What is it that we do as marketers?

As marketers I’m sure we’ve all been out and had people ask you that question:

So what exactly do you do?

Ok. How long do we have? Will they really understand? Do I want to excite them to pursue their dream of becoming a marketer? How long do I really want to be stuck in this conversation?

Obviously depending on our role in this great area, the answer could be as diverse as the number of misconceptions that exist. Sure I could tell them about being chained to the desk analyzing excel spreadsheets, budgets, sales performance and gate papers, but let’s not put them to sleep, so yeah let’s confirm what they want to hear:

Well you know those ads you see on the tele, or billboards, or maybe even that Facebook thing? Well, that’s what I do

Now let’s not try to justify how stressful and draining it is to make thee ‘sexy’ elements of being a marketer, let’s just see their eyes light up.

Whilst that’s good for social gatherings, what I really struggle with, is answering “what can I bring to the table to help out family and friends?”

I’m sure if you’re like me you have many mates who have a ‘trade’ and in addition to no HECS debt, these people are always in high demand; need a drain looked in to, have some rotting wood, car on the fritz you give these guys a call. Then they pop over, do their magic, you provide them the customary slab of beer, share a few, then go your separate ways, both happy the exchange.

Contrast this situation with most marketers and you realize that applying our craft to help out someone isn’t so easy. More so, especially for those of us who have the good fortune to work on big brands, with big budgets, these often provide a safety blanket for us. Sure we can brief out a cracking advertising idea, or new media solution, or packaging option and the list goes on. However this isn’t so easy when helping out mates for free.

Then yesterday I had a call from my brother, who runs an amazing pool business and he had a few questions for me. Naturally I was chuffed that he wanted my help (and glad it didn’t involve digging a concrete pool shell in the rain as I feared it would be), and whilst I firstly thought that the wasn’t much I could do without my big safe budgets, I had an epiphany.

What we actually do as marketers is to think. That’s right. It’s pretty simple, but isn’t our role really about applying logic to problems, then applying leanings from past projects to come up with solutions to help address the problems. More so it’s about helping to shape the thinking of others. Getting them to change from doing what they were going to, and do what we want them to do. So in this case, help my brother to think about getting people to question their current pool quote and give him their business.

After this realization I felt great in the knowledge that after all these years we do have a lot to add in terms of mates contra. Sure it might not be tangible at first sight, but the gift we provide is helping to shape thinking leading to ongoing success for others. Simple as that.

Footnotes:
1. Luckily I’m pretty handy on the tools so haven’t had to give out too much advice
2. No cash was received from Minke pools for this article (yet!)
3. I wrote this blog in my car whilst waiting for a meeting, stupidly leaving my ignition on causing my battery to go flat, so clearly I still have a lot to learn about thinking!

“Sh!t, or get off the pot!”

I was recently in a meeting, where a fairly important decision needed to be made. We had all the right people in the room to make the call; some of the best marketing and advertising minds I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. Together we had more knowledge on the matter than anyone else, and importantly we all knew what we needed to achieve in terms of the end game.

Despite all of this, we couldn’t actually make the decision we needed to; something was holding us back.

Now I’m pretty sure this isn’t just something limited to my workplace, or more so the marketing industry. Rather what we’re seeing is an increasing need to to quantify everything, and prove the future, before a decision can be made.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m totally supportive of consumer research and validation as a process to help make decisions, but to my mind expecting that this research can actually make the decisions is a leap too far.

But more importantly, isn’t the reason we as managers are paid our salaries, is to ultimately take all the available inputs and then most importantly, review this with the benefit of our past experience and professional judgement to actually make the decisions?

What I fear is that big businesses are increasingly slowing down or avoiding decision making, trying to quantify every little decision before making the call to ensure its overall success. In the process we are missing the opportunity to be first to market, or for the campaigns to be as good as they could be, and as such the overall creativity and power of big business is failing.

Contrast this with start ups and more entrepreneurial businesses who have the freedom and confidence to trust their instincts; trial and learn with their initiatives and as a result they are winning.

Take a recent example; look at how Kodak with 8,000 workers and years of trust and equity in their brand dies a rapid death vs Instagram that was started by 3 uni students with a freedom to try, and now not only are they incredibly cashed up thanks to Zuckerberg, but they had one of the most popular apps of 2011 and are now becoming the default for photography.

Yes we have different pressures, big business with share holders seeking to see continued top and bottom line growth and dividends vs start ups operating with lower overheads and no real pressure to succeed over night. But surely this model seems to be broken, or at least slightly cracked. As a share holder I think I’d prefer to be investing in those companies that are going to be around for the long term future (when I plan to be drawing on to my super) vs trying to secure an unsustainable dividend today.

So perhaps it’s about time we all start trusting ourselves to make the call a bit more. Surely the only worse thing than making a bad decision, is not actually making one at all…. As a wise marketing director once told me, “shit or get off the pot!”. Hard to argue with that…

Have we reached the private label tipping point

After seeing the much hyped work by Droga5 for their new client Woolworths go to air last week, it really made me think about not only the role of private label in Australia, but more so the ramifications of traditional brand agencies in actively promoting them.

I would hazard a guess that unless you’re working on an uber premium brand, there are very few brand managers who would have private label / controlled brands in the top 3 threats in any SWOT analysis or strat plan.

The traditional agency has always been one of the major tools in guarding against the rise of these retailer led competitors, the theory going ‘we have a brand and will develop a campaign to drive equity to make sure consumers choose us vs these cheap copies’. The result has been millions of dollars spent creating ads that (to varying levels) will drive equity, make people laugh and generally make us as brand managers feeling that we’ve done our job in protecting our brands, and then eagerly await the latest market share reports and hope like hell this has translated in to share growth, or at least not share decline

However as we all know, without controlling the full distribution network, try as we might, with the highest concentration of retail power in the world, if we’re not in bed as ‘partners’ with one of the big two I fear those all important share reports will be in the red. And whilst we’re on it, can we ever really partner both majors, without having issues with the other becoming a jealous, vindictive, angry ex (has a threesome ever not ended in tears?).

So back to the start, as we now see a traditional disruptive creative agency now partnering up with Woolworths to turn their private labels truly in to brands, is the war over??  Seems to me like the agency is backing the retailers to win the brand war, and they want to be there from the start. If as I hope this is far from a certainty, how do all the newly acquired brands of said agency feel about briefing them to protect their brands, all the while knowing that within the agency there is another account service team taking the same brief from Woolworths to ultimately bring down the brand?

Interesting times, strap yourself in for the ride!

Balancing brand partnerships and social responsibility

An interesting thing struck me over the weekend when thinking about modern sponsorships. Can you ever truly have a relationship where both parties are 100% happy?

It’s an interesting thing when you think about it. As a brand we often pay multi million dollar deals on securing a sponsorship property; whether that be to build a positive brand association, reach a broad range of consumers, or as was more prevalent in the ’80’s and still many small businesses today, because the owner / CEO personally likes the property or has a hero syndrom with the team.

In exchange for the sponsorship you would think it fair that you could then leverage that sponsorship, within reason, as you wish. However increasingly I am noticing examples of the sponsorship property forcing the brand to undertake activities that counter the original objectives of the sponsorship. For instance a performance car brand sponsoring a car race, then actively being forced to promote a TAC style, speed kills campaign. Or a confectionery brand sponsoring a sporting league and then forced to develop a ‘limit your unhealthy food intake’ campaign.

So why are the property owner’s feeling that their social responsibility stretch from their direct product to the broader association with brands and any perceived risks they think exist.

More so, why are brands conceding to these demands and still investing, and how long will this continue?

It’s no surprise therefore to read the latest figures that show sponsorship investment in Australia is down -4% year on year. If it’s becoming more expensive as well as more restrictive in how you can leverage a partnership I really question where brand managers will be investing in the coming year.

Digital anyone?

 

Getting started

So today was a big day. Had some time to get out of the usual brand management rat race and actually stop and think about marketing. Not just about marketing your brand, but marketing yourself. Luckily I had an hour with the inspiring Steve Samartino, and as a result I’ve decided it’s time to move from just thinking about stuff, to actually committing it to my blog.

What will you get in here? Well as the name suggests it’s really a place for all of the random thoughts regarding marketing and brand management that usually just buzz around my head. After a decade or so madly running on the FMCG brand management treadmill I’ve got a few interesting thoughts that I hope others might also enjoy or learn from.

So we’re live now, and I’m making the commitment to prioritise using this blog regularly, so be sure to check in.

Day 1, let’s do it…