by Julia Ahlfeldt (@JuliaAhlfeldt) If millennials were hard to engage, Gen Zs are even harder. So what, then, can brands do to protect themselves?
Generation Z is the most-educated and -connected generation in history and have an unprecedented power to make or break brands. They expect agility, want personalised products and services, and rate great experiences over price. They also tend to be fickler about brand loyalty. Gen Z’s have so much choice, and know how to find what they’re looking for, that they can switch and choose what they like, when they like it.
Brands must offer phenomenal experiences across every touchpoint in their customer journey. I realise phenomenal is a strong word to use but, if Gen Zs’ experience of a brand is not seamless and engaging, they will quickly find one that is.
Keep them keen
Customer-lifetime value is a term brands and their managers are very familiar with. It is, after all, the commercial holy grail as it costs seven times more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain one. But it’s got a whole lot harder to keep the next generation of consumers keen. Price, product, placement and promotion aren’t the only key differentiators; experiences are, too.
Gen Zs expect websites to be responsive and easy to use. They demand personalisation to the point of individualism. They want information at, quite literally, their fingertips. And they expect a brand to be engaging and conversational in their interaction.
How brands can deliver
One word: data. Most brands are sitting on mounds of it. Collected by clever CRM platforms, and operational systems, brands have access to information about their customers’ wants, needs and actions, yet few are able to extract it.
All of this data is difficult to sift through. That’s where AI comes in. Machine-learning-enabled data analytics allows businesses to make sense of massive amounts of data in real time. This type of supercharged information processing underpins innovations such as chatbots, predictive marketing and virtual reality. These innovations unlock a world of possibility for engaging, personalised experiences that are also seamless.
Brands who get it
Common examples and customer experience frontrunners are Apple, Uber and Spotify. Yet smaller brands are also catching on and creating brand interactions that tick all the right AI boxes.
Take the Sephora app for instance. This mobile app allows customers to use the selfie function on their mobile phone to ‘try on’ different makeup looks. The app taps into the novelty of augmented reality (which is only made possible through AI). It’s fun and engaging, provides the ultimate personalised experience, and also creates awareness about products that the customer might not have otherwise tried out.
Another great example of where a brand has integrated AI into its experiences is MultiChoice. It has a call centre of 1500, all there to help customers resolve queries. To improve this experience, the video entertainment brand uses IBM’s Watson Assistant to support its call-centre agents through a virtual assistant chatbot called Tumi. Through her AI capabilities, she delivers a speedier service to subscribers in an increasingly tough operating market.
Early adopters
As Gen Zs’ income levels rise along with their age, brands — from clothing to insurance to multimedia entertainment — will need to have a far firmer grip on what their customers want, and create experiences that deliver. It’s likely that those who invest in technology and AI early enough will be the ones that will win.
Julia Ahlfeldt (@JuliaAhlfeldt) is a certified customer experience professional (CCXP). For more must do’s and don’ts on how to keep customers returning again and again to buy from your brand, listen to her podcast, Decoding the Customer. She contributes the monthly column “The CX-Files”, which looks at current issues from a CX perspective, to MarkLives.
In 2016, the Broadcast Research Council of South Africa (BRCSA) changed its policy about giving away TAMS and now only monthly reports, highlighting the top 20 or 30 primetime shows on several popular channels, are available.
The Broadcast Research Council of South Africa (the BRC) is a non-profit, industry body that was incorporated in 2015 to cater to the audience research needs of the radio and television industry in South Africa.
by Herman Manson (@marklives) Interpublic-owned McCann Johannesburg will be merging with 1886, the wholly owned subsidiary of the FCB Africa group (also an IPG agency), to become McCann 1886. The move comes at the request of IPG, says Brett Morris, FCB Africa GCEO.
The new agency will have a diverse, integated offering and its final positioning in the market will emerge in the new year.
1886 — helmed by Derek Coles, executive VP, and Stuart Stobbs, chief inspiration officer at FCB Global and 1886 chief creative officer — is known for its work on the recent Cell C rebrand; other key clients include Steers, Nivea, Sasfin Bank and Easy Waves. Among McCann Johannesburg’s key clients are Diageo, kulula, L’Oréal, MasterCard, Nestlé and Reckitt Benckiser; its leaders are Fraser Lamb, McCann executive chairman Africa and Mick Blore, McCann Worldgroup South & sub-Saharan Africa CCO. In terms of revenue bands, 1886 falls into the R40–50m range and McCann falls into R50–R60m.
Leadership
According to Morris, McCann 1886 will be led by Coles and Stobbs, and Lamb will remain executive chairman for McCann in Africa, looking after affiliates across the continent. Blore’s future role is, as yet, unresolved. While the combined agency will have a staff count of around 100+ people, it’s not clear at the moment if or how many jobs are on the line and retrenchments remain possible.
The merger will create a larger agency, say Morris, that will have a greater impact on the competitive Joburg agency market; while 1886 is a strong boutique shop with a unique culture and strong leadership, McCann enjoys a strong network and great research capabilities.
Cell C will be the new agency’s biggest client and the merger becomes official as of 1 January 2019.
Herman Manson (@marklives) is the founder and editor of MarkLives.com.
by Sabrina Forbes. A small, seemingly inconsequential start — branding a coffee mug 13 years ago — turned a creative, ambitious duo into leaders of a team of 74, with offices just off the main artery that joins Sandton and Bryanston in Johannesburg. In 2005, Promise Group’s co-founders, Marc Watson (ECD) and James Moffatt (CEO) set out to create an agency led by a concept that’s still highly visible on its office walls. It’s simple but effective: “Come with remarkable, or don’t come at all.”
This 2017 Financial Mail AdFocus Medium Sized Agency of the Year has experienced impressive growth this year, a lot of it organic. Its May 2018 win of Castle Lite’s digital account enabled Promise to achieve more synergy overseeing the combined brand portfolio; it already held the Castle Lite BTL account when it won the multi-agency pitch. Other wins in 2018 include Bestmed and Hansa Golden Crisp (digital).
Organic growth
While the agency’s pitch ratio the past 15 months sits at 83%, the two still believe organic growth from existing clients is an important part of who they are and something they continue to pursue. “It’s been something we’re very good at,” shares Watson.
The team believes its ability to organically grow its accounts is one part having the right clients, and another part being so intrinsically involved in each client’s business that the transition to more work and the upselling of additional services seems natural. “We’re in a fortunate position where we have a lot of wonderful clients who allow us very close to their businesses,” says Watson.
“We do have a very open and authentic relationship with our clients,” adds Moffatt.
The agency’s move to becoming more involved in the deeper details of its clients’ businesses has allowed it to add a unique service offering to the mix, one that very few creative agencies have been able to get right. In November 2016, Verushen Reddy acquired a 26% equity holding in the Promise Group and joined the leadership team as the director of strategy and digital. His experience in data, eCRM, digital media, analytics, and digital strategy was the springboard for Promise’s shift to data.
“Consultancy approach”
“We take a consultancy approach with a lot of our clients and are starting to advise on things like business processes,” says Reddy. In addition, he explains that “agencies traditionally service clients only on their need for advertising. We work further up the vendor acquisition chain.”
Promise (L-R): MD Craig du Preez, ECD Marc Watson, strategy and digital director Verushen Reddy and CEO James Moffatt.
In their minds, their offering isn’t much different from the likes of Deloitte or Accenture but is backed by a deeper understanding of creativity and decades of experience in the advertising game. What they’re aiming to do is identify where marketing plays in the bigger business picture while being involved in many of the decisions and strategies outside of the marketing/advertising loop.
When either pitching for work or dealing with existing clients, Promise aims to challenge its clients’ readiness for the future. “You have got to show there’s an agency out there that’s brave enough to challenge a client’s business model,” says Reddy.
Through research and insights into various audiences, Promise worked with Afrisam to develop new products based on the heavily data-driven outcomes of said research. “It allows us to advise them on what their product set should be, not just help them sell the products they define,” explains Reddy.
With PPS, the Promise team advises on the business model, as well as take-to-market work.
As expected, Promise is one of many agencies which has added ‘data’ to its list of services. It’s about “getting data ready for marketing use because now you’ve got to have real proof of concepts. When Promise talks data, we’re talking about unlocking the potential of data for our clients… data for us is a standalone service to our creative work,” says Reddy.
Data before creativity
For the agency, data comes before creativity. It uses data-driven insights to develop strategies and creative solutions, which gives the agency the opportunity to measure the results of its solutions in real time, shifting with agility as the need arises.
Promise has created a “lean in” culture when it comes to agency pitch work. According to Reddy, the approach to pitches has been culturally shifted to create a hunger and drive around creativity, with each member of staff competing to be involved in every pitch.
“We’ve turned being a part of a pitch into an achievement… the teams no longer look at pitches as just more work,” says Watson. As an agency that believes in idea meritocracy, he shares that “no one is too junior to have an idea or an opinion, or to make a real change.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BqZOz2UB0Qm/
The leadership team of four men (Watson, Moffatt, Reddy plus Craig du Preez, the managing director) has also recently made the decision to expand exco and give more responsibility to upper management. In turn, there will be more opportunities for everybody to lean in.
Industry fragmentation
Speaking about industry changes during the last decade, Moffatt notes that he’s seen the fragmentation of what agencies do into 1000 pieces instead of just a few. Procurement departments are now also more heavily involved in the decision-making processes but, unfortunately, still see agencies as service providers and not valued resources. “The offering of agencies has greatly diminished. We need to be the ideas [people] again, not solving technical issues,” says Reddy.
Is it the fault of the agencies themselves or just part of a continuous cyclical process? The jury’s still out. Creativity, especially, needs to find its place and relevance again. Reddy reminisces about when TV ads used to be an inspiring break between uninspiring content and adds how now “you’re forced to watch an advert in the middle of a Game of Thrones episode”.
Watson adds that there needs to be more-focused messaging on the unique platforms available — with content that is made for the platform specifically.
Unlike many other agencies, Promise stays away from using an on-demand work force and prefers to follow the more-traditional route of having all its staff full-time. For Watson, a disjointed team won’t truly understand the nuances of clients and the culture of the agency and clients’ businesses. “We come here every day and do this together,” he adds.
Key clients: RMB Private Bank, AB InBev (SAB), AfriSam, Bestmed, Internet Solutions, PPS
Services: Full service (ATL, BTL, digital, data) plus business consulting
“#AgencyFocus” is an ongoing weekly series updating the market on ad agency performance, including business performance, innovation, initiatives, the work, awards and people.
Sabrina Forbes (IG) is an experienced writer covering the food, health, lifestyle, beverage, marketing and media industries. She runs her own full-stack web/app development and digital-first content creation company. For more, go to moonwrench.com. She is a contributing writer to MarkLives.com.
Shane de Lange (@shanenilfunct)’s weekly analysis of media design from South Africa and around the world:
Commercial print: Atlantasupports the importance of handicrafts within the production of culture
Iconic: Juxtapoz celebrates 25 years of leveling the playing field separating the fine arts from most other creative practices and genres
Independent print: Lökpromotes contemporary illustration, referencing the allegory of Narcissus, in the context of the theme dimensions
Online: The Gentlewoman has a website that compliments its print version, embracing white space and classic typography and marrying photography and writing beautifully to create a curated and aesthetic online experience
In last week’s column, Popeye magazine was mentioned, and the importance of craft within any given cultural context was stressed. The November 2018 issue of Atlanta magazine delivers a similar message, featuring handmade products from more than 70 independent craftspeople. The role of the maker in society — those artisans and craftspeople who produce well-considered and carefully crafted designs for mass consumption — is the focus of this issue. The parallels between crafting and making, the maker and the ‘constructor’ (see Blok and constructivism in last week’s column), is important to point out here, regarding the production of culture and its social dynamic (art, design, discourse and craft). Showcasing emergent, independent arts and crafts practitioners and their quality handmade goods, the cover to this issue is itself an example of handicraft. It is created by design director, Matt Love, and art director, Khoa Tran, with the photographic prowess of Caroline Kilgore.
A New York Times magazine cover was featured in last week’s column, presenting the question, “What will become of us”? A sub-question here is one of a disjointed human condition where there is no longer one reality or truth, with multiple dimensions and a distorted sense of time, space, and place. Or, as Jean Baudrillard placed it: “It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.”
The 10th issue of Lök magazine supports this perspective with the related theme, dimensions (“dimensioni”). Much like Blok (mentioned last week), Lök is also a magazine and a creative collective, quasi-avant-garde following pseudo-dada traditions, focusing on the production independent publications, organising exhibitions and other happenings. Lök promotes contemporary illustration, comic art, and other likeminded forms of creativity and culture. The cover is by an Italian illustrator based in France, Gloria Pizzilli, with an illustration that looks like a fragmented, echoed image of a traditional Japanese Kabuki mask done in the style of anime. The visual seems to refer to the allegory of Narcissus, making a comment about hyperrealism and terminal identity in the context of the theme.
Online
The Gentlewoman (UK), issue 18, autumn and winter, November 2018
The Gentlewoman has always been at the forefront of contemporary womanhood, presenting inspiring exchanges with women of the moment. The magazine’s unique representation of women is an amalgamation of style and substance, fashion and discourse, within the context of the current feminine zeitgeist. The magazine showcases prolific women with a sincere blend of trend and personality, all within a feminist futurist folk genre of sorts. Although the print version of the magazine steals the limelight, The Gentlewomen’s website is equally impressive, sporting a healthy blend of ‘real’ women’s stories and a ‘virtual’ digital platform. Aside from presenting rich content and well-crafted literature, the website’s embrace of white space, effective use of Futura, and its curated appeal succeeds in creating an aesthetic online experience that arguably matches its printed version.
The current issue, #18, the autumn and winter 2018 edition, features Agnès Varda, an iconic French filmmaker. Her work may be described as an experimental mixture of realism and feminism, forming part of the French New Wave, defying French cinematic traditions during the ’50s and ’60s with her implementation of ‘readymade’ locations and unskilled, untrained actors. Great photography supported by quality writing has always been a staple of The Gentlewoman, and this issue sees Varda photographed at her home in Paris by British photographer, Alasdair McLellan, supported by the writing of Pittsburgh-based Holly Brubach.
A modern cultural icon, Juxtapoz magazine’s continued investigation into high- and lowbrow art has been ongoing since 1994. Started by a group of young artists and collectors, including Robert Williams, Fausto Vitello, Craig Stecyk, Greg Escalante, and Eric Swenson, the magazine emphasises how the underground feeds the mainstream, thereby creating a market for the accumulation of value and the production of culture, which has been the mainstay of the magazine for the past 25 years. Juxtapoz profiles derelict street artists, offbeat illustrators, emerging fine artists, and related industry practitioners, allowing readers to get a taste of contemporary makers who mostly function below the commercial radar, and the influence they have on pop culture. Jutapoz is a publication that attempts to level the playing field that separates the fine arts from most other creative practices and genres, easily rivalling the circulation of the top highbrow art magazines, such as Art in America and Frieze.
Often referred to as the bible of the urban art, or lowbrow, movement, some influential now-established names have adorned the pages of the magazine in the past, including: KAWS, Barry McGee, Camille Rose Garcia, Mark Ryden, and Tom Sachs, to name a few. Featuring KAWS on the cover, the current issue, the Winter 2019 edition, celebrates this 25-year-long history by showcasing contemporary superstars such as Swoon, Andy Warhol and Jason Revok, who were once emerging artists in the publication and are now cultural institutions in their own right. This issue shows that, after a quarter century, Juxtapoz deserves its place as an iconic independent title that has contributed immensely to cultural production in the US and across the world.
Shane de Lange (@shanenilfunct) is a designer, writer, and educator currently based in Cape Town, South Africa, working in the fields of communication design and digital media. He works from Gilgamesh, a small design studio. Connect with him on Pinterest and Instagram.
Media Design, formerly Cover Stories and MagLove, is a regular slot deconstructing media cover design, both past and present.
by James Maposa.For organisations looking to withstand the test of time, being led by a purpose is critical to building the brand and ensuring it delivers on its promise over time. Purpose is also important from an authenticity perspective, including a continuous internal evaluation on whether the brand’s positioning is aligned to it.
In addition, a strong purpose results in an empowered expression of the organisation’s brand promise and enables the building of trust, both internally and externally. Establishment and sustaining of stakeholder trust in turn results in loyalty and advocacy — currency required to keep your brand in a mainstream position.
Standout organisations are mostly driven by a purpose. A reason to exist is important for any company as it defines the ethos of the organisation’s brand, including effective positioning in alignment with delivering on its purpose. Purpose provides clarity on what the company is and is not. Knowing why the company exists influences its culture, a culture that will hopefully attract the right type of employee. The right type of employee easily buys into the organisation’s purpose and wholeheartedly contributes to the delivery of experiences that draw loyal customers who, with time, become advocates for the brand. Over time, advocates aid in the recruitment of the business’s next generation of customers through referrals.
As an example, Unilever’s purpose over the last few years has been sustainability. This is an aspect that is recognised and lived out at both corporate and product level, including committing to environmentally sustainable production processes, educating its stakeholders on the importance of sustainability and emphasising this purpose through all communications.
Your purpose contributes to developing a single-minded proposition
A proposition expresses the essence of a brand, its ambitious core. It defines why employees get out of bed each morning and how to deliver on this mandate. A proposition serves as the guiding light or moral compass of what an organisation must be doing within the context of effectively satisfying stakeholder needs. A proposition should speak to a core audience that easily identifies with the company’s cause and readily give of its resources with the perception of gaining through each purchase or interaction.
As an example, for customers who buy or use Apple products and services, even though the pricing for the aforementioned is a premium when compared to competing brands, customers who believe in Apple feel they’re gaining through the purchase more than the company selling the product to them.
If customers feel that they’re gaining through the purchase, it builds loyalty, fosters advocacy and, in most cases, results in these customers recruiting your next set of customers. This free advertising is priceless because the organisation’s customer acquisition cost is greatly reduced with little conviction needed to get them to try out the product or service. Trust is thus established through the development of a single-minded proposition that is aided by a clear purpose on why the organisation exists.
Your purpose and proposition determine your brand’s values and behaviours
Knowing why you exist and what your organisation stands for informs how you should behave and the values the company should uphold. As an example, if your organisation is driven by an innovative purpose, inquisition should stand out as one of its behaviours. Curiosity results in the organisation always asking “what if?” questions and constantly challenging the status quo to develop a next-frontier product or service that will contribute to improving stakeholder lives. In addition, purpose and proposition also determine why an organisation upholds its said values. As an example, for a financial service company, integrity is paramount. A dial-down of this value raises eyebrows and leaves prospective customers in a state of nervousness that often results in them not taking the risk of trying your organisation’s offering.
I will, however, point out that the more values become common, the more they become hygiene factors. This makes it difficult for organisations to differentiate themselves around these table stakes. In markets where competition continues to intensify, values and behaviours should contribute to organisations standing out when compared to their rivals. To present equity building values and express these values through enabling behaviours, a deepened understanding of your purpose and proposition is required. This ensures the company goes beyond the table stakes to define and articulate its values. One way to develop this deepened understanding is to build your values around a longer-term purpose that is future-focused. A visionary purpose builds layers of understanding for the organisation that extend the present; including an appreciation of the past to clearly define the company’s position in the future. By outlining what the future holds for the entity, the values are easy to develop; including the emphasis of how these values are different to your competition.
Your values and behaviours influence designing and delivering equity building experiences
Building a strong brand is always done with the end in mind. To better understand the importance of brand, it has become critical to often refer to the outcomes. Outcomes should not be confused with outputs. Outcomes are largely linked to treating brands as organisational assets that can be exploited to contribute to revenue growth, profit realisation and reduced expenditure (marketing in particular) over time.
Referring back to Apple, the organisation is considered one of the standout brand-led organisations that invested a great amount of time fostering stakeholder buy-in through a clear and concise articulation of what the organisation is and is not, including the benefits of experiencing the organisation’s products and services and the company building more equity through exceeding expectations by delivering on its promise.
Through the synthesis of underlying values, the organisation defines its behavior and this behavior is converted into action, expressing how the brand should speak, look and make customers feel through each interaction. The more satisfying the feeling, the greater the chances of the customer trying out your product or service on their next purchase. If the purchase is more gratifying than the first experience, they’re likely to start speaking about it and invite others to partake in the same experience. This could in turn result in the invited person inviting their own set of people to partake in your organisation’s product and services on their own next purchases.
In light of the above, it is suggested that brand is important for any organisation looking to grow and progress in a future-fit manner. Brand is leveraged to develop frameworks that prioritise critical touchpoints that ensure the delivery of experiences that push customers to try your product and/or service repeatedly. In addition, brand can be leveraged to develop frameworks that are centred on obtaining internal stakeholder buy-in. This engagement is beneficial to the organisation over the longer term through reduced staff turnover and an established consistency when it comes to the delivery of external experiences.
Google is an organisaton that has one of the lowest staff turnover rates based on internal experiences that are geared towards keeping them at the organisation for longer. Retaining staff results in a higher innovation quotient that ultimately contributes to the delivery of exceptional returns from a shareholder return viewpoint over the longer term.
Conclusion
I conclude with my mandate as a brand advisor: to support my clients to build purpose-led organisations, tapping into their entrepreneurial core to unpack what they want their organisation to be known for over the longer term.
A synthesis of an action-orientated purpose results in the definition of an enlightened positioning, as well as, values, behaviour and essence for the brand. This in turn leads to an effective expression of the brand and what it represents to relevant stakeholders — particularly core audiences. A well-defined essence aligned to the organisation’s reason for existence also contributes to an ease of translation on what the brand should look like, say and how it should speak to its target audiences. A purpose also outlines how the brand will deliver equity building internal and external experiences centred on a unifying culture. This winning culture results in stakeholder loyalty and advocacy.
These currencies in turn result in brand delivering on its asset classification, effectively contributing to revenue growth (retention of existing and recruitment of new customers through advocacy), profitability growth (reduced customer acquisition costs over time) and cost reduction (declining marketing spend based on ‘free’ word-of-mouth advertising from existing customers).
2018 edition now available!
James Maposa has extensive experience in the research and strategy consulting industry. Before founding Birguid, he worked for Interbrand, Frost & Sullivan, Ipsos and Ernst & Young, where he was responsible for supporting clients to grow and progress their respective businesses within the sub-Saharan African market. He’s worked for Standard Chartered, Old Mutual, Standard Bank, Discovery, the DTI, Audi, Ford, Toyota, Afrox, Air Liquide, Air Products and Telkom, among others.
by MarkLives (@marklives) Our weekly wrap of the latest market and consumer research:
Black Friday retail fail
Digital OOH growing
B2B buying disconnect
Black Friday retail sales decline
Data from retail management platform, Vend, shows that in-store retail spending over the Black Friday shopping period this year dropped by 10% compared to 2017, with sales volumes also decreasing by 2%. [Cheryl Hunter]
This is despite discounting levels growing by 5% compared to 2017, and the average discount amount increasing by three percentage points. On Black Friday this year, the average discount offered by retail stores was 20%. Vend found, however, that Black Friday continues to provide a significant spike in the retail calendar. When looking at the Black Friday shopping period (24–27 November), spending increased by 20% compared to the previous weeks in October and November.
Says Higor Torchia, Vend EMEA country manager, “Our data shows this year has fallen flat. Most stores now offer Black Friday deals through until Cyber Monday, both in-store and online, so it could be that consumers are doing more of their Black Friday shopping online, or they’re focusing on the deals from big-box retail stores.”
In the major centres, sales growth was positive, particularly in Pretoria, where sales jumped by 19% compared to previous weeks. In Cape Town, sales increased by 13% and Johannesburg retailers saw a 10% increase. Pretoria was the only main city to see year-on-year growth however, with a 20% increase.
Vend’s data also found a big increase in shoppers paying by credit card this year, compared to last. This Black Friday, 53% of sales were taken in cash, and 45% were on credit card compared to 58% and 36% respectively.
Spend on digital out-of-home advertising (DOOH) — video content and/or digital signs located in high-traffic public locations — is expected to grow 10.1% each year between 2018 and 2021, accounting for the entirety of growth in the OOH market as spend on traditional sites begins to decline from 2019. This is according to WARC’s latest Global Ad Trends Digital out-of-home report. [Cheryl Hunter]
Digital’s share of total global OOH adspend is expected to rise to 37.3% or US$14.6bn this year, up from 34.8% in 2017, 32.4% in 2016 and 22.7% in 2012. The rapid growth of DOOH is driven in part by the higher cost-per-thousand the format commands but also by the rising penetration of digital panels and the opportunity to combine data-driven targeting with powerful, dynamic creative.
Major providers are accelerating investment in digital sites, and this will further fuel growth over the coming years. JCDecaux, for instance, is building on its existing base of 59 744 digital screens worldwide with the ongoing digitalisation of street furniture in New York, Chicago and London.
Data from the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA) shows that digital billboards now account for 21% of all billboards in North America, and research by Nielsen shows that approximately 60% of US consumers see a digital billboard each month and 37% see one each week.
In the UK, DOOH plays a core role in the daily commute, generating £152m in adspend for Transport for London.
The outdoor ad revolution is not, however, problem-free. The collection of mobile phone data, for both targeting and measurement, raises privacy concerns. This is cited as a particular issue by almost one in three mobile marketers.
While DOOH provides the opportunity for improved targeting through facial recognition, consumers are yet to be sold on the idea. A full 65.2% of those surveyed were not happy for facial recognition to be used for personalised marketing messages.
by Mark Eardley. Here’s a rare bird: a top-notch, down-to-earth report on what builds buyers’ trust in B2B vendors — and what doesn’t. It might be focused on selling/buying technology but I’d say the findings are spot-on for the whole B2B spectrum. This report’s a real good ’un.
For the 2018 edition, TrustRadius surveyed over 650 technology buyers and vendors to get deeper insights into the B2B purchasing process. Overall, it found: “There is still a significant trust gap between buyers and vendors, especially when it comes to understanding what a product really can — and can’t — do.” In other words, “[b]uyers want the brutal truth, but vendors aren’t keeping up.”
Lifted straight from the report, key findings include:
85% of vendors believe they are open and honest about their product’s limitations. Only 37% of buyers agree.
Just23% of buyers said their vendor was highly influential in the purchasing decision. Those vendors were 2x more likely to be candid about their product and provide unbiased customer insights.
84% of buyers said they were willing to share their perspective with prospects. There is potential for 2x participation in advocacy program, but vendors need to ask.
For me, the fact that marketers must really up their game in terms of creating relevant and credible content that triggers sales is summed up by this:
As the report says, “All of the vendor-provided sources of information scored at the bottom of the barrel for trustworthiness and influence.” Ouch! That comment typifies all the sharp, wide-ranging insights this excellent report provides. Great piece of detailed research, clearly presented, essential reading and definitely worth acting upon.
“Market Research Wrap” offers readers a weekly overview and critique of the latest market and industry research.
Cheryl Hunter (@cherylhunter) has written for the South African media, marketing and advertising industries for more than 15 years. A former editor of M&M in Independent Newspapers and contributor to Bizcommunity, AdFocus, AdReview and the Ad Annual, she has also produced for various television networks and currently consults on communication strategy and media liaison.
Mark Eardley (@mdeardley) advises B2B companies on how to govern their marketing to attract and retain profitable customers; several of his clients have grown to become market leaders. His monthly “Back2Basics” column covers how B2B companies and their agencies should manage their marketing.
by Warren Moss (@warrenmoss) In order for an agency to create a fit-for-purpose B2B brand, there are two mandatory requirements: trust between brand and agency, and meaningful face time with the people who work at the company, the management team behind the brand and past, current and potential customers.
Recently, there was a pitch for the rebranding of one of the country’s largest B2B businesses. Each invited agency was asked to submit a proposal on how to approach the rebranding, from which the company would select two ‘finalists’. These would then each get three hours with the brand’s exco team to get insights, from which they’d propose the rebranded solution and present, with one agency selected as the pitch winner.
We looked at the process and decided not to participate — not because we don’t like pitch processes but because we think, when it comes to a B2B branding process, that the vital elements mentioned in the intro should be part of the process to allow the pitching agencies the opportunity to deliver the best possible work.
Strongest currency
Trust is the strongest currency: pay an agency in trust and you’ll get the best work. Trust empowers the agency to be bold and leaves room for mistakes. In a trusted relationship, mistakes are tolerated and accepted; in a low-trust relationship, the agency plays it safe because there’s the constant fear that it’ll get fired tomorrow if it gets something marginally wrong. Trust means there is no fear and it fosters strong communication.
Face time is important because it allows the team working on the brand the tie to forge a deep understanding of the DNA of the people behind the brand. A B2B brand has to be an emotional and visual representation of the people behind the company. The past, current and future clients must inform where the brand is going, certainly, but there must be a significantly higher weighting towards an understanding of the people who operate the brand. People who get up and go to work because they love it have a special affinity for the brand. What better way to foster belief and buy-in for the brand than have them as part of the process of establishing its personality, its feel, its DNA?
I’m not talking about token involvement. Spending real time with them is important, to get a meaningful understanding of what makes them tick, what their ambitions are and what their lives look like. Anthropology is a great way to inform that approach.
Pivotal element
B2B brands have an audience of thousands, not millions; most management teams aren’t bigger than 15, and those are the people who need to believe in a brand. One of the pivotal elements of B2B marketing is therefore shaping communication that shows how a product or service may solve a potential customer’s need — something which is only possible when the team behind the brand understands that need.
We had a rebranding experience like this a couple of years ago. We managed to spend deep and meaningful time with the CEO, CMO and exco, the employees, the intermediaries and some of their customers. If I look at that brand now, it’s directly representative of the team members who run that company. If you opened the CEO’s bedroom cupboard, it’d look like the company brand palette: professional, considered, premium, and thoughtful. The CEO and team personify the brand, brand represents them and their passion, and that’s why its successful. People who work there wear company pins on their clothes because they’re so proud of what they’ve helped make the brand; there’s even a shop in the office that sells company-branded products…
The CMO recently surveyed employees and partners, asking what they think of the brand, and an unprecedented 92% came back and said they love it. That’s because it was built for them, not their customers — and there’s a knock-on effect. Pride acts as a motivator, which is directly related to a positive growth in business performance. We’d never have been able to give voice to their personality if we’d only have been able to spend a couple of hours with them in a boardroom.
Direct manifestation
If we accept that, in B2B, the brand is the direct manifestation of the values of the people who work there, it makes sense that in order for the agency to create a proper brand solution, it needs meaningful and deep access to the employees, management and customers, so it can extract the true values of the brand and understand its DNA. That requires meaningful engagement with the people who drive it and total experience of the brand itself.
You need to get into the heart and headspace of a brand to deliver an experience which targets the brand’s own potential customers in a significant way.
Warren Moss (@warrenmoss) is the CEO and founder of Demographica, a multi-award winning full service agency that specialises in the B2B category. He is the chair of both the Direct Marketing Association of South Africa (DMASA) and the Assegai Integrated Marketing Awards (Assegais), as well as the only African to judge the B2 Awards, which recognise the top performing B2B marketers in the world. Warren contributes the monthly “Thinking B2B” column, which looks at the latest trends in B2B communications and explains why it is fundamentally different from B2C comms.
by Megan Power (@Power_Report)An interesting thing about the recent Schweppes soda-water ‘apology’ is that nowhere in the actual 1 minute 16-second video posted on social media does the word “sorry” appear. But it doesn’t matter. What Schweppes has successfully done — something many brands find so hard to do — is own up to its blunder publicly and fix it. Customers loved it.
#OhSchweppes, we're so sorry that our mix-up ruined your mixing. For the record, we agree with you – our packaging blunder wasn't our brightest moment. We'll be better. pic.twitter.com/uaG7RUiyQp
But there’s far more significance — long term — in Schweppes doing what it did. On the face of it, the soft-drink brand was making amends for irking its loyal customers by rebranding its soda water to look just like its tonic water — a gaffe that led to happy-hour chaos and bitter chirping from annoyed gin and whisky drinkers across the country.
The brand responded, albeit a good while later, with a playful yet authentic, take-off of the mix-up. Instead of arrogantly dismissing customer concerns, it took full responsibility for the oversight and held the relevant internal team accountable. By name. The result is an honest (the sheepish marketing execs featured are the real deal) falling on its sword that says to its customers: “We hear you, we feel your pain, and we’ve fixed things so we don’t irritate you anymore.”
Customers were thrilled; even those who didn’t use the brand claimed to be converted. It shouldn’t surprise anyone, though; consumers are inherently a forgiving bunch, if only brands acknowledged fault more often. I see it in the area of brand protection and customer experience (CX): a reluctance and, in some cases, a complete inability, to see or accept customer obstacles and frustration when using a product or service. Thankfully, the smart organisations are prioritising user experience (a very separate function to marketing) and ensuring UX and CX insights inform each and every process.
Goes further
But the Schweppes mea culpa shouldn’t be seen as a clever piece of spin that’s earned the brand and its agency some temporary kudos. It goes further than that. The more a brand successfully navigates the little bumps on the road, the more prepared it is to cope with the big crises when they happen, and the more receptive and understanding its customer base becomes.
Slip-ups, if managed well, present opportunities to strengthen trust, credibility and goodwill with customers, and should be embraced. It’s the regular deposits into the goodwill bank that pay off when something much bigger breaks.
Another win is that when businesses do right by their customers, they set precedent which raises the bar for all future customer engagements. In Schweppes’ case, Coca-Cola (which owns the brand) will now be held to a higher standard across all its brands.
Deadly for diabetics
It’s already happening to Coke. As with the soda-tonic fiasco, Coke’s new packaging for regular Coke and its sugar-free variants are just as indistinguishable, and causing much upset. But where the soda-water confusion was just irritating, a mix-up in Coke brands for diabetics could be deadly.
Consumers, who have already taken to social media to protest and warn Coke of dire consequences if diabetics suffer, expect the brand to take stock — and action. Just like it did in the Schweppes situation. Except, this time, they’ll want a bit more urgency.
Companies shouldn’t think they’re able to pick and choose which complaints they’ll entertain, and when. And certainly not a company which has just spent time and money owning up in a very public way to a fairly innocuous issue.
Listen very carefully
Once an organisation shows integrity, it’s tough to change direction later on if it hopes to retain credibility. Which is why the Schweppes apology shouldn’t be a once-off, and Coke should listen to its customers, especially its diabetic ones, very carefully.
If it does, the benefits could be far reaching. Should Coke or its brands face a major crisis in the future, which stops business as usual, chances are its customers — won over by an ongoing culture of listening and doing the right thing — will be more forgiving. They’re more likely to trust the brand to fix things, and give it the space to do so. Some may even come out as faithful defenders of the brand.
Who wouldn’t drink to that?
Megan Power (@Power_Report) has nearly 30 years’ experience working in South African media, including investigative journalism and news editing; she now runs Power LAB, a strategic communications and customer experience agency focusing on customer journey audits, crisis readiness and brand reputation. Megan’s consumer column, The Power Report, ran weekly in the Sunday Times for six years and has now found a new home on MarkLives.
by Erna George (@edgeo23) Why the distinction, you may ask? Many people use these interchangeably, yet they are different. While a common focus behind brand may unite, “marketing-led” as a principle could create a divisive culture.
“Why should marketing lead the way? Surely the customer teams are more important because they land the sales, or manufacturing because they make the stuff that’s sold, or finance because they focus on driving shareholder value?” See the challenge? While there are areas of commonality, “brand-led” means something distinct, or should do so in terms of operating and unification.
Language is powerful
Language is powerful. It’s able to inspire, inflame or divide. “Brand-led” or “Marketing-led” both lend themselves to signifying an external focus but, being human, almost everyone wants to be important — the need for acknowledgement is high. “Marketing-led” may limit the brand expression to a team or function. If this team is lauded as the leaders or as more important, this may lead to competition, in-fighting and ultimately a silo-effect in ways of working. Why?
The marketing team are more than brand crafters, working across the value chain, from touching manufacturing with new product development to finance with costings and income statements, etc. Marketing is seen as being more than brand.
A brand belongs to the business and is touched by most throughout the organisation, from being charged on an invoice in accounts to being packed by logistics into trucks. While marketing may be developed and ‘owned’ by a group of marketing experts, how a brand goes to market is owned by many more functions.
If the orientation is to a team or function, it may not feel owned by the rest of the business. As the brand is activated by many in the organisation, the brand expression could be disparate. Similarly, as the brand belongs to more than marketing, it can also unite.
Extraordinary momentum
Ever heard the adage, “Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing team”? This is a term that irritated me the first time I heard it. Without internalising what it meant, I took offence. Being a fair bit older and perhaps a little wiser, I see the alternate view that, if everyone is united behind a common vision of the brand, the momentum that may be built is extraordinary — beyond what a single team can generate. Marketing would be key in setting the brand’s strategy but sharing the strategy and infiltrating this through all functions can create a wave with significant impact.
Brand-led means that the organisation is consumer- or market-orientated or has a philosophy that focuses on satisfying market needs. Imagine an entire organisation galvanised behind consumer and market needs — marketing woven through the total organisation so ideas and processes are built around answering real needs. Design-driven around adding the right added-value features; commitment to the right level of quality (not over- or under-specced), a consistent approach and, most of all, always relevant. This could create or provide a common purpose and help inform the culture and behaviour of the business.
To make an organisation brand-led, the brand must be demystified into the elements and language that are most relevant to each in the organisation. It’s key to identify the critical business revenue drivers and align these to brand principles. When this is filtered through the business to deliver, a consistent experience may be developed. Build brand proposition into product principles; brand beliefs and heritage into the sales process or customer proposition, consumer care centre or even supplier meetings. Ensure all departments embrace what the brand stands for and weight in on what that means within their sectors — they identify their stake in and their responsibility to the brand.
If all understand the qualities or principles that make the brand distinct, then sales teams can move a little more beyond price in tough customer conversations and the finance team will talk to the value of the brand in investor interactions.
Rallying cry
With brand principles as the rallying cry, everyone is clear on what is expected and what is to be avoided. This allows processes and new initiatives to be designed around the brand. Everyone is brand and consumer champion — the voice of the brand internally and the champion for the brand externally. This should make the marketing role easier. Instead of spending time aligning everyone, marketing teams can more spend time on future-scaping (looking at trends and finding new opportunities) or with stronger external view on competitors. It should be empowering for all and make for a more distinct organisation
Moving to a brand-led organisations does require a strong foundation with tight controls so that the brand, while understood by all, is at inception determined on a clear strategic platform.
Marketers develop strong brands that everyone understands
Ensure brands are built with a focus on consumer needs and market view for optimal relevance, and share this
Avoid making the output dependent or about the marketing function to ensure business doesn’t happen in frustrated, competitive siloed ways of working
The power of a consumer or market-centric organisation is untold — make it about the brand to unlock the power.
After starting at Unilever in a classical marketing role, Erna George (@edgeo23) explored the agency side of life, first as a partner at Fountainhead Design, followed by the manic and inspiring world of consultancy at Added Value. She has returned to client-side, leading the marketing team in the Cereals, Accompaniments & Baking Division at Pioneer Foods. Her monthly “Fair Exchange” column on MarkLives concerns business relationships and partnerships in marketing and brandland.
Julia Ahlfeldt (@JuliaAhlfeldt) is a certified customer experience professional (CCXP). For more must do’s and don’ts on how to keep customers returning again and again to buy from your brand, listen to her podcast, Decoding the Customer. She contributes the monthly column “The CX-Files”, which looks at current issues from a CX perspective, to MarkLives.
