All Blacks are a brain strain

Melbourne Herald Sun 12 June, 2010

A few months ago I helped out at an agency that needed some web-page copy written urgently. The client was a manufacturer of breakfast cereals, the market was New Zealand and the promotion was all about rugby and All Blacks.

So for the few days I had to think like a teenage Kiwi rugby-tragic All Blacks fanatic. It was a strain on the brain cells I can tell you. I never understood rugby even in my own teens.

But in business you often find yourself having to think through the mind of a customer who is not the least bit like you. And you have to be convincing.

This calls for that much overused word “empathy”. It’s different from sympathy. It means feeling what they are feeling, from the inside, taking aboard their likes and dislikes and even prejudices.

A US research firm has been doing a lot of work on this, and has put people into 16 different categories. For example, people like me, in advertising or journalism, they put in a class called “word” people. Probably you would fit in that too.

But these people make up just 18.5 per cent of the population, who do much of the talking to everyone else.

The trouble is that the ads we create tend to appeal to other word people - like the clients and their marketing managers - and maybe don’t strike the right note with the rest of the population.

The company, Xyte Inc, did tests on TV commercials. And found that these ads tend to do disproportionately well with word people.

The company’s CEO, Larry Burns, was not surprised. “This is happening more often than we would like to admit," he said. While agencies are briefed on their target markets, they also want the clients and their own peers to like the ads. “We like to talk. We like word problems. We like to express ourselves. "

But often this is not what appeals to the customers. They don’t want to know how clever you are, they want to know if the product will give them what they want - in tangible, understandable terms.

Another category Xyte calls the "hands". These are people who prefer working with their hands. Their focus is much more immediate and practical. And they make up 30% of the population, a bigger portion than word group. "They like touching things, tangible things, and they often don't like ads that appeal to word people," says Burns.

Anyone who’s raised a child knows that they emerge from the womb hard-wired with certain personality traits, likes and dislikes, that no amount of training or enforcement will change. So it is that a person will be dismal in one environment yet exceptional in another.

A product or advertisement will appeal to one set of people but turn off another. It’s important to know the market for each product - and when you identify those who react against it, you can vary your message accordingly.

This you can only do by studying your audience - your customers. Talking to them and understanding their view of the world. The researchers say they are “segmented via patterns of predictability in media, messaging and purchase”. In plain English, if you know your customers and their core attitudes, this will tell you what to say and where to reach them.

Because the fact is that conventional classifications don’t necessarily work. A middle aged woman and a teenage boy might respond to the same stimulus (“Carn the All Blacks!”) while two adult men might totally disagree with each other on a product or issue (“Magpies!”, “Blues!”).

Sing a song to sell Australia

Melbourne Herald Sun, 5 June 2010

Can you believe that the United States created its first tourism board just a month ago? Before that they have always believed that tourists will come of their own accord, while local states did their own promotions.

But then a survey - by a British company, Oxford Economics no less - concluded that were the yanks to stir themselves, they could attract an additional 1.6 million tourists a year. And an extra $4 billion to their economy. Handy even by US standards.

So finally President Barak Obama signed the Travel Promotion Act - under severe criticism from Republicans of course - and enacted a $10 surcharge on every non-visa visitor to America, as a donation to the cause.

Of course here in Australia we read this with disbelief. Tourism campaigns have been so much of our national life and psyche, for so many years.

Like them or not, we are all aware of the campaigns of the past 30 years, and the fact that they have dragged millions of the curious half way around the world to stare at our kangaroos and empty spaces.

The grandaddy of them all is our favourite grandaddy (well most of us), Paul Hogan in the “Put a shrimp on the barbie” campaign. This Mojo Advertising gem pushed Australia up the US “Dream Destination” research stakes - from number 78 to number one in a matter of months, and it stayed there for 20 years. So don’t say that advertising doesn’t work.

The problem then becomes, how do you follow up on such a huge success? You try to be clever and that isn’t always easy. “Where the bloody hell are you?” was clever but also a major public relations problem. Sure, no publicity is bad publicity as PT Barnum said, and it made us top of the world talkback charts for a while, but a campaign that is banned in several of the key countries is really not very effective.

Baz Luhrman then strode onto the stage with a campaign based around his blockbuster Australia. Alas it didn’t do a huge amount of good for either the movie or the country, but it was a short-term stopgap.

This week Australia launched its new TV campaign and this one is “designed for the next 10 years” says the Tourism Commission with lots of hope and hyperbole.

You’ll see it soon enough. It starts with lone voices, mostly pretty bad, and a piano on the beach (borrowed from New Zealand?). Bit by bit it grows into a catchy anthem, with the usual surf and koalas, Ayers Rock, Kangaroos and helicopter shots. In fact it’s like an amalgam of every tourist ad you’ve ever seen, including barbies and schooners of beer thrust at the lens.

But I can’t be too critical. After all, this is what will bring the punters in. We have to appeal to their dreams and fantasies. Canada’s “Locals Know” campaign has helicopter shots of the Rockies, grizzleys frolicking and snaking snow trails.

South Africa is being clever in its World Cup run-up, with a campaign called “Do the Diski dance”, showing individuals from schoolboy to waitress to footballer - no not singing, but dancing. They’re all bouncing from side to side to a very South African tune and inevitably become a crowd.

Then New Zealand has its 100% New Zealand ads, with lots of helicopters over mountain tops and restaurants in the vineyards. Ah yes, show them what they want to see.

In fact the cleverest ad was one I reported on nearly a year ago, from Australia. That “Best job in the world” campaign that turned a million dollar investment into a hundred million dollars worth of free publicity. But these you only see once in a lifetime.

ray@ebeatty.com