Table of contents for Oct/Nov 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.…

At Amazon, the customer is king. From ensuring head office staff have call centre training and regularly visit fulfilment centres, through to making heartfelt apologies when it makes mistakes and using cutting edge technology to personalise every single email, Amazon has consistently placed the customer at the centre of its business. When the brand started two decades ago, founder Jeff Bezos would keep an empty chair at key meetings to represent the needs and wants of the most important person to the business – the customer. So great is the power the Amazon customer yields, that customer service staff are authorised to pull items off the (virtual) shelf should just a handful of customers complain about the same product. No negotiation takes place with the category buyers or marketing teams…

Have you heard about Data as a Service (DaaS)? You may have heard of its cousin Software as a Service (SaaS) or brothers Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). And, of course, there is Big Data as a Service (BDaaS) – riding the wave of Big Data hype. SO WHAT IS DAAS? DaaS is described in a number of different ways depending on to whom you talk and what your Google search throws up. Today, DaaS is described as a cloud-based solution used to facilitate the accessibility of data in a timely, secure and cost-effective way. DaaS operates under the premise that data can be supplied to users on demand, irrespective of any organisational or geographical separation. The shift of data to cloud-based databases (i.e.…

You’ve recently moved to a new suburb, and you’ve come down with a killer flu. You need a doctor. Badly. Google says there’s a clinic just around the corner. Relief! Well sort of. It doesn’t have a website, but it does have a phone number. You ring to book an appointment. You’re put on hold for 15 minutes. Your weariness turns to anxiety. A disinterested voice (is he chewing gum?) books you in. Five hundred metres from your house, the clinic proves impossible to find. Shivering, delirious, you walk down cold streets and dead arcades. Google Maps unhelpfully says you’ve ‘reached your destination’ – apparently the clinic moonlights as a laundromat. When you eventually burst through the opaque glass door, the receptionist (definitely gum) mumbles that there’s a 45-minute wait…

“[Air travel] has always been a fascinating market because you have to both build a brand, so people like you, and be responsible, so people trust you.” SUE’S TOP FIVE FAVOURITE FILMS (IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER) Muriel’s Wedding / The Godfather Hunt for the Wilderpeople / The Devil Wears Prada / Black Swan Since 2009, Sue Zerk has been the marketing director at 20th Century Fox Theatrical. This role is responsible for building a brand from zero and turning it into dinner party conversation within six months, 20 times a year. Speaking to Zerk, it’s easy to see how her straightforward, anti-BS mentality has seen her through an impressive career. Everything she says is paced, calm and well-thought out – a rare quality in today’s high-pressure marketing environment. Zerk’s career…

Qualitative and quantitative research found that the habitual nature of purchasing fuel had lowered awareness, understanding and consideration of E10. Campaign Biofuels Education Campaign – E10K Client Department of Energy and Water Supply Agency Ogilvy Australia, Brisbane Background: To stimulate economic growth and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the Queensland Government’s Biofuels Mandate requires E10 petrol sales to double. The problem is that E10 petrol is not a popular choice among motorists. Ogilvy and the Department of Energy and Water Supply (DEWS) embarked on a digital-centric campaign that is successfully engaging an ambivalent audience in a low-involvement category. While E10, an ethanol-blended fuel, had been available in Queensland for over a decade, a compounding decline in sales forced the Queensland Government to respond with a new legislation to curb this downturn…

Marketers are chasing Millennials because for a brand to be successful in 20 years’ time, we need Millennials and Gen Z to feel positively about our categories and brands. So far, 2017 has been a year of reassessment and substance over style. The marketing profession is losing its infatuation with buzzwords and collecting data for the sake of it, in favour of real insights and analysis. The result is smarter, more targeted advertising. Here are the five defining trends to emerge this year and how they stack up in our report. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK: MANAGING THE MEDIA MIX For 50 years, ‘the right content, to the right people, at the right time’ meant TV. For the past 15 or so years we’ve been relearning the art of complexity…

“ Business focuses on doing, while academics are afforded the luxury to think through the intricacies of concepts more deeply. ” The current crop of innovation driven companies collaborate closely with universities. Facebook recently allied with 17 universities, and Google and IBM have always cooperated closely with educational institutions to develop areas like artificial intelligence (AI). The information and knowledge that flow from these partnerships help them gain and sustain competitive advantage. Paradoxically, Australia – the research and discovery institutions of which are globally ranked in the top 1 to 2% – ranks last in the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) for business-university collaboration. How do we turn this around? Benefits Claus Otto from Shell has a good question, “What can these university centres do better or differently…

“ Someone wise once said, “If serving is beneath you, leadership is beyond you”. It sums up servant leadership well. ” There was an uproar. “How dare we be referred to as servants?” “That demeans us, makes us seem inferior, unequal, without merit.” They were private bankers and a journalist had published an article in which a senior leader from a bank had referred to private bankers as being ‘servants’ to people with complicated lives and complex financial needs. ‘What’s the problem?’ I thought. Serving others is a universal purpose for the majority of the world’s workforce. What did these two private bankers think their job was? I am fast collecting words that need a rebrand: ‘retirement’ is one, ‘feminist’ is another, and I think I may add ‘servant’ to…

It’s been my absolute pleasure and privilege to work on Marketing over the last six years, the last four as editor and the past 12 months as associate publisher. There aren’t many jobs in which you get to serve and meet such a diverse array of the smartest people in business in Australia and from around the world. To the clients, columnists, PR pros, writers, sub-editors, content partners, designers and everyone who has helped make this publication what it is in all its formats: thank you. It’s not possible without you. And a huge thanks to my colleagues here at Niche Media – I’ve worked with dozens of incredible people, many of whom I can now call friends – with special thanks to Paul Lidgerwood for all the opportunities I’ve…

The Australian Promotional Products Association (APPA) is the only professional trade association specifically for the promotional products and promotional marketing industry in the Australasian region. The APPA Awards for Promotional Excellence recognise the outstanding use of promotional products in business and marketing programs. Platinum Award for Overall Excellence and Merchandise Programs and Events Merchandise WINNER: ARID ZONE CLIENT: XERO AUSTRALIA In order to complement its brand promise to make accounting software cool, Xero required a bespoke merchandise range for internal staff and customer events. B2B Programs WINNER: FLOURISH MARKETING CLIENT: INSIGHT Healthcare ad agency Insight asked Flourish to develop a mail campaign for doctors. Flourish developed a program that included clinical posters, a brain model and a video brochure to discuss key elements of pain. Consumer Programs Gift With Purchase…

Brands need art organisations and arts organisations need brands. Servicing brand partners, however, is an intensive activity and often lean artistic organisations lack the resources to deliver on this promise. Likewise, CMOs have enough on their plates without having to weigh up the merits of aligning with cultural events or businesses. This is where agencies come into the equation. Agencies have long played the role of middleman between consumers and brands. It’s a similar relationship between arts organisations and audiences. With a recent study showing 98% of Australians engage with the arts, it has become a target CMOs cannot ignore. The arts provide a platform to engage an increasingly difficult-to-capture youth audience while reaching the population at large. In short, they’re every marketer’s dream. Agencies are adept at bridging the…

We outlined the topics for 2017’s issues (Versus, Intelligence, Generation, Culture, Serve) in July 2016. It was months later when Amazon announced its plans to start operations in Australia. Since that time, conversation and speculation has whipped retailers, marketers and media into a frenzy. It’s a little coincidental that as we reach going to print on our October/November issue, Amazon’s arrival is so, so close. I’m not going to argue that great service is more important than ever. It’s always had the power to make or break businesses, even before social media shone a light on it and marketing departments got their hands on it. The topic and talk of serve and service, on the other hand, has never been so hot. Great timing for us – dreadful timing for…

Disrupting the bricks-and-mortar retail experience Amazon Go’s first flagship store enables customers to scan in when entering the store, pick up items and leave without lining up or paying at a checkout. Payment is charged to the customer’s Amazon Go account. Whole Foods purchase Amazon purchased the popular – yet notoriously expensive – quality grocery store, and has already begun slashing grocery prices. AmazonFresh It home-delivers groceries, and AmazonFresh Pickup enables Prime subscribers to place an order online and choose a two-hour pick-up window for drive-through collection. Drone delivery The brand’s commitment to developing drone technology is well-documented and publicised. Successful Prime Air deliveries have already been tested. A recent patent document outlining plans for the drones to scan houses they deliver to in order to serve relevant ads has…

It was early 2014 when the development group behind the Grosvenor Place precinct in Sydney recognised things were about to become challenging. Already facing a significant battle in terms of its commercial leasing division, its anchor tenant had just given notice and the team suspected that – pitched against the backdrop of a series of high-profile redevelopments taking place in other CBD locations including Barangaroo, Martin Place and Circular Quay – the iconic 44-storey building designed by Harry Seidler and constructed in 1988 was neither old enough to be considered Heritage nor modern enough to attract progressive commercial tenants. Partnering with specialist branding and design agency Frost*collective, the team set about aligning Grosvenor Place with audience-relevant opportunities. Frost’s group creative director, Ant Donovan, says the project was about addressing the…

“At that moment I realised a couple of things. First, that as a marketer I couldn’t translate what I was doing into a language my boss would understand: revenue.” Many years ago, one of my old bosses in a previous company came to me and asked the question: “If I give you 20% more marketing budget this month, where are you going to invest it? And, more importantly, how much revenue should the business expect to get back from it?” Do you know that sensation when your heart stops for a few seconds, everything around you seems to be moving in slow motion, and no matter how far back in your mind you try to find the correct answer, you know it won’t be precise? That was me, many years…

Artificial Intelligence (AI) improves the economics and capabilities of everything around us. Consumers are starting to expect intelligent experiences – personal, contextual to their immediate situation, and highly relevant – every time they interact with a company. Customer service interactions are no exception. In fact, four in 10 contact centre decision-makers are exploring using AI technologies to differentiate their service. AI can assist agents in completing repetitive tasks, or even completely take these tasks over. Yet, instead of replacing humans entirely, AI will enhance agents’ skills and allow them to focus their attention beyond routine tasks. Agents instead will handle customer interactions that require deeper insight, and analysis. These interactions will often take longer to resolve and are opportunities to nurture profitable customer relationships, which are increasingly rare in a…

Community management is at a crossroads. Once tethered to the digital frontlines, community is now heralded as the future of business and leadership. Community managers are building the human infrastructure of the 21st century. AI and automation can support them. The machine layer offers community strategists power – think Tony Stark’s suit in Iron Man. Used as a tool, it can liberate our time for work that demands a human touch – essential to build that human infrastructure of interconnected ecosystems. But the Iron Man scenario only works if community professionals help drive the creation of AI – behaviourists alongside technologists to shape nuanced, contextually astute intelligences that consider where the human begins and the machine ends. MODERATION Real strides have been made here, even though most tools are geared…

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming so embedded in the everyday that we risk not noticing it at all. Self-driving cars, humanoid robots and Go grandmasters may grab the popular imagination, but it’s the way that AI is seeping into everything from voice recognition to fast food delivery that better illustrates its quiet ubiquity. Voice controlled personal assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri are getting smarter day by day, along with most other connected devices. In the domain of digital advertising, machine learning has already been with us for several years. Well-known techniques – from regression analysis to deep learning – are being used to combat ad fraud, optimise ad viewability, improve audience composition and enhance goal conversion. The vast amounts of data generated by ad tech platforms and the…

“The best experiences I’ve ever had with any firm are usually when someone in the organisation had the courage to break some rules. ” If you’re looking for a singular narrative with an astounding conclusion about service strategy, you won’t get it here. I’m instead going to start out with some corporate folly we’ve all had to face in marketing, and then a set of vignettes that prove what service really is, and that its core requirement is not based on some kind of strategic advantage or expensive research, but mostly humanity, sprinkled with a little bit of courage. The art of service is the sum of the parts. It’s the fight against a corporate machine driven by rules and efficiency. But anyone can choose to go off script, which…

“ the non-experience is emerging as the new benchmark to shopping. Predetermine everything; choose nothing. A brand’s job is to create a shortcut. By encoding meaning that resonates with target audiences, brands make consumption choices easier. Like magnets, strong brands attract our attention. Yet automation advancements are pointing towards Doomsday for brands. From a series of staged choices, consumers are moving by inertia through their paths-to-purchase, with their more mundane choices made obsolete. Using an AI deep-learning algorithm developed at CERN to manage its stock, German retailer Otto has been able to predict what customers will order with 90% accuracy. Otto buys products from suppliers without human intervention by looking at 30 billion transactions and 200 variables (e.g. weather). This reduced two million stock returns and surplus stock by 20%.…

As a young academic one of my prized possessions was a photo taken at a conference in Nashville, Tennessee featuring me alongside the then doyens of services marketing research, Valarie Zeithaml, A Parasuraman and Leonard Berry. The trio of ‘rock star’ status researchers had a few years earlier published their famous SERVQUAL study that introduced, five dimensions upon which the concept of ‘service quality’ could be measured. This was done by comparing consumer expectations to experiences, thus highlighting any gaps that may occur. That time, almost two decades ago, preceded the huge technological impact that has changed not only the that consumers interact with businesses, but also how they interact with each other. Despite that, and some of the academic scrutiny that the model has endured over the years, I…