Should Editorial Be Bought?

This week I heard about a change in policy at one of Britain's largest media houses: editorial can now only be about products and services offered by advertisers.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not naive. I'm aware that the brandishing of my marketing budgets has frequently led to coverage where there may previously not have been any. However, I am also aware that many, many businesses simply can't afford to advertise in major newspapers or glossy magazines, but who might be doing incredible, newsworthy things that deserve to be written and talked about.

So what does this all mean and why does it matter?

Well, advertising is a regulated industry. If someone presents something to you in an advert and you believe their claims to be incorrect or unfactual, you have a right to complain and a body to complain to.

Advertorials are up front about being paid for editorials and marked as such so you can decide for yourself if the information is biased or relevant.

However there is nothing, absolutely nothing, to stop a newspaper or a magazine creating a policy like the one I've mentioned above, passing off funded opinions as genuine editorial. This is the media equivalent of back room deals by governments. You, the consumer, the reader, have no idea it's gone on and the outcome is entirely outwith your control.

The net result will, in my opinion, be bad for business in the long term. Smaller, innovative companies who can't afford to advertise will not get the opportunities to be heard that they fully deserve, the customer and readers will not get the opportunity to decide for themselves.

Instead we will be spoon fed a smorgasbord of products and services that can afford to pay and, although they may not be the best, they will be the only ones we can read about.

Magazine and newspaper content will degrade, although perhaps not at first. Readership figures will move with them. And an industry, which has clearly lost its way in the dark, may have just put the final nail in its own coffin.

It may seem like good business sense to look after your paying customers (advertisers) but what about the hundreds of thousands of paying customers (readers) whose rights to unbiased editorial that they are clearly overlooking?  The people that, ultimately, matter most to the paying advertisers?

I'm afraid that while, as a marketer, I like to opportunity to negotiate coverage with publications in return for advertising pounds, as a PR I also like the fact that editorial is NOT something that can be bought.

It's the media equivalent of free speech and should always remain so.

Poor Service is Costing your Business Money

This week my husband made £500 by just complaining.

£500.

For those of you who know my husband, you'll know he's not the type to complain. He's pretty laid back and things that would irritate others casually pass him by.

So it had to be terrible service in order for him to make a stand. And make a stand he did.

Shockingly his net gains this week come from just TWO sources.

And I'd be exaggerating if I said that he made £500 in one week. The truth of the matter is he did it in a single day.

His benefactors? A national tyre fitting operation who managed to damage his car when it was last on their premises (then tried to cover it up) and a Scottish bank who last week decided to change their online banking system for businesses (seemingly without testing it first) wiping out significant swathes of data in the process and turning a 5 minute transaction into one that endured a nauseating 150 minutes. Yes, you read right: 150 minutes.

Just think, at £500 per week, if my husband were to complain about every poor service experience, it might have the potential to deliver him a living wage.

The lesson to be learned from this? Poor service costs your business money. A lot of money. 

Get things right and that money goes straight to your bottom line.  

Good Year or Bad Year? You Decide

It's been a Bad Year.

I've heard this more than once from a variety of business people. So it must be true.

On more than one occasions I have been told that customers just don't have the money to spend. They are behaving differently. The business is just not there anymore.

Explanations abound. The Bad Year has been caused, it would seem, by something "out there" - the economy, the recession, customers, the market, the town.

If I was to give in to the rhetoric, external factors outwith their control are the cause of this doom. It has rarely had anything to do with the business.

But here's the thing. Our clients, across the board, have had a Good Year. Sales are up, visitor numbers are up, profitability is up. How come?

In fact, if we extend our reach beyond Scotland there are  many examples of businesses who are having a Good Year.

Apple now has more cash than the US government - an unusual victor in a worldwide marketplace that is supposed to be struggling to pay their basic living expenses.

Primark, the budget retailer, by comparison has had a Bad Year. In precisely the circumstances you'd expect them to flourish.....

So what's making the difference?

I'd like to hazard a guess that it's partly to do with innovation, and partly to do with vision.

Apple has a vision for the future. Apple has continued to innovate practically ignoring the recession, pushing on regardless. Launching iPads and iPhones and changing our expectations in the process.

Marks and Spencer announced significant investment in the layout of their 703 stores just last week, and "shook up" their marketing team the week before. Their share price rocketed.

Looking at our client base, the one thing that binds them together is that they all have a vision for the future of their business and they are just not prepared to accept that the recession will have an impact. They are ready (and eager) to bend and flex with the market to journey towards that vision. Many of them have altered their business models in the last 12 months. They've shifted their marketing activities significantly and trusted my judgement when I've said "That won't work anymore".

Marketing has also entered a new era. Media has shifted. Customers have shifted. Behaviour has changed and changed for good. Many businesses have failed to shift with them. And until they do, they will continue to have a Bad Year. And possibly another one after that.

I am still staggered that some businesses are trading off a hotmail or gmail address. Some don't have websites. Many don't have facebook or twitter pages. This is the modern equivalent of a business refusing, point blank, to invest in a phone in the 1960s. Wise up.

Wake up. Smell the coffee. If you want to start having a Good Year, the solution is very, very simple. You need to stop doing what you've always done and innovate. Customers are still spending money. The business is out there. You just need to focus on making it easier for them to buy. And that doesn't mean dropping your prices. If you don't believe me, visit the Apple Store.

Innovate. And your customers will come back. Stand still, and they won't.

Death of a Salesman: What Double Glazing and Print Advertising have in Common

If you grew up in the 1980s, you'd know that double glazing was all the rage. The double glazing gold rush was pursued vigorously and competitively by an army of double glazing sales people who used each and every technique in the book to win those sales.

As their market started to contract, their sales tactics got stronger and more erratic. The consumer affairs programme Watchdog was awash with complaints about strong arm sales tactics, calling on vulnerable people unawares, and generally becoming a nuisance to society. 

This kind of sales pest behaviour is well documented, and broadly disliked. But despite that, some organisations and industries persist in maintaining this sales approach.

Take my job, for instance. I'm one of those strange people who spend their life developing and delivering marketing plans. This means I spend time looking at the market, identifying key messages, setting marketing objectives, finding suitable communication mediums, setting budgets, spending them, and delivering against that plan.

I find this delivers results. 

Advertising sales people, clearly, assume that I do something completely different.

Judging by their bizarre behaviour, they must think I sit at my desk with a big pot of money waiting on the last minute, must buy advertising opportunity to plonk right into my lap. Relevant or not.

This baffles me.

Some advertising sales people have got it right. Every January I have meeting after meeting with sales reps from outdoor advertising companies and radio stations. They ask what we have coming up for the year, I tell them. They show me the range of their products, they share their pricing mechanisms with me. They give me data on their media and its effectiveness. Occasionally they bring goodies - nothing ostentatious - but my spoils from these meetings have included packets of biscuits, boxes of chocolates, post-it notes and mugs. 

They see their job to assist me in the all important planning and budgeting stages. The outcome of this clever and well thought out sales process is very simple: they have a higher likelihood of being included in my marketing plans.  

Print advertising sales people (in the main, and there are a few exceptions) seem to respond to seeing other media or adverts and call me. Daily. Incessantly.

And the truth is, they haven't got a hope in hell of placing a sale - because the budget and media plan is already set. They have missed the proverbial boat. And not just by minutes. It sailed weeks ago.

I am not alone in being caught in the grip of the onslaught of advertising sales. Our clients are sick to death of it. As a result, we offer them this promise as part of our service: Let us deal with them.

And we do.

We route all our calls through a call answering service so it's easy to analyse the impact of advertising sales calls on our business.

Last week 61% of the incoming calls we received were from advertising sales people. Each and every single one of them believed they were the only advertising sales person to call me that day.

Only one of those calls was from a sales person from whom I was actively trying to purchase. One person called 5 times. In one day. And refused to leave a message. She will assume I don't know that she called that many times, however our system tells me everything I need to know. Imagine the negative impact on that publication's brand before she even gets through to me.

This erratic and seemingly desperate behaviour is indicative of an industry in turmoil. Readership figures are dropping, prices are increasing and their sales teams are panicking. If they see a poster in a train station on their way to work, they call that company that very day to see if they want to buy advertising. Their not so very clever assumption is that because we have already spent money on advertising, we must have money for advertising.

I know this to be true as, in our plan, we have the "in charge" dates of outdoor advertising sites I've booked, and every time we have a billboard or a poster go up in the outdoors, we brace ourselves for a flurry of advertising sales calls from daily newspapers. It's almost laughable. But it's really not that funny.

Print publications need to sort their advertising teams out and get back to the basics of selling. Know their market, know their needs and meet them. Otherwise they are in grave danger of becoming the double glazing sales people of the business world.

You have been warned.

Don't Say you Can if you Can't

My husband recently ordered a room divider for his new office. The website said it would be delivered within 2 weeks.

Almost 6 weeks down the line he is still waiting.

In a fit of growing irritation he's called the company daily for the last 8 days. Various excuses have ensued: the factory is closed for two weeks, it's waiting to be despatched, it'll be with you tomorrow, it'll be with you next week, we're not sure where we are with that order.

That company is now in big trouble:

• It's in breach of the UK's Distance Selling Regulations
• It has also breached the Advertising Standards Authority's rules and regulations with making false claims on their website
• And it's clearly in breach of Contract

We could go to town and ensure they are delivered several strong slaps on the wrist for their incompetence. But it's a bit like scolding a stupid child for being, well, stupid.

You can't legislate for intelligence in business. So let's try to keep it really simple:

Don't say you can do it, if you really, really can't.

Teach a Man to Fish

Marketing has always been, for me, a fascinating subject. Drawing on many academic disciplines from psychology to maths, from art to economics.

At its heart, marketing is very simply the process of buying customers. It's both an art and a science. And much of its motivation is based on a simple theory: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

Maslow was a psychologist whose 1943 paper, A Theory of Human Motivation, suggested that individuals had a simple progression of needs starting with the physiological and ranging to the self-actualizing. The premise was that until one need was fulfilled, the individual had little or no desire to move onto their next priority.

Marketers have traditionally used the hierarchy as a means to communicating product benefits (slimmer, prettier, faster, better) and driving lifestyle choices (fulfilled, happy).

The recent London riots would perhaps suggest that, some 60 years later, Maslow's pyramid may no longer be as relevant.

Just one week ago London, and a number of other English cities, were gripped in a series of so called "consumer riots" which saw thousands of, mainly young people, take to the streets to thieve and loot.

The spoils of their efforts? 42" plasma TVs, shoes, DVD players, trainers, bicycles, alcohol, designer jeans..... the exhausting list of fast moving consumer goods goes on and on.

This was society's poor, we are all being led to believe. Neglected, unemployed, gang-ravaged communities. Their riotous efforts could be, depressingly, understood within that context, even justified.

But this was no modern re-make of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. These rioters weren't starving to death. It wasn't bread and water they were looting for, it was plasma TVs and games consoles. So much for Maslow's hierarchy.

These people have put self actualization at the very top of their needs list. Everything else? Seemingly secondary. The Bishop of Manchester agrees.

But perhaps marketers are partly to blame for this overt, all consuming consumerism? Maybe this is the culmination of all that is fundamentally wrong with capitalism? But can businesses play a part in helping society to change?

When I think about the corporate obsession with perfection, it leaves little room for mistakes and therefore learning. How do these young people get a genuine start in life if no-one is willing to teach them, or give them the opportunities to learn?

I've always felt that businesses have a role in education. I am extremely grateful to those companies and managers who took me on with little or no experience and taught me the skills of their trade. I may not have followed a career in some of their lines of work, but they were willing to take the risk. Now we are so obsessed with perfection in service delivery and efficiency in operations that it's our young people who are genuinely missing out.

So, for all those business owners out there who employ people, this is your broom. This is your opportunity to help clean up our community and make a tangible difference. This is not someone else's problem. And it's certainly not just the responsibility of government. It's our problem to solve. Each and every single one of us.

Give a man a fish and you'll feed him for one day. Teach a man to fish and you'll feed him for a lifetime.

Let's get back to basics.

Word of Mouth Marketing: The Holy Grail

We’re often led to believe that word of mouth marketing is the very best kind. Reliable, effectives and free, it spreads like wildfire and costs the company nothing. But marketers often miss out on two vital components of word of mouth marketing: it must first be believable, and everyone needs to be saying it.

We live in a cynical age, where integrity appears to be lacking and even the most well meaning claims are subject to scrutiny.

Several months ago I switched supermarkets. I ditched the weekly Tesco shop in favour of “luxury” food market Marks & Spencer. In one simple move I saved time, money and improved the quality of the food we eat.

But, and here’s the interesting part, everyone I’ve told about this amazing money and time saving move hasn’t believed me. They’re just not convinced. It’s not just any food, it’s Marks and Spencer food. Surely it must be more expensive.

The cost of my weekly shop has dropped by almost 40%. The time I have to spend shopping has been halved. I can’t argue much with figures like that. But everyone seems doubtful that my information is correct.

“Try it for yourself!” I suggest.

My suggestions fall on deaf ears. I’m the only crazy woman I know making these claims. Remember: word of mouth only works if everyone else is saying it too. This is one of the indisputable laws of marketing. A demand curve that first demands that there is a slow burn of early adopters.

This is true for almost every product or service ever launched. Unless you are Google+ that is.

When I consider the number Facebook or Dropbox requests I suspiciously ignored before I finally gave in (mainly to the sheer volume) then I guess it’s reasonable to assume I’m not one of the world’s early, early adopters.

In the early adoption stakes, Google+ has played a blinder launching as an “invitation only” – there’s nothing more alluring to word of mouth early adopters than something they can’t get access to. Claiming the fastest social network launch in history, and well on its way to 20 million members, the sheer volume of people talking about Google+ is enough to guarantee initial success.

By jumping the demand curve, and putting early adoption above everything else, Google+ may have missed one crucial thing: if all the early adopters abandon the network after failing to find anything interesting in it, they’ll have to work twice as hard to continue to grow. After all, who wants 20million early adopters saying it’s not worth it? Better to have a smaller number of early adopters giving you useful feedback on how to improve. and develop. That’s what’s behind the success of Facebook. And Marks & Spencer.