Real Needs and Real Wants!!

A Schematic Food for Thought! Dig It!!

Branding, Identity or Logo! What Is It Really?

Isn't It Time We Decoded Branding Correctly?

It is a great, huge disgrace that the word 'Branding' has been so overused in recent years. More and more agencies (small and big alike) and clients tout the ‘Branding’ word about as though it were going out of fashion… which of course, some people would like it to do.

But the fact is that many of these so-called proponents of Branding simply don't understand what a brand is, or how Branding works. Branding has come to mean very little to a lot of people, largely because it is so regularly misunderstood, and is used so vaguely and liberally. The word 'Brand' is often used interchangeably (and incorrectly) with words like 'identity' and 'logo', and clients who simply need a visual identity are tempted to request a Branding programme because, quite simply, it's been the buzzword of choice for the past couple of years.

A brand is like a unique individual personality. It is the sum of a great many parts, and is made up of an elusive set of characteristics and traits, all of which combine to provoke an emotional response from anybody who comes into contact with it. A person's personality is made up of their attitudes, their values and their beliefs. And the way we perceive someone's personality is influenced not simply by what they say, but by how they say it, what they wear, what they look like, how they behave and more.

The subtleties of perceiving someone's personality are just as evident when it comes to perceiving an organization or their products and services. People have personality traits, organisations have brand values. But they are the same things. Think about Pepsi, Apple or Porsche and the chances are you'll have a fairly similar view of each of them to the guy next to you. This is no accident. These brands have been carefully and skillfully managed to be consistent – wherever you come across them.

A brand can be a valuable business asset, increasing loyalty and revenue from customers, increasing share value and reducing staff turnover, whilst at the same time paving the way for future business growth and roll-out of related but separate sub-brands. Get it right, and your business can flourish. Get it wrong, or mistakenly think you are creating a brand when you are simply designing a logo, and you will be back at the drawing board much sooner than you wanted.

When Ford bought Jaguar, its physical assets were estimated at only 16% of the total value, and when Vodafone, the world’s largest telecommunications company bought Orange its physical assets were estimated at just 10%. The purchase values were therefore largely the result of an intangible set of assets which an accountant might describe as 'goodwill'... and which we would simply call the brands. Vodafone has since bought over many brands including most recently Hutch in India for similar reason while Tata Motors took over Jaguar from an ailing Ford in 2 June 2008 for around £1.7 billion.

As soon as Branding sorts out its identity crisis and is recognized to be more about personality and culture than a simple logo and typeface, the world will be a better place - not just for brand-driven agencies, but for clients and business the world over. Like it or loathe it, 'Branding' as a concept is here to stay, so isn't it about time we started using the term quite correctly?

Jargon Idiolecture

Why is that Lawyers and Accountants speak a strange language?

Had a bad day with my lawyer today and it was my auditor yesterday. No, nothing wrong with them – its just I cant understand the weird language they speak.

It seems that most professionals (like lawyers, accountants, doctors, engineers..) are to blame for developing a complex vocabulary entirely or themselves. Partly, I suppose, to give themselves an resourceful way of talking to each other and partly to sound intelligent but then they forget that the rest of the world hasn't really seen their odd glossary of terms… yet we have their inexplicable jargon imposed on us.

To their timeless credit, lawyers and accountants especially have developed an industry based almost entirely on their own language that only their fellow brethren can comprehend - with lengthy unpunctuated sentences, bizarre unenglish terms and over formal lingo. Needless to say, this means we have to pay them (or law/finance book publishers) simply to decipher what exactly each of them is saying!

Well, the point here is that it's incredibly refreshing to see some brands that are brave enough to realize that simple communication has a much broader appeal, and is genuinely more practical. You should never have to read anything more than once. And speaking in an strange, multifarious or formal tone of voice will not guarantee you project yourself as more gifted or erudite than your competitors.

The evidence is out there and it still feels new, but it's basic common sense – talk as people talk. Explain complex issues as you would to your pal at the pub, and it'll make far more sense than if you try to jargonise and embellish what you're saying with fancy terms.

Anyway, gotta scoot now. Gotta run some ideas up my laptop before my client’s personal assistant locks diaries with me. Hope this didn’t sound too jargonish to you!

Thinking about Lateral Thinking

We're all capable of Lateral Thinking – of thinking sideways, yet still having the natural ability to understand, or to make the mental leap between what is being said and what is being implied.

Yesterday, I watched an old episode of “Only Fools and Horses”, a popular British TV sitcom that ran between 1981 to 1991 and even upto the early 2000’s. What I'm getting at is the genius of scriptwriters like John Sullivan, who anticipates an audience's response before conjuring up something brilliant. With “Only Fools and Horses”, he decided that forever and a day the character 'Trigger' would get his best mate's name wrong, without exception. What an indisputably splendid bit of audience understanding to include such a detail.

So why do we love this kind of lateral thinking? Probably because we welcome humor more if we've got a bit of work to do to 'get the gag'. It's more rewarding.

The point is, Creatives (blokes like me who in the creative industry) bang on about being lateral thinkers... but ask them to explain what lateral thinking is.

For me the best analogy is a joke – 'a man walks into a bar... BANG, it was a lead bar' – Okay, so it's a crap joke, but let's face it, in a split second you probably envisaged that man, saw his face, his clothes, where he was, and you had in mind a particular guy with an open door. Yet you were thrown sideways by the punch line, and the bar in question conjured up a completely different picture in your mind – a solid piece of lead piping, with the same guy's face now wedged up against it.

The fact that, to a greater or lesser degree, we can all consciously make this sort of leap sideways allows us to take what can only be described as the 'scenic route' to a concept. Getting there is 75% of the reward. And the ability to take an even more oblique route is perhaps the difference between a great idea and a bloody extraordinary idea.

To be too obtuse in one's communications is, of course, counter-productive. The more oblique the route, the more likely it is you're going to get lost. Equally, to generate a formula (or road map) for this kind of thinking is clearly impossible. So to make sure we come up with bloody fantastic ideas more often than not, the answer is simply to have an alternative approach, to think in a way that explores all the routes around and between concepts.

And anyway, this kind of lateral approach is much more fun than always going in a fixed direction. So, are you thinking now?

P.S: If Lateral Thinking interests you, read Edward de Bono's "New Think: The Use of Lateral Thinking", "Parallel Thinking: From Socratic thinking to de Bono Thinking" and "Six Thinking Hats: An Essential Approach to Business Management". All the 3 books are a great read and proof why de Bono is perhaps considered one of the greatest thinkers of all time!

Starting A Online Venture - Here's Your Recipe For Digital Sucess

Websnacker’s Top 10 Rules for Launching the Perfect Online Venture

With the stupendous success of Facebook, Twitter and hundreds of other online success stories that you keep reading these days; sure, big ideas seem great but how about some practical tips for successfully building and launching a digital venture? Here are top ten rules derived from my and my team’s collective experience at my creative firm.

Rule 1 - Always Work as a Team: Assemble an integrated project team of business, creative and technology minds to develop the corporate vision and work requirements then see them through to actual implementation. True innovation comes from active, multidisciplinary collaboration so focus on it.

Rule 2 - Anticipate Change: From the outset, the entire team should be ready, know and accept that requirements will naturally change and evolve. Flexibility should be the core team value. Challenge your team to imagine the unexpected a few steps into the future and how they would handle it.

Rule 3 - Communicate Openly: Issues always arise on projects, particularly with new technologies and high visibility. Openly raise the issues, present alternatives and work as a team toward resolution.

Rule 4 - Don't Reinvent the Wheel: Leverage existing products and tools where appropriate but keep the product mix to a manageable minimum. Don't try to deliver all functionality at once.

Rule 5 - Phase the Process: Imagine it (informed brainstorming), define it (prioritization, scoping and design), and do it (implementation). Phase deliverables, test them with the audience, then iterate and refine. For each phase and deliverable, know what you're going to do, when you're going to do it and what it's going to cost.

Rule 6 - Reward Your Team: It all comes down to human beings working together. You won't hesitate to tell your team when something's wrong, so don't forget to reward them when something's right. One of the best rewards is simple and low cost: genuine recognition. Stand up and recognize them among their peers or to a broader audience and they’ll love it.

Rule 7 - Get to Market: Beat the competition. Offer incremental features and functionality over time. The sooner you can deliver, the more time you will have to build brand loyalty. Deliver "good enough" now and continually improve upon it. Think IPod or the IPhone.

Rule 8 - Market and Promote: Whether you're launching a consumer web site or an online web store, you need to let people know how and where to find you, and why they should bother. Branding, marketing, social media and viral promotion are key. Plan for this from the start.

Rule 9 - Measure Results & Improve: Technology permits you to capture incredibly valuable information about who is doing what on your site. Continually analyze and use it to inform your next steps: marketing strategy and tactics, interface and content improvements, functional enhancements or architectural changes. Keep improving.

Rule 10 - Select the Right Partner: Select a creative/marketing partner who can help you solve the whole problem and sell it to your audience. Incorrect branding, marketing, advertising and public relations can all impede innovation and time-to-market but with the right partner, you can get it right. (Hint – try us)

This ain't the magic formula but it sure will take you on the right road to success! All the best.

Digital Playgrounds of the New World

Child's Play and Advertising

Quick! What do you remember about Saturday or Sunday mornings when you were a kid? Chances are, if you grew up in the 70s or later, Saturday and Sunday morning meant cartoons. And while a weekend sunup might have meant cartoons for you, it meant direct-hit, targeted marketing for toy and cereal companies. Bernard Loomis is known as the man who invented Saturday morning because, as CEO of Mattel, the manufacturer of Hot Wheels, he launched the Hot Wheels television show. This flawless blurring of TV show and commercial was a revolution of positively epic magnitude in marketing terms. Imagine getting a consumer's exclusive attention for 30 straight minutes today! Very good luck.

But a few weeks ago on a rainy Saturday morning, I noticed a fascinating experience at my former senior colleague’s home. His three kids (all under 7 years) and their two equally young cousins were huddled around one of the many computers at his home. The living room was completely vacant and the television was switched off. Lazily sipping a fine Nescafe blend, I asked them why they weren't watching cartoons like good little kids.

The collective force of annoyed looks was scornful. "We're playing games with other kids online." Pointing excitedly to the ever-changing screen, my friend’s daughter said, "See, if you want to chat, you type your message here. Look, I'm talking to a kid in Austria while we play." "Whoa," I thought, "After these messages, we won't be right back!"

I was intrigued. Multi-user web gaming isn’t breaking news to me, but it dawned on me that yet another precept of marketing had been rendered dead in the water by the Internet. Man, I just love that!

I sat down in the empty living room with my favorite cup of hot coffee and stared out the window, past the darkened television to the distant wet sky, and wondered just what, exactly; Bernard Loomis would do in this situation.

Marketing is shifting swiftly these days, and technology-driven opportunities are numberless. Just look at the frantic promotions that those sprawling mega-malls are employing to keep people off-line. Or checkout Airtel’s new Facebook promo, the telecom leader in India has a new promotion with Facebook that offers consumers free access to the Facebook’s mobile site in vernacular languages on their phone, a first of its kind in the world. Seems like kind of a stretch to me.

Everywhere you look, big brands are in trouble. Kelloggs, McDonalds and Ford are all examples of big brands having difficulties adapting to the new consumer-driven web economy. Back in 1969 when Bernard Loomis came up with his brainstorm, the brand was the central focus. The thinking was that if you create a popular brand, customers would flock to you. But now, consumers are more concerned with the future of their brands than the history of the brand. Yikes. This turns traditional packaged goods marketing upside down.

Then again, every fit of disorder and change presents new opportunities for those who are willing to apply some energy to their interpretations. We know that kids have moved from in front of the TV to in front of the computer, from passive viewing to active real-time interactions. There's an exchange going on, and the challenge for marketers is figuring out how to meaningfully join in and capitalize.

For Bernard Loomis, that meant creating a TV show based on his product. For today’s marketer, it might mean creating something completely new that delivers exactly what tech savvy kids are asking for these days. Poke around the Cartoon Network website and you'll see what the little kids are doing today.

So if you're a marketer experiencing that nauseated deer-in-the-headlights feeling brought on by out of control change, I encourage you to remember that chaos breeds opportunity. And if you think about it the correct way, you just might find that opportunity waiting to be knocked online (and also offline).

Demystifying Victoria's Secret

Why a Woman's Lingerie is Not Just Underwear

It’s been said that you can tell a lot about a woman by her choice of intimate apparel; presuming, that is, that she shops for these herself and that the black satin Wonderbra or skimpy red Victoria Secret thong she’s wearing under her office wear is not a gift from her significant other, or lover.

While many women won’t settle for anything less than the luxurious feel of an expensive lace caressing their hidden skin, there are those who prefer the clean, clinical innocence of pure white 100% cotton or the comforting, girlish cuteness of cartoon-festooned knickers and colorful vests. There are those, too, who opt for sensible, neutral bras and panties in fuss-free tones of flesh that never ever reveal their existence even beneath the sheerest of chiffon shirts and skirts.

As there is a somewhat indefinable line that divides the girl from the “real” woman (it has nothing to do with age), there is also a point where underwear and lingerie seem to lose their common ground.

Lingerie, Lan-zhe-ray. Not just an exotic sounding word, it also has a certain intrinsic power, able to convey a multitude of seductive imagery, associations and feelings in both the men who admire (or shy from) it and the women who wear it – or would never - of all ages, castes and nationalities.

Since time immemorial the naked, natural female form has instilled both awe and fear in its beholders, who have concurrently worshipped its voluptuous curves and slender valleys while also denouncing them as the cause of all the world’s evils. Take for example, a woman’s bosom, while being revered by men for its “fruit-like” bountifulness and respected for its maternal functioning, it has also been hidden, bound and even denied its god given beauty.

Pity the Victorian English women who fainted with boring regularity under the severity of aristocratic conventions, corseted to the point of breathlessness, constrained behind painful laces and stiffly starched, unforgiving layers.

Throughout the greater part of the 20th century, women still had to contend with a certain shamefulness associated with their under things. Brassieres and knickers, always well-concealed beneath ultra-feminine, flouncy dresses, were unattractively bulky, clumsy and chafing.

The 2 World Wars brought inevitable liberation, with ladies sassily belted in hardy workers’ trousers as they toiled on the production lines of war factories. But it was those dirty-minded French who caused all the trouble, what with their seemingly loose morals and fondness for free flowing garments. It was then, in that foreign but eternally romantic capital, that the word “lingerie” came into being. Rather than believing the female form to be better off when “out of sight, out of mind”, the French, rather, pledged themselves to framing its loveliness – like a priceless work of art - in the most beautiful of laces and ribbons, satins and velvets.

Although the true inventors of fiddly, frilly women’s intimate apparel – the kind we know and, indeed, women love today – were the French; in the latter part of the last century, they had to contend with the entrepreneurship of their newly-awakened European and New World counterparts like Frederick’s of Hollywood in 1946 famous for the ‘Rising Star’, the world's first push-up bra and La Perla, the Italian underwear and swimwear house founded by Ada Masotti in 1954. Almost 50 years on, European women still associate the La Perla label with an almost noble glamour, frequently bankrupting themselves for the sake of experiencing the cool extravagance of a La Perla bra or chemise.

In the US, Victoria’s Secret is undisputedly the best selling lingerie brand and boasts a huge, immensely popular, online shopping presence. The creator of bras with intriguing names like the “Miracle Bra” the only bra that apparently adjusts to let you create three levels of cleavage at the click of a button and the “Seamless Natural Miracle Bra”, seamless, liquid-filled cups create curves that look and feel like your own; the brand is also revered for its bevy of shapely models who grace the glossy pages of its catalogues.

In England, things have certainly changed, too. Roam the high streets of the capital city and chances are you’ll come across London’s legendary lingerie company, the delightfully named Agent Provocateur, a brand now synonymous with seduction, pleasure and the provocation of the senses. Founded in 1994 by Joseph Corre and Serena Rees, the brand offers trendy ladies a combination of serious eroticism and naughty exhibitionism in its ultra-glamorous, custom-made items. Indeed, its wicked array of kinky knickers, hosiery and strappy boudoir sandals have been snapped up with relish by the fashion editors of high street mags like Vogue, Elle and many more.

Another hip British label, Gossard, the creators of the incredible Wonderbra once caused near-riots on the streets with its no-holds-barred, £1-million poster advertising campaign flaunting the bold pay-off line, “Find Your G Spot”. Calling it the most exciting bra advertising concept ever, Gossard targeted the modern, liberated woman with a wicked sense of humor, actively encouraging the fairer sex to take control in the sack (so to speak) and implying that their ultra sexy lingerie leads to sensational results.

Maybe, they wanted to imply that Lingerie is the ultimate in female empowerment, inviting women to make use of their imagination and slip into an achievable fantasy. All of which reiterates the much-researched fact that women wear sexy lingerie for themselves and not just for mankind – men need be afraid, be very afraid!

And perhaps, while Underwear is, well, just plain underwear; sexless sounding and full of practical, good-common-sense connotation; Lingerie, on the other hand, is a word that lingers, full of pregnant possibility, on the lips, bringing a hot blush to the cheek and, often, a sparkle to the eye, as its soft-spoken syllables are pronounced.

Move aside, Naomi Campbell, Heidi Klum and Laetitia Casta - it's time for all other gals to also have some fun!

Privacy Is Dead - Get Over It, Folks!

Privacy is dead. It died a long time ago so why blame Facebook alone for it.

If you have ever used a credit card, ordered from a mail-order catalog, subscribed to a magazine, answered a phone survey or supported a local charity, you have provided marketers with information they consider extremely valuable. Long before the Web was invented; you were counted, cataloged, sorted, indexed, cross-referenced, sold, and redistributed countless times.

During my college days, I worked part-time as a telemarketer for a major health supplement company. I was given a stack of printed leads and told to call - all to ask for money. I called. I sold various supplements and brought in plenty of orders. Was it my charming personality and silky smooth voice that convinced total strangers to hand over their credit card numbers to me? I'd like to think so.

More likely, it was that stack of call leads, which told me not only their names and phone numbers, but also what these people did for a living and how rich or poor they were. What kind of diseases they had, who their general physician was, how often they ate out, what kind of cars they drove, recent major purchases, and so on. My employer had purchased their personal information.

If you really want to see someone run and grab their checkbook, tell a U2 fan that by joining at the Club level, he or she will get to meet Bono the next time he's in town. Any die-hard football addict will gladly hand over their credit card number when they are told that it will pay for a 24-hour David Beckham appearance.

Advertisers and Marketers have long been exploring the idea of using personal information to derive and provide value. And the companies who do it are the aggregators. They have also been known as infomediaries, metamediaries, metamarkets, syndicates and disintermediaries. Now, they exist in our midst in the form of Google, Facebook, etcetera. The players in this space combine a large database of user information with a large collection of products and services in order to play matchmaker.

These aggregators can collect large amounts of user preferences and then shop for special deals. For example, knowing that I am looking for a new Android based cell phone is of little value to a retailer. However, knowing that 10,000 people are shopping for and are willing to pay no more than $200 is invaluable to a retailer. The retailer can then decide to lower the price in order to make 10,000 new customers.

In an age where getting and retaining customers is everyone's number one priority, retailers are happily trading margin for volume. In addition to volume sales, the retailer can also benefit from relevant upsells. For example, a new Android phone customer might eventually be convinced to purchase other related products, like an eBook reader or a media player.

Aggregators are able to provide consumers something even more valuable than great deals on products and services. They help consumers regain some of their privacy. By divulging personal information to trusted aggregators, consumers can derive the benefits of sharing their interests and preferences without fearing that their personal information is spreading across the Internet and beyond.

Aggregation may be a situation where everyone wins. Consumers and vendors can each deal with a single point of contact. Consumers are ensured that their information remains private while using that data to secure good deals from vendors. Vendors are happy to have access to a new set of consumers who want their products and services. Aggregators can profit from commissions.

There are some areas that are prime territory for aggregators to step into. Products which require extensive pre-sale research. Big ticket items whose prices can fluctuate. Complimentary products and services which can be combined into packages. Services which require the collection of large amounts of customer information. Products and services where the purchase process is either inefficient or unpleasant.

As consumers realize the value that aggregators provide they will slowly begin to part with some of their personal information in order to enjoy the benefits and security aggregation can deliver.

The Internet has succeeded in increasing awareness about privacy concerns, both online and offline. Unfortunately as the Facebook case vindicates, the popular press has tended to focus exclusively on the negative issues around Internet privacy. As a result, consumers have developed a certain degree of paranoia regarding their personal information. Though protecting one's personal data is very important, it is also important for consumers to know how to effectively use personal information for their benefit.

The Internet is not uniquely responsible for invading your privacy; it is simply the newest place businesses can track your personal information. Instead of harboring the illusion that you can live, interact, buy and socialize in this society in utter privacy, consider the power you hold and use it to your advantage. After all, the power ultimately lies in your hands.

Making Advertising & Marketing Work!

This is my concluding post on Simplicity in Marketing

Why Experts Matter
A qualified corporate messaging process drives the dialog so that the visuals, language and information hierarchies are designed in concert with the product or service. Thoughtful design of content should begin earlier than many corporate executives and entrepreneurs believe. It isn’t just make-up to apply after the real thinking’s done. When experienced content designers are part of a strategic planning team, they can influence explanations for greatest success. They can provide the context to build the relationships between breakthrough ideas and the way they are expressed to the people who will buy them.

Whether homegrown or outsourced, your business needs a team dedicated to scanning for patterns and trends, and forging connections between ideas. They will also facilitate the integration across mediums that will bring together the systems, structures and processes in such a way that choices and solutions are connected, linked and cross-sold. A great marketing team is the liaison between the products of business and the minds of the consumer. It must understand both before it can serve
either.

Particularly in this tight labor pool, a competent external marketing partner can be as important to business success as financial and legal counsel. Assuming a venture has an innovative product idea and business model, a great executive team and enough financing to get traction, it still needs the packaging that will take it to market effectively. An experienced agency (like us) can provide critical bandwidth and brainwidth extensions to ensure that a company’s look, feel and messaging resonate the personality an enterprise wishes to own in the marketplace.

Blending Online and Offline Worlds
Although brands and identities must be integrated, many messages that work great in print suck on web pages. This is a topic onto itself, but here’s the top layer.

Print requires great attention to one-dimensional design and layout. Each view is a discrete canvas. Information elements are static and can explain and enhance each other predictably. Web pages, on the other hand, are a dynamic scrolling experience that place greater significance on navigational feel. Relationships between information components are fleeting.

Print can be visually stunning and still accommodate substantial text. It appeals to the eyes. Web pages are compelling for their interactive engagement as much as their content. They appeal to the hands. Why does everyone need to print stuff out? It is actually quite difficult to read online (never mind the iPads and the eReaders.)

The infinite navigational dimensions of the web, current bandwidth limitations and differing desktop environments mandate fewer and smaller graphics, shorter text and simpler typography. While effective print design is grounded in highly refined best practices, web design is still infantile, with huge upside for marketers who get the interactive value and simplicity thing figured out.

To be successful in today’s energetic marketplaces, companies must project a integrated message across all communication materials – corporate identity, packaging, advertising, promotions and web presence. Companies must quickly amalgamate all of their core messages into a single, powerfully unique selling proposition in order to convince impatient, value-minded consumers. But the approach must be optimized for the delivery channel. The implementation techniques are very different.

Why Simplicity is Paramount
Simple means clear, consistent and easy to find. It all starts with leaders who aren’t afraid to think independently. To explore and map new ways through unchartered physical and virtual spaces so that people, actions and events can be connected in creative, compelling ways. It ends with those same leaders being willing to hear and communicate truth. It involves calculated risks. It requires the insight and courage to involve communication specialists in the development of business strategy.

The leader’s objective is to build a “landmark,” not just become “scenery” in a target market. Landmarks are easy to spot, but often endure on the basis of considerable underlying complexity. They don’t necessarily have to be large in stature, but they must be unique in appearance. They are always enduring and prominent. They are obvious.

The return on simplification is huge. By providing the right information the right way at the right time, messages resonate and trigger responses that deliver actual sales and maximize valuation. By distilling content, leaders are able to spend less to build and sustain differentiated brands. Investing in a singular positive image that is optimized for each medium has leveragable impact across the company’s entire portfolio.

So go ahead: make your long, long story short and bring your brand alive.

Distilling Your Brand’s True Brew

This post is a continuation to my earlier post on Simplicity in Marketing.

Creating a Simple but Effective Blueprint
Distilling the real essence of your message is an intense process that requires quality input, an understanding of goals, analysis and tough decisions. It involves regimented facilitation, real-world testing and expert packaging. There is no magic off the-shelf blueprint that allows you to make the intricacy transparent. However, brand specialists and expert knwoledge can assist with the refinement process – providing the steering tools and structures to aid and accelerate it. Beyond packaging the ideas for ease of consumption, these objectives can enable your company to swiftly convert a business model’s strategic objectives into actionable and profitable milestones that drive momentum, orchestrate positioning exercises and test acceptance.

Most executives want their company’s marketing and advertising messages to be “stylish, sophisticated or professional ” and if possible, “clever.” too. This pasteurized checklist is at the heart of what is leading many competitors toward a fruitless state of uniformity. They’re all saying the same things and trying to lead the customer to the same conclusion.

Eager to demonstrate their “proof-of-authenticity,” many of these same executives are afraid to leave any spec for scrutiny or proof point out of their sales proposition. The extensive detail is perceived as validation. This “everything-but-the-kitchen-sink” approach is an easy way out. And, its net effect is usually the exact contrary of what was intended. This plain vanilla granularity just causes more puzzlement that doesn’t help in any sales conversion or market expansion. Besides, there is brand degeneration resulting from decentralized company silos – corporate divisions and operating units which propagate self-styled messages, positions and identities, often ill-timed, hastily designed and poorly executed.

Think Smart and Work Hard
Product Differentiation and Service Demarcation is often the result of simply noticing what your competitors have overlooked and providing that instead of everything else. Think of the Apple iPhone or Gmail. A lack of sacrifice represents unripe positioning.

If your message designs are based on what really interests people, and how they can talk to each other and make easy comparisons, you will find that you can say a lot less. Strive to find and use the language and questions that real people use.

The Truth is Out There
Let your hair down for a second: When you visualize the triumph of your business, is it based on the way things ought to be or the way things really are? The act of arranging information for simplicity then becomes an act of brand and market insight.

Amidst a flood of new age propaganda and mega-efficient delivery mechanisms, human communication is still very much grounded in some enduring truths, and the maxim that those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it is indeed one of them.

While technology is changing exponentially, the hearts of the people using it are inflexible to transform. Most of what’s being sold today as new insight is merely the rediscovery of knowledge we’ve had for centuries but perhaps not acknowledged. The trick is to admit it and leverage it to your advantage. Candor is a guiding principle and Authenticity provides understanding that transcends spin and packaging. As experience counts, you could also learn from the marketing gray hairs who’ve been through a business cycle or two.

Give What the Audience Wants
To see sales patterns and develop a marketing message that incites a desired result, start with age-old human nature, not cold corporate logic. Hence, the content of your brand message must communicate genuinely in the language of the intended audience. For a brand or image to break through the information overlaod and market sauration, it must be based on what the target audience perceives as indispensable and relevant to them. What they want to know and need. Not what you feel is imperative or exciting to them.

Technology can help and create exhilarating opportunities but it can also overwhelm us with choices. Codifying, collecting and making everything accessible in nanoseconds is less important than describing how it’s used – the application context. Instead of speeds and feeds or the rate of data, concentrate on describing your brand’s spirit and how it relates to your audience, reflecting on the people connection and your brand’s heart.

If you wish to harness technology efficiently, improvise all the time and focus on the things that happen behind the patented breakthroughs. Recognize that the real goal for the technology is for it to be as transparent and useful as possible.

Content is still the King (and the Queen too)
Content is and has always been the language of customers. And as mentioned earlier, remember to always communicate from the intended listener’s point of view, not your company’s. Start your brand messaging where employees and customers meet, work backward from their needs. By the way, cracking the code on your customers’ needs and priorities can’t be accomplished “inside”. The key lies outside your business and perhaps outside your industry.

If all else fails, revert to the inevitable and basic questions of your customer: How is your product useful to them? What value does it provide? What’s truly in it for them?

In this sense, your content should be much more than words, pictures and voices. It should evoke emotion – a deeper connect. It should be simple, insightful and compelling. And, it is perhaps Content - the one thing one can't teach a computer to generate, so there is a uniquely human dependency. Respect that. After all, the content you develop is what will help you bond with your customers and if driven right, help you achieve world-class results.

Why Simplicity is the New Marketing Paradigm

New age businesses are pumping out new ideas and knowledge at an unprecedented rate. As our recent marketing assignment for a radically new product would vindicate, the new age chant seems to be - more, better, faster, louder and most importantly simpler (think Twitter).

For marketing and design professionals, simplicity might well be the decade’s greatest differentiator. It’s the timeless power to do more with less. To be heard at all amidst the electronic chaos, let alone be clearly understood, a brand’s marketing communications must refine and talk the essential truth as plainly as possible.

Have you ever noticed how there now seems to be a “time” for every business and technology idea, and when that time comes, the idea springs into the minds of several people simultaneously? The next big thing emerges overnight. From categories like social media networks, niche portals and concepts like trending topics, social buying, to the fancy fonts and the reds and greens to prop up corporate identities. What’s up with that?

With millions and millions of people receiving indistinguishable data and stimuli, should it be any surprise that many have the same epiphanies at about the same time? This phenomenon gives overnight birth to entire industry spaces awash with venture capital and generous seed money. It also paralyzes decision-makers.

Consumer Minds are more Saturated (and Confused) than ever before.

Business information is doubling every three years. That’s about twice as much stuff every 1000 days. And, the web-centric among us are now bombarded with something like a billion different URLs. Researchers tell us there’ll be ten times that many in two years.

Let’s face it; we’re all developing internal defenses to guard against the blight of buzzwords and boilerplate verbiage. The sheer volume of media available and density of communications is making many potential customers indifferent, if not immune to even the most persuasive value propositions.

Stuff all looks and sounds the same. It’s all mission critical. It all improves shareholder value. And it’s all “e-this” and “i-that”. Even the once refreshingly clever names of techie start-ups have become astonishingly analogous.

Our adaptive brains automatically discount the predictable. The vagueness and overkill is bad news for people who need to promote and sell technology products and services. So they throw more up against the wall in fruitless efforts to see what will stick. Case in point is the scam-tainted, overvalued IPL: It was relatively easy for flush new mobile companies to drop millions of dollars for mundane IPL ads, but what will any of them really accomplish?)

Let’s Just Cut to the Chase

The solution is Simplicity. Simplicity is the result of making the intricate clear. It greatly improves the performance of information. The cost of confusion is greater than the task of making things simple. Simplicity reduces advertising and public relations expenditures.

The key to message simplicity is painfully obvious: focus. Selectively exclude messages and media, which matter less, so that attention is given to those that matter most. That’s it. You need read no further. Just as simple a concept as losing weight for cheap: eat less, exercise more. Duh.

Okay, like weight loss and fitness, simplicity is also a great paradox, an absurdity because achieving it is known to be very hard work. Intuitively obvious. Practically difficult. And sometimes, you need a little coaching to provide the requisite inspiration and discipline. So where do you start? I’ll tell you soon.

Clients, Wives and One Night Stands

Its Time to Nurture Clients as Family

Okay, let me tell you upfront that this is not a seedy take on extra-marital bang bangs but an allegory of client-agency relationships. As we move ever closer to the next frontier, there is no doubt that we are seeing a momentous alteration in the role of advertising and creative agencies. There are two key areas of change currently taking place. The first is, of course, the rising might of the New Media – read the power of the internet, social media, twitter, facebook, google, the eworks. The second and more understated, is the role ad agencies now play in developing a client's marketing and sales strategy and the growth of mature, continuing client relationships, like an enduring marriage.

The area of most spectacular change is, of course, New Media, as clients and agencies have become more adroit in using online advertising & electronic marketing as an effectual part of the overall marketing blend. Yet, many clients and many agencies are still not fully sentient of the opportunities available from marketing through the Internet and as time will surely tell, it will be much bigger and better than any of us can ever picture.

Lets now come back to our original reference of client and agency symbiosis. In the early days, agencies dealing with 'below the line' advertising or even conventional style advertising were driven by single one time projects or rather creative ‘one night stands’. Before and behind us stretched an apparently infinite set of very short term, tactical work, some of which might occasionally add up to something substantially larger and attractive, but still mostly one off projects. And customarily, the role of advertising agencies was to come up with the Big Idea first. Increasingly however, the spotlight now is to brainstorm, research, test and develop a longer term stratagem first. Once this is in place, the big ideas develop in tune with the strategy.

These long-term projects place greater importance on consumer research and the increased work put into client planning means that advertising & sales promotion activity has now become a much closer understanding of the consumer and the client needs. In turn, this has meant that strategic advertising and niche promotions have become more refined like a courtship, pregnant with unique dynamics that fit closely into the core offer of the targeted brand.

Many agencies fail to understand this and blame annoyed clients instead, reluctant to admit that something deep down in us still yearns for the good old one-time project days. We agency types just can’t kick the sales driven habit of running after those ‘one-night’ projects and as a result, our appearance at the client family table sometimes starts to look rather dubious. To continue the allegory, we may be pretending to eat, enjoying the food but apart, from that, our table manners still sometimes send out suspicious and wrong messages.

However, as caring wives, clients are increasingly enthusiastic to listen to what we have to say and welcome our participation as strategic advisers of the family. To improve that further still, we have to focus more on trust, building the business kindred links we have with our existing customers and ditch our ‘more orders, old sales’ unattached mentality. Unless we do that, the sound, valuable business advice and solid support we can give will go unheeded and a major opportunity to grow our business and industry will be mislaid.

We should not let that happen and break our client-centric families; the main reason because anyone who does continue to try to increase their business solely through new projects alone will find it more and more, difficult to grow. Clients are willing to work with us in new ways and the potential for significant growth and expansion is clearly still there. Perhaps, it's time to "say "adieu" to the one-off project and embrace clients as our newly wed wives. Shower them your love and they’ll love you back. After all, you are family.

Not So Secret Recipes For Employee Motivation

Recently, I was called to speak on “Employee Motivation” at a Business Luncheon organized by a Travel brand discussing ‘Innovation in Business’. Yes, the buzz term – “Innovation” is still very much in Business. The organizers wanted to know how my company with its little crew has been able to withstand the recessionary winds and continue sailing on while our bigger step brothers are almost on SOS rescue missions. Real innovation, hard work or sheer luck; what was our secret recipe? Maybe a mix of all but I would stress more on ‘Team Spirit’ of our small but extraordinarily motivated workforce.

As the advertising and creative industry moves into the next century, everything and nothing has changed for all those involved. And if this seems a rather incongruous statement, let us first mull over our parental ancestors - Adam and Eve. Way back before time began, Eve motivated and Adam succumbed to what could be described as the first incentive - the legendary apple.

I think this is where the root of the changes, or not, in our industry lie. Certain fundamentals of human behavior always remain the same irrespective of time, fashion and history. There will always be a need for people to be motivated and rewarded in their personal and professional lives. So while the foundations of our whole business remain intact, performance is always influenced by behavior. It is all about stimulus and enticement to create the 'best' from people, which of course ultimately impacts organizational culture, brand success and ultimately, bottom line.

The changes that companies will experience, and my company is no exception, are the pace and way that we work. With the advent of technology and science, the physical 'make up' of staff performance programmes has of course evolved. Back in the 70's when new companies formed and management mantra evolved, employees may have aspired to be awarded a Polaroid camera or a Beegees trilogy, whereas today the sky is really and literally the limit. In fact, there is this incentive company which arranges space rides aboard experimental spacecrafts and even jet fighters for a price for your star performers.

Now, new technology and new products develop at such a rate that the challenge is too keep one step ahead and explore just what really is cutting edge and what will actually inspire. This is certainly true of companies worldwide as they strive to keep one step ahead of global product development.

The advance in technology also reflects the way that people have developed. Employees have become far more empowered, and expect to make an active contribution to the management of the organization they work for. Not surprisingly, with their participation and dedication increasing, so does their need for incentive and reward. A staff performance programme must understand what actually drives individuals, as a change in approach is the key to influencing a shift in long term behavior. As for the ongoing debate in the industry as to whether cash, vouchers, merchandise or indeed travel are the most effective mechanisms for a performance based incentive scheme, I think they all play an dynamic part.

We are a ‘incentive middle-of-the-road neutral’ company and actually try hard to implement schemes that will not only encourage staff but make sure that they are equipped with the right skills to get the most out of their individual and therefore total performance. We also spend a great deal of time and investment in inspiring our own people to commit to our brand and culture. It is absolutely crucial for our success, just as it is for our clients, that as an organization we have to have a well-trained, motivated, strong and devoted workforce.

At our company, we believe that whether you use a trip to Dubai, a custom designed IPod or a tailored incentive voucher scheme to egg on your employees, the end result remains the same. It is about identifying exactly what will keep an individual motivated to 'practice' the values of the organization he/she works for. Based on this behavior, lifestyle and aspirations, you can tailor a motivation programme that covers every incentive tool or just one, but it must be part of a clear strategy that encourages employees to take accountability for enhancing their company brand.

Let’s take a branded retail outlet for instance. The manager, the cashier, the merchandiser and the accountant will all have very dissimilar demands of a synchronized business performance programme. So that is where the challenge lies. In tailoring a programme which 'speaks' to everyone individually and yet at the same time, can potentially make use of every motivational and incentive element available. The programme must also understand how each of these people plays a critical part in their company brand culture.

As to the future of employee motivation, the logistics are certainly shifting - 'e' gifts and online incentive schemes have grown and matured to sophisticated limits, travel has becomes more exploratory, and employee lifestyles these days are increasingly urbane. However the nucleus of any business, and of course the industry at large, is about motivating people to give their best performance - to build triumphant brands across the world.

So, by 2100, staff will probably want a trip to the Moon, reward points to stay at an underwater deep sea hotel, vouchers to buy longevity pills, etcetera but these would be still just merchandise used to induce and incentivize employees as part of a staff performance programme. And I think this is what makes the business of employee motivation so interesting - the fact that we would have changed dramatically and yet, since the world began, NOT at all. Eve perhaps, has a lot to answer for!

The Evolution of Online

It was once a universal truth that online advertising plays poor relative to the creative nobility of the advertising & marketing agency world. In creative terms, online is considered perhaps less a poor cousin and more dwarfish stepbrother with one eye blind, hearing impaired and a speech impediment. For this reason, the Internet was once viewed solely as a place for direct response campaigns, and certainly not to be trusted with building a brand or driving awareness.

But the ugly duckling is slowly becoming the swan as it moves out of its infancy, and starts having cool haircuts and trying to find a girlfriend. With this, the online creative scene is finally embracing the power, vigour and sexual allure that relative youth can bring, while its daddy reaches for the vitamin pill and looses all sense of rhythm. But what’s behind this blossoming of online? Now that it’s come of age, what is the proper pursuit for a medium that for so long could but crawl, dribble and manage a few simple words like “click here”?

It all comes down to people. The people doing it, the people paying for it and the people consuming it. The people doing it are better.

There was a time when online ads were largely produced by designers who, despite being good designers, were not ‘creatives’ schooled in conceptual thinking. “Knocking out” a few banners as an afterthought, based on whatever design concept they’d used in the header of a client’s website lead to ads devoid of an idea and unable to communicate a proposition to an audience. As creatives replace designers in digital agencies, this problem fades.

The slow down in the advertising market as a whole has benefited digital agencies. Good planners, account people and creatives have begun to consider online as a career option - with the industry growing, a future online looks more secure than in traditional agency roles. The more good people, the better the level of work, which in turn attracts bright graduates to the industry. It’s still the case that most creatives looking for their first job favour big ad agencies, but the reality of life in a traditional shop is often frustrating for creative free spirits. Top accounts being bagged by senior teams and internal competition gives rise to a viper pit atmosphere. Within the online space, there’s room for bright young teams to work on edgy ideas for major brands from the off – and with the relatively fast turnaround on digital projects, they aren’t stuck servicing the same account day in day out. All this makes for a creative vitality producing better and better ideas on the Internet.

The people buying it understand and appreciate it
Agencies can’t take all the credit. The increasingly savvy marketing manager is embracing online as never before and there is something of a “viral” effect taking place as web-literate decision-makers move jobs, helping grow online budgets in companies that once overlooked digital entirely. And with the legendary measurability of online including SEO and SEM, the talented marketer has the tools to persuade boards to release cash.

But it’s always been measurable. What’s changed is that strong brand building creative ideas capable of motivating customers are offering brands the ability to gain unprecedented consumer insights. It’s no exaggeration to say this is transforming the way brands market themselves - FMCG companies now have tangible relationships with the customer unmediated by the big multiples. This is nothing short of revolutionary and is slowly beginning to release the kind of budgets that provide scope for bigger ideas.

The people buying it have the money for it
Marketplace factors that have threatened traditional agencies are benefiting the upstarts. Audience fragmentation on TV, longer working hours and the break down of traditional demographic groups all benefit a highly targeted medium like the net. So while budgets have gone down in the last one year, the proportion of spend online has gone up 50% year on year since 2004. Meanwhile, increasingly brand literate consumers are demanding new things from their communications.

The people consuming it are responding positively
With broadband users accounting for many home Internet connections, an assured good experience means that consumers are spending more time online in greater and greater numbers. The internet now accounts for approximately 10% of all media and news consumption3 and within certain demographics, the Internet is almost the only place to guarantee a satisfactory ROI – the average 21-34 year old spends over 28 hours a month on the web. The more time consumers spend online, and the more money they have with them, the more online as a branding medium becomes relevant. As we know from the offline world, it’s a great deal easier to inspire loyalty and sell premium priced products to consumers who engage with the brand.

From passive to interactive real-time communication
Online excels at engagement - interrupting someone with a 60 second TV ad, does not compare to the possible “time with brand” achievable online. The best online campaigns can capture attention by interruption with a 10-20 second ad and keep that attention with entertaining and informative content on a brand site. The end point of this chain of engagement could be a data-capture opportunity or a purchase, but the motivating factor for the customer is entertainment and information. If the creative standards are high enough en route, the customer may spend up to 15 minutes with your brand before going back to what they were doing.

Using time efficiently with brand
With an entertaining brand experience a good digital agency can keep a consumer engaged. But the key to understanding the potential for brands online lies in what a business can do with that opportunity. Until the Internet arrived, brand communication, driven by TV ads was characterised by the passive consumer receiving messages. It was a one-way process and the advertiser had little genuine insight into response. In order to combine brand experience with consumer insight, DM was brought into the mix. The draw back with Direct marketing is that high creative standards tend to be prohibitively costly for all but the highest ticket purchases (cars, etc). Now that the Internet can deliver on the creative impact and audience reach necessary for brand advertising, its unique strength comes into play. The web combines the reach of TV with the targeting and consumer insight of traditional DM.

In order to benefit from this powerful combination, businesses must embrace a communications process that recognises the importance of a seamless, entertaining journey from ad to transaction. It’s not sufficient to rely on highly creative advertising that simply sells “off the page”. Effective digital strategies require a combination of creative ads with engaging websites, insightful information architecture and business processes geared up to receive and understand the information customers are prepared to give as they interact. Done correctly, joined up branding becomes a virtuous circle where valuable consumer insights are gathered at each part of the customer journey and are fed back into the creative process to develop a more and more engaging brand experience.

The future & beyond
Those businesses that embrace the power of the Internet as a branding medium now will make considerable gains in the future. Higher speed broadband (2MB speeds and upwards will be the norm) will enable companies to deliver richer content and in so doing they will be able to harness consumer interaction more easily. As web use becomes ever more convenient, consumers will continue to spend more time online and will look for brand propositions that deliver entertainment, service and convenience. Brands that understand the importance of a consistent two-way relationship and have the crucial business processes in place, will benefit from a trading environment that brings them as close to their customers as a medieval merchant once was.

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Safe Shopping, Happy Shopping !

Although my Cheque book is heavily battered after a recent tax related splurge, July I hope would bring some solace - as sales galore! "Prices slashed here", "Liquidation" sales there and "Special Offers" abound... The temptations are enough to make even the most hardened miser rethink their ban on credit plastic. After spending the entire month of June throwing money at the Government, the prospect of a gift to oneself sounds pleasing and even well-deserved.

Many people fool themselves into thinking that if they buy something on sale they are saving money (as I always wanted to believe). The truth is that whether the item is discounted by 50% or offered at 25% you are still spending your money. Smart shoppers generally wait for the sales to stock up on items they need rather than what they want. Many of us (including me), however, do not practice self-control and buy merchandise at full price and then splurge on sale goods because the offers look so tempting. The problem with this type of shopping is that we end up with 15 white silk shirts, unworn Van Heusen socks and a very happy shopkeeper!

If we took some time to add up how much money we waste in a year by succumbing to these impulse buys, we would sink into despair (believe this man). Let’s face it; most of us (bloggers, that is) could survive for a year without buying a single thing (except groceries). Designer clothes, premium footwear, electronic gadgets and gizmo’s are not vital to our survival.

So to get the impulse shopping monster under control you have to devise a strategy that will make you think before you hand over your cash for that gold cufflink. You simply need to impose a 24-hour moratorium on all purchases, which are say, over Rs. 100. During this 24-hour period, the dialogue between "I need" and "I want" will go on in your head. This is when you should start to think about Japanese aesthetics (stay with me, this has relevance), in particular the Japanese concept of "Wabi". Wabi is about cultivating a simpler life, viewing excessive consumption as a burden that diminishes rather than enhances our existence. Giving yourself a night to think it over will take you away from the seduction of the retail environment.

If we take a step back from the lure of massive megamalls, designer labels, sublimely "buy that" mall music and persuasive shop assistants, we will recognize and realize when we have overstepped reasonable limits. I am not saying that you must survive on bread and live in a hut but rather ask yourself if that new LCD TV purchase is going to materially improve the quality of your life. You will find that 90% of the time the answer will be no (besides LED TVs are in/LCDs are passé). This awareness of the tricks and triggers that incite us into buying action is half the battle, the other half is a commitment to the goal of saving. So remember, when you go shopping, buy safe and spend safe. Extra cash in hand and the Bank is worth priceless when you have an emergency. Happy Shopping.

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Viral Fever Blues

I am sick with a mysterious viral infection that has worsened day after day – for the last 14 days and it continues to aggravate – spoiling my work, my daily dose of ‘hi-bye’ emails, web surfing, googling new discoveries, reading illicit stuff, Jay Leno, HBO and a whole lot of intensely important things of my everyday existence.

One of my favorite daily rituals consists of waking up early each morning, brewing a big cuppa of hot herbal tea and returning to bed for about an hour to sip my Camellia Sinensis while reading the printer-fresh copy of the daily newspaper that lands on my doorway during the early hours of the sunrise. It's a calming little routine that gives me the chance to shake off the previous night's sleep (or no sleep) while catching up all the news, gossips, events and scoops of the (hopefully) new day ahead.

Lately, I confess, the financial news has been rather bewildering. On one hand, vapid tales of a total economic slowdown and mass layoffs have become a regrettable staple of each day's news. Yet at the same time, I keep reading reports and studies of how Creative agencies like mine which also employ temporary workers are magically faring quite well amid all the downward slump. What a piece of crap!

As one reporter wrote "Part of the advertising industry's elasticity can be credited to the increase in demand for highly skilled professionals, who hitherto were not part of the temporary employment pool." The article went on to cite data from some acronymistic trade association which indicated that temporary design, editorial and media staff were among the fastest-growing categories this year, based on industry profits. Wheh!

And then, of course, there are articles like the one I read this today morning, which says that shopper confidence worldwide increased during February indicating that positive consumer perceptions of the current economic meltdown were increasing far faster than actually expected for the next six months or so. One more piece of crap!

Faced by these assorted and utterly confusing pointers, I have realized it’s pretty pointless to complain and an apposite time to stop my insane grumblings, view my viral sickness as a holiday break, stay at home, savour my camelia infusion, listen to soulful music and Seize the Day. After all, its free, doesn’t bill my credit card and should probably reinvigorate, refresh and rejuvenate me for all the uncertainties ahead. And thank god, this is no crap!

Ambition in a Bottle

Yesterday, I found myself sitting across the lunch table with my friend - a successful product designer who's been hired as a design specialist by a celebrated perfume brand, headquartered in Spain.

The problem the brand was besieged with, my friend explained, was how to create a new Perfume bottle (and a Deodorant canister) that would appeal to young 30something people who are career oriented and work for high-energy new economy startups, people who work from home and on the move using an assortments of tech gadgets almost as frequently as they work from traditional offices. Thus far, he added, the perfume industry has taken this notion of ambition and personal mobility quite literally and the aim was to create new aspirational scents housed in trendy tech-tinged bottles and cans that boosted their confidence and conveyed a unique differentiation.

My friend said that he was cynical of this approach but, he admitted, he didn't really know where to start. It's one thing to evaluate critically the current thinking, he confessed, but another thing altogether to know how to actually improve upon it.

In an effort to be helpful as I come from the same league, I suggested that the consumer ‘wants’ aren’t always really about the brands you own or in this case, how the perfume bottle looks at the shelf. Rather, it's about ideas and the sublimal connection, something much more than just who the consumer is and what he/she does for a living. It's more about being true to the individual and having that truth reflected in the products we design and the advertising we create.

We both agreed it was a tricky goal and I'm not sure how this might eventually influence my friend’s thinking, but I believe that it can only lead in the right direction and hopefully, the right fragrance in the right bottle!

Positive Consumerism

In Advertising and Marketing, Does any one care for the Consumer?

What on earth is Psychology doing in Marketing? Psychologists are, of course, strange mortals who are treated by others with, occasionally, well-placed cynicism. Let me tell you, if you are ever trying to get rid of someone at a social gathering or are trying to make them edgy, try telling them you are a psychologist or a psychiatrist and watch them suddenly change posture, scratch their ear fiendishly and finally retreat at speed to refill their already-full glass.

But Psychology is not a black art and it’s no secret that the Marketing and Advertising world is full of psychologists, amateur or otherwise. Coming from a totally different background to most agency staff, I tend to look at things from a different point of view. And I suppose that's why I am constantly perplexed why the personal likes and dislikes of clients have such a enormous participation into the final decision making process.

You may, or may not, be aware of the expression 'Social Loafing’. This is a phenomenon which occurs when you have a large number of people working towards a common goal and, together they are less productive than they would have been if they had been working as individuals. Now, if a psychologist was to decide to conduct research into the details of ‘Social Loafing’, the last person they would ask to identify the variables that impact on productivity is the boss (or the client). This is because the boss/client will have every kind of preconceived idea which will colour their judgement. You get the idea. The objective way to do it would be either to observe dispassionately exactly what is going on or better still, talk to the people and see what they say.

So why is that the personal preferences of clients and agency personnel for that matter get built into the process that arrives as the final creative execution of any promotional marketing or advertising concept? After all, the target audience is rarely the board of directors on the client company. And when you look at the people who make the final creative decision, they all have different agendas. The Marketing Manager wants to sell something that is original and stimulating, inventive and chock full of freshness. The Advertising Agency wants to win awards and design/produce something that makes the rest of the world sit up and take note.

But what about the end Consumer? Do they really care if the advertisement/promotion is nominated for a "Best Sales Promotion" or "Best Advertisement" award? Does it matter to them if the advertisement promotion is held up as a signpost of the way in which the industry is heading? It seems to me that no many occasions it's the down-to-earth and sensible approach which wins the day. Take for example, the ‘buy one, get one’ promotion which offers an extra product free.

Added value is hardly original but, after all, the shopper buying the product, actually likes the product so what better incentive could there be than to give them more of the product they like? And before agency staffs hang their heads in despair, there is no reason why a tried and tested technique can't be give extra creative sparkle. It’s proven psychological fact that most people would choose a $50 bill today rather than a $100 bill promised next week. So maybe the creative/advertising industry should be looking in greater detail at what the consumer actually wants rather than what both the client and the agency, want the customer to want. You get the picture?

Note: At our company Ideasonic, we ensure that the Customers needs are addressed first, coupled with our creative juice and the clients requirements.