OverFishing - Charities and long term image

*Doorbell rings*
Ed: Hello? (seeing its a representative of Concern)
Man: Oh hello I was just wondering if you would like to support... (launches into what would inevitably be a long drawn out spiel)
Ed: Listen, thanks for coming around but I won’t waste your time (implying go away)
Man: Oh I see, what’s the matter, you don’t like Concern?
Ed: Gives angry stare and shuts the door* ...
...

The last few years have seen the major charitable organisations in Ireland turn to somewhat questionable methods in order to gain the most revenue they can, and I suppose the change represents a shift to a more “Target driven” culture in these organisations.

The most visible and hideously annoying example of this are the representatives that hit the streets and harass the public (with often questionable methods) to “take a few minutes” of our time to be bullied into giving a standing order to the charity in Question. The shift has been a very definite move towards contracting out private firms, who pay their reps €13 an hour to pester the public, and is something find a little disturbing to be honest, and I’m not sure is particularly in line with the spirit of “charitable” donations.

With consumer confidence extremely low, and many people either feeling, or fearing the consequences of the economic downturn, I would imagine that those who might have given money to a charity in better times will reconsider this. As a consequence I think this will lead to a rise in the level of the “aggressive” approach of gaining revenue.

And to be fair, it will probably work, pester people a little bit harder and they may pay up, however I think that the conduct of these charities, and what their marketing managers consider to be acceptable marketing practices are ultimately going to be harmful in the long run. By annoying/infuriating large sections of the public I think they are ensuring that they person will have a negative view of that charity in the long run, and in turn will be unlikely to donate money to them.

I like to think that the situation is similar to the problem of over fishing, you will get good returns now, but one or two years down the line what have you done to your market/fish stocks. The way things are going I think most of the major charities will have tarnished their images substantially and will regret the “hard selling” conducted during the tougher times.

What a difference a fridge makes

The orange (flavoured) drink Sunny Delight, the meat product Pepperami and the most soy milk products found in supermarkets all share three traits with each other.
The first is that they are poor excuses for their “parent products” (REAL juice, meat and milk respectively). Secondly they are all found in the refrigerated section of a supermarket. Finally, none of them need to be there, they don’t need to be stored in a cold environment, so why the fridge?

One of my lecturers used the example of sunny delight to highlight the concept of positioning of a product, both physically on the shelves and mentally in the mind of a customer. Due to negligible quantities of actual orange juice in sunny delight it does not require refrigeration during storage, and to begin with Sunny D was place on regular non-refrigerated shelves across the land. Well at Sunny HQ they noticed something was wrong… no one was buying their product, it seems people didn’t want to buy warm orange drink, and furthermore weren’t too keen on paying a price that often exceeded that of its chilled and more healthy alternative. The team up at Sunny D central designed special promotion fridges to put the drink in, and shortly after that the stuff started flying off the Refrigerated shelves.

Seth Godin gives the example of “Silk” soya milk in the United States, it was a great product and had a known market who wanted the product… but no one bought it, why? It was just on regular shelves, who buys warm milk of shelves?... no one. As soon as they convinced supermarkets to stock it along side the milk displays it suddenly gained greater credibility and acceptance with shoppers and resulted in a whopping 300% increase in sales.

My current vice of choice is Pepperami, a cured meat snack which through the amount of processing it endures no longer really qualifies as a meat product is also stored in fridges alongside its meaty ancestors, despite the instructions on the pack which remind consumers that refrigeration is unnecessary. Putting it with the meat, rather than the crisps and popcorn gives it a bit more credibility as a meat product and in turn allows them to charge us customers a bit more money.

What a difference a fridge makes...

Product decoy

Really interesting class last week in the interesting subject of Consumer and Buyer Behaviour.
The first topic we talked about in class was “decision framing”, this is the way in which you phrase or frame the options in front of a consumer, option one these crisps have only 30% fat, or these crisps are 70% fat free, people will tend to go for something that is X amount fat free rather than thinking how much fat they are eating.

The most interesting part of the class was about decoys.
Some schools of marketing thought would say that when positioning a product/service the optimal practice is to choose a specific and distinct segment to aim for and accompany it with a suitable pricing strategy. An example of this can be observed in the example of the strategy of Ryanair as opposed to that employed by Singapore Airlines, they are opposite ends of the scale and therefore do not engage in the wars seen in the middle ground of most markets.

This week one of our lecturers discussed the idea of a product decoy, a strategy which can be used by manufacturers and retailers to use operating in the middle ground to their advantage. He gave us the example of a bike shop that sold two models of bike one for $99 and one for $199 he asked for a show of hands of which option we would choose assuming we would only need this for a short journey to and from college, and not for any specialist reasons the majority of the class said they would purchase the $99 option.

He had asked a similar question in the exact same class he gives at another time slot during the week, but this time asked the class which they would choose if there were three options, one for $99, one for $199, but this time a more expensive option at $399, now which would people choose?
This time the majority of people said they would choose the option for $199.

An example of this that I have thought about before is restaurants and their wine menu, they always have the cheap option, a middle option, and then the astronomically priced option. Nobody wants to buy the very cheapest wine because it will make them look cheap, nobody can really afford the crazy priced wine, so they have to go for the middle options. Interesting stuff

Bic Ad

A great piece of out side the box (or billboard more specifically) thinking, I'm sure in Ireland you would probably need planning permission or something equally ridiculous.

McDonalds/T-Shirts/Water

I have been rather amused at the response to the recently released study on McDonalds and the loyalty its brand fosters among children, some of the opinions that people around me have expressed about the “startling finding” have left me really having to bite my lip and try not to burst out with a tirade of abuse. Leaving aside the questionable ethicality of advertising to children, people were very quick to look at the study and smugly think to themselves “oh kids, they sure are stupid”

When I first head about a study that showed that children would on the most part claim preference towards a branded item over an identical unbranded one, the news did not shock me, not even a teeny weeny bit. And when I hear “grown ups” tell me how stupid kids are for that sort of behaviour and how “its unfair because children are so impressionable” it tends to make me laugh, as the person I am speaking to tends to, more likely than not, be a complete hypocrite.

Let me get one thing clear, as far as I am concerned we are all those children and some of those grown ups among us have much worse tendencies to go for the branded item, it may change in time from preference for a fast food brand, like say McDonalds to an undying loyalty for a clothing company like Topshop.

The difference between the two? The excuses get a little better, and it becomes so widespread that it becomes more acceptable and less frowned upon by people to indulge in your blind preference for one branded product over an essentially identical equivalent.

I use Topshop as an example due to the recent revelation that some of its clothing manufacturing was taking place in sweatshops in the third world, I’m sure this will dissuade some customers of Topshop, but you can rest assured that most fashion conscious people will assure you that a White 100% cotton t-shirt made in a sweatshop from Topshop is better than a White 100% cotton Nike t-shirt made in a sweatshop and certainly better than a White 100% cotton t-shirt made in a sweatshop sold in Penney’s for 1/10th of the cost.

I don’t mean to pick on clothing, or indeed on Topshop the examples get worse and the excuses that accompany them become more and more incredible. My personal favourite is bottled water, something about believing water tastes better from a €1.50 Evian bottle than it does from a €0.30 Tesco bottle, or even… from a tap, makes me really despair about peoples level of intelligence.

We are all the children … our excuses and wallets get bigger.

Study reveals kids like McDonalds...better than McDonalds

This week saw the release of an extremely interesting report on the effect of advertising on children by Stanford College researcher Dr Tom Robinson. The study concentrated in particular on the brand strength and effective marketing of fast food giant McDonald's, and the effect it had on the participant’s perception on the taste of the food presented to them.

In the study, over 60 children between the ages of 3 and 5 years of age were presented with fries, burgers, apple juice and carrots some accompanied by McDonald's packaging and some in plain blank packaging. Bearing in mind the products were completely identical it was interesting to see that the children far preferred the “McDonald's’s” food to its plain equivalent across the board.
Below you can see that the McDonald's fries were named the superior product by a huge majority of the children, and even carrots wrapped in the famous golden arches were preferred by over half of the participants with 54% preferring “McDonald's” carrots, 23% the blank alternative and only 23% claiming they tasted the same.
In the short time this study has been out is has caused uproar among parents who say that MacDonald's, who spends in the region of $1 billion in marketing per annum, is practicing unethical advertising by aiming its marketing efforts at their children, in what the author Dr Robinson refers to as “an unfair playing field” because young children are unaware of the persuasive intent of marketing.
In my opinion the playing field may not be entirely fair but it is a field in which others could be a part of, Its high time we saw fruit and healthy alternatives markets and branded properly to evoke the same response, rather than stand around pointing the finger and whining about someone who is preforming their job effectively

7eleven/Kwik-E-Mart?

To coincide with the stateside launch of the much heralded “The Simpsons movie”, the convenience store chain 7eleven has launched a superb publicity campaign, rigging out their stores to look just like the fictional Kwik-E-Mart from the cartoon series, complete with products from the popular show including squishees and “Krusty O” cereal available on the shelves.

The above picture is a branch located in Burbank, California, and actually gives an eerily similar replication of the cartoon equivalent. I must admit if I was in the US right now, the Simpsons nerd within me would have at the store straight away taking many hundreds of photos, but alas I must make do with Spar.

Car Wars

The Worlds Best Presentation

Slideshare.net recently hosted a presentation competition in which one could submit their slides on a topic of their choice, and it would be put to a panel of judges and the general public. The panel of Judges was seriously experienced and included writers from two of my favorite blogs Guy Kawasaki and Garr Reynolds of presentation zen.

The presentation below is the winning entry as chosen by the judges entitled "shift happens", the content was originally compiled by Bill Fisch and this is a more graphical representation of the facts in question.... well worth a look, and a near perfect example of how to create an engaging presentation

Election posters

I was getting the 46a into college today and it struck me that there was a truly incredible amount of Election posters up everywhere that my eyes cared to wander, seemingly any street light pole is fair game for pre election advertising, and the political parties have them fairly comprehensively covered in an incredibly short amount of time.

I’m not sure who designs these posters on behalf of the candidates, but I think that they are fundamentally flawed and very ineffective. I think the people in question haven’t asked themselves some pretty simple questions, seeing as this is an advertisement (of a type)

• Who am I selling this idea to?
• How will I convince them to choose my idea over someone Else's?
  

As far as I can see, the people who know the political scene in any meaningful way, on the most part, know who they are going to vote for and why, and (I acknowledge they can also act as a reminder) they are not going to be swung by the amount of times they see Joe Bloggs’ smiley face on a poster stuck up on a pole on the way to work. So therefore the people who might be swayed by these posters are the uninformed or undecided voters.

Once that is established you need to decide what method would be best to swing these people to choose your candidate/idea over anyone elses. The current approach seems to be to get the candidates face to fill the poster and put his/her name beside it…great.
I think that a much more effective approach would be to state what that person/party is offering to you the voter, that the others aren’t. Even a few simple sentences “introduce mandatory duck washing” or whatever it may be…just something….anything…Information.

Comparing this to an everyday product that is advertised to perfection is Dell computers, Dell know who they are trying to advertise to (on tv: the “average home user”) and try to convince you by telling you exactly what they offer for your purchase(vote). This is a much more effective way of swinging uninformed/undecided buyers than simply putting an ad on the TV that says “BUY(vote) DELL”

Guinness in Africa: A branding success

In recent year sales of the iconic Irish drink have been falling on a domestic level so Diageo decided that it would have to look further a field to developing markets for new sales.
Diageo got in touch with the famous advertisers Saatchi and Saatchi and started about entering the African market and creating what the advertising company call a "lovemark", described as a brand that enjoys loyalty beyond reason from consumers.

As African Managing Director of Diageo Eric Frank said in 1999 they wanted to create a brand that says "Inside me there's a powerful heroic assured person"

In 2002 the company started running television and radio ads following the trials and tribulations of Michael power (seen in the billboard above) an exciting African James Bond-like character who evaded danger and saved the beautiful woman, followed by the phrase "Guinness brings out the power in you". And the advertising has instilled this feeling of power in its new found enthusiasts as one Nigerian man commented "It makes me feel powerful", adding "If I have three stouts, my wife knows she had better watch out. I have energy in my body."

The actor playing the iconic character, Cleveland Mitchell explains that advertisements aim to bring "stories that bring the true strength of Africa. We want to highlight the way we live, the way we talk, the way we play and the way we do everything that makes us unique as Africans", and they are so well made that African tv stations air them as free programming.

The advertising campaign was a resounding success throughout Africa and by 2000 Guinness led the African market by 50%. Currently Out of the top 10 Guinness markets worldwide, four of the top consumer’s are the African nations: Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon and Kenya, and Ghana represents the 5th largest consumer of Guinness in the world. An impressive 1/3rd of all Guinness consumption is attributable to Africa and when the continents consumption is compared with others around the globe, we can see that they drink down more than three times that of North America. That’s a lot of the black stuff!

The link below is a link to the Saatchi & Saatchi site, and an example of the African ad campaign
The ad

The Heart Attack Grill

Sometimes it gets kind of annoying watching companies like McDonald's try and keep up the illusion that they are healthy, trying to be more healthy and really really reallllly care that their customers are healthy. The logic behind it- “this will be good marketing”

I stumbled upon wildly successful “Heart Attack Grill” a burger restaurant in Tempe, Arizona, that maintains a remarkably honest advertising campaign, the flagship product of the outlet is the Quadruple Bypass Burger, featuring 2 pounds of beef, four layers of cheese, 12 slices of bacon, and 8,000 calories it is also accompanied by Flatliner Fries which are cooked in lard, of course that may not be for everyone, there is also the lesser “triple bypass burger”.

Sometimes intentionally being “wrong” can work out

Betty Crocker - "just add an egg"

Betty Crocker is a brand of instant cake/brownie/etc mixes that provide a pretty tasty treat with minimal effort, and it can be found in most supermarkets of note in the western world.

Life for "Betty" started life in 1921 as an invented persona for replies to customer queries to the US food company general mills. The name Betty Crocker gave the more personal, soft touch that a CEO or directors couldn’t. The name was later adapted to a series of cookbooks released by the American food giant in the 40s.

By 1945 Betty Crocker was voted the 2nd most famous woman in the United States by the business magazine Fortune, second only to Eleanor Roosevelt. On the back of this fame the General Mills company decided that they would do some market research into creating a range of “Betty Crocker mixes”, after much research they decided that customers were sufficiently enthusiastic for this convenient product, and they marketed it on the basis that all the customer needed to do was add a little water, mix, and then you had yourself a cake.
When they were released in the early 1950s…nobody bought them, despite the fact the customers had said that they were all for it, they just weren’t going out and buying the product!

In desperation General Mills decided that they would try the emerging concept of product focus groups, which looked not at what the product should look like, or feel like, but focused on what the product meant to the customer. Through this they discovered that the housewife of the 1950’s felt decidedly guilty about using these products as it was too easy, and almost tantamount to cheating. So the marketing team behind the product line set about changing these attitudes towards the product. They re-launched the product a few months later, however now with very slightly altered ingredients.
The stroke of genius they had come up with was to remove the powdered egg and instruct the housewives to whisk in an egg. The process of going to the shop, choosing out the egg, bringing it home and whisking it in to the mix, involved the customer sufficiently so that they no longer felt the guilt they had associated with the product before.
The case of Betty Crocker points out two pretty simple marketing concepts

1. What the product MEANS is as important as what the product looks, feels, smells like
   
2. Involving the customer to a greater extent gives them a greater feeling of ownership/loyalty (just look at web2.0 site vs that of web 1.0 the loyalty and usage rates are way higher, all due to involvement)

The Problem with TV advertising

Back in “the day” things were easier, marketing being one of them. It used to be that you paid the big bad tv broadcaster a whole load of cash, they broadcast your message between the scheduled programming, and then…. You sold units and made yourself a bit of money to buy nice things with etc.
The population back then thought “surely any product on this new “television” is superior”, right? Well that was the golden era of when “as seen on TV” made a difference, and people sat at their seats like they were supposed to, and watched your ads.
The problem is, people aren’t playing by the rules anymore, in fact, they are stomping all over them.

Example 1: Take the average household as an example, the ads come on, “oh time
to make tea”, go potty, etc,

So while Procter and Gamble throw millions of dollars at you across the screen to buy their latest product, you remain gleefully unaware of this, and you genuinely don’t care.

Another more worrying problem TV advertisers face is, young people aren’t watching enough TV! Recent surveys carried out at Harris Interactive show that it lags behind internet usage and the trend is only set to continue.

Example 2: Young teen, residing in Sandycove(Dublin), Spends most of his media
time online, Doesn’t watch ANY television, and the shows that he does watch are
taken from online bit torrent sites, which have the advertising breaks taken out
of them

The advertiser can think up the most elaborate campaign to put in between two popular tv shows, and pay the stations the big bucks, but to that individual and many like him, their product is INVISIBLE, they don’t matter, they don’t exist.

So what are the implications for the media? Well if the adverts aren’t working, companies will stop using them, that means no revenue for television stations and in turn no finance for program production. One of the suggested methods that advertising could be conducted is on screen “bugs” that appear in the corner of the screen throughout the broadcast, much like the station logo on most stations, but this time with messages from advertisers. Oh and don’t forget good old product placement!
So the gauntlet has been thrown down, as more and more people move online, and ignore the big box in the corner, the challenge to reach the people and make them play by the rules again begins here.

What do you think, leave a comment or two

The problem with Mac ads

I recently watched one of the many episodes of the “I’m a mac” ad series. To get things straight, I like macs…alot, and although some of the ads in this series are just not funny, I do like the way they poke fun at pcs and deliver them a much overdue comedic beating. However from a business perspective there are numerous problems with the whole series of ads, some of them very fundamental in nature.

I personally like them because I understand them, and I think they cater to the whole Apple “in joke” brand of humour. However for your average computer user, who we can presume is relatively computer ignorant, the ads serve no real purpose at all. They don’t inform or persuade in any meaningful manner, conversely if we look at a typical Dell ad, it tells us what we get, when we’ll get it, and what a great deal we are getting. And obviously this has brought them great success, where as Apples “we’re cooler than thou” approach has had relatively limited success.

The most fundamental problem lies with who they are aiming these ads at.
The ads essentially act as funny little shorts that provide light entertainment for Apple fans, although amusing this is a true waste of advertising revenue. In case you didn’t notice, apple fans do not need to be convinced to go out there and buy an Apple computer anymore, they are preaching to the converted and fighting a war that for that person, has already ended. Apples hardware and software do all the marketing it needs to KEEP customers, and they do not need to run smug reminders to retain their loyalty.

Should apple ever decide to make meaningful inroads into the home computer market they will need to adopt a new marketing approach, I’m not suggesting they go out and out “Dell” on us but they need to adopt an advertising method that can inform the Appleaphobes among us what they are missing out on, rather than insult (that’s no way to make new friends) or worse tell them nothing at all.

Marketing Boundries?

No one is immune to marketing.
No one.