The humble promo pen

Anyone in marketing (particularly medical and technology) will be familiar with the humble promo pen. Cheap, common and still strangely ubiquitous. 

The most common rationale for pens and other promotional products are that it is sustained brand exposure for a brand. Often, it is because sales people feel good having something to give to clients, no matter how small. Easy to dismiss, particularly when you see people actively making a game of collecting them for their children at trade shows. 

But it is not about the pen, it is about the moment of delight, no matter how small, that comes from being given a gift. 

The talented team at Truly Deeply use a phrase called Brand Gestures. A brand gesture can be a way of treating clients and guests at your trade show, it can be providing luxury hand cream to people on a flight or it can be a the provision of a humble promo pen. The better linked with the brand essence, the stronger the brand differentiation. 

As one organisation doing award winning promotional work, Zinc, says: we remember what we touch and feel. 

What brand gesture can you give your customers, remembering it is not the size of the gesture, but the gesture itself that is meaningful? 

You? What do you think? Are promotional gifts passe or do the right ones still have a powerful role to play for brands?

Obvious to you.

At a fabulous event to stimulate and inspire entrepreneurship from a surprising source - The British Library, I was reminded about the importance of placing yourself in your customers' shoes. 

Christina Richardson, founder of the Nurture Network, an outsourced marketing function for small business did a succinct presentation on key steps as you market your new business. 

With respect, to me it was obvious. With even more respect, I saw many people in the audience madly scribbling notes. 

It was a reminder to think about what of value can be shared, however obvious it may be to you. 

You? What could you share that may be obvious to you, but helpful to your customers? 

Margin mud wrestling

I'm currently reviewing the performance of a major consumer good brand in the UK. It's very clear that together, FMCG and retailer companies have created a mighty interesting situation for themselves. In a bid to be number one, either product or retailer, they have price promoted their pants off. 


So now they are naked, with only a shred of margin for protection. 


In some respects the customer is a winner, with cheaper prices. But combined with private label, the resulting 1-4 brand category leaves very little room for innovative new products and economy-stimulating small business. A similar situation is facing the IT industry. I am all for market forces and pressure to force brands and retailers to innovate, adapt and streamline to be the best. May the best brands win. But as brands fight it out, there's a whole lot of margin being lost with the resulting instability for businesses and jobs. 


So perhaps the analogy is less standing naked, shreds tactfully poised and more...mud wrestling. 


It would be naive to think that it is an easy thing for manufacturers and retailers to have completely open, honest and productive conversations about what next. 


But I think that those that manage these conversations well, will win. 


Both sides have smart, customer focused people - if we stopped wrestling, perhaps we could create smarter, more resource efficient businesses that delight consumers. On both sides of the ring. 


Flickr image credit: Filippo Venturi

A lessen in expectation and passion from Joan Collins (or rather, her audience)

Attending an event at the glorious Theatre Royal Haymarket today, a Master Class with Joan Collins, it was a reminder about passion. And about people. 


Funnily enough it wasn't from Ms Collins (who is absolutely an inspiration in terms of determination, pragmatism and traffic-stopping legs at any age!). Rather, it was after, speaking to people involved with the Master Class, the theatre and acting in general. They have their own language, what to me would be famous actors are master practitioners and dramatic practice becomes the craft. 


People have enormous, life-dedicating passion to the craft. But if I passed them on the street, or saw them in-store I would type-cast them as an X-type consumer. 


It was a vivid, candid and razor witted reminder that people are not defined by their 'type', they are defined by their passions. 


I wonder what you find if you ask some of your customers about their passions? 




*The Master Class is about to do some even more exciting projects - I recommend you learn more about this very positive organisation supporting London Youth and sign up for updates at http://www.masterclass.org.uk/. 

The bollocks club

The what?

Yes, the bollocks club.

I propose this as a new introduction into your marketing decision making process.

Pick the biggest nay-sayers you can find. Ideally, non brand-loyal customers and potentially some of your sales team who need to sell this into your key accounts.

And run your new campaign idea past them.

What did they say?

Does your idea pass through the bollocks club and makes good common sense? Did it make sense to them? How did it make them feel? Do they think it is genuinely new?

Or are you just convincing yourself that this new angle for differentiation will be heard, understood and acted upon (i.e. your product bought or new, raving fans collected).

It's just another way of sense-checking if you have marketing myopia.

I am not saying that you have to do what this groups says, by any means - it is your job to lead people to new thinking and perceptions about your brand and potentially even the market.

But what it will do is give you the honest answer before you spend £10m on a new campaign. So you can choose before, not realise after how people will act as a result of your campaign.

You? Do you have your own version of the bollocks club? What does it look like?

Why is it the inside that matters?

It has been hot here in London. Yes, you read right, an Australian calling London hot! Amongst the over-heated crowd I noticed patterns peeking out from beneath thonged feet (flip flops for non-antipodeans).

Why would someone go to the effort of buying shoes where you can barely see the pattern?

I was reminded of a time when a friend showed me his fine new work shoes, but was most excited by the inner lining depicting a sunset scene. Likewise, a hand-bag maker once told me that often, the reason people bought her bags was because of the lining (I too was seduced by the lining for my Nancy Bird bag). Recently I was researching a client's online experience and the one thing that customers repeatedly mentioned was their delight in the wrapping. Clearly the same occurs for Apple lovers given the recent spate of 'unwrapping' videos.

Expanding the thought, the same delight in discovering an unexpected interior occurs with houses (warehouse conversions), service and even people such as Susan Boyle.

I am not sure there is a straight answer to the question "Why is it the inside that matters?", but I think it can start to be explained by an overall concept of consumption=personal. It is that feeling that the design or moment is rare and can only be experienced by me (or a select few). They are all richly sensory moments, from the vividness of a pattern to the texture of fine silk lining. It ties into the notion of brand experience, or moment of truth for a brand.

One thing is for sure - it is at that moment that your 'thing' becomes personal. You connect. And the love and loyalty begin.

How can you create something special on the inside to delight your customers, and keep them coming back? Or have you already? Why do you think it is the inside that matters?

photo credit: nancybird

Are big corporates a big backwater?

I am lucky enough that I get to see and work with people in both business worlds, the corporate and the entrepreneurial. The more I do it however, I wonder, is corporate the big backwater?

I am sure that there are fantastic exceptions to this, such as Google and some retailers such as Boost Juice. But the differences are often stark. These are a few of the most common, and most frightening differences:

1. A sense of urgency – when there are lot of floors between you and a customer, it is kind of hard to hear what they are saying. Same goes with the finance department.

2. Spending – A bank recently accidentally transferred $7.8million to customers. I think a smaller organisation might have noticed the extra zeros.

3. Change – 1 person making a decision is (usually) faster and more feasible than layers of decision maker.

This is not earth-shatteringly new – but I feel that the gap is getting greater, and the risk of disconnecting with the marketplace more so than ever before as web-based or micro-businesses are taking off at warp-speed. I recently had conversations with several well established global consumer brands and realised that for all the budget and talented people, their system was continuing to drive them to do the same research, NPD and promotions that they had done in the past. A little more digital dazzle (if you’re in Kids), but essentially doing the same thing, in the same way, as it has been done since Kotler.

I realised that those brands and organisations that used to be a dream to work for may have moved from being the fast track, to the slow wade.

To get you started on moving back into an entrepreneurial frame of mind, here are a few thought starters:

• Get with the start-up mentality with 13 tips from Paul Graham
• Read What Would Google Do?
• Go to an entrepreurial networking event and start to surround yourself with an alternate mind-set.
• Approach someone you admire in a smaller business, profess your admiration, buy them coffee and ask how they would change things?
• Get a genuine change expert involved.
• Talk to your customers. And I don’t mean do a survey. I mean YOU. Get on the phone or in the store.
• Got some like-minded peers – form a “no to brackishness” group to meet for beverages of some description once every couple of weeks.
• Form an internal group / IM group / forum with these people – and keep the conversation buzzing.
• Stop, and consider what YOU really think. Radical, I know…but there is a corporate group-think.

What have you done to shift your backwater? Even if it is forming a faster channel in the middle, it’s still movement.

flicker credit:farleyj

(27 May, 2009)