‘Battleground’ sounds a bit violent. Marketing’s always been a bit adversarial but as times have got so much tougher we shouldn’t understate just how rough the competition is. The call for brilliance in marketing to help give a competitive edge is really intense. There’s a book by Howard Stevenson called Do Lunch or Be Lunch. There isn’t time for lunch today. We are all trying too hard to survive.
Welcome to the past
Nearly 100 years ago Henry Ford said:
‘History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history that we make today.’
(Chicago Tribune, 1916)
Henry was right, but he’d have been amazed at how eternal truths and tradition are being discarded today. Three years ago, of the top twelve global brands only two, Microsoft and Google, were created after 1940. By 2011 that number was six and my guess is by 2020 all twelve will be ‘modern’ brands, and about a third will be Chinese, Brazilian and Indian because times are changing and we are living in the present.
The seven ages of marketing
1950s – The dawn of modern marketing
Food rationing after the Second World War only ended in 1954. The first TV commercial was shown in the UK in 1955 for Gibbs SR toothpaste. ‘It’s tingling fresh. It’s fresh as ice. It’s Gibbs SR toothpaste.’ This is when the retail revolution, with the emergence of supermarkets and a consumerist economy, started.
1960s – Mass marketing develops
This was the ‘swinging sixties’ – Carnaby Street, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. TV advertising became much more important. This was the era of promotions, with free plastic daffodils being given away as an incentive. It was a time when soap powders went into combat rather like jousting knights, when breakfast cereals contained plastic toys. In supermarkets there were people dressed up as Honey Monsters offering samples of Sugar Puffs. Even the Kray twins had a small (but unsurprisingly aggressive) promotional company. Everyone was at it. Marketing was cool. Marketing was mainstream.
1970s – Creative marketing arrives
Advertising was the marketing driver in the 1970s and a series of impressive advertising agencies hit the UK – Saatchi & Saatchi, BMP, French Gold Abbott and WCRS, one of the founders of which pronounced his intention ‘to kick away the white sticks of the big, fat US agencies’. Advertising became increasingly sophisticated, with campaigns for Heineken (‘It refreshes the parts that other beers can’t reach’) and Hamlet cigars (‘Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet’) both from the best agency ever, sadly now disappeared – CDP.
1980s – The decade of the ‘brand’
Big became beautiful. Marketing became a golden key to unlock fortunes. Research companies had never been so rich. New products were filling the shelves. The UK took over the world, with WPP buying US ad agencies J Walter Thompson and the Ogilvy group. Marketing became a zero-sum game, with warfare breaking out in product sectors everywhere. There was even a ‘lawnmower war’ every spring between Flymo and Qualcast, the latter declaring that their rotary product was ‘much less bovver than a hover’. The brand became the thing. In 1988 Rank HovisMcDougall, the food company, under threat of a hostile takeover, hired Interbrand to help recast their balance sheet by revaluing their brands.
1990s – Target marketing
The way it used to work was the advertising agency retained a commission of 17.65 per cent on all media bought. And the way media people were treated in agencies was as though they were ‘below stairs’. They were always last on in new business presentations. They were regarded as a necessary evil (albeit rather good at maths.) And maths was now what was needed. It was no longer a case of ‘whack it on telly’. Clients were becoming cleverer, many with MBAs, and were asking awkward questions about models for effectively deploying funds and things like ROI. When the word ‘creativity’ was mentioned, they’d ask: ‘What are the measurement matrices?’ So media men took over. And the word was all about precision targeting and value for money.
2000s – Digital marketing
Enter a new pretender. The digital-space kid whom Richard Eyres (ex-Capital Radio, ITV, Pearson and the Guardian Media Group) once described as being spotty, with lots of body piercing and a permanent expression of rage on his face. His mission was not to be leading edge or cutting edge but ‘bleeding edge’. Suddenly, if you weren’t spending half your budget on the web you were a dinosaur. Search engine marketing was where the cash was going. It was the equivalent of derivatives and hedge funds to most marketers – they didn’t understand a word but it sounded good. Everything had a number against it.
Now it’s the age of the ‘idea’
What an exciting time to take up or be involved in marketing, when what everyone wants is an all-embracing idea that can be translated into whatever medium or type of marketing you choose. That ‘big’ idea designed to be the most powerful concept for 50 years. Everyone is looking for the idea that is global and that integrates all activities. It’ll be an idea you can easily summarise, like Pimm’s and sunshine, like Bisto and roast lunch, like Saclà and Italy, like Canon and colour printers, like Aga and the heart of the home, or Ben & Jerry’s and ‘yum, yum’.
This contest used to be well mannered, but has now become increasingly aggressive. When you look at the facts you can see why.
Some facts of marketing life
- Fact: Fewer people watch any one TV channel. (In 1965 in the US just three prime-time TV spots were needed to reach 80 per cent of the population. Today the number is around 100. From three to 100 in a generation. Wow.)
- Fact: TV is very expensive now. (It’s gone up 250 per cent in the past decade.)
- Fact: Returns from advertising are poor. (Less than 20 per cent of TV advertising generates a positive ROI.)
- Fact: People skip ads. (90 per cent of people who can skip TV ads do so.)
- Fact: There’s a lot of advertising. (Daily per capita exposure to advertising messages exceeds 3000 a day.)
- Fact: Nobody’s got enough time. (With so many pages, magazines, web sites, radio channels, TV channels, posters and promotional stuff.)
- Fact: Mass marketing used to be affordable. (£1 million bought you a decent, national TV campaign with a little poster money left over. But that era is long past.)
Consumers are hard to reach, expensive to reach and, just when you think you’ve reached them, they turn you off. Hard to see how you can afford or justify a big marketing budget, but wait a moment.
Key factors to help you to marketing brilliance
Product quality
Yesterday’s consumers were less demanding. The Austin Allegro and Triumph Dolomite seemed good enough cars back then. Standards were lower. People smoked in restaurants and in cinemas, small boys put coins on railway lines to see how squashed they got by speeding trains, and cake baking was the big activity. The world was second rate, dangerous and unhealthy.
Today product and design are the keys. There really are better mousetraps being built – as Ralph Waldo Emerson said in 1889: ‘If a man write a better book, preach a better sermon or make a better mouse trap than his neighbour, tho’ he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.’ Look at Kindle, iPad, Dyson, Bose and BMW. Brilliant marketing today involves spending as much time worrying about the product and how it looks, tastes and performs as on considering how to market it.
We want language and relationships to be authentic
Yesterday there was subservience to the establishment. Newscasters on TV were craven in dealing with their leaders: ‘Prime Minister, sir, did you have a good holiday?’
Today marketers have got to speak ‘people’, not ‘corporate’. Like it or not (and most senior corporate executives I talk to don’t seem to like it at all), consumers are now in charge. They’re in charge because they own today’s primary medium, the web. Companies can’t control what’s on there. If you search for any company with the words ‘bad news’ attached you’ll find yourself getting into a morass of grumbles. BMW may say it’s a great car but ten of their angry customers can obliterate the value of their shiny advertising in minutes.
I loved a book called The Cluetrain Manifesto (2000) written by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger. In it the four authors say ‘talk is cheap’. And this comes from Rick Levine, ex-Sun Microsystems, about our having ‘no choice’ in the way things are:
‘People talk to each other. In open, straightforward conversations. Inside and outside organisations. The inside and outside conversations are connecting. We have no choice but to participate in them.’
For years brochure writers have been trying, in a pompous way, to speak to their audience. But consumers today want to be spoken to in the language of their friends, not the language of yesterday’s proprietor.
You need a great product but a real human being has to present it engagingly and sell it with conversational passion.
Noisy mass marketing is dead
Yesterday we interrupted people with our story. We took up a megaphone and blasted our marketing message to whoever was out there to hear it. It is what we call ‘interruption marketing’ and it worked because TV was cheap and because consumers put up with being interrupted.
Today we have more knowledgeable conversations. Don’t for instance, imagine that Nike could have got the sports thing as right as they did if they hadn’t spent a huge amount of time with athletes, soaking up locker-room gossip. Don’t imagine the John Lewis Partnership could be as successful as it is without brilliant people management, which involves a high level of interest in everyone who works there. Spending money and effort on getting your staff to really know their stuff is vital.
An internal love affair leads to an external communication of it.
From management to leadership to heroism
Yesterday we were in manufacture. We didn’t have CEOs, we had managing directors. Leadership was something we expected from admirals and generals, not businessmen.
Inspiring leadership is on everyone’s agenda. The late Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Oprah Winfrey, Martin Sorrell, Alex Ferguson and Jamsedji Tata are the heroes of the 21st century. Everyone recognises the roles of innovation and creativity. But marketing consists of creative prima donnas. To get the best out of them we need the kind of leadership seen in orchestras with the Simon Rattles of this world. Of course we need wizards, but we also need impresarios.
Marketing today is about being heard through the white noise. You need to transmit at the right frequency for your audience to hear you.
Lessons on working with change
- There’s a sense of frenzy in a changing world so there are a lot of things to do at the same time.
We are all required to do more and more multi-tasking. But David Weinberger said (again in The Cluetrain Manifesto) that focus is in and multi-tasking is out.
‘The sum total of attention is actually decreased as we multi-task. Slicing your attention, in other words, is less like slicing potatoes than slicing plums: you always lose some of the juice.’
- No one can avoid change today. Ten years ago Motorola was the world’s most admired company and the market leader in mobile phones. Then along came Nokia and they became market leader. Then along came iPhone. Then along came Android phones. Then along came Google and bought the Motorola mobile phone business. Just being big and rich no longer guarantees success.
Ways in which the world will change (are you ready?)
We shall see increasing unpredictability in this global world. Moscow, Beijing, Mumbai, São Paulo are as important as New York, London, Paris, Bonn. We shall see booms and busts like never before. Nothing is impossible … that applies to everyone.
The mighty will fall. Lehman Brothers was not an aberration, more a sign of the times. No one is safe. Not your boss, not his boss. No one. The ‘normal’ that people talk of our returning to is over. Normal is chaos.
We live in a 24-hour society. Offices such as Google’s in Zurich are open 24/7. There will no longer be time to reflect for a few weeks. Response times will need to get so fast that concepts such as three-year plans are redundant. As BMW said, ‘The big do not always eat the small. The fast always eat the slow.’
Be fast at work. It gives you an advantage.
Reputations will be under constant threat. No one will be able to manage the media. Truth will out – always. Don’t lie and don’t hide errors. Deal with stuff that goes wrong, quickly. Standing still and hoping for the best is a suicidal strategy.
However, unpredictability will lead to more opportunities previously not considered possible. We’ll need to be master tacticians who can constantly change course. The brilliant marketer of the future will have to be agile and an insomniac.
The new world of marketing
It’s a revolution now
We are seeing revolution in the marketing world. Media competition will hot up with more news online, more commercials, more PR and more conversations online. So we’ll have to find new ways of reaching people.
New technology = new experiences
This will make experiential marketing far more important, with more interactive marketing. Virtual reality will become a reality and transform design, research and e-commerce. More extraordinary cinematic experiences than ever will be conceived, making this and theatre more important for marketers. The O2 and Wembley are just the beginning when it comes to live entertainment; we’ll want to talk to people when they are having a good time.
Talk to people when they’re happy and relaxed.
The shopping scene
Control of distribution will be key in the battle between retail and suppliers. Poor service will get punished. Ethical retail will flower – the cooperative movement, John Lewis and specialist shops – as will e-commerce. Out-of-town shopping will decline. The high street will do what Mary Portas tells it (Well, you would, wouldn’t you?). We’ll see more phenomena like Brighton’s Lanes, Chester’s Rows, Tunbridge Wells’s Pantiles and Oxford’s Covered Market. But moribund high streets will die. Expect to see massive change in our towns and cities. Invest in popular places because there will be losers as well as winners.
Consumer and customer relationships
The key lever will be the building of relationships between consumer and brand owner. The concept of the lifelong customer will become central to all marketing. We shall see what I call ‘relationshops’ – where customers are treated as friends and recognised by new identification technology, so more shopping becomes a personal service experience
B2B and loyalty
In business-to-business, partnerships will be the key – with suppliers, wherever they can, going direct to customers. Death, I’m afraid, for wholesale and middlemen. Business one-to-one is the way of the future. If your people, or you, can’t build relationships you are in trouble.
Winning will not be alone about money
In a world where the marketing funds seem to be running out, there are still pockets of investment that produce a powerful cut-through and situations where change is achieved through cleverness. Like taking a brand – Lucozade – which was firmly positioned in the sickroom, next to the chamber pot, and repositioning it as a healthy energy drink. Like a brand called Innocent, which came from nowhere. Like Skoda, with its clever quality/price story – VW quality at a lower price. Like Waitrose: they price-match 1000 Tesco items and give a nicer experience. QED. Like Jamie Oliver, who’s gone from a no-money kid on a Vespa (the Naked Chef) to Mr Rich today. Anything is possible.
Big challenges and issues for marketing and you
- The face of business will change. In a global economy there will be an increasing emphasis on quality and value for money, which is going to hit high-inflation China and India hard. Steiff, the soft toy manufacturer, took production back to Germany from China, saying an eye half a millimetre out turned Teddy’s look of devotion into one of idiocy. It’s cheaper now to make a lot of stuff in the UK than Asia.
- Corporate social responsibility is going to become more important. For example, Diageo run marketing campaigns on the need for responsible drinking – not cynically, but because not to do so is to put their relationship with government and society at risk and because they won’t get young, socially responsible people to work for them unless they do. It’s also the right thing to do.
- Brand partnerships will grow. Expect more and more alliances. Imagine some others: Google and Fox; Omnicom and Disney; Nestlé and Fitness First; Bose and Sony; Apple and Orange (I like that one); WHSmith and the Department of Education, and so on.
- SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) are going to grow rapidly. Governments regard small and medium-sized businesses as the true engine of the economy. With them there’ll be a mass of new brands, and with those will come an increasing need for sharp marketing. And a whole new generation of unemployed becoming self-employed. Because of digital marketing, anything is possible now.
- Which brings me to a speculation about talent. Talent in marketing, not talent in finance, is going to be seen as key in the next decade. The brilliant marketer of the future who is very creative, fast on their feet and makes things happen is going to be very highly prized and highly rewarded.
- When companies grow, the founders have to step back and delegate, is what all the management books say. But no owner of a business should ever get rid of their role as marketing director. If you lose your touch with and love of your customers then you are in terrible trouble.
- There is a change in consumers and customers. We are seeing the increasing importance of women as the decision-makers in the home and the key influencers over all purchasing decisions. But you wouldn’t think that when you see an average car dealer at work, would you?
- We are seeing the increasing importance of the 55+ sector – you know, the ones who feel about 40 and act about 30 – what American trend-watcher Faith Popcorn calls ‘down-ageing’. When everyone in marketing is getting younger this potentially creates a communication problem. Go and talk to a group of older citizens and listen to what they say and what they want. Everything from bigger print to brighter light to less packaging to better manners. When you have an unsatisfied need in marketing you have a big opportunity.
Spend an hour looking around for bad examples of marketing and decide what you would have done had you been in charge.
- In a lecture he gave to the University of Laguna in October 2008, Wally Olins said the consumer is ‘answering back’. Brands, services and retailers that don’t deliver are going to have an increasingly tough time. Complaints are a specific opportunity. At South Western Airlines in the USA they have a person on the board who sorts out all complaints as and when they are made. A complaint solved and a consumer placated become a friend to the company.
- The blue sky and beyond – towards the small society (not the ‘big’ one). Local communities are going to grow in importance and a reversal of the demolition of local shops and pubs and post offices is surely on the cards. Look at the boom in allotments. Most councils have long waiting lists. Local voices are prevailing.
- Cultural festivals are booming – Brighton, Edinburgh, Cheltenham, Hay-on-Wye, Manchester – as is the desire to play an instrument, sing in a choir (thanks to Gareth Malone and others) and to be a literary critic, hence the boom in book clubs. The arts are going to play a larger role in our lives. Are you thinking about how to take advantage of this?
- Sport is getting bigger and exciting more people. Not everyone can afford to sponsor the Olympics, premier division football, test cricket, professional rugby or tennis. But the buzz of sporting contest proves (as with live performance arts) that seeing battles in the flesh is a unique experience and a great marketing opportunity.
The future will be exciting, diverse and, most of all, unexpected, which is why the big, slow-footed corporations will have a tougher time. Even if they are very well off.
Marketing on a shoestring
If you have no money you have to think. Sometimes this means focusing on a very few consumers, perhaps a few hundred, and doing a great job for them so you have the chance of building a customer base. If you are a good decorator, maybe being the decorator everyone in one street likes and uses is a better place to be than being just another name in your county on Yell.
This is where creativity comes in. And sometimes the cleverest way of reaching potential customers is to break the mould. Take Sid our decorator. He didn’t put another card through letter boxes. He got a whole load of sample paint pots and printed a message on the labels. He left the pots on people’s doorsteps:
‘Hi, I’m Sid. I’m a decorator. Ask me to quote if you want a job done. And I’ll give you the first litre of paint I use free (even, gulp, Farrow and Ball). My phone number is ….; my email is …. Thanks for reading my pot. Sid’
Life is about choices. But what you have to spend will determine what you can afford to do.
Doing less but doing it very well is better than spreading yourself too thin.
Marketers will have a tougher time too, especially with talking to consumers, but this means you have to build better relationships and have more straightforward and intelligent conversations. Marketing is going to be at the very core of a future that is more responsive to what people want. The winners are going to be the smart, the attentive, the curious, the energetic, the determined and the optimistic.
The core lessons of marketing history
- If you don’t have a product of which you are proud you’re in trouble.
- Boring communication won’t ever work.
- Every marketing plan needs to have a great idea, not just money.
- Learn how to talk to consumers in their terms, not yours.
- Spend over 50 per cent of your time thinking about your customers or you’re getting it wrong.
- You have to be very fast on your feet – marketing is a race.