The boomers are going back to school

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday November 19, 2010

Baby boomers have taken an armchair ride through life. They've had everything - money, jobs, the youth revolution, drugs, rock 'n' roll, free love and lots of it. Now they want the education that they never needed to get in the first place.

This dominant demographic was spawned from the loins of returning soldiers at the end of World War II and the decade after it. There were lots of them, which is why the media picked the phrase "baby boom".

The world was rebuilding so there was plenty of work. They could walk out of school and straight into a job so there was not a lot of incentive for advanced learning. Money was plentiful, houses were cheap and they quickly set up their own home.

Meanwhile their belief that they knew best, and to never trust anyone over 30, created a noisy revolution. They marched against the Vietnam war; in France they rioted against authority. Their soundtrack was The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Doors and a hundred other bands whose music you still hear on the radio every day, today.

The necessary accompaniment was drugs and sex. Marijuana and acid were easy to get and not so legally constricted. The pill stopped babies, antibiotics cured VD, and AIDS did not exist, so sex ran riot.

They created new fashions - long hair, braided jackets, necklaces, high heels, and that was just the boys.

The girls wore mini skirts, burned their bras and demanded equality.

Work came easily so they changed jobs at the drop of a hat. Those who bothered to stay were quickly promoted.

They waited longer to have babies, and less of them, so the next arrivals - Generation X - were always overshadowed by their domineering parents.

They generated the movie stars we still flock to visit today. Ever noticed how many baby boomer films there are? Like Reds with Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren and Morgan Freeman, where all the heroes are over 60. Or TV shows like The Old Guys, and New Tricks with once-were-stars Dennis Waterman and James Bolam.

There's a whole new market out there for oldies, while 20 years ago you would scarcely see an over-40 on the screen.

Chemists are now awash with anti-ageing creams anti-oxidants. Motorised wheel-chairs are getting flashier.

Our boomers are by now rather bored with life as it plays and suddenly they are hankering after that education that they so casually tossed aside 45 years ago.

Even as colleges cope with a decline in foreign students, there is a surge in older people looking for education.

Locals enrolled into postgraduate programs have grown by 13 per cent, with master's degrees jumping by 18 per cent.

A report this week from researchers IBISWorld expects the leap in numbers to soften the pain of the import losses. In fact they are predicting $3 billion improvement over the next five years.

Baby boomers who have taken early retirement - either voluntarily or through redundancies - are studying business, commerce and the hospitality industry, as well as advanced professional development.

Others are taking their leisure in short courses at TAFEs. Encouraged by the reality boom on TV, shows like MasterChef, The Biggest Loser and Dancing With the Stars, many boomers have sought education to expand on a personal skill or hobby. So they are enrolling for study in the creative arts, cooking, health and wellbeing, and personal development.

They might have had an armchair through life, but the boomers aren’t about to sit back in one over their twilight years - they have no intention of going gently into that good night.

(Marketeer confesses to being a boomer himself.)

The greatest artists you never saw

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday November 12, 2010

Who can ever forget Marni Nixon? What a wonderful voice - remember her "Shall we dance" from The King and I? Or "Tonight" and "I feel pretty" in West Side Story? And how about "I could have danced all night" from My Fair Lady? That beautifully clipped English soprano voice.

What's that you say? I'm thinking of Deborah Kerr, Natalie Wood and Audrey Hepburn? No, sorry. They were the faces you saw on the screen. The voices were all Marni Nixon, the greatest singer you’ve never seen - the ghost singer.

What about you, have you ever been a ghost? I'm sure you have. In fact to be successful in business you have to be able to do it without (too much) resentment.

Those times when you did a job exceptionally well, beautiful work in record time - and you had to let your boss take all the credit.

Or the times when you have given your staff the credit and praised them to the sky. Even though you knew it would never have happened if you had not had the idea in the first place - or been there to push them along even as they told you what a dumb idea it was.

The world of art is full of ghosts. There are so many people who want to be artists. So few who have any talent.

So you get ghost writers providing the words for the rich, the famous, and the wannabes.

Like British Big Brother Peter Bennett who has made a career out of being famous. In 2006 he published an autobiography, Pete My Story, and did the usual book tours. In one interview he was surprised to hear what he had written. His publicist commented, "You really should have read it, Pete".

Even an experienced journalist like Merle Ginsberg must have struggled to ghost Paris Hilton's autobiography Confessions of an Heiress. Maybe that's why sections feature the diaries of chihuahua Tinkerbell.

If you feel that the world needs to hear your story, go for it. Biographers are not that dear. In fact one Indian web company sells articles and books at $8 for the first 350 words and then $2 per 100 words (I hesitate to write this with my editor looking over my shoulder...).

There are now companies that produce e-books and sell them on the web at reasonable prices. They cover every topic in the world: how to write a wedding speech, teach yourself guitar, stocks and shares for beginners, and so on.

You can set up one of these companies yourself. Can't write? Don't worry - your teams of Indian writers can churn out the copy as fast as you can post it on the net. You cover those costs in the first few paid downloads, as you Google Adwords the titles all around the world.

Painters have always used their "assistants", from Michelangelo to Rembrandt to Rubens. More recently Andy Warhol blatantly called his studio "The Factory", with art assistants churning out his Campbell's Soup and Chairman Mao and Marilyn Monroe.

Just this week his Elizabeth Taylor portrait, copied from a Life magazine photo, sold for $63 million. Did he paint it? Probably, possibly, what does it matter? There's a blurred link between the artist and the ghost.

They called Marni Nixon "The ghostess with the mostest" and there's irony in the tail. While the beautiful, enchanting actresses have all passed on, their ghost is still living and singing at 81. She gave a concert in California just last month.

Heroes, sponsors and their scandals

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday November 5, 2010

He was the world’s greatest golfer, winner of 71 PGA tournaments, and once again the saying was proved: “The bigger they are, the harder they fall”. But if you are his sponsor, do you also fall with him?

This question reared up about this time last year when Tiger Woods had his morally fatal Thanksgiving car accident, and all the truth of his gluttonous love life tumbled out. Certainly for AT&T and Gatorade it was indigestible. They dropped their champion like a hot brick.

Others, like Nike and Tag Heuer, decided to brave the storm. So have their brands suffered since?

This is a question every sponsor dreads having to ask. And it seems that if you bask in a hero’s radiant glory, you always risk the fall-out of a fall from grace.

Nike went through it all before, in 2002 when Wayne Carey fell in the mire, where they hung in as they did this year for Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, accused of rapes and gross behaviour.

Initially this year the scandals seemed to have no effect on sales. But then something did: Tiger Woods started to lose, and kept on losing all year long. Suddenly, his clothing sales have started to dip.

Next week he’ll have a chance to redeem himself when he visits Melbourne for this year’s Australian Masters. He’ll need to work hard on it though. Already ticket sales are reported to be soft. Whereas last year you had to buy your tickets six weeks in advance, this year they will be on sale at the gate.

What about the Mark McInnes and Kristy Fraser-Kirk scandal? Will the former CEO’s grubby bra-strap twanging and lewd suggestions stop women buying their skirts and make-up from David Jones?

Well according to the Sydney Telegraph, “Customer surveys reveal that shoppers dislike both Ms Fraser-Kirk and Mr McInnes - but that they feel sorry for Djs.”

I’m not so sure about that view, or our own Miranda Devine who seems to think that Fraser-Kirk wrecked her reputation, encouraged by “a conga line of pseudo-feminist poseurs” for a mere $850,000, while McInnes won public sympathy. Hmm.

I asked a researcher for an objective point of view. Michele Levine is CEO of Roy Morgan Research and they are currently looking at the issue. “Each company sponsors a sportsman for a different reason,” said Ms Levine. “His imagery has to be in alignment with their image. With Tiger Woods and Nike it's not about selling shoes,” it’s about being seen as the poor boy who struggled and practiced and became a world champion.

“It’s always been like this. Years ago we saw how Readers Digest responded to the early cancer research figures and cut out the advertising of cigarettes,” said Ms Levine, “Kodak were always very careful that who and what they sponsored had a wholesome image.”

Of course image can work in different ways in different cultures.

Jean-Christophe Babin, CEO of Tag Heuer, was asked why it was that this year the watch company increased the use of Tiger Woods in its TV and outdoor advertising in China.


It’s all a matter of what is seen as prestige. “With the Chinese it rather increases their esteem," he said. "In China, by tradition, your success is measured by your number of mistresses." And, presumably, you have more girls to buy watches for.

iPad carves its own path through the computer market competition

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday 29 October 2010

If you'd asked me eight months ago when they first came out I would have said that an Apple iPad was too limited to compete with laptops, and too cumbersome to compete with mobiles. It was an orphan with charisma but nowhere to go.

Fortunately, Steve Jobs never took my call and Apple have sold 350,000 iPads in that time, which by my calculation is about $200 million.

And that's in Australia alone, world-wide the sales are projected at five million a quarter, so you can safely say he now is yet more billion dollars richer.

What my theory didn't allow for was the possibility of iPad creating its own market, like a glacier carving a valley through the Himalayas.

In a newly-released analysis, Sydney telecommunications research group Telsyte delved into the uses these iPads would be put to. A clear winner was the "Facebook phenomenon", the explosive growth of social communication through Facebook, MySpace and similar applications.

What the buyers aren't doing so much is viewing movies, sports or newspapers . For those they tend to prefer a desktop computer or a TV. And as yet iPads don't have phones or cameras built in, so those functions safely remain with the smart phone.

Another research company, Gartner Australia, has also been watching the phenomenon. Their research director Robin Simpson observed an unusual pattern, he reported recently. The push for iPads has come from up above.

He explained: "It's a top down push which has never really happened before for a consumer technology." The past pattern - going back to the birth of personal computers and private mobile phones - has been a gradual filtering up from the bottom. Young, enthusiastic staff would snap up the application and gradually the bosses would take notice.

"This time," said Mr Simpson, "it's completely different." It's now the executives who want the toy and are introducing it into the corporation.

The slow response to paid on-line newspapers hasn't stopped the media moguls who well understand that this is where the future lies. This paper's boss, Ruper Murdoch, has loudly promoted internet news subscriptions. With his usual determined persistence he has seen The Wall Street Journal, The Times of London, and even our local The Australian, slowly clawing in the subs.

Compared to the hard copy sales, the numbers are still tiny, but nevertheless rapidly growing.

I recently discovered that the iPad was developed before the iPhone, but then put in the freezer for three years. This would explain why it still has no telephony.

But despite the caution there has been some cannibalism, at the low end of the MacBook line. The greater damage, though, has been to other manufacturers' computer notebooks. iPad has gobbled up 25 per cent of that market already.

In a counter-offensive, Telstra has taken alliteration to new highs this week, in naming their Telstra T-Touch Tab. With a smaller 17cm screen, they hope to dent the iPad's progress at half the price, with telephony and camera.

Certainly retailers are happy, expecting that the revived interest in yet another wave of computers will bring them Santa for Christmas over the next two months.

Whingeing Poms not as deadly as the Icy Aussies

Melbourne Herald Sun, 22 October 2010

Forget the Whingeing Poms, when it comes to punishing bad customer service there are few more deadly than the Icy Aussie.

While the first may bleat and complain, the second will smile, turn a heel - and never return.

This has been brought out in a recent report from American Express, who surveyed customer responses in 12 countries to find out how tolerant they are to poor service.

It seems that Australians are second only to the Mexicans on the scale of service intolerance. And you wouldn't want a mad customer in Tijuana, that's for sure.

According to the survey, nearly half of Australian customers will only allow a business two strikes before they are ruled out of any future consideration.

In fact nearly a third will only give them a single strike. And nine out of ten Aussie customers confess to carrying their own personal blacklist.

However there is one escape clause. If they have experienced consistently good service from you in the past, they will be a bit more lenient.

The worse thing is, they don’t tell you what the problem is. At least with a whinger you can try to defend yourself and put things right.

But who am I kidding? We all know that most institutions don’t give a toss about customer satisfaction. You’ll never be able to penetrate the corporation to make a complaint, and nothing happens in most cases.

I saw this just recently with my own big Aussie bank in Collins Street. I made a helpful comment to a senior member of staff that their ATM machines outside the bank had overstuffed receipt bins and neatly branded litter was blowing down Elizabeth Street. A week later I walked past and the leaves still scattered the pavement.

Later, I had to see a bank officer and took a number from their very sophisticated queuing system. Then I waited and waited in a visitor chair. Half an hour later I saw a suited businessman opposite me jump up, screw up his ticket and stamp out. I considered this, decided it was a good idea, and followed suit. A hollow gesture - nobody noticed.

But you can’t be too complacent. When did you last phone your own office, calling in on the public line and without any of the short cuts? Be sure to disguise your voice.

You might find yourself driven mad by robot voices that ask questions which don’t relate to your query, send your call off into blind alleys and then drop you into the silent pit.

The receptionist might not know who senior people are, or even what products you sell, and finally suggest you phone a competitor. I’ve seen all these things happen to me recently.

So even if you’re a really busy bodkin, don’t neglect to keep your eye on customer service, so you can be sure that your business isn’t being turned away.

Oh and to be fair, there is another side to this problem - customers can be a pain as well. The other day in a St Kilda coffee shop I glanced at the blackboard behind the counter where an obviously frustrated waitress had written: “Prices may vary according to customer attitudes”.

Saachi brothers come to the party

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday 15 October 2010.

A week ago famous British ad agency Saatchi and Saatchi celebrated its 40th birthday and the biggest surprise was the guests - brothers Charles and Maurice Saatchi, who stormed out of the agency after a boardroom coup in 1995, to found M&C Saatchi.

They joined 1500 past and present staff and clients to celebrate the early days when they conquered the world, creating some of the most memorable ads and commercials - ever.

In 1970 they generated a storm from the start with the then shocking photo, even for Swinging London, of a "pregnant man" holding his distended tummy. The headline read: "Would you be more careful if it was you that got pregnant?"

Anyone who visited the UK in the years that followed will remember the beautiful, subtle ads for Silk Cut cigarettes, the magic of their British Airways commercials. And one campaign that travelled the world was "Australians wouldn't give a XXXX for anything else", for a certain Aussie beer that became popular in the London pubs.

The creativity came from Charles Saatchi, who built advertising's sharpest creative departments around the world, especially Australia.

These days Charles is probably even more famous to the general public as the lucky husband of Nigella Lawson. He gets the soulful eyes, the heaving bosom - and she can cook. What more could a man want?

Back in 94 the Saatchis’ departure dealt the agency some near-mortal blows. Mars walked out, while Dixons electrics stores, Mirror Group Newspapers, British Airways and Gallaher tobacco accounts followed the brothers to their new start-up, M&C Saatchi.

However, to everyone’s surprise both agencies recovered and flourished, to the point where they are not only talking but sharing parties. Not political parties though. In the recent UK election Saatchi and Saatchi did the Labour campaign while M&C did the Conservatives.

Here in Australia the agencies mirrored their parents. M&C Saatchi opened in Sydney with a coup - the Qantas account. The two have been fierce rivals ever since.

Today M&C have over 400 staff and are one of the biggest agencies in the country with clients like ANZ, Optus and Freedom.

Currently they are taking some satisfaction from their recent win of David Jones from their brother agency - the new campaign starts next week.

Of course in advertising the agencies may change but you’ll always come across the same old faces. In this case, 30 staff have moved from the old agency to the new. The more things change...

DJs is not the only pain Saatchi and Saatchi have been suffering down under. This week they have lost their important Toohey’s New and Hahn accounts, though they will be grateful that these did not move to their fraternal rivals.

The pressure is mounting though. Just a week ago their keystone $50 million Toyota account also came under threat, with a slice of it going to Droga5. An agency born in London from ex Saatchi staff and also repeating the success pattern in Oz.

So did Australian M&C fly up to London to join in the party? “No,” said Chairman Tom Dery. “I did receive an invitation but things were too busy down here. That party was not just for Saatchi and Saatchi but for all of us who came from the brand. We’re more interested in celebrating our own 15th birthday, in three weeks.”


If he had attended he could have recollected old times over a beer in their local pub next to the office in Charlotte Street. Appropriately named, “The Pregnant Man”.

Pills and potions beat Holdens and Fords

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday 8th October 2010

Automotive is no longer king of Australia’s high-tech exports. You could say their leadership has been nobbled - today’s big winner is pharmaceuticals.

Yes, we export more pills and potions than Fords and Holdens. In fact IBISWorld researchers believe that in the coming year our sales will be $4.3 billion. That’s nearly half of all exports that haven’t been dug up or grown.

It’s interesting that although major markets, as you’d expect, are New Zealand, South Korea and the US, we also have a burgeoning trade with China and India - who are no pygmies in their own abilities to make and export medicines.

The secret is that we have a good grasp at the leading edge of medicines. Drugs like the influenza cure Relenza, invented by the cooperation between scientists at CSIRO, Monash University and ANU. Earlier this year the world had a scare over swine flu and all of a sudden governments around the globe were stocking tonnes of the only reliable remedy - Relenza.

Dr Fiona Wood made history with her ReCell spray-on skin. The dividends have been coming in, like last month’s announcement of a $2 million contract with the US Army.

But let me ask you a question. Where is the biggest producer of opium poppies in the world? Burma? Afghanistan? Nope. Tasmania.

Yes, Tasmania is the world's real Golden Triangle. It produces 51 per cent of the world's morphine concentrate, grown by 1000 licensed farmers. And then it is manufactured in the world's biggest opium factories - in Port Fairy, Victoria.

Of course, this information is not shocking news because it's all strictly legal - the opiates are used for medicines like codeine, thebaine and morphine. The only unauthorised junkies were a mob of wallabies who jumped a fence, got stoned, and made crop circles. (Cross my heart, it's the truth!)

Big pharma, however, is facing problems for the future. Some of the most lucrative patents in history have recently expired or will soon do so. Asthma drug Advair, antibiotic Levaquin, cholesterol drug Lipitor, and the invention that made Britain great, Viagra, are all expected to go off patent this year. This then makes them open game for the smaller generic manufacturers.

A blockbuster drug can also explode. Like Vioxx, which cost Merck & Co over $5 billion in legal damages, or the newly emerging case from users of Glaxo’s diabetic drug Avandia which is also being accused of causing heart problems.

Added to this, the government's Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme has locked down the prices of many drugs and ensured that Australia has some of the lowest prices in the developed world. Good news for consumers but not for profits.

But as always it's swings and roundabouts. With a greying population about to be hit by a flood of baby boomers, the pharmacists' tills will ring ever louder for some time to come.

The companies and universities are not standing still, either. Last month the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that this country’s research investment has just topped $1 billion. The hunt for new cures is relentless.

So the 40,000 employees in this $18 billion industry can regard their jobs as being pretty secure for some time to come.

How do you sell a lost dog?

Melbourne Herald Sun, 2 October 2010

How do you sell a lost dog, or a Japanese beer or a hay fever cure? There are thousands of products that don't fit the standard big-budget mass-marketed model that you see every night on TV.

But sometimes being out of the mainstream calls for very clever solutions - and a number of them featured in last week's Media Federation of Australia awards. Take the dogs. Literally.

Every year thousands of dogs die because nobody wants them. For two years Pedigree dog food ran TV commercials encouraging people to find a four-legged friend at the local pound, but with little success. In researching the problem, it seemed people saw "shelter dogs" as likely to have problems or be aggressive. But when they learned the history behind a dog they became more sympathetic. So the marketing task became - how to meet the dog.

The MFA judges were not looking for individual ads, but the clever use of media to achieve the objective - like this idea. The parks of Australia blossomed with thousands of yellow cut-out dogs. On each one was pasted a profile and history of an individual dog. The web is also particularly good at this - you were able to go on-line and browse through hundreds of available dogs.

The campaign was a huge success with over 3300 dogs adopted, where before it had been just a few hundred. It didn't do sales of Pedigree dog food any harm either - but this drive came from motives of sincerity, not cynicism. It deserved the Grand Prix.

I'm a bit less comfortable with the winner in the Food and Grocery section, Macleans toothpaste. Fighting against the Colgate giant is always hard work. They produced a popular-science travelling road show, a 60-minute "science spectacular". This was provided free to 100 schools in NSW. My twinge is at an education program to children, produced by a partisan company.

Other winners included Zyrtec antihistamine which produced a mobile phone widget to warn of high pollen counts. Land Rover followed six surfers, driving Defender 90s, and their adventures in getting to the Quicksilver Pro Event.

Researchers told New Balance sports clothiers that fitness fans follow what their instructors are wearing. So they made a partnership with Fitness First gyms, setting up 59 mini stores in the foyers of the gyms, and kitting out 4000 trainers and instructors with New Balance clothing. This boosted their sales - and gave them a new chain of retail distributors.

CUB wanted to position their Asahi beer as a premium, exclusive product - but working with a budget that was minute by beer-advertising standards.

So they set up a web site - The Internetwork - to create, said the judges: “An online community of early adopters who had an interest in art, fashion and music.” This positioned them ahead of the trendies, with avant garde art and ideas, believing that these style leaders would also influence drinking preference. In Victoria alone they claim a sales increase of 25%.

Advertising will forever get more expensive. So apart from the small group of super-rich companies with bottomless budgets, the rest of us have to rely on our wits. It means using all the media, thinking outside the TV-big media square, and coming up with some clever ideas.

Like this one from the other end of the beer market. Tooheys needed to hold the loyalty of the fickle 18-24 year old consumers of their Extra Dry. They latched on to the “6 degrees of separation” theory, launching a competition where four youngsters were selected to go hunt for their target celebrity - beer by beer around the world in a promotion called “6 Beers of Separation”.

Their progress was filmed and posted onto social media sites like Facebook and YouTube. The result was a 15 per cent increase in market share and over 700,000 on-line hits.

So maybe the answer to your marketing problem is not to spend more - but spend smarter.

Do advertising campaigns need slogans?

Melbourne Herald Sun, 25 September 2010

There's something about an advertising slogan. It’s a reassurance, a thought you can hang your hat on. But it's also the cause of endless debate. Do they work, are they corny, do they just interfere with the message?

Slogans appeal to clients who see them as the pretty wrapping paper around a campaign. It can be hard to explain all the subtleties involved in campaign creation, marketing strategies and strategic plans. Whereas a slogan should be neat, and encapsulate the sales message. It saves long explanations and pleases the accounting mind of the marketer’s client. But is it really needed, does it give any value?

In recent times there have been fewer slogans around, if you ever stopped to notice. I think the ad community, and their young, educated clients, find them a little bit embarrassing.

But if the slogan is really good it can summarise the whole campaign in a few words. Think of the no-nonsense gruffness of “Carlton Draught. Made from beer”. What it’s really saying is “None of the mamby pamby poofy European stuff here, this is real Aussie beer,” greeted with grunts of agreement from the blokes propped against the bar.

The Victorian police have their own hard-nosed campaign running, justifying their increased breath-testing activities: “Victoria Police. We'll catch you before someone gets hurt.” Watching that, you’re glad you resisted that extra drink before driving home last night.

Sometimes you don’t need words at all for your slogan. The newest campaign for OPSM has a commercial following a pair of huge inflatable balloons around beach and town. One is shaped like an eye, the other is a big red heart. They are volley-balled around town by increasing crowds of happy shoppers and eventually reveal themselves to mean “eyes”, “love”, and finally the company name “OPSM”.

It’s cute and clever and the kind of indulgence you can afford when you are market leader with 40 per cent of the business. But smaller players need to be more canny, and it’s possible to be too clever. I still haven’t got my head around “That’s Sydnicity” despite many ads from our NSW sister showing off beaches and vineyards and their glorious harbour. The pictures are as beautiful as ever but the phrase is too twee for my taste, it doesn't ring any mental bells.

Now that mobile phones have become our pocket encyclopaedias, it might be time for Sensis to bring back that wonderful Yellow Pages slogan, “Let your fingers do the walking”. Only, instead of a phone book, these days the fingers walk on a smartphone.

So how long should a slogan be? My simple answer: as long as it takes. Sometimes it can summarise everything in three words: “Just do it”. How many milliseconds did it take you to think of the brand? There are a small number in the history books that are as strong as ever: “A diamond is forever”, “It’s time”, or “Finger lickin’ good” – another great slogan foolishly discarded.

Others are long, like “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight." Hands up who didn’t think of Fed Ex?

But you’ll notice something here. More than anything a slogan needs longevity. It has to get into the culture, become a meme (remember memes?) and it will go on toiling for your product with ever-increasing relevance.

The greatest problem is that slogans are killed too quickly. The client gets bored, the agency gets a new creative team - slogans are lucky if they survive a couple of years.

Yet the ones you remember were imprinted when you were still in nappies. "Helps you work rest and play", "Have a break, have a Kit Kat", "A glass and a half of milk" - how come it's the chocolate bars that get the long life? Although owners have changed and markets have expanded - these chokky bars survive. Does the slogan have something to do with it?

Twilight of the opera?

Melbourne Herald Sun, 18 September 2010

Stand at the back of the State Theatre during an Opera Australia performance and your eyes will be dazzled by a sea of white - the heads of the 2000 audience members. Any colour variations come from the frequent bald pates and the ladies' expensive hair dyes.

Quite obviously this audience has a use-by date and it's not that far away. Who will come to the opera, ballet or symphony orchestra when they are gone?

Roy Morgan Research keeps a constant watch on these "heritage arts" in their surveys, most recently in July. As always they found that the biggest group in the audience was aged over 50, and less than a third were under 35. Over the quarter-year, the arts drew an audience of half a million, as opposed to 9 million who went to the movies.

When your audience is so rigidly divided, how do you build a market? It's not like there is a lack of choice. Opera alone has its big Opera Australia, plus four active Melbourne companies. With four percent of the population attending, in fact we have a higher participation rate than the UK or US.

But that leaves 96 per cent who rarely go - or have never been at all. Can they be won over?

Oz Opera is a Melbourne-based touring company that takes opera to country towns and schools, demonstrating that there is nothing to be scared of and you might even enjoy yourself. Melbourne Opera and Victorian Opera also evangelise so there is no excuse for not peeking or being frightened off by the regal Arts Centre.

But there has not been much encouragement from our leaders. Both John Howard and Kevin Rudd thought "culture" was yogurt in the fridge, and both Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott rarely raise their sights above the sporting field.

The arts community wistfully recall the days of Whitlam, Keating and our own Jeff Kennett who were always there to raise the curtain. But this week's events have cheered them up enormously.

The appointment of Simon Crean as Arts Minister was heartily welcomed. As Greg Hocking, artistic director of Melbourne Opera, happily pointed out, the new boss is a genuine fan. The portfolio also goes back into the PM's department, which will give it much more clout.

Mind you, the minister still has to earn his stripes. Richard Gill, the charismatic conductor who heads Victorian Opera, voiced their thoughts. "To paraphrase Sting - every move you make, the arts community will be watching you."

It has just been announced that Melbourne will get the equivalent of the opera Olympics in 2013 - Wagner's The Ring Cycle, a $15 million production played over four nights for a total of 15 hours. This always attracts excitement and brings an audience from around the world. But be warned that it's not recommended for newcomers to opera.

It will play just three performances, only in Melbourne - because we have one of the world's biggest stages to accommodate the epic.

While Opera Australia struggles to break even with government grants of $18 million, Greg Hocking's Melbourne Opera receives no subsidy at all, but still puts out three professional productions a year.

Right now he is conducting a double bill, Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci, at the Athenaeum. Tickets are as low as $25 each. "We don't have elaborate sets, we spend the money to make sure the singing is superb."

Hocking does not worry about the age factor, either. "All the years I have gone to performances, all over the world, the audience has always had grey hair. Opera is something you get to when you are older, it's something you grow into."

Do it yourself and save - can you dig it?

Melbourne Herald Sun, 11th September 2010

You want broadband fibre to the node? Then pick up a shovel and start digging a trench.

This is what the Norwegians are doing to cut down the cost of their broadband network. It's true. An Internet TV provider called Altibox gives customers nearly $500 rebate if they lay the fibre between their house and the node at the end of the street. And four out of five of them have accepted.

Is it because Scandinavians have a relatively small population that they have co-opted the customers into supplying the donkey work?

A few weeks ago I wrote about Ikea. Now there's a company that conquered the world with low-cost products - by getting the customer to do the assembly work. As we all know, when you buy at Ikea you don't get a cupboard or a table - you get a large cardboard box, a packet of screws and a Sunday of fiddling and swearing.

The Internet has given all of us enormous do-it-yourself power. Or headaches, depending on your level of competence. But we do like that feeling of being in control.

Like your next holiday. Are you just going to hand the destination over to your travel agent? Or are you going to spend a week or two rummaging the ether looking for that extra-special discount fare or a hotel that throws in free breakfast and an extra bed for a child?

Fortunately for travel agents, enough customers have tried this system and ended up poorer and sorry, that they come running back to the experts. The agents themselves, meanwhile, are constantly dreaming up new types of group or packaged holidays and marketing innovations to keep the customers flowing in.

Like everyone in today's business, they have had to quickly adapt or perish.

We like to feel in control of our money. How else can you explain the queue of clients waiting at the ATM while inside the bank is nearly empty? Between the cash machines and internet banking, our financial institutions have made themselves even richer by trimming out the middle-man - the teller.

Another industry to feel the pain of DIY is music. The record stores are fast shrinking and disappearing out of our high streets, with the decline of the packaged CD. Flicking through the thousands of records in the shop racks has been replaced by clicking through the millions of music tracks on iTunes.

You compile your own record and burn it to CD or onto your iPod. The company has saved itself the major costs of record production: manufacture, packaging, distribution and retail margin. Good for everyone, except the retailer.

A huge business is self-publishing. Think you have produced the great Australian novel, or that the world should know your family's history? Well after the first few dozen rejection slips very many authors do it themselves. There's an abundance of companies that will publish your book - so long as you pay for it. Be careful when you select one. Some are good and reputable, but many are not - be sure to investigate them closely before making any decision.

You can create anything yourself, even yourself. Since 2003 the Second Life virtual-world game has grown vastly and even non-players are familiar with the term Avatar - a self outside of your body yet part of you. The hugely successful movie of that name spread the term even further and many people are creating their own avatar. They can design whatever person they want, to be their alter ego in the mythical world. And they'll often use the character as their Facebook or email photo.

So the mild-mannered bookkeeper becomes a superhero with the power of flight, a slinky sexy model, or maybe Cartman from South Park. Do it yourself, dude.

ray@ebeatty.com

The Father’s Day oasis in the desert

Melbourne Herald Sun, 4 September 2010

If your business is retail you will be well aware of a large hole in your calendar. The seven months between Mother's Day and Christmas when there is no reason for the public to splurge - in your shop.

So was it just serendipity that dropped Father's Day right in the middle of this business desert? Or the work of a smart retailer with an eye for more trade?

Well for the sake of integrity I'm pleased to tell you that it was more luck than marketing. Father's Day was created in Washington State, USA, by a Sonora Smart Dodd in 1910, on the date of her father's birthday in June. So most of the world celebrates it on the Sunday of the summer solstice, around June 21st.

When it reached the antipodes in 1935 it was moved a couple of months across to the first Sunday of spring, from September 1st. You could say that it is the counterpart of the northern world's spring festival, Easter.

Certainly for the retail trade it is a legitimate excuse to welcome in a million sticky hands clutching five dollars bills to buy daddy a gift. Fortunately as they grow up, so does their spending capacity.

The cards and gifts thing has been a relatively recent phenomenon. These days this is definitely driven by marketing and gives a kick to trade at a chilly and quiet time.

While the past couple of years have seen subdued trading for the festival, this weekend it promises to pick up. In fact a report from researchers IBISWorld predicts expenditure of more than a billion dollars on the celebration.

A lot of it will happen tomorrow, when our cafes and restaurants are expected to reap $262 million, up nearly four percent from last year. That's a lot of busy chefs and waitresses.

If you're a dad who has been hoping for a new hammer-drill, you could be in luck. The hardware and electronics sector is expected to be the major winner for the day, with a 13 per cent growth in sales to $236 million.

It's the big day of the year for those who sell electric shavers, and a lot of dads will be getting new computer games.

In fact the news keeps getting better for you. With a decline of seven per cent in clothing sales, you are now less likely to receive a new tie or pair of socks.

The image of dad as an athlete, whether it's true or mistaken, is obviously firmly believed by their doting offspring. They will spend over $100 million in the sports store for you.

Half as much will be spent on books and CDs. While those with a true understanding of Dad's heart will spend nearly $30 million on booze.

Economics aside, I hope you give Father's Day the weight it deserves. In business you meet too many people who say, "I'm too busy for that nonsense", or "I'll give it an hour or two then I have to fly interstate for Monday's meeting". They shrug it off as sugary sentiment and not very manly.

But for your kids it's important. They've been preparing for it all week, have worried over their gift and their card. For them it's an important business campaign - to impress Dad with how clever they are and how much they love him. So you have to take it as seriously as any important business deal.

More so, because while customers come and go, and business ebbs and flows, your kids are with you a very short time and before you know it they'll be gone. How can you help them remember what a great time they had on Father's Day 2010?

ray@ebeatty.com

How Abbott hung Parliament - and the Labor Party

Melbourne Herald Sun, 28th August 2010

Whichever party wins government in the next few days, there is one fact that can't be denied: the Liberals won the campaigning and Labor lost.

While the rest of this newspaper debates the politics, let's see if there is a marketing lesson to be learned by those of us in business. You see the seeds of defeat were planted on Monday 26th November 2007. That day should have been the commencement of Labor's re-election campaign, Monday after the victory of Kevin 07.

Successful marketers start preparing their next campaign immediately. In fact there should always be one on the whiteboard - even as you run your current advertising burst, plan how you will do the next.

This was the system Labor ran back in the 80s when Cain locally and Hawke nationally, were always ready to win the next campaign. The modern team are obviously too young to remember.

I'm sorry to tell those commentators who say the parties should be more flexible and willing to debate the hard questions, that it's never going to happen. That's not how you win elections.

Want to see how it's done? Look at Tony Abbot. He had an impossible task - defeating a successful incumbent government with record employment and economic success. But his team devised a simple strategy.

From the end of last year they planned the marketing of the campaign very carefully. Enough time would pass for the memory of the Malcolm Turnbull assassination to fade. They selected a handful of key issues. They gave each of them its own shibboleth - a magic password to be repeated again and again in place of any debate. And they stuck to it like glue.

By now you can recite them in your sleep. "The new big fat tax", "we will stop the boats", "cut the massive debt", "stop wasteful spending". The phrases were repeated again and again, with absolutely minimal discussion.

You could see Joe Hockey cringe as he mouthed simplistic phrases like "big fat ugly tax" and “a balanced budget by 2013". He would have wanted to say something more meaningful, more perceptive. But he was under orders to stay on message or face the Abbott wrath. He stayed on message.

Labor’s campaign error was in not preparing its own shibboleths. Maybe, "we're the world's best economic managers”, “we saved your job", "we rebuilt health and education", "we'll give you a broadband network".

Keep hammering at those over-simplified statements until the politicians believe them and eventually the public will believe them too. Sorry to say it but there's no room for complexity in modern politics, nor is there in modern marketing. As the poet said, "keep it simple, stupid!"

Look at your own advertising. Sure your product has dozens of great attributes. Sure you could talk for hours about the benefits. But don’t. Select one or two phrases and stick to them. And make sure everyone else does too.

The hardest part of an advertising agency’s job is to keep the client on track. Clients get bored with one positioning for their product. They’ve seen the new commercial a dozen times before it went to air and after it has played for a few months they believe the public is as bored with it as they are. Wrong. The public has only just started to notice it.

So what about “the real Julia”? Well that should have been planned for from the start. Instead they put her into a straight jacket that made her look like a mannequin. Only in the last couple of weeks did she break free - and start hard-playing the shibboleths: “better schools and hospitals”, “move Australia forward”, “better economic management”, “building a 21st century economy”. Repetitive short sharp simple phrases, just like Tony Abbott was doing. Only he was already months ahead.

Take a lesson from Triathlon Man. Before you launch your campaign decide precisely what your objectives are. Set the key target points and give each one a shibboleth - five words at the most. And then make sure that everybody in your team knows them and sticks to them.

Spam: fighting the locust plague

Melbourne Herald Sun, 21 August 2010

How a simple processed meat became a major marketing phenomenon - and everybody's favourite hate - would make a great comedy script, if it wasn't already a comedy script.

In 1970 the Monty Python team screened a sketch that reached new standards of stupidity. Two customers sit in a café where every possible dish contains Spam, the American processed ham. It so happens that sitting next to them, of course, is a crew of cow-helmeted vikings who start to sing "Spam spam spam spam lovely spam" ad nauseam.

This was recalled a decade later, newly-fledged internet email services were being bombarded by floods of unwanted advertising. The geeks of the day christened this "spam" and so it has remained ever since.

Just today, 90 billion spams have flooded the world's computers. And depending on the effectiveness of your spam filter, it probably feels like half of them have hit you.

Over the past 40 years the computing world has fought a continuing war against these ether-borne locusts. Today 96 per cent of all business email is spam.

In front-line defence is a spam and virus hunter called Mailguard. This is an Australian company, headquartered in South Melbourne, that protects companies in 18 countries. Managing Director Craig McDonald does not see the problem going away any time soon. "Some of our clients get - literally - thousands of spam emails per employee per day."

His company protects corporations, government departments and retail chains, including Acer, Baker's Delight, the AFL, the Australasian College of Surgeons.

In the darker recesses of the web you'll find 'botnets' - computers captured by a virus that turns them into groups of slaves, up to two million strong, pumping out email. Such a new spam site has just a few hours to operate before it is spotted and blacklisted by the anti-spam services of the world. But this is long enough to send out billions of letters.

If that's not sci-fi enough for you, they have 'spambots' that crawl the net seeking out computers that are not locked down and secured, and convert them into 'bots' to send out email.

Have I made your hair stand on end yet? Surely with so much effort, they must get some result to make it all worth while? Well a research project secretly measured the activities of a botnet for a month. Their conversion rate was well under 0.00001 per cent. From which they would have made about $3000. However there were other sites in the network, bringing the total up to about $3.5 million a year - not bad in a developing country.

Just what is it that they sell? Like the detective searching the suspect's rubbish bin for evidence, I lowered myself into my own garbage skip - the spam file on my computer. This is where all the rejected mail is sent by my Symantec anti-spam program. Before I empty the folder I always take a quick look, in case some legitimate mail was swept up by mistake.

Out of today's trawl - almost a hundred emails - about 90 per cent were pharmaceutical. This is common with a lot of people I talk to, and reassures me that I have not been specifically targeted for sexual enhancement.

However, I have been selected to receive many millions of dollars which will be passed to me as soon as I give Mr McWealth my bank details. And if that's not enough, Mr Frank Walter has offered me $10 million at three percent interest.

More worrying, I can quickly become a qualified radiologist able to carry out x-rays, diagnosis and treatment with radioactive compounds. I'll bear that in mind before my next medical check-up.

I can easily get an accounting degree - which might explain some of the funny-money stories that appear in this section of the paper. And I've just won half a million dollars in the Nokia competition.
All together now: "Spam spam spam spam, wonderful spam!"

The Broadband Shock

Melbourne Herald Sun, 14 August 2010

It was a shock, two years ago, when the national broadband network was launched. $43 billion - so much money! $2000 a head! But after some agonised questioning, I concluded we didn't have any choice. It was either fork out, or go sit on the dock to watch the world boat depart without us.

Well now I've been shocked all over again. This time by the threat to discontinue the project two years down the track. We'd be left sitting on that dock, appropriately surrounded by stacks of bananas.

This news came through as I was working on a piece about convergence. This is where the media, tools and mechanics of industry are all coming together - at a spectacular speed.

Internet marketing and on-line shopping are already old hat. Even grandma is ordering her knitting patterns on the net. There's been a spectacular growth in remote working - even very large companies have their virtual offices, with employees working from home or their cars much of the time.

The amount of data passing within and between businesses has grown exponentially. Really, think about the way that you do business now. If you compared it to ten years ago - you'd probably wonder how anything ever got anything done back then.

The media growth is incredible. Pay TV threw down the gauntlet fifteen years ago, now offering over 100 channels of entertainment and news. After a very long pause, conventional broadcasters finally responded and formed the Free TV group. Government released more licences and suddenly we have the growth of free networks - ABC 2,3 and News, 7Two, SBS Two, Go!, One, and others.

Fast coming up is Internet TV. Channels like Boxee.TV (is it a channel? We need a new name.) give you access to thousands of TV programs instantly. Already debate has started - is ITV going to take up too much Internet space? How big will our internet pipeline have to get?

Certainly, in year or two, 100Mb speeds will be the norm around the world for commerce and communications. Which draws the question again, where would we be if we were still stuck in the copper age?

As regulations loosen up we see even further convergence. Telcos around the world are offering internet TV with their broadband packages. Cable TV providers are offering phone accounts and interactive services.

In the US they are already calling this new era TV2. Listen to Allen Weiner, of research firm Gartner Inc: "New stakeholders, such as telco providers, web search engines and portals, and new media titans, such as Apple and Microsoft, make for a crazy quilt of businesses and competitors looking for a significant stake in the future of TV." And they'll all be jostling for a piece of that data pipeline.

But never mind entertainment, what about your business? Most companies need to be connected into huge national data bases for stocks and supplies.

Just-in-time inventory management is no longer the preserve of car companies and big corporations. Now every business has a degree of JIT working, warehousing managed centrally, minimum stock investment on the floor.

All of us in business know the inadequacy of the communications network we have now. So hands up anyone who thinks that present problems, and future requirements, can be satisfied by a bit of tinkering and improvement to our copper network?

Regardless of the weather, I don't think you'll find a single raised hand in Collins Street or Pitt Street.

We now have the last week of an election that makes a Shakespeare play look like soap opera - just count the bodies littering the Forum. But let's keep focussed on what matters. Not next week but for the next ten years. So let me urge the political parties to put away the game plans and take a long cool look at where this country is going and what it will need to get there.

It's not the politics that matters, it's the hard reality of this country's future.

The secret to making billions: consistency and great design

Melbourne Herald Sun, 7th August 2010.

Dutifully following Herself around the twisting alleys of the Richmond Ikea between displays of bedrooms and living rooms and kitchen appliances, I though of how many times I had been in this stage set. In Shanghai, in Berlin, in London. In fact you could go to 37 countries all around the world and find the near-identical store.

"It's no wonder," I thought to myself, "that the guy's the richest man in the world".

"The guy" is Ingvar Kamprad - that's the I.K. in Ikea. At such lofty heights, richness is a matter of degree depending on the strength of the US dollar - in March Forbes marked him as No 11 because the dollar was up but a couple of years ago he was No 1.

Like Steve Jobs of Apple, Kamprad has never invented anything new. He took existing technology, applied brilliant design and focussed marketing, and then stuck to it. He founded Ikea when he was 17, now he is 83.

So what can you learn from the secret of his success? He started with a vision. To give working men and women furniture that was elegant, functional, and inexpensive.

As a model he had the Bauhaus movement of 1920s Germany, that still influences every modern-day architect and designer. An object can be simple and made from cheap materials, yet still be beautiful.

One day in 1953, when it was just a small furniture store, an employee took the legs off a table to fit it into a van. Other bosses might have said, "Mind what you're doing!" Instead Kamprad saw a way to cut down the high rate of transport damage and at the same time save on construction costs. The flat pack was born.

Ikea first entered my marketing consciousness a few years ago when I needed a pair of bookshelves. They should match, but to serve different functions they had to be easily adjusted and customised. I saw what I wanted in the Ikea catalogue but when I called they were out of stock, I'd have to wait three months for the next container to arrive.

Blow this, I thought, I'll get them somewhere else. So I searched every furniture shop and showroom in Melbourne. The cheap ones, the dear ones, the fancy ones. None had anything of the simple flexibility that I needed, at any price. I ended up waiting three months.

As a marketer I was stunned. Here were the Ikea stores packed to bursting any day of the week. You'd think that after 60 years there would be a dozen Ikea clones in every high street. But there aren't.

Sure there are cheap furniture stores, but what they sell is limited and for the most part - cheap. They don't have that elegance of good design. This is where Kamprad, like Jobs, is willing to spend money on the very best.

Being publicity-shy he isn't seen much, but here's a quote of his philosophy: "Any architect can design a desk that will cost 5000 kronor," he wrote thirty years ago in A Furniture Dealer's Testament. "But only the most highly skilled can design a good, functional desk that will cost 100 kronor. Expensive solutions to any kind of problem are usually the work of mediocrity."

So if you're a youngster, here's the secret to making $25 billion. Start with a product everybody wants and needs - chances are you're sitting on an Ikea chair as you read this. Make sure the design is simple and functional but also beautiful.

Make buying it easy - think about the way Ikea stores are laid out, the thought and logic that has gone into every step of the process. And make it affordable so the buying decision is not hard.

Old man Kamprad is long retired to his home in Switzerland. But the story is that no major decision is ever made at Ikea without his approval - often as not it's his idea.

Look at me! Now look at him.

Melbourne Herald Sun, 31 July 2010

You've got to laugh at this one: The most successful and talked-about commercial on today's TV is one that never officially ran on Australian TV. It has popped up on The Gruen Tranfer, Good News Week, even earnest and serious Q&A, and who knows how many more TV and radio talk shows.

It has been called "The perfect ad", has been ripped off and copied and parodied around the world. At the Cannes Lions awards it won the Grand Prix as "The world's best commercial". It's every marketer's dream - the ad that takes off like a rocket and captures the public's imagination.

I'm talking, of course, about the Old Spice "Look at me" commercial. No, not "Look at moi" as in Kath and Kim but "Look at me" as in Isaiah Mustafa. He's the handsome, muscular black footballer who challenges the ladies in his audience, "Look at your man, now back to me, now back at your man, now back to me..." And makes a fairly safe bet that your man does not look anything like the Adonis on screen. However with a dab of body-wash he could smell like the bulging-bicepped Mustafa.

The guy is so sexy you can hear the sound of heaving bosoms all around, and the script so clever that you have to laugh rather than gag. Add to it a million bucks' worth of scenery effects that transfer our hero from bathroom to yacht to the back of a horse without a blink of his penetrating eyes.

From the marketing point of view it's the perfect way to transform the fortunes of an old-old product associated with your granddad rather than Gen X or Y.

But can one commercial change the fortunes of a product that has been gathering dust on the back shelves of an old barber's shop? We'll have to see. It's certainly having a huge immediate effect.

In the US, after a year of static sales the product shot up 107 per cent and swung its market share up five points. Mind you Gillette and Nivea body washes also made substantial growth. But I wonder if the commercial didn't just re-awaken interest in the category?

This is a great example of a marketer taking a risk with a clever commercial and hitting the jackpot. Remember last week's column - how research shows if they like the ad they're more likely to buy the product?

Apparently this ad has never had a paid-for run in this country, according to my friends at Mitchells. Yet world-wide it had 94 million views on YouTube including huge numbers of Australians.

They then stimulated this further. In response to Twitter messages, they selected over a hundred people and organisations and made an individual version of the commercial just for them. Of course most of the selected are famous folk or news media - who are bound to show their trophy around.

This follow-up was a marathon effort which was apparently turned out over two days. The copywriters and cameramen must have been working like a cattle auction. But handsome Isaiah seems to keep his sense of humour - and his cool - throughout.

Go to YouTube and search for "Old Spice man", and you'll find there's a whole industry of them . He even proposes marriage, on behalf of one Twitter, to another. And I believe it was accepted.

The problem now is how to maintain the momentum, and turn all this notoriety into ongoing sales. Staid old Procter & Gamble is as cobwebbed as their Old Spice product was, it's not a company renown for its creative marketing. Can those arthritic toes dance them forward from here? "Look at me, I'm P&G" doesn't quite ring true.

How to grow brands without slitting veins.

Melbourne Herald Sun, 24 July 2010.

Two hundred years ago your doctor's answer to most of your ailments would be to slit your vein and drain a few pints of blood out of you. The sicker you got the more blood he'd take. And if you died - well he said you were sick, didn't he?

A new book claims that most of our marketing professionals have been using the same approach to diagnose our businesses - with similarly erratic results. And he says that just like medicine, we must stop relying on myths, beliefs and assumptions. It's time to examine years of accumulated research into what really happens when a customer chooses your brand, and develop an evidence-based approach.

Byron Sharp is a professor at the University of South Australia and his new book, How brands grow (Oxford University Press), swings a hammer at some of the key beliefs and rules running our marketing operations for half a century.

For example, the belief that loyalty is the key to solid market growth, and that it is cheaper to hold an existing customer than hunt down a new one.

Not necessarily so, says Sharp. Through analysing years of research from the US, UK and Australia, he has set down principles - the Laws of Marketing he calls them - which have been overlooked or ignored by generations of marketing gurus.

Expensive, elaborate loyalty programmes are designed to prevent defections to the opposition. But he is able to show that each brand has its loyal base, and a percentage of defectors. This defection rate is remarkably constant between brands, with or without loyalty programmes.

His controversial advice is: rather than work so hard to retain a small percentage of your escaping customers, concentrate on catching part of the much larger group of customers defecting from your rivals.

Research also explains the weak or slow responsiveness of brands to advertising. Too often even large marketers do not spend enough - as a percentage of their market share - to make an immediate difference. Or they produce advertising that is just not good enough to be noticed.

Also when they stop advertising, the momentum carries on for some time and makes it hard for a marketing director to justify any increase in their budget. So the investment stays too low but eventually there is a visible decline.

He analyses the consumers who were exposed to regular advertising as opposed to those who were not. Even though they did not show immediate results, research revealed a definite decline in sales for the under-exposed.

Some of the book's revelations come as no surprise. The major factor in success is wide distribution and ready availability; people are more aware of ads that they like; and that clever, creative advertising is the way to attract attention. Most importantly - they are more likely to buy products with ads that they liked.

Of interest to me is what he says about memory structures. That you must be aware of your brand's image and produce ads that reinforce people's existing memory structure. In other words, that the ad should fit in with how they know the product, it should 'feel right'.

How brands grow will disappoint those looking for an academic text book. This is very lightly written for popular consumption.

It sets down ten laws of marketing. Most you know already under other names, but a few are genuinely surprising.

For someone who has read very little marketing literature, this would be a good primer. For everyone it is a reminder of the importance of continually researching your brand - and getting a realistic picture of who your customers are and what they are looking for in your product.

Make sure your consumer becomes a consumable

Melbourne Herald Sun, 17 July 2010

Leafing though an Officeworks catalogue I saw a good quality Hewlett-Packard colour printer for just $49. Doesn't seem so long ago that they were hundreds of dollars. Then on another page a range of HP coloured inks was selling at $85. "Ah yes," I thought, "and that's where HP get their money back".

The money's not in the printers, it's in the ongoing sale of inks, month after month. I've joked that next they'll put computer printers in Corn Flakes packets just to get them into our hands. (Yes it would be a very big Corn Flakes packet, but you know what I mean...)

If you're going to buy into a business, always check out the consumables connected to it. This can make the difference between struggle and big profits.

Four years ago when Gillette launched their new five-bladed Fusion shaver I was given a free razor and two blades as part of a promotion at my gym. Before that I'd wondered why on earth anyone would want five blades to shave with, and then just left it on the bathroom shelf for months.

But one day I tried it, it felt funny but seemed to work well, and I kept using it ever since - and buying packets of replacement blades. I now see that Britain's Office of Fair Trading is investigating allegations of price-fixing collusion between P & G (Gillette's parent) and major supermarkets.

One of their submissions says that the blades cost 10 cents to make. In my supermarket they are selling at $19 for four. So I think that by now I've paid for my razor.

For their cost, most popular cars do not have a high mark-up. On highly competitive models it can be ridiculously low. But have you noticed how all the dealerships have such bright, clean, well-managed service departments? Of course you'll take your precious new car to be serviced there. The first couple of years it's under warrantee and then it becomes a habit. And of course you'll insist on genuine spares, even if they do cost double. You've become a consumable.

From the States comes the story of the Toyota Prius. It seems some have had problems with their "high intensity discharge" headlamps. A number of them have needed replacement, which then highlights a little consumables problem: the HID lights can cost up to $2,000, including labour, to replace. And they're not covered by the warrantee. Ouch!

Have you been to a doctor or into a hospital lately? Now there's a market for consumables. Every hypodermic used once and destroyed. Sealed surgical packs opened, one or two items used, then everything dumped. The sterilisers and autoclaves gather cobwebs (metaphorically speaking - no cobwebs allowed in today's hospitals!) as truck-fulls of medical waste rumble out of the back gates.

What if you're selling a product that once purchased, will continue to do its job excellently for years? Well you have to turn it into a consumable. World business has got really good at this.

It was in 1960 that Vance Packard wrote in The Waste Makers about planned obsolescence: "The systematic attempt of business to make us wasteful, debt-ridden, permanently discontented individuals." That's a scheme that has certainly succeeded.

You've barely finished installing Windows Vista when Windows 7 comes along. You're all excited with your iPod and yet iPod 4 has arrived and is making your dearest look old. Your big old TV might still be working fine but it has probably been moved into the garage to make room for the new wide-screen plasma.

And as for your umpteen-thousand dollars worth of camera equipment - well that has all been made obsolete by so many wonderful digital cameras.

Don't think that I'm knocking consumables or planned obsolescence. They are an essential part of this economy we depend on. If Fords were made to last for ever and never need replacing, that would make Geelong obsolete, wouldn't it? (Sorry Geelong - just kidding.)

What do you think? Join in with a comment

The gene for your brain

Melbourne Herald Sun, 10 July 2010.

This week I'm going to teach you a new word. It's doing the rounds of academia and is popular in the New York marketing cocktail party scene, so before long it will be on everyone's lips. I know my readers will enjoy being the first kids on the block to use it, so here it is. The word is 'meme', rhymes with cream.

Meme is the invention of Richard Dawkins, the Oxford professor who wrote The Selfish Gene, which describes how genetics and natural selection work. The meme is the social equivalent of the gene - the strand of DNA that determined whether you were born a human, an ape, or a fish.

In the same way, the meme is the germ of an idea that takes on its own life and grows - often in directions quite different from its original intention or meaning. Just in the past few weeks we saw a little meme become a world phenomenon: the vuvuzela. Did you know what one was a month ago? Does anyone in the world not know now?

There are lifestyle memes too. If you ever watch Mad Men, the TV series about advertising in the 60s, you'll soon feel ill from the constant smoking by every character. In the office, at home, in bed, full ashtrays everywhere. Unthinkable now. But just remember back a couple of decades at your own life and work...

This is the difference between a meme and a fad. Smoke-free environments are not a fad, they are here permanently. (So, alas, are vuvuzelas.)

Fashion is full of memes. Remember Cory Worthington's hoodie and sunnies? How many of those do you now seen on the streets of Melbourne? Mini skirts were thought a fashion item. Look around you, even in mid-winter - they are now ingrained in our girls' beings. And that fashion fad for faded blue jeans is still with us 50 years on - it's a meme.

Like genes, memes propagate and mutate. Like evolution, some flourish and grow while others eventually fail to reproduce and fade away.

The internet has provided the most fertile soil for memes. Men have developed a culture of regularly swapping and passing on jokes, funny commercials and sexy pictures. Women have their uplifting thoughts, pictures of sunsets and babies and meditations. (Mind you they also have their jokes and smut, but not as much as men, I think.)

These activities don't come from a compulsion to talk or nudge ribs. Rather they are a way of maintaining contact, telling each other they are still alive. If you want to get evolutionary, it's the modern equivalent of grooming the fleas out of each other's hair.

Smart marketers will spot a meme rising and jump on. Think about espresso machines. You'll scarcely find a café or even milk bar without one. Now it is becoming an essential for every good home. If only you'd had shares in Italian kitchenware importers a decade ago! And the early buyers of the coffee house franchises were able to pick the best sites and get in early.

I'm forever awed by the Paul Potts story and how one song on the internet propelled a good (but not great) singer to world fame, creating a meme that was later duplicated by Susan Boyle, proving that looks and age are no barrier when the meme is on the roll.

A Canadian called Gregory Levey wrote a book called "Shut up I'm talking" and promoted it on Facebook. Before long he had 700,000 fans. Not for his book, which was in fact about international diplomacy, but because the phrase generated a meme. The big question is, how can he turn those fans into book buyers?

There is now an academic field called Memetics which has generated books and PhD dissertations on the topic. Both scientists and philosophers are fascinated by the process of propagating thoughts and ideas.

Marketers, I'm afraid, are a bit more crass. We look on with deep interest and wonder how we can make a quid out of it.

Can Gillard save the Labor brand?

Melbourne Herald Sun, 3 July, 2010.

It sounded more like a marketing convention than political comment. Out of your paper, your telly, your computer came a flood of warnings: "Brand Rudd is terminally damaged", "The Kevin 07 brand has lost its lustre", "Labor's brand-damaging decisions". No wonder the cereal box had to be taken off the shelves and replaced with another one.

Now we have a New! Brighter! More Concentrated! product. But the question is, can it regain market leadership after such a battering?

These days political honeymoons last barely as long as the trip back from the registry office, so Julia Gillard can't rely on that to pull her across the line. Then what are Labor's marketing options for promoting themselves back into public favour, and how can the Libs stop them?

To start with they have to clear the debris off the decks. The resources tax advertising has quickly been hammered into a modified, negotiated package.

The miners knew that there was no way the tax would be dropped - no government was going to allow them to carve shiploads of money out of our soil without paying out a substantial slice. And it was obvious the Libs weren't going to rescue them - Tony Abbott has already started spending the money.

I do wish that political parties would stop decrying government advertising. Every opposition always swears that it will not use public advertising to promote its cause, and every one is revealed a liar once it gets into power.

But we the public need to get real too. We put such ridiculous demands on our politicians, such impossible standards which inevitably dissolve in the face of reality. Like this government coming under the multi-million dollar shock and awe attack of the miners. Of course they were going to dip into the treasury and fight back. Honestly, we act like the girl who believes her boyfriend doesn't have sex on his mind when he suggests a weekend in the country.

Expect to see a "happy schools" campaign to diffuse the coming attacks on Julia Gillard. The public needs to be assured that the benefits of the education spend are greater than a few screw-ups. And it's a weak spot you can bet Tony Abbot will be kicking with gusto because it's one of the few chinks in the PM's armour.

I asked the opinion of the best campaign strategist Labor ever had. Bob Hogg showed John Cain how to win, then repeatedly plotted the electoral victories for Bob Hawke. His last campaign was perhaps the most satisfying - stealing John Howard's seat with his partner Maxine McKew.

"They should concentrate on projecting their programs," said Hogg, "Don't spend time bagging Abbott - Gillard should not be associated with anything negative."


He also warns about jumping in response to opinion polls and "All the stupidity that comes out of Facebook and Twitter," which comes from very small groups and doesn't represent the public.

But Hogg was the one who invented closely managed election polling. Has he changed his mind? "No, you need research to give you information, but you don't let it run your life".

Everyone I speak to makes the same comments: that Kevin Rudd micro-managed obsessively and did not allow air to the others in his party, not the caucus nor even the cabinet. So we can expect Gillard to be much more inclusive and communicative.

This is where advertising can play a part. Not as the main thrust but as embroidery and expansion of the message. The Government needs to tell people what it is thinking and what's going on. And do it before it launches ready-made bills.

President Barak Obama has had a similar up and down ride. Fortunately for him he has no caucus to pull the plug.

But right from the start of his administration he has maintained an important link with any who care to take it. Every Saturday the White House blog loads a video address from the President. It may be just three minutes, or five, but enough to explain one of the week's topics. Not a bad idea, and you don't even have to face the charge of misusing public funds.

The Labor Government was taken by surprise at the ferocity of reaction to its carbon trading backdown. It was too busy watching the Libs and Greens across Parliament's floor and hadn't expected the massive scream that would come from its own supporters.

Mark up another topic for a coming public information campaign - once they have worked out what that information might be.

The Opposition has the hard task of kicking the Government's policies without beating up on a poor little girl. You can expect all kinds of lobby groups to pop up and run campaigns doing the dirty work, secretly guided from Abbott's office. The Government will be using the unions and others in the same way.

As for the Greens, reliable sources say that they have been gathering together their electoral funding from all over the country - they are paid $225 for every vote - and consolidating it into a killer treasure chest. Their target is Lindsey Tanner's vacated seat of Melbourne. Having taken a prime minister's head through their choking of the emissions trading scheme, their next political move is a seat in the Reps.

Now we can expect to see much of that money spent on Melbourne television through lots of very Green ads.

The Prime Minister made a smart political move by declaring that she would not take The Lodge until she won it outright. It gives a focus to the coming campaign ("Let's get Julia into The Lodge!") and an excuse for an early election.

If, this time next year, she's still in power and things get rocky again, she has another card up her sleeve. Australia's equivalent to a royal wedding. After all, that did wonders for Scott and Charlene's ratings.

The mobile phone wars are far from over - they’ve only just begun.

Herald Sun 26 June 2010

The mobile phone wars are hotting up with a new intensity of competition. The reason, of course, is the Apple iPhone. And the question is, has Steve Jobs given the sector a shot of adrenalin - or is he vampiring all of the blood for himself?

You see, last year because of the Greedy Financiers' Cataclysm (GFC) the mobile phone market took a sharp dip. The junk bond traders and barrow boys could no longer afford a new phone a week so sales and turnover declined.

But by this year it has recovered, globally up by 22 per cent in the first quarter, selling nearly 300 million units. The impetus has come from smart phones. After all, who wants to be seen with a dumb phone these days?

In the US it's still Blackberry in the lead with iPhone, the newcomer, hard on their heels. Already between them they have nearly 60 per cent of the market.

Here in Australia, Nokia is still the king. But market research analyst IDC predict that Apple will knock the Fin off its throne by Christmas.

The claim has some credence in the street. One phone store was asked, "Are the iPhones selling well?" Their reply, "We haven't been selling anything else all month." There is a definite swelling momentum at work here that could sweep all before it.

So I wondered, well the other companies aren't dummies, they're hardly going to pack up and go home, they must have some strategies up their sleeves. What's the plan?

Nokia were tight-lipped about Apple’s predicted triumph, but they did declare they have the lion's share of the smartphone market in Australia - without nominating a figure.

Their hopes are resting on the new model N8, to be released October-December. This has more bells and whistles than a theatre organ: 12MP camera, high definition video, web TV - and a big graphic screen just like the iPhone's. They have obviously been burning a lot of midnight oil in Helsinki.

The other big hitters are also slugging away. Google's Android operating system is fuelling new magic from the likes of HTC and Motorola, while Microsoft are about to launch their new Windows Phone 7; their current customers include Samsung and Palm.

Where iPhone has won big-time is in the apps race. Two years ago Blackberry had thousands of apps yet Apple had but a handful. Today Apple claim 150,000 apps while Blackberry App World has 15,000 at the most. What went wrong?

"Blackberry didn't focus on apps, Apple did," explained a BB observer. "Also, they don't do their own above the line advertising, just leave it to the carriers, and Apple swamped them." Not controlling your own advertising is like driving from the back of the truck.

This is where good marketing counts and as I've often said, there's no better marketer than Jobs. He has sold iPhone directly to the public, creating a sucking vortex that the resellers can't ignore.

"Resellers hate iPhone, they don't make money out of it," explained the observer. "Jobs put all their money into marketing and has given the guys in the middle nothing."

Nokia also took a swipe at Apple. "We're not a one size fits all company," sniffed a spokeswoman. "We're able to deliver a range of handsets across different price points to different customers."

As if to prove the point, Nokia recently released its Bicycle Charger Kit, like a bike light generator you plug your phone into. It’s aimed at the Third World, one of the biggest growth markets. In South America or darkest Africa, even if they don't have electricity, they can charge their phones as they ride to work. Try that with an iPhone.

Sometimes you need the Big Ugly Sign

Melbourne Herald Sun 19 June, 2010

One of our busiest business trainers, Brendan Nichols, has a good story he delivers at some of his seminars. It’s called “The Big Ugly Sign Theory”.

He speaks of a block of land he owned in an upmarket area. It had beautiful ocean views and he gave it to a local estate agent to sell. They put up a smart display board and waited for two months, with very little interest.

So Brendan decided to do it himself. He hammered a big sheet of plywood to a pole and hand-painted on it: “Private Sale - Good price - Phone xxxxxxxx now”. As he describes it, “The phone rang off the hook and I sold the land”.

Now this story is painful for those of us who spent much of our lives perfecting the art and craft of advertising creation. We want to the ad to look beautiful, the headline to be clever, for people to comment on what a lovely ad it is.

But I have to admit that this is not always what the product needs. Sometimes you have to tone down. So what’s the theory behind Brendan’s story? Well if you look around you, there’s a forest of real estate signs from the big house agents. Each is bigger and glossier than the last.

What the scrawled sign did was signal that this was a vendor sale. Probably they weren’t very sophisticated, maybe it was a chance to get the block for a cheaper “straight from the farm” price. It was certainly enough to stand out and spark interest.

Of course if everybody had hand-made signs on every sale property, it would then be the fancy billboard that would attract the interest.

It’s a fine call to decide which way to go, which is why you call in a professional - if they’re good, they can make that fine judgement. Do you need the glossy brochure and inserts to say that you are a wealthy, successful company they can trust. Or do you photocopy a sheet of paper to say you are honest, down-to-earth and cheap?

Well if you’re a bank, nobody would believe the second anyway. But the first can work in the right context. Like the retailer I once heard about. His shoe sales were going very slowly so he pulled out several dozen shoes of all types, piled them on a large table near the door, and put up a big sign saying: “Run-out discount sale, check for sizes”.

Soon the table was surrounded by shoppers pulling out shoes, checking them for size - and he soon sold his stock. In the right context, yes it can work.

Another of my clever friends is Bill Shannon who has an agency called Shannon’s Way. A few years ago he mentioned that one of his campaigns was for the Industry Superannuation Funds. “What,” I accused, “don’t tell me you’re responsible for those terrible ads with that wooden Bernie Fraser recommending the investment funds?” The former Reserve Bank Governor might be a clever chap but he ain’t no matinee idol - or exciting presenter.

Bill grinned, “Yeah, that’s us, aren’t they wonderful? They’ve got to be some of the most boring ads on TV - and they work like gang-busters!” Of course. He’s selling people their most important decision - where to invest their life’s savings. They don’t want to give their money to a flashy car-salesman. They will believe someone who is steady, dull and boring. (Sorry Bernie, nothing personal.)

Money is a serious business and we want to believe that the people handling ours are reliable, serious, even boring people.

Come to think of it, that’s also Kevin Rudd’s secret of success. (Sorry Kevin...)

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

What’s the real cost of your advertising?

Melbourne Herald Sun, 29 May 2010

“I have to promote this little product. Is there any way to get free advertising for it?” At some stage every client asks that question of their agency and you give them the stock reply: “If I knew how to get advertising for free I’d have an endless supply of clients and be much richer than I am.”

The simple fact is that no, there is no free advertising, always it ends up costing you - usually according to the number of people seeing it. That’s why you need to do your sums on a “cost per thousand” basis - how much does each unit of a thousand readers, viewers, listeners, passers-by or whatever, cost?

You’ll sometimes find that a small publication works out more expensive than a big medium like TV or a newspaper.

For example the Wool Knitters’ Monthly may cost $1000 to reach its 5000 readers - 20c a reader. Whereas a TV commercial might cost $10,000 to reach 500,000 viewers. Only two cents a viewer. So which is the better buy?

Now if you are selling ice creams or draught beer, you’ll want as big an audience as possible so obviously the commercial is the way to go. But if you are a wool mill selling hand-knitting yarn, you’re looking for a small specialised market and it may well be worth 20c to reach each granny.

These days advertising is being expected to do a great deal. Think of advertising from your younger days and you’ll remember some department store and job ads in the papers, endless second-hand car commercials on telly. All right I’m exaggerating as usual, but memory does recall a simpler time, doesn’t it?

These days advertising is being expected to carry massive burdens. Like much of the cost of the internet for a start. All these billion-dollar deals involving Google and Microsoft, Times Warner and this paper’s parent News Limited, make almost weekly headlines. Just this month an online publisher called Associated Content was sold to Yahoo! for $110 million. It was founded in 2005 by a Luke Beatty. I must find out if we are related - he may get a visit from his Australian second cousin.

So much money being invested all round, and what’s going to pay for it all? Advertising. So there’s this massive expectation of how much money it’s going to generate, and that’s not forgetting all the myriad current media that still expect to make profits. Free advertising? Forget it.

However there are still cheap ways to do it. I’m frequently amused by a Prahran “fashion” clothing discounter which advertises its sales with placards and sandwich boards. You’ll find bored, desultory students standing on the street corners of Chapel Street holding a sign proclaiming “Huge sale now on!” as they read a book on their next uni assignment.

I’ve often talked with admiration about guerilla campaigns - where a very clever commercial gets hardly any paid TV time but is passed around the web with millions of hits. Or a new and exciting product that generates a tidal wave of chatter on talk sites and blogs, growing legs of its own.

But really this is only an updated version of word-of-mouth. Only now it’s word-of-web. The communication technology has improved immensely, but the product still has to pluck the heart-strings. And I’m sorry to say, however clever you are, it still involves as much luck as winning Tattslotto.

So here’s my advice. Examine your product and its users. Who are they, where would you find them? Spend enough to prepare good, effective, attractive advertising that will touch them. Then dominate your media. Now if the medium is the cooking page of your local paper, be the dominant, most visible ad on the page. If they listen to radio, choose just one of the stations they go for and be one of the biggest advertisers on that station.

In other words, don’t get lost in the also-rans. Too many small companies waste the little budget they have by spreading it too thinly - till it just disappears. It’s more effective to make a couple of big bangs, than a trail of little pops.


ray@ebeatty.com