How do you get the shoppers back to the shops?

Herald Sun, Friday November 25, 2011

Like the waves pounding on the Bass Strait coast, the changes in our buying patterns roll in relentlessly. It’s a natural phenomenon with no regard to the damage being wreaked on ships and shore. Great sandstone cliffs can be worn to collapse and carried away in the undertow.

Just last week the Australian National Retailers Association declared it is making an effort to cling to Christmas. Together with Commercial Radio Australia they have started a campaign nominally priced at $5 million, although much of it is advertising provided by the radio stations.

Having listened to the campaign commercials and read the literature on their web site, I can only find one word to describe it: wet.

Wet as in weak and mealy-mouthed. They do not actually tell us who they need protection from. Is it the multinational invaders? The booming on-line shopping industry? The strangling, selfish supermarket giants? But no-one is targeted, which means the campaign will never hit its mark.

The commercials themselves are awful. If they are the best that the combined brains of our Australian radio industry can produce - well that confirms my sadness at the creative decline of radio in this country.

There are major problems facing the retailers and they do need help from us, their customer base. But they will not make a difference by bombarding us with figures.

They tell us there are 140,000 retailers. That’s a lot. And they employ 1.2 million people. Yep that’s a lot. But somehow these figures do not give me the need to leap for my wallet.

The bright-voiced announcer goes on that these are mums, dads, uncles, aunties, sons and daughters. Yup... most people are.

But we’re talking here about winning back the hearts and minds of a population that is drifting elsewhere. From the retail strip to the mega-mart. From the local café to the multinational chain.

Most worryingly, away from shops altogether. You might remember my column a couple of weeks ago, featuring the subway wall in Seoul which had been converted into a virtual market. Commuters can order their groceries with a click of their mobile phones.

To combat these waves of progress, we need to be more cunning. The campaign needs to give our mums and dads et cetera, a reason to want to visit shops.

Any campaign planing should start with the question: what would make people prefer the jostle of a busy street to the canned music of the supermarket? Or, the bigger threat, the comfort of their livingroom computer?

Mandy Vere, writing in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, summed it up: “They have goods for you to peruse and handle, feel and read; free p&p; the joy of serendipity; live, and often knowledgeable, staff – sometimes even with smiles and conversation.”

You can feel the cloth and put on the shoes, enjoy the variety of choice and explore shops you had never seen before. It is this physical, emotional experience that needs to be communicated, not statistics.

When New York’s Department of Commerce wanted to promote its city and state, in 1977, it hired the hottest agency in town, Wells Rich Greene, and the great graphic artist Milton Glaser.

Because they gave the job to the best they got a campaign that was brilliant in its simplicity: I Love New York -

It’s still running today, and every city in the world has picked up the graphic - just take a look at the souvenir shops in Swanston Street.

I’m sorry retail association and radio stations, I give you an F for your campaign, with the note: “Engage your hearts and start again”.

ray@ebeatty.com

The battle of the bank managers

Melbourne Herald Sun, 20th March 2010

Do you have one of the 600 smiling, friendly bank managers from Westpac, or is she the cold, hard-faced cow "Barbara" depicted by the ANZ? As competition between banks hots up, we're now going into the Battle of the Bank Managers.

The problems they are addressing were created by the banks themselves, of course. For more than 20 years they have slashed branches, decimated staff, neglected small business in favour of big-time developers and financial markets.

Those of us struggling to make a quid and pay off huge mortgages have watched as every quarter they announce their billion-dollar profits and then increase interest rates by the Reserve Bank index plus a bit more on top. Then they weep crocodile tears about the growing costs of borrowing, as if we cared.

When they do research on themselves they find - horror! - that the public doesn't like them. A recent survey was made by West Australian mortgage manager Homeloans. They found that the number of Australians who "liked" the four major banks the Commonwealth, Westpac, NAB and ANZ had fallen by 15 per cent between August and the end of last year. In fact, says the survey, less than one in four likes the big banks.

Now such a situation is not only commercially unpleasant - it is also politically dangerous. It means that the Government can do anything it likes to the banks and nary a tear will be shed. There are votes in being nasty to banks.

Hence the spate of new TV commercials with their swarms of smiling bankers.

Anyone in small business knows how impossible it is to develop a relationship with your bank. If your branch has a manager at all (rather than a distant "business centre"), you will try to get to know your manager - you never know when you'll need them. But then one day you'll walk in and find he's been moved to Toowoomba and you have to start with some new 25-year-old.

Well it seems that branch managers are back, at least at Westpac. In their new campaign they confess to having seen the light: "We're bringing back over 600 local bank managers," they declare, and on their web site, sure enough, you can find the name of your branch manager.

The ANZ obviously believes that you think your bank manager cold and intimidating and are happy without one. Hence their "And no Barbara" campaign. It's an interesting marketing ploy - making the virtue out of not matching your opponent's high card.

The NAB have also faced harsh realities. Their new campaign says they will stop robbing you. Or not so much anyway. "More give, less take" is the slogan. We'll believe that when they announce they have halved their profits and given the money back to their customers.

The Commonwealth Bank obviously held their summer seminar at Hogwarts. They now have a benign, smiling bank manager who, with the help of his magical iPad, can conjure up a new house for a girl in a matter of minutes. That's finding the house, buying it and settling the mortgage with the wave of a finger over a computer screen. No wonder his name is the rather familiar sounding Henry Pottson.


For several years St George Bank has cashed in on this bank aversion with a TV commercial set at a barbecue. Our character is asked what work he does. When he confesses "I'm a banker" a sudden hush falls over the gathering and you feel before long there will be a lynch mob. Then he splutters: "With the St George!" and all is well, because they are small, almost not a bank.

Trouble is they are now part of Westpac, so there goes their line of defence and also, presumably, that commercial.

ray@ebeatty.com