Modern Marketing - Blog by Collaborate PR & Marketing

Talk To The Brand, Because We’re Not Listening

For brands, advertising has always involved finding a third-party shop and letting the young guns rip on a riveting, inspirational concept that can be worked up by the art-crew into a striking visual nugget and blasted out across the mediasphere.  Central to that process has been the relationship a Marketing Director has with his Agency.  The effectiveness of which can easily determine the future wage-packets, postcodes and kids' schools of everyone concerned.  However, like many others aspects of marketing, that’s changing.  ‘The unwritten rule used to be three decent TV campaigns and you’re on the Board,’ an ambitious brand manager from an FMCG Mega-Corp whispered to me last year, under cover of his cappuccino.  ‘But not any more,’ he said with the glint in his eye of someone who has realised the goal posts have been moved but that not everyone has noticed.  So what’s the future for the upwardly mobile brand manager?  And indeed, the ambitious Agency Chieftan?  Will the pivotal relationship between the two survive as the media landscape shifts?  As ever, it’s a question of balance.  Third-party suppliers will always be a vital part of the marketing industry.  If only because the economics make it sensible to use an agency that’s beating media owners over the head with a bigger stick.   Or wise to buy into a PR company’s network or a creative hotshop’s spark.  However, the growth of networked media may well start a shift away from branding created by third party suppliers to marketing driven by internal teams.   In networked markets customers don’t want to talk to the brand, they want to be heard by the business.  And that might be difficult to achieve when the customer hotline goes through to a PR company in Soho.  For marketeers, the way to the top table could then be more about smart investment in new assets that sit on the company’s balance sheet (even if they are white-labelled from GoogleBook).  And less about buffing up the agency’s awards cupboard.  Indeed, P&G’s Tremor network, a product sampling platform, is not only shifting goods but is rented out to other companies as a service, thereby adding to the bottom line.  Of course, the future will always be about results and who can deliver.   However, even the vast media players will admit they don’t have the iron-like grip over the new media barons such as Brin, Page & Schmidt, whose revenues are largely made up of thousands of smaller direct customers, as they did over the old guard.   ‘We used to show up at ITV and say if we don’t sign this cheque, you are going out of business’, a Media Grand Fromage once told me. ‘You can’t do that at Google,’ he added pointedly.  Furthermore, Google’s Adwords system has educated the marketplace in the ways of media self-service, a development that Facebook...

Time To Spread The Love (Not Blow Your Wad)

With the mind-boggling degree of innovation occurring in digital technology and networked media, it’s very easy to forget that, in commercial terms, we are still only talking about markets. And markets are still just made up of people.  The other commercial task that hasn’t changed is the need to deploy resources to work within the marketplace to realise specific aims effectively.  Such as building sales and keeping shareholders content.  What is changing, as every marketeer worth his Cluetrain now knows, is the nature of that marketplace.  However, these changes are still yet to be fully reflected in the marketing industry because the most important cog of the business - media finance - continues to lag the trends driving networked markets.  Big marketing shekels remain driven by two words – reach and frequency.  An approach akin to asking as many people as possible out on a date until one or more of them falls for the smooth new chat-up line.  And this view of the world is all about size.  Bigger.  Louder.  Harder.  The problem is that in the new marketplace this approach doesn't build relationships - it wrecks them.  Of course, awareness is absolutely vital for any brand, particularly a new one.  And there’s always going to be a need to get out the big guns out and fire away at the marketplace to remind the world that a brand still means business.  But consumers (aka people) are fed up with brands only offering them a one-night stand, time after time.  Just think about the financial services industry where enticing offers are sprayed around, only for the love to be slowly withdrawn once the deal is done.  The bank’s rate of interest gets lower and lower until it just fizzles away and the corporate desire for new accounts on the bedpost grows.  Which leaves consumers more cynical and determined to stay footloose.  Or to become ‘rate tarts’ as they are tellingly known by the industry.  For brands to break this Tiger Woods lifestyle, they have to change not only their ways but also, crucially, their means.  And that means a very serious redistribution of their cash.  For if a corporate or brand is only in town occasionally for a night out on the campaigning tiles its long-term reputation suffers.  These days consumers see reliable brands as being there for them 24x7 - when they need the help and support.  And how can a brand do that if it spends its marketing wad on the first night?  It’s not easy changing long-standing behaviour.  But unless brands spread their love, attention and cash throughout the year, and are able to hold some back to respond to people's demands, no one will believe their clever words and lovely promises.  In the world of marketing and brands, the size of your wad still counts.  But in marketplaces driven by networked media, people are more interested than ever before in how you use it.

Second Life 'Economy' Grows 65%

Second Life is still going strong and its latest 'Economy Wrap-Up' shows how sophisticated it has become: 'Here's a look at 2009 - through the lens of the US dollar value of gross earnings made by Second Life Residents during the year.   In 2009, Second Life Residents in the aggregate earned approximately US$55 million in real money, growth of 11% over 2008. This represents the sum of all US dollars transferred "out" of the Second Life economy by Second Life Residents, and into PayPal accounts, and then to bank accounts and wallets.  We call this figure "Gross Resident Earnings" and it represents the sum total of processed credits for Second Life Residents.  This works as follows: when a Resident business accumulates a Linden dollar (L$) balance through the sale of virtual items or other economic activity, they can sell their Linden dollars to other Residents on the LindeX or the Xstreet SL Exchange, creating a US dollar credit on their account.  Note that we are not including activity from third party exchanges as LindeX and XStreet SL exchange comprise greater than 90% of credits processed.   When a Resident with a US dollar balance on their account moves that balance to PayPal, we record and track that amount as a "processed credit."  Taken as a whole, "processed credits" are a reasonable proxy for Gross Resident Earnings, as they represent surplus Linden dollars gathered by a Resident business and turned into US dollars. In 2009, US$45 million of "processed credits" came from Second Life accounts and US$10 million came via Xstreet SL accounts.  Note that many Xstreet SL merchants also have significant inworld businesses, and use Xstreet SL to collect earnings from their inworld businesses as well as their Xstreet SL businesses, accounting for the fact that processed credits on Xstreet SL are greater than the volume of the Xstreet SL Marketplace and Xstreet SL Exchange.'