Modern Marketing - Blog by Collaborate PR & Marketing

The Real Thing

"We're headed to ideas....ideas that bring entertainment value to our brands and ideas that integrate our brands into entertainment."

Steve Hyner, Chief Operating Officer, Coca-Cola

Not In Control Anymore

Here's Andy Bryant, Director of Creative Services at BBC Broadcast talking about what this blog refers to as open-source branding.

When the Beeb is picking up on modern marketing issues we know we are really on the verge of something new.

Conventional marketing experience leads many marketing people to accept that their role is primarily about control. For example control of pricing, control of distribution, control of brand architecture and control of NPD strategies.

The problem is that traditional advertising approaches attempt to apply the same degree of certainty to the way in which brand messages are delivered to and received by consumers. The researcher Wendy Gordon has pointed out the flaws in the military language that results.

By continuing to use this kind of language...most people...involved in advertising....cling onto the illusion that they are still in control. But we aren't in control anymore. Control has passed to the viewers. Interupting their viewing with targeted hits of commercial messaging may no longer be possible or acceptable.

In the words of advertising planner and author Jonathan Grant what he calls 'new marketing' is 'voluntary and participative'. It's about ideas and content that the audience chooses to engage with and, in their own way, contribute to rather than their own ideas simply beamed at them in the middle of a commercial break.

Modern Marketing Management

I have recently been working with a corporation that desperately wants to modernise its marketing but remains blinded by old-school process and metrics (no names!). So this essay by Sue Unerman, Director of Strategic Solutions at Mediacom, caught my eye.

It discusses how modern marketing must be supported by new personnel structures not traditional ones.

Planning and buying ads for the future -- who knows. Maybe a team of econometricians will optimise bulk-bought airtime and space according to streams of effectivness data from ad-measuring and sales registering mobile phones, while engagement strategists will plan how to truly hook into the consumer through the line. And maybe TV buyers will continue to spend summer on the golf course and have an annual punch-up at Christmas. Time for change I think but the pace of change is up to the industry itself.

This is not suggest that it will be easy although there is way through if you focus on the consumer. Essentially it's like an relationship -- give attention and it will pay back. Fresh working practices to ensure that the usual channels aren't being followed out of apathy, and an openess to innovation and change is essential.

The bedrock of any schedule must not be any one medium, but talking to the consumer at the right place at the right time.

Hear, hear.

Cars Love The Web

Modern marketing in action....

The Swedish car maker said that hits to the Volvo UK website have more than doubled since the launch of the campaign, and that 435,000 digital viewers of the ad have selected the red button option to view the documentary via interactive TV.

Carlos Soto's spoof website has been visited by 77,000 people across Europe and the Volvo Dalaro site has had 440,000 hits, including 96,000 from the UK.

...sounds like digital consumers have given the campaign the thumbs up.

By the way, similar figures have been release for that landmark BMW campaign..

BMW distributed these films via a dedicated BMW films website. The initiative created a buzz which enabled the company to compile a highly lucrative database of prospective customers. In the first year alone, BMW estimates more than 13 million saw the initial batch of films; 2.4 million people provided the company with their email contact details; and 40,000 people gave it permission to contact them - an invaluable source of self-selecting sales leads.

Seems like modern marketeers have their own metrics model emerging.

Future Shock

Another helpful quote for those involved with modern marketing strategy.

'There are three mistakes that people make when trying to imagine the future. The first is to believe that it will not be constrained by what has gone before, that it will be entirely different. The second is to believe that it will be exactly the same, that nothing ever really changes. The third, and the worst, is not to think about it at all.'

Horsman & Marshall: After the Nation State

We Must Create

A useful quote about what the new digital consumer...

'While in the past the media provided passive entertainment for all, nowadays the young want to create their own content. Radio is being replaced by MP3s; games consoles have eaten into time once spent with traditional media: magazines can be read online and TV programmes can be downloaded were broadband access is available.'

Sheila Byfield, Director of Consumer Insight, Mindshare Worldwide

Volvo Get Creative II

So impressed have I been at Volvo's S40 launch based around a spoof documentary, 'The Mystery of Dalaro' that I have been investigating the company's other marketing campaigns. They do indeed have the modern marketing mindset that this blog investigates.

It seems the company's enthusiasm for modern marketing techniques began with the success of a campaign they executed for the S60 in the US.

In a presentation entitled 'Who Says You Can't Introduce Cars Online?' in 2002, Volvo stated that their message was exposed 250,000,000 times resulting in tens of thousands of sales leads. All with a budget only 10 per cent above what the media alone would cost for a traditional campaign.

"As we learn from these promotions we continue to refine and adjust the components. But year on year we see a greater acceptance of digital messaging, particularly when you provide them with valuable content. Convergence isn't coming. It's here.'

These guys are tapping into internet culture to deliver results -- big time.

This should be good

Niklas Zennestrom of Kazaa fame has set up a company called Skype that offers free telephone calls using Voice over IP or Internet Telephony.

Free calls. No charge for telephone calls. As in no phone bill.

BT makes $3bn a year profit from charging people for calls.

The technology is still in a nascent state but that doesn't stop us asking the question : is the telecomms business in for a taste of the peer-to-peer treatment ?

The interesting angle is that it's likely to be big spending companies with huge networks that use the new technology to slash their costs. And this time it's all completely legal !

The interesting question will be how Big Telecom reacts. Will modern marketeers learn from the recording business that digital consumers are becoming more powerful all the time and change their offering or try and use their corporate might to bully, cajole, flex and.....fail.