Table of contents for Aug/Sep 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.…

BRAND: INTEL FESTIVAL: COACHELLA, APRIL 2017 Earlier this year, as tens of thousands danced at Coachella, something was happening above the main stage. What initially looked like fireworks or a light show quickly surfaced as an activation like no other: 300 synchronised Intel dancing drones creating shooting stars and artwork across the sky. Merging technology and art, Intel was able to create a unique experience for festivalgoers while cementing its brand as a leaders in the drone space. BRAND: FAST COMPANY FESTIVAL: FAST COMPANY INNOVATION FESTIVAL, NOVEMBER 2015 Experience trumped entertainment when the creators of Fast Company decided to celebrate their 20th anniversary with a five-day festival, rather than a party. Operating in New York, the first Fast Company Innovation Festival incorporated more than 100 events across 75 venues with…

“Closing the gap on digital literacy is digital technology company Indigital (indigital.net) founded by Mikaela Jade, a Cabrogal woman from Sydney. Indigital is bridging ancient cultures and the digital economy. Based in Kakadu, it brings new technologies like AR and VR to rural, regional and remote communities. Empowering Indigenous communities to share their ancient culture with the world and creating economic opportunities for them. One organisation aiming to build on the strengths and assets of Australia’s first peoples is First Australians Capital (firstaustralianscapital.org), a company founded by Jocelyn King in order to reduce poverty and disadvantage. By supporting the prosperity and growth of Indigenous business, it is confident it can help entrepreneurs to create viable and scalable business that will ‘close the gap’ for Indigenous communities. First Australian Capital provides…

“ Those interested in accelerating women’s sport need to lean in with a startup attitude toward investment and expected return.” It’s an exciting time for women’s sport in Australia. Earlier this year the AFLW surpassed expectations in its first season, attracting impressive crowds. Our rugby sevens team won gold at last year’s Rio Olympics. March saw a pay rise for top-level cricketers. Pro surfers remain more competitive internationally than Australian male surfers. The NRL continues to invest in grassroots and touch football programs to engage a new generation of athletes and fans. It’s not just codes and fans flocking to support women’s sport. Big brands are rushing in too, recognising an obvious opportunity to get in at the ground level of a growing industry. But it’s not all positive. Unfortunate…

“Everyone is different… That’s where machine learning comes in because for anyone to optimise that manually is impossible.” The lunch event was held in Sydney and attended by a group of senior retail marketers as well as the Marketing team. Hosted in collaboration with email marketing experts Return Path, we were fortunate to have in attendance special guest Matt Blumberg, CEO of Return Path, who founded the company almost 20 years ago. What we discovered is that, while businesses are at very different and distinct phases of their customer experience strategies, data and talent are primary determining factors. Artificial intelligence (AI) is adding a new layer of complexity, but also opportunity. For many retailers, online and off, the primary barometer of customer experience is Net Promoter Score (NPS). “We do…

 “ Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.” So said, reportedly, Muhammad Ali. One way to pay our dues, so to speak, is to create a culture of giving. Giving tends to take many forms and often rolls up into one, or more, of three main buckets: One way to pay our dues, so to speak, is to create a culture of giving. Money – this can take the form of: • one-off donations, • regular giving: for example, sponsoring a child or a workplace giving or payroll deductions system, • sponsorships: you sponsor your friend or colleague to ride in a charity bike ride, or • crowdfunding: you join a particular cause or project to which you are inspired to donate money,…

“NPS hasn’t evolved. Businesses have. This is a big problem.” Mark Ritson makes some excellent points in his article on marketing intelligence (‘Intelligence the noun, not the trait’, Marketing magazine April/May 2017) and, while I appreciate the simplicity of his message regarding the Net Promoter Score (NPS), there are several points that need to be addressed. We can all agree that listening to customers should be the heartbeat of any successful company and it is only through linking intelligence that companies can get a competitive advantage. But how we accomplish this does not need to be reliant on an ineffectual measuring system. Let me explain. WHAT’S THE POINT OF DOING ANYTHING IF NOT FOR FUTURE GROWTH? If NPS has a “weak to non-existent correlation with future business growth” (or anything…

If by some miracle, a prophet could describe the future exactly as it was going to take place, his predictions would so sound so far-fetched, so absurd, that everyone would laugh him to scorn – Arthur C Clarke In 2001: A Space Odyssey, Clarke described many technologies that today we take for granted, like using geostationery satellites to communicate. Marketing managers happily do future-watching. We ponder how to accommodate and exploit disruption in our marketplaces. For many, the case is that the change is happening now. When doing this, we ask, ‘How can we see?’ Our bosses ask, ‘How sure are you?’ We try to see it as an issue of insights and outsights – how to see beyond your data to know megatrends. John Cleary, investment adviser at…

“Symbolic associations like ‘sophisticated’ are just as functional as those related to ‘performance’ or ‘speed’. It’s all utility for the human consumer. ” We’ve been talking about ‘consumer culture’ for so long we’ve forgotten what the term refers to. It does not mean people shopping a lot or obsessing about brands and advertising. It runs much deeper than that. Culture, at least from an anthropological point of view, is the rich web of meanings that you and I use to make sense of the world we live in, others and ourselves. To be human is to face a continual stream of existential questions: what does it mean to be Australian? Successful? A working mother? We use meanings to answer those questions and culture is simply the agglomeration of all of…

From theatre to sport to pots and pans, the one thing all actors, athletes and marketers have in common is the task of communicating with and satisfying an audience. I wrote in this editorial a couple of years ago about a pet hate I caught from Steve Sammartino, Dave McCaughan and others: the word ‘consumer’. It’s the economists’ definition of people as mindless input-output machines – about as complicated as a single-celled organism. Generalisations and predictions of behaviour are necessary, of course, but the language we use at the same time also affects how we see our customers. If we instead view marketing as a performance, our mindset is automatically and significantly altered. It helps us keep in mind that real, complex people are at the end of our messages…

Jean-François Ponthieux has been a fixture in the Australian music industry since he moved to the country from his native France in 2003. After spending time working at Filter Music and Petrol Records, he began his own small boutique festival, So Frenchy, So Chic, in 2011. “When I started I was doing old school marketing – TV, radio, posters, PR and digital banner ads,” says Ponthieux, “In my second year, I realised this approach was becoming obsolete and I had to pivot to avoid going bust.” Despite being something of a “private person” and having no social media presence personally, Ponthieux realised the importance of utilising these platforms. “I decided to learn everything I could about social. My first comprehensive digital campaign was in 2015; ticket sales increased by 20%”.…

ARTEFACTS Artefacts include the visible, tangible identifiable elements in an organisation and they can be recognised by people not part of the culture. They may include aspects like interior design, dress code and jokes. Artefacts are easy to observe but can be hard to decipher. ESPOUSED VALUES AND BELIEFS Espoused values and beliefs are an organisation’s ideologies – it’s ideals, goals, values and aspirations. It is often expressed in official philosophies and public statements of identity and is how the members represent the organisation to themselves as well as to outsiders. It may or may not be consistent with artefacts and behaviours and trouble may arise if leaders espouse values that are incongruent with the deeper assumptions of the culture. BASIC UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS Basic assumptions are the deeply embedded, unconscious,…

Jemma Wong’s top five pre-game pump-up songs 1: ‘Run the World (Girls)’ – Beyoncé 2: Just one, every time. See above. Jemma Wong describes herself as a brand storyteller and you can tell from the way she speaks that this is how she approaches all aspects of her role. Her tone is infectiously positive, yet also realistic. In 2015, Wong won the prestigious Cannes Young Lion Award for Marketing, in 2016 she was an ADMA Young Marketer of the Year finalist and, most recently, she was named the Mumbrella Awards Under 30 Achiever of the Year. Wong is the perfect example of someone who can move seamlessly with business changes and demands. “More and more you’re seeing businesses invest in or build corporate accelerators and work with start-ups,” she says.…

No matter how prominent your brand or how big your budget, overpromising in your advertising, or being a tad too clever with your choice of words, is playing with fire. In the worst case scenario, your brand promise will go up in smoke, along with your profits. NUROFEN Nurofen is a case in point: the Reckitt Benckiser-owned painkiller brand recently made Australian consumer law history for all the wrong reasons after the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) appealed a decision to fine the company $1.7 million for misleading conduct. The Federal Court had already found in the regulator’s favour, ruling there was no evidence to support Nurofen’s claim that its Specific Pain range targeted pain in specific parts of the body, but the ACCC wanted the fine increased, to…

"I know marketing professors and market research companies are dead set against NPS these days. That’s predominantly because they’re both impractical, self-serving hypocrites and don’t want you measuring customers on your own without their ‘expert’ input. Ignore their counsel when it comes to NPS. They’re probably right that it has a weak to non-existent correlation with future business growth. It matters not. NPS is a merciless data point, it has C-Suite understanding and it’s so simple you can use it to explain to a call centre team why they suck, how they can improve and how they will be re-measured. Pound for pound, NPS has changed the world of service satisfaction more than any other metric in the last 50 years. Just remember that there is no point comparing your…

Something remarkable happened in the art world in 2015. For the first time the Turner Prize was not given to an artist. Architecture studio Assemble won the coveted award for combating the dereliction of a rundown council housing estate. Another surprise this year was IKEA’s Better Shelter being awarded Beazley Design of the Year. The temporary, sustainable housing answered the refugee crisis ‘brief’, beating David Bowie’s Blackstar album cover. Social utility is the emerging value in the arts. There’s even a museum for it! The Museum of Arte Útil proposes new uses for art within society and is one of the drivers of a global movement shaping our contemporary art world. So what? Advertising has borrowed artistic values to captivate consumers. So why haven’t we embraced utility more vigorously? As…

11% ESSENCE 2.2 MILLION ADULTS The Essence segment tends to be well-educated professionals who are highly-active cultural consumers and creators, they are leaders rather than followers. Confident in their own tastes, they will act spontaneously according to their mood and pay little attention to what others think. 12% AFFIRMATION 2.4 MILLION ADULTS Affirmation welcomes culture as a way of enjoying quality time with friends and family at the same time as improving themselves as individuals. They are interested in less traditional artforms but will continue to attend large, mainstream events and activities as they offer a low-risk means of satisfying these varied needs. 29% EXPRESSION 5.7 MILLION ADULTS The Expression segment is in tune with their spiritual side. They are confident, fun-loving, self-aware people who accommodate a wide range of…

In 2012 a war of words erupted in the Federal Parliament between two MPs on the same side of politics when one was described as an “urban Aboriginal” and “not a man of culture”. As the senior policy adviser to that same political party in the tourism and regional development portfolio, I was fixated by this, but keen not to engage for several reasons. First, it was being driven by the other side of politics, for partisan political gain, and not to advance the cause of Indigenous Australians. Second, I had only recently received the results of Tourism Australia research that showed 81% of inbound tourists wanted an ‘authentic’ Aboriginal tourism experience – something that required interpretation and understanding. Third, it challenged my own thinking about Aboriginality, and potentially identity.…

“The days of taking in the sights from the safety of a tour bus are coming to an end.” Top five motivations for travel outside Asia: • Relaxation (44%), • to try something new (39%), • to feel excited by new experiences (37%), • a reward for hard work (30%), and • to meet new people (28%). The rapidly evolving Chinese traveller promises to dramatically shift the needle for the tourism industry in Australia. The growing middle class in China has allowed for a greater emphasis on quality of life and, with that, people are more willing to spend on travel and shopping. From our recent investigation into the Chinese mindset about travel abroad and what they look for in travel experiences, we’ve identified an emerging theme: the Chinese are…

Magnum Opus Partners’ 2017 ‘Awareness Survey’ of 1500 Australians showed that, when asked to recall an ad they either liked or disliked, 57% couldn’t remember a single ad they felt positive about. Perhaps more shockingly, 66% couldn’t remember an ad they disliked. What’s going on? Why are brands wasting millions on marketing that evidently doesn’t work? I catch the bus into the Sydney CBD each morning for work. Between the city bus stop and my office, there are 14 different cafés I could grab my coffee from. But I always go to the same place: a small hole-in-the-wall style coffee shop called Mia & Co. It’s a moment I look forward to each day. As I place my foot inside the door, I’m greeted with a smile, and a warm…

“Without clear guidance, employees will interpret customer-centricity in their own way.” It’s rare for executives to go on record to say that treating customers well is the wrong thing to do. Most think that customer-centricity is both common sense and something they already do. However, in reality, as Forrester’s ‘Customer Experience Index’ data show, most of these brands fail to deliver experiences that customers value. According to our 2016 data, Australian customers said that the CX (customer experience) of 76% of the brands they interacted with was just ‘OK’, and none of the brands in Australia even made it into the ‘excellent’ category. Customer-centric cultures matter because they enable companies to deliver great experiences by default and resist forces that may degrade the experience. In addition, because transforming a culture…

“The value of data is a topic all on its own, but for me it’s cost versus ROI equals proof of concept.” Long gone are the days when data could only work in silos. Clients are now asking the hard questions around the usage of data across adtech and martech, particularly on how they can use first-party and second-party data together. And that’s exactly what they should be doing. I recently attended both the Salesforce global summit in Las Vegas, as well as the Adobe Symposium in Sydney to gain further insight and make better data and tech usage decisions. Common themes emerged at both conferences, but the main topic of conversation was around a single view of the consumer across devices. The key to achieving this Holy Grail of…

“Isolation is one of the cultural impacts technology has changed forever. ” In the early 1970s, in the middle of an urban dystopia, on the fringes of Manhattan Island in New York where people had access to few if any resources, a global multibillion-dollar industry emerged. The industry itself though – that didn’t happen until a decade or so after this thing started. In fact, the industry was a surprise externality; for years this thing had lived in a tiny space of a few square kilometres where it had bubbled up, and been shaped and formed by a local cohort who had exactly zero intention of turning it into money. The thing itself was what mattered to the people creating it. If you haven’t guessed, I’m talking about hip-hop culture.…

“ Despite marketing constantly branding itself as a creative process, it often delivers the business equivalent of déjà vu.” It’s not often you see the words ‘anthropology’ and ‘marketing’ in the same sentence. Why would you? They’re two vastly different disciplines, right? One belongs to the social sciences and the other to business. Anthropology is that slightly dated method of studying and understanding human culture, whereas marketing is the ever advancing, constantly adapting business discipline that ensures organisations are constantly revisiting and repackaging their offers and positioning them in new, unique and exciting ways. Yet, how often is the audience truly blown away by an innovative, timely and resonant marketing message? Far too often marking messages are merely copied versions of a previous incarnation. When was the last time you…

The multitude of new communication platforms, the voracity of the media to explore every angle and increasing demands from stakeholders provide an interesting marketing conundrum for modern branding. While corporations once played a role in culture and society by resonating with the feelings of the community, they are now often expected to be leaders, even when that position may not be congruent to their primary purpose. A driving force in all this must be laid at the feet of marketing commentators, like me, who have long argued that brands have become de facto icons with which we establish powerful and emotionally binding relationships. In this scenario, it is understandable that managers may have faith that their brands project some stronger cultural purpose that goes beyond simply selling satisfaction. A few…