Accelerate Grads '06

A new spin on things?

People are suspicious creatures, and will jump on anything that makes a brand appear untrustworthy. Take, for example, Wal-Mart's fake blog of last year, and its efforts to infiltrate its comments into the blogosphere (here). Dishonesty is a dangerous thing when almost anyone can now jump online and become a reporter. Honesty that is becoming the key to success in PR. And look at the success of those brands which market themselves on this value, for example Dove's 'real beauty' campaign.

Have a look at this recent article on Culturefeed. Here's an excerpt:

"As consumers become more aware of the messages targeted at them, they are increasingly searching for ways to regain control of their lives and their minds by downsizing and through a do-it-yourself culture. The question is, how will your brand communicate to these new consumers? How can you market without marketing? How can you help people simplify their lives, while maintaing loyalty to your brand?"

Consumers want control and are increasingly sceptical about marketing messages. The answer, as I see it, is honesty. Not just in the stories you present about your clients or the way you present them, but in offering the consumer something of value, whether it be a product, insight, experience, or relationship.

This applies across the board: if we expect people to interact with our brands, whether they are consumers, journalists or investors, we will be infinitely more successful if we can offer something of real value, a message, experience or story they choose to interact with.

I'm not sure this is such a recent trend, either. Just one which is being execerbated by social media. And as far as I can see, it's a real opportunity to improve the quality of our work and carry on coming up with worthwhile, creative strategies and ideas for clients. Is this new, or has it always been the mark of good PR?

War of the ... youtube videos?

Crisis communications is something every company should consider. Assessing the risks a company is likely to be exposed to is the first step, followed by training in how to handle potential crises if they ever arise.

However, just like the rest of the marketing landscape, the field of crisis communications is constantly changing, and new threats can quickly materialise. Take, for example, Oxfam's recent youtube video campaign against Starbucks. The coffee giant has responded in kind, gaining immediate access to the audience targetted by Oxfam, and refusing to let a medium often seen as suspicious and dangerously uncontrollable be used as a weapon against it. The comments posted by viewers suggest this was a good move: Starbucks have managed to reject any suggestion that they are a faceless corporate, by engaging on a personal level with their audience. I guess it's the online equivalent of calling round interesting parties to explain the situation. Anyway, the debate still rages, so go and have a look here and see what you think.

If you're interested in crisis communications, keep an eye on Crisisblogger,

The World of We-Think

The 'We-Think' book is an interesting project by Charles Leadbeater to attempt to understand the development of participative online phenomenon such as Second life, Wikipedia and YouTube.

The rise and rise of such websites are highly topical issues for the marketing industry, not only due to the current trends that are emerging using these new mediums of communication but also because of the potential for broader business applications in the future. Leadbeater's book 'We-Think' is an attempt "to understand this new culture; where these new ways of organising ourselves have come from and where they might lead".

For graduates looking to get into the industry, it would be a good idea to know as much as possible about these trends, to have an opinion on their longevity, and ideas for how to implement them into - for example - a communications strategy.

The cool angle to Leadbeater's book is that he has posted his book online before publishing to allow for feedback and comments in order to experiment in what he terms 'collaborative creativity'. Have a read of two introductory articles he has written for the Times and the Guardian to get an insight into the World of We-Think. If you enjoy reading about this, you can download the full draft here.

Cheers

Rich

Awards, awards, awards…

The first thing that someone will do when they are explaining their particular marketing agency and what it does is to list their flashiest and most impressive clients. The second thing they will do is reel off the awards and accolades that they have recently received. “We were Campaign’s Digital Agency of the Year 2004”, “We won the Cannes Print Award with our creative”, “We got an IPA Effectiveness Award last year for our campaign” etc etc.

While film stars want an Oscar, athletes want an Olympic gold and scientists want a Nobel Prize, those in the marketing communications industry want Awards. The trouble is there are so many ceremonies and within each one so many different awards categories that the prestige of winning one of them is somewhat diluted. In addition the cost of entering a piece of creative into one of these awards competitions is quite considerable. At Claydon Heeley we have just put forward 3 pieces of creative for the

Paris based Epica Awards and it has cost us €800 (and that was pretty reasonable). So inevitably the smaller, independent agencies simply can’t enter so frequently.

However, awards are still a good way to measure an agency’s success and to highlight their strong-points. For example, some agencies excel in digital whilst others seem to always scoop up in the outdoor category. The awards websites are also great places to check out some of the latest and most innovative stuff that is going on in the industry.

Have a look at:

http://www.canneslions.com/winners_site/film/

http://www.dandad.org/awards/awards.html

http://www.oneclub.org/os/

Any Qs just give me a shout,

Soph

Concepts in Marketing: Emotional Branding

Head to any Advertising/ Marketing section in any Borders with Starbuck’s caffeinated beverage in hand and you will notice the huge volumes of stuff written on brands and branding.

Pages and pages and pages written asking ‘where’s it going?’, hypothesising on the next steps for successful brand strategies and how to make a brand unique in today’s hectic marketplace.

One of the main concepts aimed at generating brand individuality that’s been floating about for a while is the concept of ‘emotional branding’.

While at this point I’d like to come up with some concise definition as to what it is and how it’s done, unfortunately, as is often the way with these trendy concepts, they come to mean everything to all people.

Whilst there are loads of different authors, who call emotional branding a host of different things, the core of their philosophy is basically the same:

• The unique selling point (USP) for a brand comes from how it can make someone feel, and the emotions that they associate with a brand, not simply about how the product performs, or how glamorous/ entertaining/ memorable its comms campaign is (although all of those things tie into making a customer feel a certain way about a product).

At the heart of it, emotional branding is about generating trust and empathy between a brand and its audience.

How jubilant do you feel when you’re on the cramped, dismal circle line and you whip out your shiny black i-pod nano, with all your favourite tunes that cater for every possible mood!?

It’s precisely that feeling of pleasure that advocates of emotional branding claim makes a brand special, and causes people to buy… and buy again…and buy again

I started thinking about this after Rich’s post (October 11th ) where he talks about brands as ‘an idea made real’ and wanted to offer up the idea that a successful brand provides us with an emotional association that makes the reality of the brand unique and profound to us… I will never buy an Mp3 player other than an i-pod.

Why?

Because the whole experience that my i-pod provides me with, from the packaging, to the product, to the ease of buying off i-tunes, to the funky adverts I see on TV: my i-pod makes me smile… and therein lies the difference.

Zo x

There are a host of things your could read on this, but my personal favourite is Kevin Roberts, of Saatchi and Saatchi fame, who wrote a book called Lovemarks.

He claims that a brand not only needs to make you feel good, but you also need to respect it; so brands that generate high amounts of love and respect are called Lovemarks. Products that generate high amounts of happiness but no respect are simply passing fads, as their ability to generate happiness has a short shelf life (tamagotchi anyone?).

I think Roberts encapsulates emotional branding in a great way, and his book makes an interesting read, check out a few pages…

http://www.saatchikevin.com/images/FinalBladSmall.pdf

You might also want to have a look at Marc Gobe and his 10 emotional branding commandments…

http://www.emotionalbranding.com/

BUT be aware, emotional branding has its critics… I’m hoping this one sparks some debate ...

Brand Case Studies

When you are applying to many of the marketing and branding grad schemes, the standard task they will get you to do, is write about a brand you love or hate, a brand you think could improve, or a brand that needs to reinvent itself etc.

It is a good idea to think long and hard about the example you use in order to distinguish youself from other candidates and show you actually have a genuine interest in this particular aspect of business.

1) Have a look at this article on brandchannel.com entilted 'What Makes a Great Brand?' Although, it is from a few years ago now, it is still a useful introduction to how to go about thinking about these case studies, as it talks (indirectly) about the key issues involved and addresses the specific points you might want to make. In all of this it is important not forget to about the strategic and business implications of your chosen brand.

2) If you are stuck for ideas, go to the Superbrands website and have a play about. Just click on one of the options on the left hand side (Superbrands, Coolbrands, Business Superbrands, eSuperbrands, Sport Brandleaders and Kids Superbrand). This will open up a website dedicated to each of the categories, with loads of examples and detail in the 'brand case studies' section, to which you can add your own personal analysis and viewpoints.

Cheers,

Rich

New Coke: The perils of poor market research.

On 23rd April 1985 the Coca-Cola company launched a product called ‘New Coke’.

Chances are you haven’t heard of it, and if you have it’s probably because by the time you were big enough to hold your milk bottle by yourself at playgroup ‘New Coke’ had become known as one of the biggest commercial flops of its time.

Why?

Because the big shiny Cola-Cola Company ignored their market research.

In a bid to re-dress their continuously eroding market share following the huge success of the Pepsi Challenge, they changed the taste of Coke, (known to us as Classic/ ‘Fat’ Coke), and re-branded it as New Coke.

Like any diligent brand they trialled this veritable can of sugary goodness with both qualitative (how do you feel about it and why?) and quantitative (how many people feel like that?) market research (check bottom of the post for deeper definitions of these).

The results?

The ‘touchy-feely’ qualitative research said that some people were deeply unhappy with New Coke, and that it somehow ‘felt wrong’. But the people with the numbers returned their quantitative analysis and claimed that their surveys’ said New Coke would be as popular as the trendiest soft drink ever…

What did Coke do?

Ignored the qual results and bowled on with their plan to dominate the soft-drink world armed with New Coke.

We all know how it ended…

NEVER EVER ignore your research.

Market research is not there to back up some idea that looked great on paper when you were brainstorming in the office, it is there to empower brands to;

1. understand their customers and their needs
2. measure the potential opportunities to impact the market
3. monitor that performance and feedback into the brand development.

New Coke brand managers made a mistake because they ignored the market research that went against their expectations, when in fact it turned out to be the one pivotal key insight that determined the success ( or ultimate failure) of their brand!

Had they taken the insight that people felt uncomfortable with New Coke, and incorporated it into their brand strategy they could have either scrapped the product altogether and used market research to help devise a successful campaign to redress the demise of traditional Coke, or used the market insights to position New Coke in such a way that didn’t alienate their potential market!

Now, given that I am on the healthcare stream, can you see just how important good market research is to Pharmaceuticals?

Given that it takes approximately £550 million to take a drug from discovery to prescription pharmaceuticals do not want to get it wrong. They want to know where their drugs can have an impact, how, how often, what would make it better than its competitor in the eyes of a prescribing physicians etc etc; they ignore market research at their peril.

I’m currently experiencing the delight of Adelphi International Research(AIR), where I have been working on a load of different aspects of market research.

Last week having received transcripts from interviews with doctors all around the world about a potential new product, I got to help with the analysis of their answers, decipher headline findings and help predict the potential impact of said drug on the current prescribing landscape: its essentially like doing an essay at Uni- get a load of sporadic unrelated material, synthesise it into some meaningful/coherent concepts and postulate on these findings.

OK, there is much more to say but I feel that even I might not get to the end of this post whilst spell checking, so any q’s on the back of a postcard…

Zo x

Definitions Qual vs Quant:

Qualitative Research: Understanding ‘why’ people feel how they do? What are their attitudes/beliefs/ gut reactions? These are usually done in the form of interview or focus group, or any forum that allows people to discuss and develop their thoughts and ideas.

Quantitative Research: Measuring how many people feel a particular way. i.e. how many people did not like the taste of new coke? How many people said that they would not buy it? Usually involves large amounts of respondents, and get a very simple top line yes/no/maybe or ‘x rather than y, but definitely not z’ answers.

If you want to know more check out a plethora of information on New Coke's creation and launch on our old friend Wikipedia:

Making News...

This week I’ve started having a look at Corporate PR, which is a welcome relief from tackling sheaves of incomprehensible numbers on a daily basis. It’s a slightly different challenge, as –since this is a new client – we have to decide on their whole strategy. Hence it’s more creative than the pure financial side of things.

We started out with an initial brainstorming meeting, just to share ideas before the client arrives to talk to us in a few weeks time. Bit of a change from what I expect from 'groupwork'. It only took us about 15mins of very concise thinking and we had a basic strategy beaten out.

It’s fascinating working with people with a lot more experience and knowledge of the sector – everyone came to the table clued in on the company, with some ideas already thought out, and since everyone there knew exactly how the sector worked, there wasn’t any arguing over the pros and cons which can stretch any decision-making session to several hours long.

Just having something to say certainly isn’t enough here – it has to be new, relevant, interesting and well thought-out and expressed. Meetings are by no means a chance to sit back and chat things over over tea – there’s some serious brainpower involved!

A bit of theory as well, to add to the general marveling at how efficient the whole process was. When trying to get press coverage for a company, there are three lines you can take:

Make news:

Publish accounts, launch a new product etc.

Create news:

You’ll see lots of companies conducting studies, thus getting their names in the paper and building up a reputation as respected authorities. For example, Sony might commission a report on trends in the electronic gaming industry, or something similar. This seems to come under the title of Thought Leadership.

Exploit news:

This is when a company gets coverage by commenting on other news items, for example the head of a financial services firm might comment to the press on current market conditions. There’s nothing newsworthy necessarily going on in the firm, but it makes the most of outside opportunities to get itself noticed.

The next step in the whole process is brainstorming with the company representative, so over the next week we need to collect together questions and ideas, and do quite a bit of background work on the sector.

FT Today - Opec (The organisation of petroleum exporting countries) have set a new $60-a-barrel minimum price for oil. Think a low oil price is a good thing? Read this ft article from last week

How to do a powerpoint presentation

OK apologies for crashing the blog with my own post but I thought that anyone who is looking and reading the posts by the newest grads on the scheme should be fairly interested in improving their presentation skills.

We can start with this short article by Guy Kawasaki (I don't think he has anything to do with the motorbikes) who is a general business guru and entrepreneur and venture capitalist. Think American Alan Sugar. Guy's blog is also worth a read, find it here.

He has written about how to doa  powerpoint and it's good advice.

Download 102030_powerpoint.doc

Cheers

Steve

The "glamorous" world of reporting

Perhaps not so glamorous after all. For those of you wanting to know what you actually do all day as a PR exec, let me tell you of one of the many horrors we encounter... COMPANY REPORTS!

Depending on where their shares are listed, companies report on their financial status either 2 or 4 times a year. Unless you're listed in the US (if you've picked up an ft recently you might have heard of SOX, which seems to be the bane of everyone's lives at the moment), you report twice a year. However, America hates PR execs so has decided to do it 4 times.

Anyway, this basically involves several days of extreme busyness. The night before, a late night is usually had by all as the press release is finalised and set up to be sent out the next morning. Then comes the joyous 6.30 start the next day to make sure all goes smoothly.

Thankfully, I had the luxury of a lie-in and made it in at 7. Not being in charge can often be a very good thing. The day then involves getting to the analyst presentation (through London traffic), straining every muscle you own lugging huge boxes of paperwork around, then frantically scribbling down analyst questions (which you don't understand anyway), only to discover later that you seem to have rediscovered linear b.

The management then call the press and go off on an investor roadshow, but we return to the office (in pouring rain, still with the 7 ton boxes) to phone picture desks, try and place stories, and decipher our own scribbles. A few days later, we'll call round the analysts (scary suited people who know way too much about numbers) and ask them for their analysis of the company's results.

So, less swanning around than anticipated, more hard physical labour. And rain. Not entirely glamorous, I'm afraid, but an interesting chance to see the financial side of a company's workings, and begin to understand how it determines its strategy.

-Rowan