Sex and your children's toys

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday September 28, 2012 

Determined to be equal-opportunity parents, we made sure that my son and daughter had access to gender-free toys right from the start.

But well before they were a year old, my daughter had pushed away the toy car and blocks, clutching for the doll. While my son, on seeing his first truck, drew it to his breast and held on to it for days.

Yep, gender preferences are nature, not just nurture. And anyone who says different has not brought up baby boys and girls.

A recent survey quizzed more than 4,000 children aged six to 12 in Canada, U.K., France, Germany, Spain, Poland, Brazil, Mexico, Japan, China, the U.S., and here in Australia.

It's important that marketers reaching for children understand the differences - and the growing similarities - between boys and girls.

The study, conducted by global brand agency The Marketing Store Worldwide, found that many differences seem cemented into the genes, regardless of geography, language and culture. These tend to be the "traditional" toys.

Nor surprisingly 55 per cent of girls chose a doll as their favourite toy. But less than two percent of boys. On the other hand, sure enough there are the trucks - 40 per cent of the boys chose building and construction toys as their favourites. Girls never found the same soft spot for bricks and wheels with only 10 per cent selecting construction.

Girls tend to arts and crafts, puzzles and board games. Boys want sporting equipment, trading cards and hobby kits.

Where they do come together is in modern technology. Maybe it really is a plot to confound their parents. But their nimble fingers and brains very quickly learn mastery of their gadgets. Initially this tended to be boys playing the games, girls playing the music.

But this has changed too as marketers have grown more savvy in their product developments. Companies like Nintendo Wii have deliberately brought in girl-friendly titles like Just Dancing, Art Academy and Mario Tennis Open. Not a machine gun or jet bomber in sight.

The top three "gender-free" sports are swimming, football and cycling. Educators have widened these choices by deliberately involving boys in cooking and shopping, girls in camping and gardening, so these days they are popular with both.

Renee Weber, of Marketing Store Worldwide, feels the toy industry still has far to go: "The gaps between girls and boys are enormous."

"There's been very little evolution to modify toys to make them interesting to the opposite gender," said Ms. Weber. She said that "there's not a big look at natural play patterns," and that making a toy pink, for instance, isn't going to generate more interest from girls. Colour is not the reason why the genders play differently.

So how do you get girls to play with construction toys? You get them to build things that interest them. Lego has worked at this and earned both praise and smacks for their efforts.

Nearly a year ago they brought out a new range called "Lego Friends" aimed specifically at girls. Still stackable plastic blocks, but with curvy characters called "ladyfigs". The play sets are in purple and yes - pink - with a range of toy girls in charge of beauty shops, horse stables and cafes. Decor includes heart-shaped swimming pools and  and flower pots.

These were not universally welcomed, with critics accusing them of reinforcing stereotypes and focussing on pretty looks.

But the girls do get vehicles - horse boxes - and vets' stethoscopes. There is no sign of male domination in that little Lego universe.

ray@ebeatty.com
Blog: themarketeer-raybeatty.blogspot.com

Has Melbourne lost its elegance?

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday September 21, 2012

Ah Spring. The sun is beginning to shine, we start to shed our heavy clothes and move into the best fashion season. Spring is still cool enough that you can wear an outfit mixing several fabrics in a layered style. We've just had the Fashion Festival to remind us that here's the time to check out the wardrobe and smarten up.

But recently, leafing through the photographs of my late mother-in-law, I saw something we don't get so much of any more. Elegance.

The shots are of a trio of beautiful young businesswomen, she and her friends, on a conquest of the City's fashion shops. Then coffee in the famous Paris End of Collins Street where you could imagine you were in a boulevard, surrounded by nineteenth century buildings. This was until architect I.M. Pei and the development barbarians turned it into the Chicago End.

In the 50s, a beautiful woman had to be elegant, too.

Their clothes followed the fashion dictates inspired by the Paris masters like Dior and Chanel. The length of the skirt? The shape of the toe? The rake of the hat? The smart young women ensured that although nature put them two seasons behind Paris and Rome, the garments were ready at the turn of the season.

Since then we have had a Cultural Revolution and such dictates would never be tolerated any more. But while freedom was won, what was lost?

You no longer see elegance among the young women of our city centres. Most seem to wear uniform black or jeans or dreary colourless clothing. But it has been strongly pointed out to me that women choose to dress this way.

Style advisor Pam Abeling of Always in Style has no doubt. "If you're looking for elegance you need to find older women. For young women today it's more about sexy."

The grand fashion and slinky hats wait for the Racing Carnival, then all the finery comes out. But it never makes it to the workday. "You love wearing it to the races, but you wouldn't be seen dead dressed like that for the office," said Pam.

So where did elegance go? It just did not fit with the new liberated times, and got pushed aside.

"I always hated gloves because I'd always lose one," Pam recalled the last attempts by the posh schools to keep their young ladies "elegant". "I was fitted for a girdle at 15, though I was as thin as a rake." And there was one particular hate: "Wearing a hat every day was a pain in the arse!"

So now history spins and we come to the slutty era. The likes of Madonna, Lady Gaga and other pop divas have been accused of thrusting it upon us and last month even Target came under attack for their "slutty" children's range, complained some parents.

But wait there is one ray of light for the faded term "elegance". "You're seeing it used more describing men's fashion," noted Pam.

Elegant men? Well if you flip through GQ magazine or Esquire you'll see handsome male models leaning on Parisian lamp-posts or emerging from the latest Lamborghini, in $3000 suits and silk shirts.

Men are increasingly doing their own fashion shopping - men's retail is growing almost twice as fast as women's - and they have deep pockets if there is something they like.

So perhaps elegance is coming back to Collins Street. Not draped on our liberated girls with their jeans and bare midriffs, but on all those cashed-up traders in their Armani suits and Gucci shoes.

ray@ebeatty.com

Blog: themarketeer-raybeatty.blogspot.com

Rowling's wish for magic

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday September 14, 2012

The higher they climb the harder they fall. So how terrifying to have reached the very peak of success - and then to take another chance.

I don't normally extend a great deal of pity to billionaires, I figure they have their own protection already. But let's spare a moment's thought for J.K. Rowling.

Can Jo Rowling stand up without Harry? Should she care?

Yes she has had vast success both literary - selling half a billion Harry Potter books in 73 languages in ten years - and commercial, from books on Quidditch to eight blockbuster movies that smashed every attendance record. And she has received her share of glory including an OBE, the Legion d'Honneur and the Hans Christian Andersen Award among others.

But what does she do next, five years after Harry's farewell? She wants to write an adult "literary fiction" novel - can she afford to fail?

We will find out on the 27th of this month when The Casual Vacancy will be published world-wide. Will she be acclaimed as a great author after all, or as someone who cannot write above the level of a teenage mind-set? There is a lot of pride riding on this.

From the marketing point of view, international publishing group Hachette have a difficult job. The obvious route is to declare, "At last a new book from J.K. Rowling", blast the news across billboards and TV, and sell millions of copies on the spot. You can see the media buyer's twitching fingers reaching for the keyboard.

But this is not what Jo Rowling wants. The whole launch has been played to a minimum, almost smothered. You'll find a few little placards in bookshops and on the web there is a 120-word synopsis that vaguely talks about events in a quiet English village. Sounds like an episode of Midsomer Murders.

Nevertheless, the publishers have still signed off on a print run of two million, but this is small beer compared to what could be achieved with a little push.

However, marketing has not been totally neglected. For the first time, a Rowling work will be released as an e-book simultaneously. Anyone who has glanced around while strap-hanging on the morning commute will know about the spectacular growth in the use of e-books.

The Pew Research Institute this year showed e-book readership had increased from 17 to 21 per cent of American adults in less than six months. By my observation, we may be growing even faster.

For marketing purposes it gives them the perfect demographic - 34 per cent of these readers are 29 or younger, in other words, the youths who spent their teens lapping up Harry Potter.

So all is ready: the book is written, the warehouses are full, the date is set, we all have to wait for the result - for a book that has been tightly restricted to a few dozen eyes so far.

Her publishing house director, Heather Fain, declared that: "In a lot of ways, we want to think of her as a new author." It's set in the real world, "It's about relationships and how families interact. There is a lot of meat to it," she said.

There are bound to be many reviewers who love it, and many who take the scalpel to it - that's the nature of criticism.

But Ms Rowling should perhaps remember the words of Joseph Heller, author of one of the greatest books of the past century, when he was told by an interviewer that he had never produced anything else as good as Catch-22.

Heller thought, nodded, and then responded: "Who has?"

ray@ebeatty.com
Blog: themarketeer-raybeatty.blogspot.com

Marketing to millions, one by one

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday 7 September, 2012

In a world of mass production, the customer gets lost in the flow. Can a brand that numbers its products in the millions ever manage to reach an individual? This thought has spurred some of the world's top marketers into searching for ways to touch us one by one.

The most ambitious attempt I've ever heard of will happen this October - with a product displaying four million individual package designs.

Four million bottles, each one different

The idea is Swedish, with that most Swedish of products, Absolut Vodka. They have devised a system where the manufacturing process generates a unique pattern for every single bottle on the line.

They are calling the system "orchestrated randomness", achieved through a combination of 51 patterns, 35 colours and a battery of splash guns.

"It feels a bit mad scientist, a bit street art," says Absolut's Jonas Tahlin. "When the bottles first appeared on the conveyer belt, we cheered. By that point the production line looked more like an artist’s studio than a bottle factory."

How consumers react to their colourful bottles will be thoroughly tested - the promotion will be released world-wide including America, Europe and Australia.

I'm sure over the years you have noticed the little ads for "Hong Kong bespoke tailored suits". The tailor who sets up in a city hotel each year and produces tailor-made suits for our business folk.

Well Nike have their own version of that now - NikeID. You can design your own shoes, based around some of their more popular models, cobbling your thoughts together on their web site and then waiting a month for delivery.

I have no understanding of the fashions or intricacies of runners. A little study has led me to discover that if you are keen you can design your own Life Dunks, Rifts, Air 180s, or whatever you favour. You can select colours for the base, swoosh, collar, laces and midsole, and compose a 'tongue top caption' of up to eight letters. We learn something new every day.

This personalising has evolved its own genre, called Kustom Kicks, and has become an industry in itself. Of course there is now also a web site called MyAdidas.

Another company that's always ready to try something new is Domino's Pizza. They have just launched an iPhone app that allows you to order your pizza as you like it. In their promotion they claim that you can make more than 1.8 billion pizza combinations. Who would have thought there were so many ways to combine cheese, tomato and anchovies?

And of course when there's pizza the Coke can't be far behind. Last summer Coca Cola issued their cans and bottles with 150 different names on them. So you could have a Coca Courtney or a Lola Cola. The prospect of half a dozen teenage boys rummaging through a fridge looking for the "Shane" can troubles me but I'm sure they had their strategy around that.

As an exercise to get their target 12 to 20 year olds talking it worked a treat. I don't know whether the "Share a Coke with your friend" angle as a peace and love activity worked, but it certainly got them talking in the school yards and on Facebook.

Mostly they seemed to be debating about which names were not there, and whether the list was too "Anglo" in its ethnicity. But hey, they were talking about the product and drinking it, so chalk the promotion up as a great success.

Yes you can bring individual personality to a product. But you need lots of money and nerves of steel.

ray@ebeatty.com
Blog: themarketeer-raybeatty.blogspot.com

If it's in the review it must be true

Melbourne Herald Sun, August 31, 2012

It’s Thursday evening and you’re discussing catching a movie on the weekend. Grab the paper, check out the entertainment ads - and those all-important little review grabs: “A drama you can’t miss”, “Funniest comedy of the year”, “Our finest actress”.

Every film seems to be a winner. Then you see where the reviews were written. Names like Silver Slides and Lumination. Can’t quite remember those review sites...
Well, we’ve all had enough disappointments by now to know that reviews have to be taken with caution, and never to rely on just one.

In fact on the Internet, good reviews are up for sale, cheap.
Take hotel accommodation. Accusations have flown around, about invented reviews in the “hotel advice” web sites, and where discounts and incentives have been offered to customers who give glowing reports.
Almost from the start, Amazon’s book reviewing system has been accused of “friends of friends of authors” stacking the feedback responses. Restaurants, theatre, wines - wherever there is room for reviews, a bit of fiddling goes on.
Researcher Bing Liu of the University of Illinois, Chicago, has studied the reality of those opinions and believes that at least a third of them are fake. But the same research also showed that it is almost impossible to pick the difference.
Since the boom of the ereader and ebook, the whole phenomenon of self-publishing has exploded.
Say that great novel in the back of your head is now written. You don’t have to camp on the doorstep of Penguin for six months to just get it read, any more. Now just turn it into ebook format, on your computer, and self-publish the book in days or even hours.
An estimate puts the number of books self-published last year, on line or physically, at 300,000. Now how on earth do you get noticed by those people who like to read?
Enter Tod Rutherford, yet another Internet entrepreneur. Working in a company for self-published authors, he saw how hard it was for them to get noticed, let alone reviewed. So in 2010 he decided to do it for them.

He set up a web site, GettingBookReviews.com, that offered to review your book for $99 - a glowing report, of course. But one was not enough, so he then offered clients 20 reviews for $499. And for those who needed their egos supercharged, $999 would to buy you 50 paeans of praise, though not necessarily the Booker Prize.
The service became a rapid hit. Before long he was making $7000 a week. The work of course was too much for one person but he quickly found a team willing to fast-produce at $15 a review. The one stipulation, of course, was that each had to be a glowing five-star rave.
As one reviewer later reflected, to make ends meet she had to churn the reviews out at a fast pace that allowed her very little time to actually read the book. She just took the time to glance at enough pages to get an inkling of what its contents might be, and then start praising the plot, concept or advice it offered.
She now thinks she might at some stage go back and actually read one or two that looked interesting.
Eventually GettingBookReviews was noticed by Amazon, Google and other big-timers who managed to shut Rutherford down. Now, though, he has self-published his own self-help book - The Publishing Guru on Writing.
It has only just been released so I can’t report on any reviews, but I’m pretty confident that before long they will come - and they will glow.

ray@ebeatty.com

Marketing the Grain of Wheat

Melbourne Herald Sun, August 25, 2012

Birthplace of marketing-
my grain's better than theirs


Marketing is the most ancient profession. When the first farmer took his basket of grain to the village and declared that his was better and cheaper than the other farmers’, markets and marketing were born.

The story told is still the same today, just many layers of complication have been laid over the top. The medium can too-often obscure the message.

Right now the media are going through major changes: the internet and smart phones are challenging the press and the air media, the lines of communication and the channels to market are blurring. That farmer with his grains of wheat risks getting lost in the confusion. This is you, the business person, I’m talking about.

Social media is the buzz today. New marketing companies are popping up, existing advertising agencies have all attached a “social media department” of one sort or another, and a lot of clients are being persuaded to pour more of their budgets into the field.

Which is all fine, you have to stay current. But in all the excitement it’s easy to lose sight of the objective.

Marketing guru Al Ries describes it as the difference between tactics and strategy. Clever web sites, viral commercials, smart phone based competitions, swipe codes on magazines and posters are all tactics in the battle for the consumer’s attention.

But after a couple of successes comes the danger of the tail wagging the dog. Too much energy, money and talent get concentrated on tactics like web apps and generating a few hundred thousand hits on your latest contest, while the main strategy gets neglected.

This is why we see so many campaigns that are poorly put together in their quality and thinking. Dull, unimaginative tv commercials, tombstone newspaper ads (they’re the kind that state the product and very little else. You are assumed to know the product’s qualities and price so they don’t tell you.) Ads that spend more space telling you how to activate their web page than in selling the product.

Certainly listen to the bright young things and their clever ideas, pick and choose. But in front of you, keep focussed on the strategy. What is the objective and where is your customer to be found?

Let me give you the example of a master of strategy. I am awestruck at the cool head that followed this through.

As you know, Facebook has been the most successful of the social media. Their recent Initial Public Offering was huge, raising $38 a share - potentially $75 billion. What it will eventually be worth, will be shaken out by history.

But Peter Thiel, billionaire founder of Pay Pal, saw its potential eight years ago and invested. He patiently waited until the offering was completed and sold a chunk of his shares early, at a strong price. A few days ago he sold most of his remaining shares.

The share price has dropped considerably so he only made $19 a share this time around, but I don’t think he minded. Coming in as a favoured “early investor” he had acquired some 10 per cent.

How much did he pay for this? $500,000. How much have his recent sales netted him? Over one billion dollars. And that’s how the rich get richer.

I doubt you have a billion-dollar idea in your grasp. But you did initially foresee the potential and rewards of what you’re doing now. That’s your grain of wheat. Keep it clear in your mind. Then in the midst of all the excitement and hoopla that invade your business days, you’ll have your strategy to keep you on course.

ray@ebeatty.com

Germany balances on its middle

Melbourne Herlald Sun, Friday August 18, 2012-08-17

Berlin, Germany

The Germans don=t have big resource mines and record prices for their products. In fact they are still the traditional manufacturing economy we have always known.  The kind that fell apart in the industrialised US and west Europe during the GFC.

So how come they are not in financial trouble and in fact are being looked on as the saviour of Italy and maybe even France?

Passing through Berlin during my European trip I was impressed at the calm flow of life and business, not much different from how I remember it in the past. Germans are well fed and contented, their taxis are brand-new Mercedes, and there seem to be a flood of new babies in expensive designer strollers.

Obviously, if we Australians have one answer to the world=s economic malaise of the past four years, they have another. What is it?

They call it the Mittelstand, the solid core of mid-sized companies that employ the majority of German labour. They give the economy, and the nation, the stability to weather any storms.

A Mittelstand company turns over less than $60 million, employs less than 500 people. Most importantly is what it does not have, in general.

It has little debt. Small bank loans. Less than 20% use stock market financing. Most of a company=s machinery and assets it owns outright. It pays its costs as its cash flows, and if they can=t afford something they don=t buy it. Which rather sounds like sacrilege in the high-flying, high-debt world of modern MBA business management.

It is this stubborn, black-hatted protestant ethic that has led Chancellor Angela Merkel into so much strife with the world=s bankers who want to see that stash of cash used to bail the rest of Europe out. Try asking any German whether they are willing to.

But what are the Germans doing to generate all this business, when any item we try to make is available fully imported from China for half of our manufacturing cost?

They do what they have always been good at. Quality. Machinery, engineering, leather goods, software, foods. Made to such a standard of excellence that price does not matter any more. Reliability of delivery, constancy of supply, consistency of quality. Once you=re out of the bargain basement, this is what matters, this will keep the customers coming back.

In recent years they have taken their products out into the booming markets of Asia, where quality, once appreciated, totally overcomes price. And into new territories like South America and Africa.

As a group they are as cautious as ever. They are advised to not allow any single customer more than 10 per cent of their business. Because if this customer departs, for whatever reason, the loss can be withstood. Not when the account takes 20 or 30 per cent, as with many of our companies.

What do you do if a customer wants more? You say, ASorry we have no more we can supply@. Now that=s a business decision worthy of an Iron Cross.

Of course everything I=ve said here is a generalisation. A very broad picture. But there are enough figures and research results to justify this view of the German economic battle ship. It=s going to take a great deal to sink this Bismark.

I=m not so sure of our own economy. Our Mittelstand has shrunk away, companies sold as soon as they start making profits, or destroyed by debt. Our own ship of the economy is faring well now - but is it sailing on shifting dunes of sand and ore? 

ray@ebeatty.com

What makes Italy so Italian?

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday August 10, 2012

Pesaro, Italy

Here=s my report from Italy, I=m there at the moment. Oh don=t worry I=m not going to attempt a political or economic analysis of all the things that might be wrong with Italy. I wouldn=t have the patience for the task. And nobody understands it anyway.

No I=m more interested in what=s right with Italy, and what will always make it distinctly unique. Certainly from the perspective of we marketers and communicators.

The difference appeared to me many years ago, in Venice - in a hardware shop of all places. Looking around at all the pots and pans, plates and tools, it struck me. Everything in it had been designed. Every saucepan had elegant lines, every pot was a work of art. The shovels had a style and flow - this was art, expressing itself in the commonest of items.

Walking from the shop I explored the revelation further. Of course I was in the most beautiful city on earth, which set a high bench mark. But looking at the ordinary items was where the proof came out. You=ll still see it today, even though Chinese mass manufacture and American dag culture have wreaked their damage, as everywhere.

But there=s still an Italianness that overcomes the modern mass-market world, not to mention the copyists and forgers. The world=s markets might display a million copies of Armani dresses or Gucci handbags; the latest cars may borrow the slickness and sleekness of a Ferrari or Lamborghini. But those who own the real thing know it, and those who see them know it too. There=s no mistaking a real Gucci person for a fake.

Taking a look at our own world, I wonder - what=s the element that=s missing in our goods that multiplies the value of an item far beyond its raw material costs?

It always starts at the point of design. At the thought and artistry that went into the original conception. You can buy a perfectly good leather handbag for $100, so why do the wealthy put their names on waiting lists to buy a Gucci for $3000?

In Australia we have plenty of fine rare products that the world wants. The problem is they are mostly commodities with no premium for where they come from or whose hands they passed through. There=s no bonus in AAustralian iron ore@ or even AAustralian gold@. The one resource I can think of that has created a niche is the distinctive Argyle pink diamond. And this is thanks to nature more than to marketing.

How can a marketer make being Australian a badge worth paying more for? 

After years of work and dedication some of our top wines have earned the distinction, in the cellars and fine restaurants of London and New York. But there are precious few other areas that have pulled themselves out of the pack.

Our best movies are now being identified, and sought after, as AAustralian movies@, something that has taken a long road, proving to the world that we have the ability and talent to produce excellence.

 
Europe will still have rocky times ahead and Italy will no doubt suffer more crisis and pain before its economy fully recovers.

But you certainly don=t notice the troubles the way you would in Greece or Spain, there are no riots and street barricades, yet. Here life is as sunny and energetic as ever.

They know that so long as the words Amade in Italy@ still have the power to reassure consumers of distinctive style and quality, that they are the creators of fashion and flair; whatever way the world turns, in the end they will always survive.

ray@ebeatty.com;

How do you get your money's worth out of the Olympics?

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday August 3, 2012 

Every four years I seem to find my pen dragged to the same topic: Are clients getting enough value out of their sponsorship of events - in this case, the Olympic Games?

Advertising people are quite ambivalent about these sponsorships. On the surface they are a loss to the agency. Usually negotiated between the client and the manufacturer, the agency sees a huge portion of "their" advertising budget disappear out of their control.

They make no commission out of the sponsorship dollars, which can be considerable. The cost of Olympic sponsorship is a great international secret, but for the top-line "Olympic Partners" it would run close to $100 million.

Pay that much for a fortnight every four years and you will certainly be looking for maximum certainty and visibility.

You are not allowed to put badges on the athletes' shirts or rotating signs on the grandstands, just how do you let people know of your generous donation?

Here the agencies do win back some revenue. The client has to run major campaigns around the event declaring their official sponsorship. Hence all those long commercials with the running children and sweating sports folk, soulful music building to a brassy victory fanfare, mothers with tears in their eyes - all leading to the end slide: "Official Olympic Partner".

Unfortunately the fact does not always register. While Adidas is sponsor, more people believe it's Nike. While McDonalds has been a primary partner for years, some 25% of Americans think Burger King is too. And as if they haven't already got enough money, Google get associated, for no cost.

Then there is all that sneaky "ambush marketing". Here non-sponsors pretend that they are. Nike has built a reputation over the years for creative piracy. This year they have their own commercial about brave young folk working hard to build themselves into Olympians in slums and remote towns like London, Nigeria; London, Ohio; London, Jamaica - what a coincidence that they all come from  towns with the same name as the Games.

The genuine sponsors need a bigger reason for their huge outlay, which would be hard to justify one burger or bottle at a time. I'd call it "respectability".

In a world where their brand is synonymous in media debates with "obesity", "diabetes", and "corrupting youth health", McDonalds can enjoy a break. They are now the providers of the world's fittest, fastest, best-looking, most exciting people in the world. And they bathe in the glow.

So it is with Coca-Cola, taking top spot because they could never afford to allow anyone else in. Especially Pepsi. Coke can boast to being the most faithful - every Olympics since 1928. Their tip to modernity is the inclusion of Powerade in the marketing mix.

There are other corporate reasons. For BP the sponsorship is a golden opportunity to rehabilitate the resources giant after its environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Moving as far as possible from undersea oil, they are supplying biofuels - made from sugar cane and grasses - to power some 5000 vehicles.

The sponsorship gives a chance to marketing's number 2s. For Adidas it's a chance to shine as a sports hero over dominant Nike. Which is why the ambush marketing makes them so mad.

Samsung can get a bit of daylight through the constant shadow of Apple - a brand that has studiously avoided any connection with sports whatsoever.

Then there is Procter & Gamble, the world's oldest marketer. They're pushing their highly successful Old Spice toiletries. Not with "Look like me" Mustafa this time, but using a geek with a motivational tape.

And of course as the originators of soap opera, P&G have mums doing the washing, cooking and taxiing for their sweaty sports kids.

ray@ebeatty.com
Blog: themarketeer-raybeatty.blogspot.com

When is the glass ceiling a glass cliff?

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday July 27, 2012
We can't say that women have broken the glass ceiling. But in cases around the world, they have fired a fair few holes in it.

This week's leading coffee bar topic is Marissa Mayer, whose success at Google caused Yahoo! to hunt her head, to be their new CEO.

On top of a million dollar salary, add four million in bonuses plus stocks, shares, options - a crammed Christmas sack that could add up to $130 million in five years. If she delivers the goods. She has another delivery later this year - she's pregnant.

Over at Hewlett Packard they put their faith on a woman. Meg Whitman's salary is only $1. But with it come $16 million stock options and a $6 million annual bonus. Again if she delivers the goods.

They are more used to a female boss after Carly Fiorina for six years. I'm pleased to hear that she and Meg frequently confer - in such a testosterone industry, the support options are very limited.

Australia does not have a particularly proud history of ceiling smashing. But the few we do have are pretty spectacular.

Gail Kelly has proved herself to be one of the best CEOs in the country, bringing in $3 billion profit for Westpac's first half 2012, perhaps justifying a $9 million salary. She's done this with a handicap in the saddlebags over the past 20 years. Triplets.

In the super-macho Queensland coal industry, Nicole Hollows led Macarthur Coal for four years until last year's Peabody Energy takeover bid. Down in Sydney Kerrie Mather is the boss of Sydney Airport. Much is expected of her in this tough job. But the pay's good at $3.4 million.

However, a team of British psychology researchers have pointed to a flaw in the skylight escape. The top of the glass ceiling can lead to the glass cliff. "Research suggests that women are more likely to be appointed to leadership positions that are associated with an increased risk of criticism and failure," say Dr Michelle Ryan and Prof Alex Haslam of Exeter University.

In other words, when the battlefield is getting hectic and your forces are facing defeat, push the girl out front and rely on her to calm things down. Can this be true?

In the case of Marissa Mayer, taking her success at Google and translating it into a new cash flow for the long-ailing Yahoo! is not going to be easy, against the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Google itself. The Web is all or nothing, it has no room for also-rans.

HP is a technology company desperate for a new silver bullet. This was Steve Jobs' genius, materialising an iPhone or an iPad from the air. HP's recent merging of its printer and PC divisions is a band aid, not a bullet.

Nicole Hollows left Macarthur Coal in the last dumpster. And fixing up Sydney Airport is the stuff of nightmares - no room! No noise! Curfew! No runways! Where would a girl start trying to make sense of that mess?

Of course we are well familiar with the glass cliff when it comes to politics. The woman gets her chance when there's no more chance to be had.

Remember Carmen Lawrence, made premier of WA to clean up the WA Inc mess left by Brian Burke. Kristina Keneally hopelessly trying to save NSW. Joan Kirner drawing the curtain on the Cain era. All valiant ladies, marched off the edge of the glass cliff.

ray@ebeatty.com

Blog: themarketeer-raybeatty.blogspot.com

Condoms come out into the light of day

Melbourne Herald Sun, July 20, 2012

We don't get many kids reading this column so I feel safe covering a delicate subject: the marketing of condoms.

Once I worked on the Ansell account and got excited when restrictions were taken off the promotion of condoms - I thought I might be able to write Australia's first French letter. Alas it was years before they launched onto the public screens.

But in the intervening time we have seen their coming out, so to speak. They are now a major marketing commodity, with acres of supermarket shelf space devoted to the little packets. These are no longer discreet monotones, either. Today's boxes are big, bold colourful and inevitably feature a beautiful couple eager to sample the contents.

We see these dreamy pairs everywhere. Not just inside the back door of public toilets but on the streets, in the billboards, at the movies and on TV. Sex is a mainstream commodity.

As you would expect, the personal subject matter of the product is perfectly suited to personal media and mobile phone apps.

Durex, for example has just launched the "In-Sync Song Generator", in the US, but no doubt soon to be seen here.

This little program requires answers to a series of questions about your preferences: what times do you prefer, how much variety, how energetic, how loud. Through Facebook you pass the quiz to your partner to complete. You have now identified your styles.

It will then select songs for every occasion. Sounds like this will need experimentation and practice to get the balance right.

All the major companies these days have very well-tended web sites. They have romance advice, games for couples, and catalogues of products that will amaze.

In fact, the world's second-biggest condom company is Australian. These days much of its headquarters and manufacturing is controlled from New Jersey, but corporate head office is still in Richmond. Eric Ansell was an employee of Dunlop who bought their second-hand condom making machine, in 1905, and set up his own little workshop.

Later down the line he was manufacturing surgical and work gloves, toy balloons, and a range of rubber-based medical equipment. By the twenties his sons were in the business, and in the sixties his grandson was running it. In 1969 it was acquired by Dunlop and went back into the fold.

Ironically by 2002 it was Pacific Dunlop that was ailing, They finally divested their many clothing and shoe brands, put their whole focus on healthcare and became - Ansell Limited. What goes around comes around.

It goes to show where the money is these days. Less in heavy manufactured goods, more and more in consumables - use it once and throw it away, the perfect product. It's estimated that by 2015 the world will need 18.6 billion condoms. Don't think too hard about it, just consider the money that will be involved.

Here in Australia business is booming. Julian McCrann of Roy Morgan Research reports that two million Australians bought condoms in the six months to March this year.

A third more men than women purchased them. The biggest buyers were Queenslanders, at 12 per cent, whereas Tasmanians only bought 4.5 per cent. And keep your regional jokes to yourself. Victorians and New South Welshmen were level pegging at around 10.5 per cent.

We'll have the opportunity to learn much more about the topic next year, when Melbourne becomes host city for The International AIDS Conference 2012. All the world's experts will be here - 25,000 of them - so expect to be hearing more about the serious, life-saving importance of the little condom.

ray@ebeatty.com

Blog: themarketeer-raybeatty.blogspot.com

Geeky nights at the hackers' hostel

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday July 13, 2012


Remember all those stories of Apple's Steve Wozniak sleeping under his workbench, Bill Gates forming Microsoft in his college games room, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg hacking code in his Harvard monk's cell? The truly dedicated geeks don't give a toss about luxury or comfort - they live for their work.

Out of this has come an idea, started in San Francisco, that has spread through Silicon Valley and is winging its way round the world as surely as the H3N2 virus. It's called the Hacker Hostel.
Now in most respects it's not much different from the backpacker hotels that crowd St Kilda and the inner city. Young people with huge packs, from all over the world, surging in for cheap rents, happy to share stacked bunks and communal tables.


A laptop on every surface

 But the ones in Frisco don't feature late-night parties or booze-filled fridges. Here the currency is ideas, internet connections, wi-fi, and night-long discussions about microcircuits and algorithms.

The guests are interviewed and approved for their degree of nerdiness, and there's quite a queue to choose from. The stay can be for a few days, or a few months.

This is where you go to incubate and hatch that world-changing idea. The hackers and their laptops are found on every surface - the tables, the beds, the couches, the floors.

If you run into a scientific or micro-engineering problem, chances are that there will be a PhD student at the dining table who is familiar with your question, and half a dozen bright young minds willing to talk it through.

This is the attraction, the collegiate atmosphere and ambitions. Several start-ups were launched thanks to their developers being able to live together cheaply over the few intense weeks or months when every penny was needed for the project - and the hours ran on unheeded. The starting price is an affordable $40 bed and breakfast.

In this rarified atmosphere, apps are developed, discussed, refined among the guests with the bugs and glitches identified and dealt with. Marketing ideas are worked into on-line solutions. Start-ups are floated and started up.

They swap investment advice, and practice their pitches with each other, for the day when they have to present to a venture capitalist or big-league IT firm.

The idea for this now three-premises chain of mini hostels, came from two girls who realised they liked to be amongst nerds. Jade Wang is a 28-year-old neuroscientist who started it with her friend Jocelyn Berl, and called it Chez JJ.

"It's not that nerds are necessarily socially awkward among normal people," mused Jade. "If you have a large room of 99 per cent nerds and you have that one normal person, they'd be the ones who are socially awkward."

Each hostel has a hostess who makes sure the hackers get breakfast and don't forget to eat, and points them to the dishwasher and washing machine when necessary. They might organise weekly feasts, or parties, a little social action to occasionally relax the overheated brains.

Here in Melbourne the backpacker hostels are also aware of the trend. Most of them offer free wi-fi, low-cost broadband, all the technical connections that the modern young techie demands. In St Kilda they are furious they have not received a place in the queue for the National Broadband Network, and many have signed in to the on-line NBN Petition.


That scruffy backpacker might one day be the richest man in the world.
Bill Gate circa 1970.



One thing is for sure, there is much to be gained from currying the favour of the nerds - add up the fortunes of Gates, Wozniak, Zuckerberg and other computer billionaires. That's a tourist trade worth developing.

rmailto:ray@ebeatty.com

Getting into your customer's eye when she buys

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday July 6, 2012


The great prize in advertising is getting as close as possible to the shopper when they are making the crucial retail decision. Being in their mind as the hand reaches out to the grocery shelf.

Over the years many ways have been tried, and as technology has become more sophisticated, the techniques have improved.

In the '70s and '80s numerous systems were devised. They featured clunky back-projected slide shows, and then TVs, perched at the ends of the aisles.

They were expensive and complicated, required a big initial investment followed by a lot of costly maintenance. Then inevitably there were the disputes - should they be allowed free access because they were promoting the sale of goods, or should the supermarkets take a cut of the advertising revenue?

In these days of flat screens and wi-fi, controlled by powerful computers, things are easier. Everywhere you go you'll find the in-store screens piping commercials at you - in supermarkets and hardware stores, retail centres and even your petrol pump.

One of the industry's early innovators in Melbourne, Alex Kaplan, eventually left the business but he still believes its effectiveness: "This is the point of purchase. The site is all-important. We researched the impact of these promotions and recorded sales increases, on products that were featured, of more than 25%. It was colossal."

Today, the explosion of smartphones has given the task a new dimension - now the customers can seek out and purchase their preferences themselves.

Some months ago I wrote about Korea's "supermarket in the subway" - pictures of products on the underground's walls that can be captured, and ordered, by a click on their QR ("quick response") codes.

Now IBM has taken smartphone technology into the store itself. Still in test it's dubbed "augmented reality" (AR?) at the company's research labs in Haifa, Israel.

Put simply, you can walk into a supermarket, point your phone at the shelves, and it will identify products with the qualities you prefer, from a questionnaire you will have filled in when you first registered.

Try and follow this: it will view the packs and goods through facial-recognition type processing and feed the information back to a huge database, presumably in the cloud, and the supermarket's own computer's list of its products.

This will be compared with your own pre-entered preferences - do you prefer wholegrain or gluten-free, hate polyester, reject battery hens? Your likes and dislikes are on file.

Before leaving home you can compile your shopping list. Your phone will then search out the products in store. When it finds a match you are alerted and can question the image further: price, discounts, nutritional information, reviews.

Through optional connections with Facebook and other social networks you can see what your friends think about it, or you can alert them where you found it.

Now I've got to tell you, we're getting into the area of "too much information" for me here. I'm just not that obsessive. But it's an indication of where marketing is heading. And you always have the choice of leaving the phone in your pocket.

In planning your own business marketing, be very picky about the unlimited new technology on offer. Technical fashions constantly come and go, but I presume you intend your business to last.

Always remember that in advertising it will always be numbers that count - a few thousand Facebook clicks will never be more effective than a million TV viewers. By all means use the apps, but don't neglect the real drivers. You've still got to get the punters into the shop, in the first place.

mailto:raray@ebeatty.com
Blog: themarketeer-raybeatty.blogspot.com

Australia's lion now sleeps

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday June 29, 2012 

Forget the Oscars and the BAFTAs, in the world of advertising the big gong is the Cannes Lion. That fest ended last weekend, with Australia proudly displaying 14 lions in gold, 15 silver, and 29 bronze - a total of 58. Our previous best was in 2009 with 45.

However there was some disappointment. Only two awards were in the TV commercials category where in the past we have been much more successful. Looking at commercials that did take home gold, they were good - but they also had million-dollar budgets you'd never get from a client in Australia.

Fallen angels smell aftershave

A Doritos chip commercial from BBDO London was set in a Mexican village worthy of a spaghetti western; BBH London continued the Lynx after shave tradition of adolescent sexism with "Even angels will fall" - set in a post-war Naples straight from a De Sica film.

Our own gold winner, Hahn "Super in, super out", had Lion Nathan money behind it, in the tradition of big-buck beer commercials.

The only other Aussie winner was bronze to DDB Sydney for Volkswagen Tiguan - which to my mind had more wit and humour, for much less cost.

This is a worrying trend of advertising world wide. More spent, hugely elaborate technology, more layers of complication instead of focus and communication.

On which topic we must mourn, this month, the demise of Campaign Palace. For over 30 years this agency defined the peak of Australian advertising creativity, winning the top prizes around the world - New York, London, and of course Cannes.

You'll remember their commercials even if they ran before you were born. "One day you're gonna get caught with your pants down", Rex the anteater, Dunlop tyres landing on an aircraft carrier, the Rev cow working out at the sauna and the treadmill.

They could handle emotion, too, like the little boy who loses his mother at a station - "If this is how he feels after losing you for just a minute, imagine how he'd feel if he lost you for life" - one of the strongest-ever Quit Smoking ads.

And a whole generation of girls remember Naomi Watts turning down dinner with Tom Cruise because mum had roast lamb for dinner that night.

Campaign Palace was founded by Lionel Hunt and Gordon Trembath in the 70s and quickly became a world-beater. Early in my career I was fortunate to have Hunt as my creative director and he would drill into us the basis of great advertising:

Study your product to understand its unique defining feature. Dig and dig and dig till you have distilled it down to one simple thought. You wear nice underwear because some day someone might see you in it. The tyres on your car are made by the same company that makes tyres for Harrier jets.

If mum puts a  roast dinner on, the kids will all turn up. Giving up smoking is not just for you, it's for your kids.

One simple thought, beautifully presented, sums up the thousand words someone else may have used to communicate the same concept. It sticks in the memory like the burr from a paddock. No amount of money can make an ad work as well as that.

The Lions lose their Palace

Just one other gold lion TVC worked that well, I'd written about it some weeks before - the Argentinian "Dads in briefs". A simple idea: what's worst on a muggy day than your dad wandering around the house in his underpants. Simple photography, low budget, hilarious concept. Quick, buy an air conditioner.

Now that's the sort of brilliance Campaign Palace used to bring to Australian advertising. Will we see the like again?


ray@ebeatty.com
Blog: themarketeer-raybeatty.blogspot.com

Have we hit saturation point?

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday June 22, 2012

Manufacturers, retailers, economists and politicians, are all huddled and worried. What is happening with society - people have never been better off or more financially secure, yet the their behaviour is not reflecting this. Certainly not their buying behaviour.

America is painfully but positively recovering from the GFC, and in Europe the Dread of the Drachma does not have to be as terrifying as it is portrayed. But in any case, what has that to do with shoppers in Chadstone or drivers in Darlinghurst?

Yet everywhere we hear these tales of slowing desires. Sales are down, expectations are low. Life is especially painful for the department stores - and we all know the empty-shop gaps in our high streets.

The politicians and commentators have a field day throwing blame around, usually at each other. It's the financial crisis; it's the carbon tax; it's the internet; it's the cost of housing that's too high for the homeless and too low for the sellers.

But there's something no-one talks about. What happens when everybody has got everything that they want? The thought struck me when my favourite men's shop had yet another sale and some particularly fine, expensive shirts were suddenly within my price range.

As my hand reached out I stopped. I recalled two shirts from this shop bought a couple of months ago and still in their plastic wrapping. Did I really need two more shirts? As I picked through my wardrobe in my mind, I realised that I also had enough trousers, jackets, and more shoes than would fit on the racks. I had reached saturation point.

Of course men have the advantage of less demanding fashion turnover. But even with girls, I wonder how many of you, over the past month, have unpacked your winter trunks and discovered skirts and slacks and jackets you'd completely forgotten about. They're as good as new, only worn a few times last winter, and finding them again felt like a new shopping expedition.

As we look at the goods that fill our lives, there aren't many that wear out and have to be tossed. Perhaps it's time to replace the TV you bought 10 years ago with a new huge flat 3D monster to transform your living room. But the washing machine still works fine and so does the fridge.

So how do you market around saturation? Motor companies have followed the money. Their booming sales are up 10 per cent in WA and 7.5 in Queensland. But in Tasmania they've fallen by 12.3, and are flat in Victoria and NSW around four percent. Of course it's very easy to spend a bit on mechanics and push your car for another year or two of service.

Fortunately we all have to eat, much to the relief of supermarkets and restaurants. Here though the marketing trick is adjusting how much is spent on each visit. The past decade has seen the decline of many of our fine food establishments. We may see more arise in the future. And all those TV competitions have revived an interest in cooking.

In fact the future does look promising if you ignore the doomsayers. Mortgage repayments are down; the carbon tax sweeteners will soon drop into people's paypackets; children's school and welfare grants will increase; and this year's inflation rate of 1.6 per cent ensures costs will remain stable.

So there is no reason for you to not feel confident and well-off. The only trouble is, once you go out to shop - is there anything you really need, and when you get it home, where will you put it?

ray@ebeatty.com

Classic marketing hits world top in 25 years

Melbourne Herald Sun, June 15, 2012


Here's how a company went from zero to the world's largest in its field in just 25 years. It's a product you may not be very familiar with: classical music.

In the big music stores like JB HiFi you'll search past vast racks of popular music and in a dusty corner find a small display of classical CDs. But when you add up all the albums sold around the world, it's a very sizable business. And for a long time very neglected, an ideal target for clever marketing.

Except that Klaus Heymann stumbled into it. He went to Hong Kong as a journalist, and then set up a business, importing fine electronic gear from his native Germany. As part of the promotion he staged concerts, and discovered there were no classical music companies in the region, so he started to import and distribute the records.

The eighties saw the growth of CDs. Heymann took advantage by setting up Naxos Records to sell bargain-priced music. He bought most of his early works from behind what was still the Iron Curtain. In cities like Prague and Budapest and Moscow were some of the world's best musicians, orchestras and singers - totally unknown in the west.

His packaging was simple and display cases of the works could be found in every record store that sold classics. Before long music lovers discovered that the performances were superb, the engineering first class, and the prices a third of what the EMIs and Deccas charged.

There were no big names or star prima donnas - though many, like Sumi Jo (below), have since shot to the top. They did not duplicate versions of their works. They did very little promotion but gradually built up a huge catalogue of music.

Classical recordings are small in sales numbers per store - but have world-wide appeal. So Naxos was an early user of internet marketing. In Australia maybe a few dozen people would get excited about a new recording of madrigals by 16th century composer Gesualdo. But if you searched world-wide you would find thousands. This is what the web allows you to do, and Heymann recognised this.

Naxos.com now has a huge inventory of music, from mediaeval chants, to the great composers, to modern glass-breaking experimental compositions. So in the classical field it has grown bigger than giants like Deutsche Grammophon or even EMI, publishing some 40 titles a month.

Their marketing plan has been to determinedly keep on track - but also to look out for other niche interests that will smoothly fit into the huge distribution channel they have created.

So they have brought in other neglected music areas - Japanese classical, Jewish-American, world music, Asian classical, jazz. All that music that the big labels could no longer support because of their old, ungainly marketing structures.

Marketing experts are warning that records are a dying business in the wake of the iTunes revolution. This is no surprise for Heymann. Recent years have brought in streaming web radio, podcasts, and the Naxos Music Library. This is aimed at schools, universities, professional music bodies and conservatories. Through it the students have access to over a million classical musical pieces.

Naxos is a great example of how a company can start off as the ignored, despised cheapie in the bargain basement and through consistent application of its passion and principles, rise to the very top.

While the rest of the music industry frets about the changes around it, Heymann and his team look for the other paths to success that are emerging - because the population, and the market, are still growing. You just have to be where they are.

ray@ebeatty.com
Blog: themarketeer-raybeatty.blogspot.com