Passionate about killing for love

Since the dawn of time, how delighted you say you are to announce something, how passionate you say you are about a certain subject matter, or your report on your mood generally has been of no interest whatsoever to your potential customer.

Web copywriters of the world, this remains the case, and if it ever changes I promise you, as my solemn oath, you shall be the first to know!

Bleating on inanely about how thrilled, excited, passionate, fervent, ardent, zealous, avid, obsessive or fanatical you are about your subject matter is of absolutely no interest to me, or your other customers.  And yes I did use a thesaurus to get all those words.  But you started it!

The briefest of journeys around the web will convince you that the web is just falling over itself with this sycophantic self serving copywriting style.  This vanity parade is the online equivalent of talking about yourself in the third person; something Gareth Dunlop has a strong dislike for.

I recently tried to get car insurance online and was pleasantly surprised to see a product which matched my needs exactly with just the call to action I was looking for “get a quote”.  I followed the link to read “Thank you for your online enquiry.  Every day in Ireland we continue to insure a significant number of people and we are very keen to have you as a customer.  To get a quote please phone 0800 123456 8am – 6pm on week days.”

Does their marketing team have any understanding of how little interest I have in the number of people they insure on a daily basis?  Or how little it matters to me that they are keen to have me as a customer?  Perhaps their marketing team go home to their loved ones and say “You know what honey, Insure Co were quoting EUR 1000 to insure me for the year and Crash Co were EUR 750, but Insure Co are continuing to insure a significant number of people in Ireland.  I think that’s worth at least EUR 250, let’s go with them?”  Good luck to the man who tries to make that one fly with my wife, he’s a braver / stupider / faster man than I am!

Lately this farcical copywriting style has started to manifest itself with passion.

We are passionate about design.
We are passionate about sofas.
We are passionate about tax optimisation.
We are passionate about rainfall numbers in Co Clare 2000 – 2010.

OK, so I made the last one up, but the others are real.

A child's first steps - BORRRRRRING - compared with tax optimisation

Think about what makes you passionate.  Gourmet food and fine wine?  Seeing your children take their first step, or learn to read?  Watching Brian O’Driscoll score a try?  A former lover from college days?  Not me, it’s tax optimisation that gets me going.  At first I was merely keen, and then became interested, expressive almost, but before I knew it I was passionate.

But not as passionate as a company I read about online just last week.  “To say we’re passionate about [ subject matter x ] is an understatement.”  An understatement!  Wow!  Imagine what words they would have used if it was a real statement?

Perhaps my favourite of all time is “Company X – passionate about everything”.  Surely these people must live on coffee and Red Bull just to keep their energy levels at the requisite levels to continue this joie de vivre for every single aspect of life?

The facts are simple.  People go online not to read promises, but to do things.  Don’t tell them how fervently you bounce out of bed in the morning to serve them.  Just serve them.  Stop yarning on about how excited you are about doing business online with them.  Just do the business online.  Enough already about how thrilled you are to provide a public service.  Just let the public renew their passport, get a new driving licence, find out when their bins are collected, or whatever matters to the public.

Those who can’t, bleat on about how passionate they are online.  Those who can, do.

It’s clear to everyone involved in the world of communications that we are experiencing consumer behaviour change at a staggering rate.  Intuitively we know that things aren’t as they were.

On a technical level intelligent mobile devices, faster internet access, cheaper hardware, an ever improving web and the social media revolution have all been catalysts for change.  Societal upheaval has complemented this, as trust in big business has never been under greater threat, and traditional religious and class influences are weakening on a monthly basis.

Angry Customer - grrrrrrr!

This has led to a cynical, marketing-proof, knowledgeable consumer, confident and armed with independent thought.

How have we as marketers reacted to this change?

Therein lies the rub, as there has been no consistent response to the new opportunities brought about by changing consumer behaviour.  Too quickly we have rushed to our comfort zones, too often (though not exclusively) along generational lines.  It seems the new generation of marketing executives fresh out of college overvalue online communication, particularly social media, and are too quick to dismiss offline communications out of hand.  At the other end of the professional generational spectrum, groups of battle hardened senior managers, who have been through too many fads to believe the latest one, have neither the patience nor the inclination to listen too carefully to the hyperbole laden promises of online marketing.

Evidently neither party is correct.

Companies who have grasped the opportunity this change brings have implemented a vision which ensures that the senior management are challenged to think about the power of digital marketing, and fresh eager young executives are given clear guidelines and targets around how their online marketing activity fits wider marketing and commercial goals.  In short, senior and junior staff are united, not divided, by a common language.

Used to its fullest potential, the ability to integrate online and offline marketing correctly is the most exciting opportunity we’ve had in years to influence consumers at all levels.

Woolly cardie, slippers and tank top nowhere to be seen?

Proof, were it needed, that offline marketing is alive and well, is the new 90 second M&S advert featuring the fabulous five – Dannii Minogue, Ana Beatriz Barros, VV Brown, Lisa Snowdon and Twiggy.  It’s stylish, sassy, sexy, confident and dramatic; a good old fashioned above the line campaign to influence consumer perceptions and challenge the notion of M&S as frumpy and dated.

Unsurprisingly it has generated a significant amount of comment online, particularly on social media and discussion forums, not all of which are commending its stylishness and fabulous production values.  Ranking high in Google are forums and blogs containing comments such as “But these are not just clothes, these are M&S finest quality cardies and slippers” and “This is not just a tank top, this is an M&S tank top”.

What a massive opportunity for M&S marketing people to listen, engage, respond to and challenge preconceptions online to complement the offline above the line showcase advert.  When M&S, and others like them, embrace the huge opportunity this affords, we can put foolish talk of the death of offline marketing behind us, and look forward to a new more integrated future.

Fail often yet we feel empathy not upset

How much time do you give to creating a positive experience in the face of meltdown?  There are books on this stuff.  They teach us that technical failures are not the end of the relationship.  Handled well and happening infrequently they can generate further engagement and even positive engagement with our most passionate advocates.

Take a day to write and then rewrite your error handling engagement.

Unforgiving Error

TalkTalk are a UK provider of telephone and broadband services.  It’s difficult for them to create unique stories because they are a highly commoditised business.  There aren’t a lot of unique stories to present to the market to create buzz so instead they spend millions on advertising sponsoring TV hit shows like the X-Factor.

Recently however, TalkTalk issued a press release that said they would pay selected house owners £250 to change the name of their house to Talk Talk. You can choose:

·      TalkTalk Towers
·      TalkTalk Mansions
·      TalkTalk@ (eg TalkTalk@37 Acacia Avenue)
·      The TalkTalk House
·      The TalkTalk Home

This is hardly the same as sponsoring the Emirates Stadium for £100m but what it does do is create lots of local small-scale conversations.  The cost to TalkTalk is incidental in comparison to the buzz they create.  I think this is true creative marketing and alongside their advertising, gives them the right to claim to be innovators in marketing.

Take Ryanair’s marketing as the alternative to this type of creative thinking. In a recent report by the Office of Fair Trading they were criticised by John Fingleton, the Chairman of the OFT, for exploiting a loophole in the law that allowed them to advertise rates without including the credit card fees.

In response to the allegations, Ryanair took the opportunity to repeat their same mantra about being a low cost airline.  This is a typical Ryanair PR response to negative publicity but it does create a buzz and water cooler conversations about their brand, albeit controversial.  This is an exact quote from Ryanair’s Head of Communications, Stephne McNamara “Ryanair is not for the overpaid John Fingletons of this world but for the everyday Joe Bloggs who opt for Ryanair’s guaranteed lowest fares because we give them the opportunity to fly across 26 European countries for free, £5 and £10.”

Why the BBC published this ‘ad’ verbatim is unknown. The response doesn’t address the allegations set before them and has no context to the article. Nonetheless it is the same subtext told often using different stories.

In the online world it is easier than ever to create positive buzz.  We have established networks and easy conduits to getting our message out via social networks and email marketing.  The hard part is always coming up with the creative idea, response or creating the correct marketing mix. As these examples show however, it need not be expensive.

Unfortunately the plan backfired and many customers thought the site had been hacked.  This lowered confidence in the brand and undoubtedly made customers nervous about shopping there.

Getting tired of answering the phone to explain that it was a part of their online strategy Dixons’ gave in and changed the site and removed the strapline.

A clear case of trying to be a little too clever with an online strategy

Dixons - The Last Place You Want to Go

The problem with tweaking the variable of price (besides lowering margin) is what happens when the competition does the same?   The problem with relying solely on price as the driver for demand for a product or service is that once the sale price matches that of the cost of production, the only variables left to change affects quality.

Online, the drive to a lower price happens much quicker than in the off-line world as it is so easy to compare like-with-like.  Goods for which there is demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market, such as corn, milk or copper, all have a universal price derived by forces external to the producer.  Commoditisation occurs as a goods or services market loses differentiation across its’ supply base.

When considering lowering price perhaps it may be wiser to try and create differentiation. A little thought in to how to move your offering from being a price sensitive commodity like corn and creating a unique story or proposition will transform the fortunes of an online marketing campaign.  Our evidence based research into our customers’ online marketing campaigns backs this up.  Those that lead with a unique story make more money than those that lead with price.

Corn is a commodity. A unicorn is a wonderful and unique story that has intrigue and interest.  If your business had a unicorn product or service, people would talk about it and your price could reflect the difference from the competitors that just sold corn.  Corn or Unicorn, they are both still “corn” but our perceptions of the value of each are very different.

Marketing Challange: Creating A Differentiator

Lien Thị Doãn Kiva.org Entrepreneur

old son and a 5 year old daughter, kind eyes and she smiles frequently. As the breadwinner for her family (her husband is not well), she works every day – weather permitting – making coal blocks.  She sells each block for around 2 cents USD.

Lien is an entrepreneur and is funded by the charity Kiva.org to help get her venture off the ground.  The charity loan her 1,626,900 VND (£55) to help start her business and she has already repaid the loan.

Kiva.org was setup 42 months ago, allowing us western folk to back entrepreneurs like Lien in developing nations.  The charity uses the web to connect the donor directly with the project they are backing.  Using the web the donor gets updates on the project success and can donate more or transfer the repaid donation to another project.

The charity has a repayment rate of 98%, has funded 221,971 entrepreneurs 82% are women. In its’ short existence it has raised over $90,000,000 using the web.  Because of the web, Kiva have been able to create a game changing charity.  Their donation and feedback model challenges how charities should be marketing.  It’s becoming more evident that charities can no longer keep knocking on a donor’s inbox and asking for more money.  Kiva has shown a game changing approach to marketing their charity through technology.

Amazon’s game changer was to show how infinite shelf space could change shopping habits.  Google has changed the game of advertising by only connecting the searcher with the ad for the product or service they were seeking.

Game changing marketing doesn’t have to always be so dramatic.  Local firm www.propertypal.com is chasing the might of Independent News and Media’s site www.propertynews.com by implementing better technology long before the media group.  The change is small but significant enough to affect the status quo.

Having a game changer makes online marketing easier.  Your game changer is the differentiator, the talking point that will get you retweeted or blogged, it is your buzz generator.  The most successful online marketing strategies we have been involved in have always started with a mini game changer.  So what’s yours?

The new internet generation are hard wired not to pay for bits

Anderson examines the human behavior behind why we feel there is value in paying for things made from atoms, for example a newspaper, a music CD, a DVD, training materials, encyclopedia, boxed software etc but yet, the moment it turns from physical atoms to bits and becomes available online, our desire to pay evaporates.  Ask yourself would you pay £0.60 for an online newspaper each day?

The book challenges you to reconsider how you market and price your digital products and services and examines the very successful companies that have embraced giving their digital intellectual property away for free and make their money in other, less conventional ways.  For example the gaming companies that gives away the game, but people can buy tools using real world money to assist them in the game.  Some 10% of people pay and the recurring revenue from this 10% it turns is more profitable than the 3 weeks at the top of the games charts.  The book is packed with similar examples.

To prove his point, Anderson gives away the audio book but asks you to pay if you want the print edition.  The summation is that if you operate in the digital world, you almost inevitably need to find a model that gives the use of your intellectual property away and look at other revenue streams that opens up from having advocates.

Understanding how we perceive value and how we ultimately market and price our products/services is a science.  This Ted Talk video from 2005 is well worth the watch to help understand how to deal with the changing world and how your customers understand value.