Table of contents for Jun/Jul 2017 in Marketing

Marketing would like to recognise and thank the members of its Editorial Advisory Board for their invaluable guidance, including but not limited to Dr Michael Valos (chair), Caroline Ruddick, Erik Zimmerman, Mike Harley, Shannon Peachey, Trisca Scott-Branagan, Skev Ioannou, Cameron Woods and Peter Little. * CONTENT PARTNER: a Marketing Content Partner is an organisation with which we’ve entered into a partnership to collaborate on content for the magazine (see page numbers listed for each) and/or exclusive benefits for Members of Marketing Pro. See marketingmag.com.au/pro for more information.…

MILLENNIAL INFLUENCE ON MARKETING Every company is transforming right now. Digital’s changing, everything’s changing. Whether you’re a B2B or a B2C, the buyers are gaining control. As control shifts into their hands, you need to move beyond just marketing to them. You need to engage them. At Marketo, we like to say ‘no one wakes up in the morning wanting to be marketed to’. But people do wake up looking for something that stimulates them intellectually. That means sellers have to engage their potential buyers on the right channel, on the right device, with an authentic and appealing message. The engagement economy is really about how organisations listen to their buyers, learn how they want to be interacted with, and then engage with them in that way. As an example…

Caitlin Iles is someone who’s experienced vastly different industries and roles, and navigated everything that being an entrepreneur can throw at you. When no two days are the same and you have to be your own accountant, marketing team, salesman, cheer squad and everything in between, you learn a thing or two. According to Matt Ehrlichman, CEO of start-up Porch.com, an entrepreneurial spirit is defined by the following qualities: they are in tune with their passion, always questioning how it can be done better, optimistic about all possibilities, take calculated risks and, above all, they execute. Iles ticks every one of these boxes – twice. At 15 Iles started a social impact business (backed by her dad), buying failed racehorses and retraining them for other roles off the track. During…

 ‘ Want to save the puppies? Keep reading.’ Crafting messages using fewer words is a universal skill you’ll be able to leverage across everything you do. OK, so no puppies were harmed in the writing of this article… But this one line illustrates that even the shortest copy can immediately capture your audience’s interest (and keep them reading). In these times when more and more of our communication takes place online, and attention spans are getting shorter (now less than a goldfish), it’s more important than ever to use short, direct copy. You actually want results from your marketing, right? Writing online content to drive conversions requires highly succinct copy, so the customer can quickly see: • What the product or service is/ does, • the benefit(s), and • how…

Greetings former self! Hello, from your future self in 2053 – some two generations away. Yes, you are still alive! I’ve just got my hands on an alpha version of the ‘Look-Back’ machine, a wearable device, which will be all the rage for Festivus 2054, and noticed that you were writing (how quaint) your column in The Generation Issue. Let me help you out by giving you a sneak peek at what’s happening more than three decades from where you are. First, cars aren’t flying, although they are largely driving themselves. Actually, not much is flying these days with intercontinental travel now done through a series of ‘tubes’ that use high-velocity magnetic fields to ‘push’ capsules across the planet at twice the speed of sound. It’s more a futuristic train…

It's almost 10 years since I first visited China. Then as a freshly-graduated, naive young man my appetite for adventure was matched, or perhaps spurred, by the dearth of job prospects at home for a psychology major not continuing to an honours year and masters degree. Hence, it was an easy choice to embark on a gap year – which turned into two and a half – teaching English in a couple of Chinese universities. As I write this I'm back, this time as a son-in-law several years overdue for a visit. The family home I'm sitting in is a collection of buildings with three generations living side by side – and an additional generation visiting most days. I'm struck now, as I was then, at this arrangement's place at…

You may have noticed a slow erosion taking place in your lead generation activities: ever-declining email open rates, dubious digital marketing metrics and the collapse in traditional outbound telemarketing conversion rates. So what lead generation strategies are working in today’s complex and cluttered market? If we refer to Chief Marketer’s data, we see that email marketing ranks number one for lead generation. Other reports, such as Hubspot’s ‘State of Inbound’ report, suggest different channels are more effective for different audiences. Nevertheless, email marketing has consistently stood out as highly potent over the last five years. If you’re really busy and you read nothing else, read this: it’s not what channel you use, it’s how you use it. Marketing has transformed from a product-centric, mass advertising, demographic-based sales machine into a…

Campaign Launch of Gluten Free Weet-Bix Client Sanitarium Agencies BWM Dentsu, Perceptual Engineering, The POP Agency, Carat Background: The gluten free foods category had been growing since 2010, with 13.8% growth from October 2012 to October 2013. However, Sanitarium’s qualitative research (Neer Korn Research, 2014) indicated that the gluten free category offered a serious lack of choice in terms of variety, taste and convenience. Gluten free cereal, in particular, was hard to find and was like ‘eating cardboard’. And many of the ‘healthier’ gluten free products were actually less healthy and higher in fat and sugar than their non-gluten free counterparts. No wonder people who needed gluten free foods felt like they were constantly forced to compromise, and being taken advantage of by food manufacturers, which seemed to be making…

Consistency is the backbone of brand success. It fosters confidence. It grows recognition, understanding and loyalty. Yet consistency, and the quality of conviction required to deliver it, appears to have fallen out of fashion. It’s being left behind. Business thinking has instead been swept up in a passionate obsession with fluidity, iterative adaptation and agility. Nimbleness to change fast and often is king. To be clear, I’m a change optimist. A fresh approach to thinking and working is essential to both survive and thrive in today’s marketplace. I would simply venture to suggest we need to adopt a multi-speed approach to business components – specifically brand. The marketing business has always been at the tight end of the orbit, with cycles exponentially speeding up to deliver growth and stay ahead…

Apparently I’m part of Generation X. I was born between the years 1965 and 1976 – depending of course on which social researcher or demographer you believe. This means that I’m part of the ‘lost’ generation, that I’m a latchkey kid, that my parents got divorced and that I grew up watching MTV. Which is all good and fine except that none of these things are true for me. The thing with demographics, and any attempt to round up groups of humans into behaviour patterns, especially those associated with age brackets and time periods, is that they are invented by us: marketers. We literally invented these things to make our own working lives a little easier. Sure, generations always existed. We always had babies, children, teenagers and adults. But the…

Every memorable experience has key features that define it and make it special. Yet, experiences are but abstractions, felt and interpreted in our minds. By analysing yours and others’ experiences, it becomes easier to define how your brand should be sensed. This is important because recent industry reports indicate that marketers are moving away from volume-based advertising to quality-based brand experiences. With that in mind and a little help from some friends, below are 11 powerful hacks to help you make a mark in your target audience’s mind. PRECISION, ADDRESSABILITY AND CONVERGENCE Vijay Solanki, CEO, IAB Australia Digital lends itself to the delivery of experiences. It does this through four key principles: • personalisation: the ability to use data to tailor the experience to you, • context: the ability to…

That the Australian population is ageing isn’t news. Demographers, futurists and planners, fed by an explosion of statistical data about the aged have been telling this story for years. What is news is that our cities and built environment are relatively unprepared to accommodate a growing section of the population that has been expressing the desire to remain engaged and active in the community – something that has been convenient to suppose the ageing population didn’t want to do. Designers, planners and architects now have an urgent role to play, where policy and development have been slow to read the signs. The most visible and flamboyant component of the new ageing population is the Baby Boomer, the ‘Golden Children of a Gilded Age’. The welfare state provided their free education,…

Based on new results from Accenture’s ‘Global Consumer Shopping Survey 2017’, Gen Z – individuals under the age of 20 – are a new generation of consumers who take Millennials’ love and loyalty for all things relating to video, social and mobile to their logical conclusions. Accenture surveyed nearly 10,000 respondents in 13 countries, including Australia, the US, the UK and Japan, and equally weighted groups of Gen Zs (18-20 years), Millennials (21-27) and older Millennials (28-37). Far more than just a platform for sharing personal details, events and building communities, two-thirds of Gen Z consumers are interested in making purchases directly via social. Furthermore, 44% cite social media as a popular source for product inspiration and 37% have increased their use of social media for purchase decision-making in the…

B2B sellers, particularly those representing high-value products and services, endure long buying cycles and navigate complex, often political networks of influencers and decision-makers on their way to success. But now there’s a new ingredient in this multilayered mix. Recent research reveals that 73% of Millennials are involved in purchasing decisions for their firms. Millennial buyers (aged 18 to 35) are taking their seat at the table. Unfortunately, most B2B organisations are woefully behind the curve in terms of adapting marketing and selling strategies to better engage with these increasingly influential and present decision-makers. B2B sellers will likely encounter Millennials throughout the evaluation process and beyond, as they are involved in a range of activities such as sourcing and ranking suppliers, as well as signing contracts and managing post-sale vendor relationships.…

On a recent chilly Friday night, 14 Australian media, marketing and creative industry executives entered the decommissioned Yasmar Youth Detention Centre in Sydney’s inner west to spend a night in jail, to experience first-hand the effects of juvenile detention, and to raise much-needed funds and awareness for the charity Whitelion. The cash value we generated was just over $30,000, a stellar effort by all involved and their friends, families and, in some cases, clients! No doubt Whitelion will put those funds to good use to continue to fund its many and varied youth outreach programs. But what was the non-cash value of our experience? I’m not talking about valuing up the PR – although that would have been in the tens of thousands of dollars with thanks to Rosie Baker…

Brand experiences, real life experiences that reach audiences at any touch point, are having their moment. It’s certainly not a new thing with applications dating back as far as the 1900s when Harry Selfridge opened his eponymous store in London. Successful brands have long been advocates of brand experience, but the current advertising climate and the demand for more effectiveness and ROI for marketing dollars are putting it in the spotlight like never before. Back in 1909, Selfridge completely redefined the retail experience of the day. Shopping was once an exclusive pursuit where only the wealthy were allowed in the stores, but Selfridges welcomed everyone. The display cabinets were open so people could touch and feel the products and the department store was the first in Britain to provide women’s…

Lead generation is a critical part of the sales conversion funnel (or pipeline if that’s your preferred model). Without it, you have no sales. It becomes even more critical at the current time when customers are cynical about marketers and customers are less likely to be long-term loyal without a clear point of differentiation. Despite this, it has been reported that only 6% of small business generates sales with social media. By incorporating social media into a lead generation process, however, companies typically see a 45% drop in marketing costs and a revenue increase of 24%. Typically, these companies achieve this by intercepting customers on social media platforms in the course of commenting on a product need or searching for a product. Traditionally, lead generation comprises outbound methods such as…

If the true meaning of an ‘idea’ is a thought, conception or notion, then every single human being on our planet is constantly ideating. (Except maybe my husband because when I ask him what he is thinking he usually says ‘nothing’! It drives me nuts – how can he be thinking nothing? ‘Denial is not a river in Egypt,’ I remind him…) Labs, tanks, spaces and hubs Generating great ideas is big business today. We have innovation labs, creative think tanks, makers’ spaces, collaboration hubs and a whole raft of other fancy-named places with the purpose of bringing people together to creatively solve problems. This is a bit of a phenomenon of our time – not the coming up with ideas, but the conscious setting up of environments to take…

We’ve been doing the generational thing a long time. From Cicero to Malthus, demography has been used to chart and measure the structure of society. But in the 20th century we began to emphasise and exaggerate the generation bands that existed within the overall population. Ever since Marlon Brando became The Wild One in the classic 1953 movie and led his gang of itinerant bikers through the post-WWII streets of the US, we have conceptualised the generation behind the mainstream as a cultural ‘other’. We named them as a discrete group. We ascribed traits to them. Dressed them in new fashions and gave them new idols. Most importantly, we used their emergence as a signal of a change to the cultural order and a commercial challenge for marketers who must…