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SEPTEMBER 2005 $7.95 NZ$8.95

BEYOND 2040: CAN NEWSPAPERS SURVIVE? THE BRAVE NEW WORLD OF BRANDING

PREMIER ISSUE NO.3 www.marketingmag.com.au

POCKETING THE PINK DOLLAR P r i n t P o s t N o . 3 8 1 6 6 7/ 0 0 3 0 1

MARKETING PREMIER ISSUE #3 SEP EPTEMBER 2005

Marketing

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Seeking shelter How to weather a media storm 23/8/05 7:48:41 PM

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CONTENTS 004

010

www.marketingmag.com.au

SPECIAL FEATURES 010 FIVE OF THE BEST

020

In an ongoing series spanning 2005’s three Marketing Premier Issues, we chat with five of Australia’s leading marketers about their lives, careers and how they got to where they are.

020 MINI MANIA The MINI is undoubtedly an iconic image. Catherine Woods investigates the little car that could.

026 WHEN CUSTOMISATION IS KEY Branding in the modern age is all about customisation, writes Martin Lindstrom.

032 POCKETING THE PINK DOLLAR

026

Australian advertising agencies and marketing professionals are zeroing in on the ‘pink dollar’. Andrew Block and Lynda Edwards report.

036 NEW MODELS OF VALUE IN AGENCY-SIDE MARKETING… According to Chris Grannell, marketing agencies that place creativity above all else are doomed to failure.

038 A TALE OF TWO SPONSORSHIPS Simon Baggs reports on how Kia Motors and Garnier have set about courting results at the Australian Open.

063 MEDIA ZONE

032

Whether you’re considering your first foray into advertising or planning long-term campaigns for blue-chip clients, Media Zone is your prime resource for informative reviews of TV, print, out-of-home and new media.

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006 CONTENTS

www.marketingmag.com.au

COLUMNS 042

044

MEDIA STORM DYNAMICS Antoni Lee braves the tempest to report on how effective responses can protect an organisation’s brand and reputation.

044

IS YOUR BRAND GOING TO HEAVEN OR HELL? Dominic Walsh looks at the world of branding and moral standards, revealing the power of conservatism in determining commercial fate.

046

BACK TO THE FUTURE FOR SALES MANAGEMENT Beverley Jones explains how new profiling software is allowing companies to effectively ‘x-ray’ candidates and existing sales teams to maximise sales growth.

048

054

IP RIGHTS – THE REWARD OF INNOVATION It’s called ‘intellectual property’, and the smartest thing to do is to make sure yours is adequately protected, writes Vikki Dahl.

050

BUILD YOU UP, TEAR YOU DOWN If your business has benefited from a positive media profile, then you’re definitely riding for a fall. With due care, this need not be fatal, writes Peter Mills.

052

WE NEEDED SOMEONE… YESTERDAY Jacqui Pollock examines the barriers that slow down the hiring process and how to overcome them.

056 058

REGULARS 008

KIELY Michael Kiely

054

WHO ARE YOU TALKING TO? Tony Lambaart

056

RECIPE OF THE MONTH

058

GUERRILLA GUIDE Geoffrey Bowll

062

RETRO MARKETING Today’s views on yesterday’s news

098

PROSE AND CONS Con Stavros

Group Publisher Grant Arnott grant.arnott@niche.com.au Managing Editor Sam McConnell sam.mcconnell@niche.com.au Media Zone Editor Tami Dower tami.dower@niche.com.au Features Editor Tami Dower tami.dower@niche.com.au Sub Editor Madeleine Swain madeleine.swain@niche.com.au Production Coordinator Jeanne Tan jeanne.tan@niche.com.au Digital Prepress Emma Meagher emma.meagher@niche.com.au National Advertising Manager Elise Neill elise.neill@niche.com.au Editorial Submissions marketing@niche.com.au Tel: 03 9525 5566 Subscriptions Circulation Manager Edward Gough edward.gough@niche.com.au Subscription Inquiries Tel: 03 9525 5566 Fax: 03 9525 5628 subscriptions@niche.com.au Marketing is a publication of Niche Media Pty Ltd ABN 13 064 613 529 Level 3, 165 Fitzroy Street St Kilda VIC 3182 Tel +613 9525 5566 Fax +613 9525 5628 Chairman & Group Publisher Nicholas Dower Managing Director Paul Lidgerwood Finance Director John Clarke Studio Design Manager Keely Atkins keely.atkins@niche.com.au Printing Southern Colour (VIC) Pty Ltd Tel: 03 9701 5544 .

Marketing ISSN 1441–7863 © 2003 Niche Media Pty Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, internet, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers. While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information in this publication, the publishers accept no responsibility or liability for any errors, omissions or resultant consequences including any loss or damage arising from reliance on information in this publication. The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily endorsed by the editor, publisher or Niche Media Pty Ltd. Niche Media Privacy Policy This issue of Marketing may contain offers, competitions, surveys, subscription offers and premiums that, if you choose to participate, require you to provide information about yourself. If you provide information about yourself to NICHE MEDIA, NICHE MEDIA will use the information to provide you with the products or services you have requested (such as subscriptions). We may also provide this information to contractors who provide the products and services on our behalf (such as mail houses and suppliers of subscriber premiums and promotional prizes). We do not sell your information to third parties under any circumstances, however the suppliers of some of these products and services may retain the information we provide for future activities of their own, including direct marketing. NICHE MEDIA will also retain your information and use it to inform you of other NICHE MEDIA promotions and publications from time to time. If you would like to know what information NICHE MEDIA holds about you please contact The Privacy Officer, NICHE MEDIA PTY LTD, Level 3 / 165 Fitzroy Street ST KILDA VIC 3182..

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008 KIELY Michael Kiely was editor of Marketing from 1985 to 1995 and has been executive editor since 1995. He is an independent consultant in the direct marketing and brand strategy disciplines, a national director of the Australian Direct Marketing Association and was inducted into the ADMA Hall of Fame in 2001.

All you gotta do is act naturally.

F

licking between Big Brother on an elimination night and rock band INXS’s live auditions for a new lead singer to replace the disgracefullysuicided Michael Hutchence (who shared a similar sexual fetish to many British Conservative cabinet ministers), I wondered at Andy Warhol’s prediction that each of us would one day enjoy 15 minutes of fame.

Why do viewers find the antics of a bunch of talentless oiks endlessly fascinating? We can’t get enough of the misleadingly-labelled ‘reality TV’. It seems that our taste for the pre-digested, over-produced TV show has been jaded. Even high production programs like the wall-to-wall crime scene investigation shows fake a reality atmosphere.

Even when the oiks aren’t talentless, the form of popular shows is tending toward the post-modern, deconstructionist (better too late than never). For instance, in an episode of one of a million shows featuring the always-jolly Jamie Oliver, his wife’s tears can be heard offcamera as one of the boy-genius’s assistants reports on media reports that Jamie has had an affair with someone in a restaurant somewhere in Germany. (Will Jools believe his denials? Did he do it?)

The question poses itself: what is driving this hunger for these undigested, raw productions – in which the creators of the program are the talent (or non-talent) themselves? Why has the theatre sports model grown to dominate current entertainment tastes?

I believe it can be summed up in one word: authenticity. And this word has significant significance for marketers. In this context, authenticity can be defined as ‘a genuine expression of character’. In a world where you can’t believe the words of our political leaders, where the credibility of formerly respected public institutions has been shredded by scandal, where trust is in short supply, people seem to need authenticity.

MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2005

If you are in the business of ‘manufacturing’ the image of a corporation or product – the business of branding – you had better learn about authenticity. “To succeed in this business you only need one thing – sincerity,” says one of Murray Ball’s cartoon admen in his longrunning series in Ad News charting the exploits of the ad agency WAN&K. “And when you learn how to fake that, you’ve got it made.” The dilemma for brand manufacturers is contained in this gag. How do you fake sincerity in a way that cannot be detected? You can’t.

Authenticity is the mother lode of good fortune for a brand. Consumers stick like crazy to authentic brands because they resonate deep inside where the inner child sits waiting for the warm feeling of security it gets when it believes it can trust in someone. The standout case study of authenticity is the Tylenol poisoning case in 1982. An extortionist injected poison into capsules of Johnson & Johnson’s marketleading painkiller in the US and several consumers died. True to its corporate mission of protecting its customers (J & J’s Baby Oil slogan: “protection for baby, protection for you”), the company willingly withdrew the product from the shelves across the US for several months – losing millions in sales and giving competitors a free run to eat into its market share – indeed, restructure the brand landscape. The downside was enormous, but the company did not hesitate for an instant.

It knew what it had to do because it knew who it was. This single act of authenticity did more to cement the company’s positioning as a genuine carer than any amount of advertising.

When Tylenol returned to the shelves, not only did it win back the share it had lost during its absence, it gained new share and went on to take an even more dominant position. The revenue lost in the time it was off the shelf was quickly recovered.

Consumers responded to authenticity in this case. Authenticity also explains why Nike

was not ultimately damaged by the ‘Asian sweatshop’ scandals. Nike never presented itself as a ‘fair competitor’. Its positioning is a ‘win at any cost’ ethic (though it would never admit to it – Nike is protected by a cloak of authenticity).

Brand authenticity does not mean being ‘good’. It means being consistently real.

How do you acquire authenticity? First of all, the organisation must have a real personality based on its motivations and values. Such companies are often founded by inspired and visionary individuals. Every great company has such a birth. Authenticity accumulates as the organisation acts naturally.

It’s hard to be authentic if your primary motive is to exploit consumers and extract the maximum from them by any means. If the dominant motivation of an organisation is to give genuine advantages to its customers – making their lives better in real, not bullshit ways – this motivation will be detected under the layers of marketing-speak we use to separate our true natures from consumers.

Organisations can lose their way and lose touch with their authentic selves. This usually precipitates a brand crisis. Time and time again, when I am called into solve brand issues like slumping sales, the answer lies not in new tactics or even new strategies. It can be found in reconnecting with the genuine nature of the organisation – its real self.

Once this is done, everything flows naturally. Internal stakeholders are aligned, consumers understand the brand and performance jumps. Brand management then becomes easy. Once you understand who you are, it’s not so hard being you. As Ringo sings, “All I gotta do is act naturally.” M

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010 MARKETING PEOPLE – FIVE OF THE BEST FIVE OF AUSTRALIA’S FINEST MARKETERS TALK ABOUT THEIR LIVES, CAREERS AND HOW THEY GOT TO WHERE THEY ARE.

SMILE FOR THE CAMERA

Ted Todd is living the Australian dream. After enjoying tremendous success through his Ted’s Camera Store chain, the Hungarian migrant is testament to the power of hard work and some instinctive marketing smarts.

Sam McConnell reports.

A

sk Ted Todd about the secret to his success and he won’t bore you with the standard set of business clichés. In fact, the founder of Ted’s Camera Stores couldn’t be more succinct when explaining the philosophy behind his success. “What made the business very successful was my belief in ‘no bullshit’. I discovered very early on that you should should actually see customers as people rather than just customers.”

A simple concept, although it’s one to which many businesses pay lip service and yet still fail to embrace. So where did it all start for Ted Todd?

“Mine is a fairly chequered background. I was born Jewish, which was a bit unlucky in 1941 in Hungary. I left with my mother, my stepstepfather and one brother in 1956 after the Hungarian Revolution. At the time, we had two cousins left in the whole world – about 50 family fami ly members were killed in the Holocaust.”

When Todd and his family arrived in Australia, none of them could speak English and money was tight. As soon as he was old enough, Todd began work.

“I did all kinds of things. You name it, I did it. Everything from picking grapes in Mildura to holding metal bits for the electrical welders, cutting hot rubber at the Dunlop shoe factory, working as a storeman at the Red Tulip chocolate factory, plus carpentry and building.”

Todd’s work ethic was quickly recognised by Red Tulip, which wanted to place him in its management program and make him a partpartner. But Todd couldn’t see himself selling chocolate for ever and soon, purely by accident, ended up working with cameras.

“It basically happened because a friend of mine got a job in a camera camera store. He was asked by a friend of his boss who ran another very famous camera store in Sydney, whether he had a friend who could work as as hard as him – that was me.

“I worked for various people in Sydney and eventually became general general manager of Georges Camera Store, probably the best known camera store in Sydney in 1970. I then decided to move the family to Melbourne Melbourne and opened a camera store for myself at 235 Elizabeth Street.”

Having started his business with less than $7000, Todd capitalised capitalised on his existing relationships with suppliers and good name in the industry and made a profit from day one. He quickly grew the business and was eventually running 10 stores throughout Melbourne and the subsuburbs. He sold the business in 1986.

From penniless immigrant to wealthy entrepreneur, Todd’s success is testament to his hard work and dedication to his customers and and staff.

“I discovered that communication is everything. Clear, concise and and focused communication is the name of the game. This led me to instiinstitute some policies that the current owners still use including the famous 45-day exchange policy. I was the first, and one and only, person to say to people, ‘You buy a camera and, if you don’t like it, you don’t have have to tell me why – within six weeks we’ll replace it and you’ll lose no money.

Or if it breaks down we’ll just give you a new one.’

“People go on with a lot of bullshit about selling goods and marketmarketing goods. I look at many advertisements and I roll my eyes and I sort of think, ‘What on earth could they be thinking?’ It’s the same thing when you go to buy something, whether it’s retail or an industrial piece piece of equipment. Salespeople tend to talk in clichés, in nonsense. They tell you bullshit that they know that you know is nonsense.”

Todd also had great success marketing the business, making marketmarketing and promotional activities a priority, not an afterthought.

“I did something that nobody was doing in Melbourne – I spent a large percentage of my projected turnover on promotional activities. activities.

Within those activities, we had two philosophies – one was that we did-

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MARKETING PEOPLE – FIVE OF THE BEST 011

“

Salespeople tend to talk in clichés, in nonsense.

They tell you bullshit that they know that you know is nonsense.

”

n’t do the super-smart, nonsensical bullshit stuff. We talked straight. straight. We had fun. We poked fun at ourselves. We had outrageous, silly sales. sales.

“Two was that we guaranteed that you wouldn’t get a better price price anywhere for 30 days or we’d refund you the difference – the 45-day 45-day exchange guarantee. Plus we did a lot of media both in papers and radio.”

So why sell the business?

“Well a couple of things happened. I was a bit burnt out – I’d been been in my own business for 16 years and before that for nine, so I’d done 25 years.

“Things were going extremely well. I was having some great years and a couple of people came along – Brian Blythe and Ron Evans from f Spotless. They made a very decent offer and I sold it – probably one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made in my entire life.”

Todd says he now realised that he sold it for all the wrong reasons. “I sold it because I was a bit tired, a bit bored and a bit used up. Because at the time I didn’t think big enough to reinvent myself and the business. I can see now that I could have made a lot more money and with a lot more money I could have done an awful lot more for other people, pe ople, which is my main interest in life.”

Three years after selling the business, Todd started Genius Camera Camera and Video in Melbourne, which was also very successful. He soon realised, however, that his heart wasn’t in it – that starting a new store couldn’t make up for his mistake in selling the Ted’s chain. He eventually sold the business to the store’s manager. So where to now for Ted Ted Todd?

“I’m trying to write books. In the intervening years, I’ve run a lot of workshops, mainly on selling and on human relationships – relationrelationship problems in general – which I did at the Canberra Institute.

Institute. I’ve also worked with the Australian Institute of Management and done a few private jobs. I’m involved a little bit with property management, management, but basically I’m retired. I’m more interested in having a good time and I really enjoy volunteer work these days.” M

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012 MARKETING PEOPLE – FIVE OF THE BEST

GEARED FOR GREATNESS

Mastermind of BigPond’s V8 Supercars project, Sandra Davey reflects on the challenges of digital media with Catherine Woods.

A

s a self-confessed sport lover, Sandra Davey relishes her role as head of sport at BigPond. With extensive experience working in the area of internet and rich media technologies, she also promotes the commercial and cultural value of digital content in Australia as national president for the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA).

Davey’s CV reads like a how-to manual for the girl who wants to take over the world, but she doesn’t hesitate to admit that she had a shaky start. “I left high school at 17 – I never had much interest in studying, but I played every possible sport at school.”

MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2005

Fortune favoured her and she credits her first job with shaping and defining her identity. It also inspired her to find her passion for life and work to pursue it. “I was lucky enough to land a job with the Australian Council for Overseas Aid and while I was there had fantastic mentors and role models.”

Motivated and articulate, her confidence is testament to their influence, plus she has proven to be an innovator, working on internet policy issues that have contributed to the development of the local digital content industry. “When I started out, I was completely enamoured with the ability of the internet to change perspectives and inform people and communities,” she recalls. “In the early days, I really believed that the internet would change the world, and it has.”

Davey has pursued her passion for the internet and digital technology through a variety of positions. She established a virtual private network for librarians while employed at the State Library of New South Wales, then worked in management consultancies during the dotcom boom. “I see myself as a generalist who has done pretty much everything from research and analysis through to development of policy,” she says. This experience was honed through positions at the Internet Industry Association and the Law Foundation of NSW. This three-year role found Davey developing internet-based information networks for legal practitioners, work she describes as “incredibly rewarding”.

The role at BigPond required her to develop live coverage of the Australian V8 Supercar Championship Series via the web and to manage the broadband sport portfolio that covers AFL, horseracing and NRL. This proved to be the most complex interactive media project of her career. Technical, cultural and production challenges regularly forced the team to learn new ways to approach their tasks. Davey has spoken at various conferences about her experiences, and she remains enthusiastic about the V8 Supercars project.

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“I think the biggest challenge for us was to deliver high quality broadcast TV to the internet in a way that created something different, that didn’t compete with the broadcast or existing media, wasn’t IPTV, and that engaged the audience.” It required the synchronisation of multiple audio, visual and data feeds in real time using access networks such as satellite, broadcast, the public telephone network and the internet, to then deliver a rich and engaging multimedia experience to users via narrowband, broadband, podcasting, Windows Media Centre and Sony’s new PSP. The V8 Supercars project has seen web development, media and broadcast production, motor sport specialists, telecommunication engineers and broadcast operators come together. Professionals who were previously inexperienced in working together were confronted with daily challenges in crossing the communication divide. It was, Davey admits, a learning curve for all involved, but she never felt her gender was restrictive to her position. “While sport in my limited experience is definitely dominated by men, the... industry where I come from is full of women who are directors, CEOs, producers, account managers, designers and marketers.”

She praises the thorough professionalism of the men and women who worked alongside her on the V8 project, particularly those from Network Ten, the broadcast rights holder for Supercars. “There is no need to differentiate out at the track based on gender. In a live outside broadcast, the job is to get to air... and to tell a bloody great story while you’re there. In that sense, chauvinistic behaviour doesn’t exist.”

Davey found her directness to be an asset when working with men in particular. “I’ve always been straightforward, so working with men isn’t

Step in

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step up… for promotion, career change and professional development

“

I’ve always been straightforward, so working with men isn’t difficult. It definitely helps being technically savvy though, and being able to put a view forward strongly and with confidence.

”

difficult. It definitely helps being technically savvy though, and being able to put a view forward strongly and with confidence.”

For someone in Davey’s position, this confidence is entirely justified.

But given she hasn’t had to apply for a job for over 12 years, it’s hard to predict her long-term future; not that it seems to concern her. “I’m not the sort of person that has a 10-year plan, or even a three-year one for that matter!”

Her only requirements are that she is interested by the projects, and that she is able to work with smart and inspiring people. “Right now my passion is strongly skewed towards working in the new and fast-moving broadband content world,” she says.

With the same fervour that drove her to dream of achieving amazing things, she embraces the future confident that there are many more challenges to discover and projects to conquer. “I do know that my future professional life involves working in rich media production and content, and at the point at which all of these mediums, such as broadband and TV, are converging. Who knows what the world will look like five years!” M

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014 MARKETING PEOPLE – FIVE OF THE BEST

TOP OF HIS GAME

Catherine Woods chats to DKM’s Dorry Kordahi about his journey from apprentice hairdresser to brand master.

D

orry Kordahi was running a company turning over more than $3 million a year at an age when most people are just beginning to work their way up the corporate ladder. In late 2002, while in his mid-20s, he founded Dorry Kordahi Management (DKM). DKM was initially a solutions and management company that sold promotional products, but Kordahi has since broadened the scope of what the business offers.

Though his success has reaped him great rewards, his start in business was reassuringly humble. Feeling dissatisfied with his position as an apprentice hairdresser in Sydney’s west, he left to join a small family business selling promotional clothing. Five years in that industry gave him a thorough appreciation of its intricacies, and a strong desire to set out on his own and prove his knowledge could sustain his own business.

A life-altering trip to Europe allowed him to define his goals, and gain essential perspective on his own life and future. “It was about broadening my thinking,” he explains. “It’s very exciting to travel to Europe and see what’s going on. Having a greater perspective is an important part of having the confidence to break free and start your own thing.”

Initially planned as a 10-week backpacker trip, Kordahi spent six months away before deciding to come back to Australia. On his return, he took advantage of his experience with promotional products and his understanding of the importance of image and brand in successful marketing to start his own brand solutions and management business. With hindsight, he can see that his lack of formal education perhaps enabled him to overlook the risks and enhanced his professional outlook. “DKM

MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2005

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is about creating a fresh approach. I’ve dealt with lots of people with degrees and most of them think the same way. They have all learned the orthodox way of thinking about marketing.”

Which brings us to the DKM philosophy. Kordahi believes there are four keys to success in any business: image, perception, differentiation and a point of difference.

His two key rules for successfully running a business are: firstly, have the confidence to stand on your own and believe in yourself and secondly, have a big picture, dream and plenty of perspective.

Kordahi’s own perspective was naturally shaped by his European experience. His travelling enabled him to identify key differences between the promotions industry here and overseas. “Europe is very image conscious. Everything is so well done. They have so much style. You don’t see the usual gear, everything is carefully thought out. Why don’t Australians take the same degree of care with their image as they do in Europe?”

His devotion to style and detail was recognised recently when the DKM logo was named one of the world’s most exceptional by international agency LogoLounge. It was in high calibre company, along with Microsoft, General Electric, Intel and Bentley.

The success of DKM to a large extent can be traced to his passion and devotion for developing the DKM brand itself. “We look after our brand,” he states with pride. “If we can’t look after our own brand, how could we ask you to trust us with yours?”

A role model for young business professionals himself, Kordahi names Richard Branson as an inspiration. “Nobody understands branding better. Virgin is the greatest brand in the world. What other brand can be used for airlines, credit cards, superannuation, record stores, mobile phones, you name it!” In terms of Australian influences, he identifies John Symond. “I think Australia’s most distinctive brand has to be Aussie Home Loans. I think Symond has done a great job building that brand. I want to be known as having done as good a job as he has done.”

Like Branson and Symond, Kordahi embodies confidence, and doesn’t flinch at difficult client requests. “The really hard ones are the last minute jobs. A campaign is ready to go and the supplier lets them down. Once we had a client ring on a Thursday in a panic, and we had a sample to them ex-China by Monday.”

“

We look after our brand... If we can’t look after our own brand, how could we ask you to trust us with yours?

”

Kordahi has also used his management experience with great success in another field – talent management and has netted some impressive clients including basketball star Kavossy Franklin and high-profile Australian Idol finalist, Cosima De Vito. De Vito signed a management deal with DKM earlier this year with plans to record a second album. As for Kavossy Franklin, the official NBL web site credits Dorry Kordahi Management with establishing a “reputation for providing highquality imports.”

Along with celebrity clients, he also manages DKwear, the house brand, which he hopes will become a household name. To achieve this, his strategy involves a clear and simple method. “We try to get people to open up and talk about the values that sit behind their brand, then come up with ideas and concepts that build on that and reinforce and drive those values out into the market. It’s really important that people understand that when they put their brand on a promotional product, their brand takes on the attributes of that product. If it’s a cheap plastic item then it makes the brand look cheap.”

Between managing high-profile clients, handling urgent client requests and constantly developing new business ideas, does Kordahi struggle to find a quiet moment?

“I have a million things going on all the time,” he admits. “But I have a great team of people around me. That’s critical to success. Business is a team sport.” M

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016 MARKETING PEOPLE – FIVE OF THE BEST

GETTING AHEAD Emma Hill, creative director at Clemenger BBDO Melbourne, talks to Catherine Woods about working in big advertising, managing creative teams and the pressure to impress.

MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2005

I

n early 2004, Emma Hill took over the role of creative director for Clemenger BBDO Melbourne. Her expectations of her creative team sound much the same as the expectations she has for herself.

“The best creative people are relentless and are toughest on themselves. Great teams can get up after a client says no and go back with something even better. They can also communicate in different ways to different target markets.”

This ability to read the client and create innovative and effective campaigns has seen Hill go from working across four brands as a copywriter to managing 20 as creative director. She began her advertising career as a receptionist and writer at Clemenger Hobart in 1994. In 1997, former Clemenger chairman, David Blackley, offered her an irresistible proposal.

“Blackers came down for a chat and asked me if I could work anywhere in the network, where would it be and where I saw myself in five years’ time. I’m no Nostradamus,” she recalls, “but a year later I was sitting right where I’d hoped, writing at Clemenger in Melbourne.”

In 2001, Hill was made a director. The following year, she became creative director of the Just Jeans account and then, in March 2004, deputy creative director of the agency. In May she was promoted to cre-

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ative director. As one of the few young, female creative directors in the business, does Hill feel the pressure to prove herself?

“I feel pressure all the time to impress colleagues, clients and competitors,” she admits, “but not because I’m young or female. I think pressure comes from the standards you set yourself and the goals you set out to achieve for yourself, your creative department and the agency, not from the fact you’re wearing a bra.”

Hill is adamant that women do not face any greater challenges than their male counterparts. “I don’t feel I’m making any more sacrifices or concessions in my personal life than a man in my position. If I had kids my answer may be different. Being a first year creative director has meant I’ve had to spend a lot of time in the office, in meetings, at lunches and dinners, getting to know clients and being available for more get togethers than I’ve ever been to before.

“But I think a man in this position would have to do exactly the same thing. I do have very understanding friends and family that know I may not call back for a week and two very patient dogs who luckily love eating and walking late.”

At the Caxton Awards in 2004, Hill gave a speech that cast research as the enemy of creativity. It was a daring and controversial stance to take. When the subject is broached, Hill denies that she is opposed to research. “I’m not back-pedalling; the comments I made that day were about using research to test a creative execution. That can absolutely impede creativity. I would prefer to use research to test the very beginning of the process. Like whether people are really interested in the product or whether the proposition on the brief is right.”

Hill defines a successful campaign as being memorable regardless of how long it runs. “[It] can run for years or just days, but it’s a success because people remember it, talk about it and went and bought or tried the thing it was advertising.”

One of the most enjoyable campaigns for Hill to be working on has been HBA Health Insurance. The heritage of the brand has great appeal to advertisers and consumers alike. “Australians love it,” she enthuses, “and they love the advertising. It’s the kind of brand you can tell strangers in a bar you work on and they get all excited and start reeling off their favourite spots!”

Another great appeal of working with HBA has been their readiness to take risks with their communication strategies within such a competitive environment. With a naughty grin, she adds, “They’re not into testing, which may also be why I love them!”

Clemenger has represented a broad variety of clients and Hill feels it’s one of the agency’s strengths that it can successfully produce a tampon campaign for 15-year-old girls, then a superannuation campaign for 55-year-old men.

And yet Hill has been selective with her clients, refusing to work with one whose values she felt compromised representing. “I refused to work on a pitch for Forestry Tasmania. Call me home grown, but I didn’t think I could bring myself to tell people it’s OK to bulldoze Tasmanian forests in a creative way.”

She concedes that the advertising industry is exhausting, both physically and emotionally, yet she would love to see more women working in the creative department.

Clemenger is definitely female friendly. “There wouldn’t be so many women at Clems if it wasn’t,” she says.

Having moved from the reception desk to the executive suite, does she consider herself a role model to women?

“Hopefully there are a few women sitting on reception reading this article right now. Of course, if a male receptionist is reading this, that’s also OK.” M

“

I think pressure comes from the standards you set yourself and the goals you set out to achieve for yourself, not from the fact you’re wearing a bra.

”

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018 MARKETING PEOPLE – FIVE OF THE BEST

FIT FOR BUSINESS

Diana Williams’ love of fitness took her from gym junkie to multi-award winning businesswoman and author. The founder of Fernwood Women’s Health Clubs shares her story with Catherine Woods.

MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2005

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hen Diana Williams first purchased a membership to her local gym 20 years ago, she discovered a deep passion for exercise and the benefits of health and fitness. It’s this passion that she credits for her incredible success with Fernwood Women’s Health Clubs, the women-only franchise she started in 1989. With 65 clubs in Australia and plans to expand overseas, the business is a finalist in this year’s Australian Franchise Council’s Franchisor of the Year Award.

Williams has also earned nominations for the 2005 Telstra Business Women’s Award and the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year.

Williams attributes her business acumen to experience, passion and learning from mistakes. “All the qualifications in the world aren’t of much use if you don’t have a deep passion and focus on the success of the business,” she says. “The best education is experience, taking risks, overcoming obstacles, making mistakes and learning from them.”

As a regular gym goer, Williams became aware of the need for a facility that gave women their own space to work out and get fit, with the aim of making patrons feel comfortable and able to enjoy their health routine. As a result, they would be more likely to maintain a long-term interest in their exercise program. Armed with a vision and the confidence to succeed, Williams opened her first facility in Bendigo, Victoria.

Her confidence in the potential of Fernwood was justified when, within the first six months of opening, the club had so many members that Williams needed to find larger facilities.

She hopes that her success has positioned her as a role model for other women. “I am very proactive in promoting women in business and hopefully the success I have been able to achieve with Fernwood will encourage other women who have a passion for an idea that they feel they would like to build into a business concept.”

Williams does not believe that women in the corporate arena struggle to achieve the same professional success and acknowledgment as their male counterparts.

“I do feel, however, that many women do not realise their own potential and have the confidence to follow their dreams when they could become a huge success if they gave it a go.”

Williams ensures that this confidence and ambition is nurtured in her employees. Fernwood relies on a dedicated team to provide high

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MARKETING PEOPLE – FIVE OF THE BEST 019 quality service, as well as offering mainstream programs in combination with new and exciting classes and services to allow members the greatest variety of options. She believes that an effective business team needs unity and energy with everyone working towards the same purpose and vision.

Fernwood takes a holistic approach to fitness and health, with a philosophy that wellness is dependent on more than just fitness. Along with providing an atmosphere where women feel safe and welcome, there is a breakfast bar, nutrition and weight management support through the Simplicity program and a Fernwood magazine.

As far as future plans for Fernwood go, the franchise will continue to develop new services and offerings to enhance members’ experience and to grow the profit potential of the clubs by adapting to the ever-changing needs of the consumer and the market. Along with developing these new services, Williams says, “[Fernwood is] streamlining and improving our current offerings to ensure that we remain a market leader and have the best possible choices for our members.”

In addition, she is also planning the growth of the Fernwood brand internationally, expanding into new markets offshore through billboards,

“

All the qualifications in the world aren’t of much use if you don’t have a deep passion and focus on the success of the business.

”

television and PR campaigns. “We’ll be using the same Australian campaigns that have proved so successful, but obviously tuned towards that particular country in relation to their culture and demographic.”

As if there weren’t enough on her plate, Williams also plans to follow the success of her last book (co-authored with Lowell Tarling) by writing another.

“The Women’s Club,” she says, “was a marketing initiative, which was very successful, enabling us to position the company and tell the Fernwood story to the employees to help them understand the vision of the company, its purpose and values, and reach our members and engage them with the story behind the club.”

The new book aims to be more motivational than informative. “It will tell the story of our development over the last five years,” says Williams, “and hopefully will be used as an inspirational piece for people with an idea and a passion to realise their potential and follow their dreams.”

While other gyms have been inspired by Fernwood’s success to provide women only spaces, Williams argues that Fernwood maintains a unique offering.

“Because of the size and limited services offered by these facilities, [they] do not retain long-term members who soon get bored and move onto larger facilities with a wider choice of services and program options.”

In a sense, these businesses provide the entrée to the more sophisticated and satisfying main course – Fernwood. It seems that Williams is the master chef when it comes to devising and providing the perfect menu for club members, franchisees and employees. Bon appétit. M

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+ The world’s leading travel magazine launches in Australia on 19 Sept 2005.

TAKES YOU THERE.

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020 BRAND PROFILE

MINI MANIA The MINI is undoubtedly an iconic image. The Morris Mini Minor, designed in 1959 with the simple aim of being an affordable and safe family car, spawned the evolution of the MINI into a fashionable icon of design and quality.

Catherine Woods investigates the little car that could.

MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2005

C

ue the lights, start the music. BMW launched the new MINI in 2001 with three models available internationally and a fourth exclusive to the US. Marketing manager of MINI in Australia, Jason Miller, firmly believes the iconic heritage of the MINI has been maintained, but definitely not at the expense of an exciting and contemporary approach. “The MINI has enduring product substance, which underpins the emotional appeal,” he says.

That emotional appeal has been nurtured since the beginning of Mini folklore. Designer Sir Alec Issigonis could never have foreseen the fashion and celebrity-studded future for his little Morris. When it was released in 1959, the simple goal was to provide a fuel-efficient, affordable and safe family car. The original model was considered somewhat of a housewives’ shopping trip vehicle; however, this was all to change when race car expert John Cooper released his own design in 1961, 196 the Mini Cooper. Successful at rallies and distinctive in style, the car proved extremely popular with the public and soon attracted a celebrity fan base. As celebrities are wont to do, they were insistent on

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BRAND PROFILE 021

modifying their cars to gain public attention. The most loved and legendary of the Mini models, the Mini Cooper, had such owners as Peter Sellers, Graham Hill, Enzo Ferrari and The Beatles. Paul proudly flaunted his green model, John’s black Mini Cooper with blacked-out windows was recognisable wherever he went, Ringo owned a maroon version and George went all out with a customised psychedelic design.

In 1990, the Mini Cooper was relaunched by Rover, the UK auto manufacturer owned by BMW, reigniting the imagination of young, design-savvy consumers with an eye on the car’s legendary cult status.

Mindful of the fond emotional relationship people had with the original Cooper, Rover presented a faster, sleeker tribute to the earlier models. Despite its popularity, production on that model of the Mini came to an end in 2000. Rover was labouring under massive losses and BMW disposed of most of the company. In order to differentiate between the old and the new, BMW renamed the new car MINI, and thus created a new car, technically unrelated to the previous model.

The new MINI flaunted its celebrity status in 2003, reminding the public of its original flirt with fame. In February of this year, Hello!

magazine reported that Goldie Hawn, Elijah Wood and Madonna were fans of the MINI. Their adoration was no doubt fired further by the release in 2003 of The Italian Job, a stylish remake of the 1969 heist film where the MINI was arguably more stunning than co-star Charlize Theron. Taking advantage of the publicity and marketing potential, MINI Cooper video games, remote control toy cars and boxer shorts accompanied the release. In Australia, half a million dollars was invested in preview and publicity events for customers and media. A three-week TVC campaign, outdoor billboards and promotional campaigns in partnership with the film’s distributor, UIP, reminded consumers who the real star was. And the MINI experienced celebrity adoration for the second time since the 1960s. The early trend toward individualising and enhancing the models has carried through to the present day, and now the privilege belongs to both superstars and regular buyers.

Miller claims one of the most appealing aspects of the MINI is its chameleon quality. “We offer customers the ability to customise the MINI through an unrivalled choice of exterior and interior colours,

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022 BRAND PROFILE

The winners of the Sydney Esquisse competition to design your own Mini.

options and accessories. In fact,” he adds, “with all of the possible combinations of colours and options, on average, only 10 in every million MINI cars produced will be identical.”

The appeal of driving a uniquely customised car is not exclusive to the young and trendy, but they are certainly the most obvious market.

“The primary audience is typically younger, successful [and] progressive,” Miller explains. He hastens to add that a slightly older audience is also an important consideration in developing marketing campaigns.

“Both share similar attitudes and values. They’re adventurous, risk averse, anti-mainstream, style conscious and open-minded.”

Miller’s key responsibilities are to develop the MINI brand marketing strategy and to manage all associated activities, including sponsorship, events and the website. Recent success has proven that MINI has an international allure and the substance to support the campaigns.

Relaunched here in 2002, Australia has the highest proportion of MINI Cooper S sales of any market and there are over 5200 Australian

“

Sometimes we’ll adapt an international concept, as we did with our model update campaign last year, where we tweaked the visual and developed unique copy to suit our specific campaign objectives.

”

MINI owners. Australia also rates among the highest in brand awareness.

Globally, MINI has exceeded all sales expectations, resulting in the recent announcement that production at the major manufacturing plant in Oxford will be expanded. BMW issued a press release in March announcing that brand retail had risen 4.5 percent, surpassing the 2004 figures and continuing the trend of surpassing expectations since 2001. This was confirmation that repositioning MINI in the market was an inspired decision.

In 2004, the MINI Cooper was named ‘Best Small Specialty Car’ under US$25,000, as the result of two prestigious US consumer surveys.

Strategic Vision, which ran the surveys, measured several factors. Value for money, affordability, warranty, technical innovation and reliability were among the covetable factors. “What you get for your money is vital to the value equation,” said Dr Darrel Edwards, president of Strategic Vision. “A cheap price for a vehicle that doesn’t stir the buyer’s values and emotions will never be more than a cheap vehicle.”

MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2005

The same year, accolades rolled in from Automobile magazine, Consumer Digest, Autobytel, The Car Book, Automotive.com and Edmunds.com. Vice president of MINI USA, Jack Pitney, says, “We are thrilled that MINI is a winner in the eyes of the press and public.

We have built a lot of fun, safety and substance into every MINI and these awards are a testament to what we offer our customers.”

The MINI campaigns have employed a variety of media to spruik the brand message; however, the power of strong alliances with other industries and media has enabled MINI to both lend its ‘fashionability’ to other brands, and to receive a direct line to its target audience. The other strength of these partnerships is that, without the massive budgets of its US and European counterparts, MINI Australia has to rely on the strength of strategic alliances. Not to mention that marketing to a younger audience requires an understanding of fast-paced changes in media, technology, trends and communication.

“Traditional media channels are becoming a less efficient way of reaching our audience,” Miller says. “Perhaps, not surprisingly, the MINI audience has an interest in fashion, art and design. We’ve been keen to align MINI with key platforms in these fields.”

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MINI could not have chosen a better platform than urban art and design festival, Sydney Esquisse, to promote the brand. The MINI Art Car was the result of a partnership between MINI, Sydney Esquisse and Pol Oxygen magazine. Pol Oxygen commissioned Marylou Pavlovic, a renowned and controversial Melbourne artist, to create the MINI Art Car that featured over 40,000 multicoloured foam polka dots. Simultaneously, a competition was held allowing the public to download a template of the MINI and to customise it according to their own whims.

In regard to the Australian accent within MINI campaigns, Miller concedes that the budget is not quite as generous here as it is overseas, but nonetheless, there is definitely scope for unique local concepts and creative for MINI. “We don’t have a bottomless production budget, so if the international creative is suitable it makes sense to use it whenever we can, particularly as the vast majority of it is pretty good. It can be a little tricky, though,” he adds, “particularly with our relatively tight advertising codes for safe driving; some of the international ads simply can’t be shown here.

“Sometimes we’ll adapt an international concept, as we did with our model update campaign last year, where we tweaked the visual and developed unique copy to suit our specific campaign objectives.”

A witty concept wholly attributable to MINI Australia, the ‘Mini Roof Down Squad’ was an April Fools’ Day joke that was designed to promote the MINI Cabrio. The press release warned that drivers would be ejected from their cars should they be caught driving with their roof closed in public, regardless of the weather. This policy was to be enforced by the

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024 BRAND PROFILE Mini Roof Down Squad (MRDS), which would offer an exchange to the ejected owner. In return for their current model, they would receive a MINI hardtop of comparable specifications. The press release concluded with a quote from a certain ‘Max Headroom’, justifying such a drastic response. “Demand for the $35,900 MINI Cabrio and $44,900 MINI Cooper S Cabrio is so strong we cannot afford to allow these cars to be driven by people who are not committed to the spirit of open air motoring. There are enough people waiting for a MINI Cabrio for us to take this unprecedented action.”

The squads appeared at various public locations with megaphones and MINI-branded uniforms, espousing the fun, youthful energy the MINI brand embodies.

Even more recently, style-savvy consumers have been excited by a free DVD, distributed Australia-wide, featuring behind-the-scenes interviews, profiles and video clips of fashion shows. Featured throughout is none other than sponsor, MINI. “We liked the Pedestrian Fashion concept straightaway. Those guys are pretty switched on and the concept is fresh and innovative... It’s well targeted and it aligns well with our other partnerships, so it gives us a chance to showcase our various activities to a national audience,” says Miller.

Truly embracing the alliance with the fashion industries, MINI also partnered with L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival, providing the popular, and decadent, MINI ‘Chill Out’ lounge as well as supporting the closing party and the Art Program. As sleek and stunning as the supermodels it was ferrying, the MINI XXL made its debut at the festival also.

The 6.3-metre long, four-door model with fully functioning spa, debuted at the Sydney Esquisse Festival before making its arrival at L’Oreal

MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2005

Melbourne Fashion Festival. Snaring the attention of the attending fashionistas, the MINI XXL was the vehicle of choice for select attendees to the Moët & Chandon finale and the Art Program.

Miller emphasises that the campaigns must stay consistent with the values, look and feel of concepts developed internationally. Mindful of this, the latest work with which Miller has been involved has also been fashion-oriented. “If the situation calls for totally unique creative, that’s what we’ll do. With the MINI Cabrio launch, for example, we developed a couple of concepts specifically for Marie Claire and Harper’s Bazaar; ‘Fresh Air’ and ‘Hair by MINI Cabrio’.”

Miller has also been involved with the launch of a new campaign for MINI Cooper S, ‘Seriously fun to drive’. His goal is to strengthen brand development through events and partnerships.

The future looks promising with several highcalibre partnerships soon to be publicised. “We are about to embark on some new partnerships, first with NGV and its forthcoming exhibition ‘British Art and the 60s: from Tate Britain’,” Miller says, “and also Flickerfest International Short Film Festival, which involves both the 2006 Sydney Festival at Bondi Pavilion in January and the national tour. We also hope to continueë our existing associations with the L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival and Sydney Esquisse.”

Lauded and awarded by automotive mags, nostalgic Mini enthusiasts and celebrities, MINI has made friends in all the right places.

From the simple model Sir Alec Issigonis first designed to a limousine with in-built spa, the MINI has proven itself highly adaptable to the times. No one is able to predict the future, but there’s one thing Miller assures us of. “There’ll be plenty more surprises from MINI!” M

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BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB B026 BBRANDING BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB B Branding B B Bin B B Bage BisBall about B B customisation, B B B B writes B B Martin B B Lindstrom.

BBBB the B modern BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB Martin Lindstrom is recognised by the Chartered Institute of Marketing as one of the world's primary branding gurus. He’s an adviser to several Fortune 500 brands, including Disney, Mars, Pepsi, LEGO, American Express, Mercedes-Benz, Reuters, Visa, McDonald's, Kellogg's, Ericsson, Yellow Pages and Microsoft.

BRANDING

B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B

B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B

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BRANDING 027

“

Tomorrow’s brands will have to transcend today’s inhibitions. In many ways, this is the ultimate test for brands.

”

dedicated blogs created not by their brandbuilders but by their fans.

Control over brand messages is gradually moving away from brand builders and edging closer toward consumers. Imagine Disney blogging about its characters, Nokia about its latest products or Microsoft about virus issues. It could very well help them get closer to consumers by reaching out to the core fan communities. Exploiting this avenue requires a firm commitment.

It’s a huge challenge for companies to write regular, informative and useful blogs. To do so, they must be flexible and react promptly.

Companies simply aren’t armed with the flexibility and quick response time required to run a relevant, interactive, engaging blog. They’d risk producing one-page press releases rather than interactive, topical points of view.

In the future, brands will have to take quick ustomisation and personalisation action effectively. They’ll need to exhibit opinare crucial in the new technology ions fearlessly and share them with the world, territory. The nature of branding meanwhile avoiding litigation and unhampered will have to adapt to embrace this by risks. Yet companies tend to avoid political hitherto non-existent aspect of issues. Corporate entities feel obliged to clear marketing. The basic concept of branding will their opinions with every quarter, eliminating all remain unchanged – to create an emotional risk of offending any sensibilities. They sanitise attachment between the consumer and a prodtheir viewpoints rendering them meaningless. uct. That, however, is probably the only thing Sterilisation tends to kill the momentum needed that will remain unchanged in the future. Here to sustain and inject value into a blog. are five reasons why…

Tomorrow’s brands will have to transcend today’s inhibitions. In many ways, this is the ultiBRAND BLOGGING. mate test for brands. It reflects organisations’ The web now teems with blogs (a frequent, confidence and coherence. It demonstrates chronological publication of personal thoughts brand self-esteem and ownership that speaks for and web links), on every subject under the sun. itself unhesitatingly, promotes opinions and Online diaries abound with individuals keen to above: Computer games – providing amazing new shares them in hours rather than in weeks or branding opportunities. share their points of view with the rest of the months. As manufacturers and retailers learned world. They’re often so well-informed that the opinions they offer help ‘just-in-time’ thinking in the ’90s, brands will have to adopt a ‘just-in-time’ form mainstream news reports. Given their potency, it begs the question ability to share information with consumers. If brands don’t make this whether blogs should in fact, be adopted by brands as communication evolutionary leap soon, companies will be left behind. Consumers expect tools. timely email responses and prompt order fulfilment to become part of the The marriage between blogs and brands is increasingly becoming a real- individual’s minute-by-minute experience of everyday life. ity. Brands like Seth Godin and Tom Peters, which exude personality, already Many companies cannot deliver this. An organisation that can handle blog. Brands such as Weight Watchers, LEGO, Apple, TiVo and Harley- the blog challenge requires dramatic structural, systemic and communiDavidson not only feature regularly in general blogs, but they have their own cations changes.

2.0 C

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028 BRANDING

BRAND ‘PHISHING’.

‘Phishing’ is the fastest-growing scam in the Imagine you went down to your local bank – world. It’s made possible because of an inconsethe branch just around the corner – to discuss quential, but crucial, fact: We’ve taught retirement plans. Imagine you did so because consumers to evaluate brands simply on looks you’d been receiving letters from your bank alone, the superficial image. We’ve forgotten the manager for the past 21 years. He’s a great guy. value of the handshake, eye contact, branch He knows you and your family’s finances better offices, real letters with real addresses. We’ve systhan you do yourself… tematically denuded brands of authenticity, left Let’s stop right there. It’s too far-fetched. I them with no protective features and made them can’t imagine it, either. vulnerable to brand ‘phishers’ in the process.

First of all, you probably never receive real New technologies will solve the problem, letters from your bank anymore. Second, but just as quickly, new scams will emerge to there’s no longer a bank just around the corner. replace this one. One thing’s certain, online Third, your bank manager has evaporated and fraud and scams are here to stay. Bearing this in been supplanted by a call centre. That call cenmind, we must strive to communicate what our tre turns anonymity into a fine art by adding brands stand for without compromising that special, impersonal touch. Every time you authenticity in the interests of cost savings. call and put in the requisite time on hold, you That’s difficult to achieve. eventually speak with some new person who If, for example, the branch office was your deals inadequately with your apparently stupid brand’s real point of differentiation, don’t get questions and who ensures everything you disrid of it. Think how Starbucks has made its cuss is forgotten the minute you hang up. cafés its real point of identity, with those OK, that’s over the top too, but not by couches and comfy chairs. If having a real much. Back to the point: branding. name on your email and real people on the Recently, I received an email from Citibank. phone differentiates your brand, stay that way.

It said the bank was updating my client data You might very well save money in the and asked me to help it do this. Not unusual. I short-term investing your all in your logo, but receive such automatic business card update before you do, consider whether it’s worth it in requests almost daily. Being sceptical, I checked the long run. out the Citibank email carefully. It seemed perBRAND ALLIANCES. fectly OK. So was the email address, the sender The rules for brand alliances have changed as and the link to the website. the consumer has become familiar with the In the good old brick-and-mortar world, concept. This opens up new global alliance even in the old click-and-mortar one, you’d opportunities that only a few years ago would know if an email was authentic or not. You’d at have been impossible to achieve. least have known the person sending it. If you above: Blogs – helping organisations move closer to Recently, I was in a taxi heading for weren’t certain, you’d have called that person at consumers.

Copenhagen Airport. My co-passenger was a the bank. Let’s be frank. The bank would never have sent an email. It would have sent a real letter. A fake one would have woman who carried a fancy suitcase. A stylish piece of luggage to be sure, been easy to spot, and you’d be unlikely to pass on your confidential data but what interested me was the combination of brands it represented. It was produced by Samsonite. No surprise there, as Samsonite is the to some unscrupulous charlatan.

Alas, this is no longer the case. The only way I could ascertain world’s largest luggage manufacturer. But this Samsonite bag also reprewhether the email was from a genuine sender or not was to judge its sented Philippe Starck, a designer known for his work with furniture appearance. Thank heavens I didn’t comply and reply with all my details, who, in this case, had designed this particular item for Samsonite.

Indeed, brand combinations are often surprising. These days, I often because this email was, of course, an example of brand ‘phishing’.

Spammers employ this technique by assuming an identity to extract notice alliances I’d never have predicted. Nestlé and L’Oréal recently valuable data from unsuspecting consumers. They then hack into victims’ announced a relationship. What do these two brands have in common?

Anything? In fact, yes. Nestlé’s apparent aim is to produce food that’s bank or credit card accounts to transfer money to their own accounts.

So how would I know if this email was genuine? I put this question to healthy, not only for the insides of our bodies, but for our skin as well. a top programmer who confirmed there’s no way to really know whether Who’s the global market leader in skincare? You got it, L’Oréal.

This new, laterally-inspired approach to brand alliances will change an email message is authentic. Major financial institutions outsource their direct email to vendors. Most bear names consumers have never heard of. the way we build brands. In the good old days, only brands with an obvious relationship tended to team up. Market leaders joined with other Sure, the address might look right, but who knows about the sender?

This leads to the issue of superficiality. As things stand right now, market leaders. There’s every indication now that an alliance between a most consumers base their assumptions of credibility and authenticity low and high-equity brand can be just as valuable for both parties as a marriage between equals. on an email’s looks and logo.

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BRANDING 029 Why is this development so pertinent? Many marketing managers control an online business. If there’s one business arena that can benefit from a brand alliance strategy via links, co-branding and general brand alliances, it’s the interactive sector. So try liberating your strategy from traditional alliances and think outside the square.

The good news is that not many brands have begun considering alternative brand alliances. There are still lots of opportunities out there.

But don’t get complacent. It’s only a matter of time before your competitor will run away with a partner that could have exposed your brand to a whole new world of business.

SITUATION PLACEMENT. If I glanced through your media plan, I’m sure I’d see the usual conventional media options: TV and radio ads, web banners, print ads and outdoor advertising. We’ve been going down this track for years.

Decades, in fact. We know we won’t be fired for using them, just as an IT guy won’t be fired for installing an IBM solution.

But the comfortable media road is disappearing. One day, you may very well lose your job for stubbornly clinging to the old options. Take, for example, the computer game market. It’s already generating revenue double that of the film industry.

ACNielsen predicts within just four years the film industry will shrink further to one-third the size of the computer game market. Where is Hollywood’s enormous power headed? Online? If it is, where are you in that scenario?

It’s fascinating to reflect on the fact that almost every medium has a price for inventory. With a click, you can find that price on search

“

If you believe TV is no longer the one true path to brand success, you should already be considering opportunities in the wonderful world of computer games.

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engines. Media prices are more or less fixed and understood. Except for one channel: computer games.

Do you know the price of placing a commercial message in a computer game? I’d guess you haven’t a clue. Is it one dollar per user? A million up front? One cent per second? Who knows? No fixed model exists, and no media agency to date specialises in booking game space.

This is virgin territory for brand-builders, which often means low prices.

Let’s do the maths. Research in my book BRANDchild shows that kids spend almost the same amount of time playing computer games as they do watching TV. These numbers will soon trend away from one another as games lead the way kids allocate their time. The really critical difference? Your TV spot probably secures some 30 seconds with consumers. A computer game placement is likely to spend hours with them. It’s no wonder energy drink Red Bull claimed it achieved such enormous success because it featured in the first PlayStation games. “Want more energy?” was the message. I don’t have to tell you the answer.

If you belong to the gang inclined toward traditional solutions, stop reading now. If, however, you believe TV is no longer the one true path to

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030 BRANDING brand success, you should already be considering opportunities in the wonderful world of computer games. Prices are still low in this unexplored territory. Results are high, as brand clutter is limited. And it’s all going full steam ahead.

The Sims Online series from EA, one of the most established game creators, no longer operates in a non-branded world. In a Sims game, players buy McDonald’s franchises and sell the branded food products, earning ‘simoleans,’ the game’s currency.

Eating the food also improves players’ standing in the game.

Computer games build brands through interaction. In the past, brands didn’t interact with customers, nor were they able to engage them in their philosophies. The relationship between brand and customer is set to change. Brands are learning that to create an engaged consumer, you must first engage them. Surprise!

I got to give my customised night cream a name of my own invention.

But for the majority of existing brands, the road to achieving MSP-driven branding is long and often expensive. We’re talking about a concept that means more than individualised customisation. This is branding that responds to a dialogue with each consumer.

Brands such as Dell, Nike and LEGO are well on their way to the MSP heaven. For example, LEGO offers its devoted customers special sets of LEGO blocks customised so recipients can build their own portraits out of LEGO blocks. Yep, LEGO has designed a computer program that scans an image of the subject, calculates the number of blocks that particular customer’s likeness requires, and, along with the customised set of blocks, provides the recipient with a customised instruction manual on building their own portrait.

As you’d imagine, not all brands arrive at ME SELLING this. Pepsi offers us an example of the perils PROPOSITION. of adopting the idea of MSP-driven branding Let me introduce you to the Me Selling without fully adopting the spirit of it and Proposition (MSP) brand. That’s a brand developing a process to deliver it. The comowned by you, rather than by the manufacpany offers Pepsi fans the opportunity to turer. MSP branding is a phenomenon we’ll join a Pepsi advisory panel. The promise is to be hearing about a lot in the near future. The involve them in future research and developreason? Because finally it’s possible to proment (R&D) projects. duce highly customised products that appeal Keen to see how this worked, I signed up to and are fashioned by individuals. as Peter, aged nine. By now it feels as if it Some months ago, I was in a perfume were nine years ago that I did so, seeing as store in Tokyo. The crazy thing was that there I’ve never received even a single word in were no perfume products on the shelves. response from Pepsi. Just a ‘thank you’ or Instead, the shop offered special expertise in ‘we’ll be back to you soon with more’ would identifying the scent that would complement above: LEGO now offers customers the ability to built portraits of have kept a boy involved, interested and feelthemselves in LEGO blocks - they even provide instructions! each customer’s personality. After answering ing important. numerous questions, I walked out with a perfume designed especially for MSP brands live and breathe the principle of communication – me. Not only that, but I chose my own bottle and received my own ‘eau de they’re born of listening and responding to, learning from and being Lindstrom’ presented to me with a personal label. inspired by feedback from the consumer. Not an easy achievement. Far This was my perfume. I owned it. In short, the product exemplified from it. The MSP is a trend that demands intimacy between brands and the true MSP brand. individuals. The established brands of the world are used to having disIncreasingly, more brands are arriving at this proposition. Procter tance between themselves and their customers. and Gamble’s Reflect.com is a good example. Here’s a brand that’s realisMSP branding is what Jones Soda does when offering its customers ing its MSP ambitions. Its home page offers its (presumably) female the chance to design their own labels and receive their own exclusive vercustomers the promise of ‘true custom beauty’ and asserts that the ‘active sion of the product for use at parties. MSP branding is about handling ingredient is you’. Colour, skincare, hair care and perfume products are individual feedback promptly, within 24 hours. It’s about building a offered along with the opportunity to design them according to your branding platform entirely according to the consumer’s parameters individual needs. rather than the manufacturer’s assumptions.

I tested the process by randomly selecting the ‘age-arresting treatIt’s a long, hard road to MSP. So far only a handful of brands can ment’ products. I found myself defining my skin type, answering claim to be driven by it, but MSP is here to stay. It’s only a matter of time questions about the current state of my face and indicating my prefer- before the individual consumer becomes accustomed to expecting brand ence for a cream that felt silky (rather than velvety, another option). I ownership. That expectation will be what separates the true MSP brands could even dictate the accent colour for my product’s packaging. And from the fakes. M

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SPECIAL ADVERTISING PROMOTION 031

As the marketing director for an international publishing company I often get caught up in and subsequently delayed by the processes involved in administrating web conferences, distributing our monthly newsletter, running direct marketing campaigns and sending mass emails to customers and our staff placed around the world. How can I simplify these complicated and time consuming business processes and save money?

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raig McCloskey, managing director, Australia and New Zealand for Premiere Global Services’ Data Communications division believes that no marketing executive is alone in feeling that much of their time is wasted on the distribution of data communications.

According to McCloskey, the Australian Direct Marketing Association (ADMA) is one of many organisations using Premiere Global Services’ Campaign Management solution to effectively drive its marketing communications and overcome the problem of communication delays.

The Australian Direct Marketing Association (ADMA), a non-profit Sydney-based organisation, is Australia’s principal body for information based marketing. It was formed in 1966 and has state branches across all Australian states. ADMA’s 500 corporate members are responsible for more than 80 per cent of the $14.7 billion spent annually on direct marketing media in Australia.

The organisation manages all key issues concerning direct marketing including privacy, telecommunications regulation, postal affairs, consumer satisfaction, fair trading and e-marketing.

Before implementing the solution including email, fax and conferencing services, ADMA communicated with members through emails routed via its internal mail system.

This was a slow process which put pressure on internal email resources, often using them to maximum capacity and blocking day to day email transactions integral to the business.

As ADMA’s member base continued to grow,

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The Australian Direct Marketing Association (ADMA) is one of many organisations using Premiere Global Services’ Campaign Management solution to effectively drive its marketing communications and overcome the problem of communication delays one of its key communication tools - email, faced increasing strain. ADMA regularly sends newsletters and surveys to members and more importantly, timely updates on industry matters, ensuring members are the first to know about legislation affecting their campaigns.

With a thorough knowledge of the common business problems faced by organisations using email and fax as primary communication tools, Premiere Global Services approached ADMA about using its Campaign Management solution to address these issues.

Ludi Alavoine, marketing services manager at ADMA says, “It’s our business to have an exceptional knowledge of the most effective ways to launch any direct marketing campaign within the parameters of evolving legislation and pass that on to our members. We were pleased to use Premiere Global Services’ applications given the company’s success in our industry.”

Now, Campaign Management messageREACH and faxREACH services quickly and securely distribute mass market messages to ADMA’s members through Premiere Global Services’ website and servers so there is no strain on ADMA’s IT infrastructure. The process of uploading messages and data is secure and in keeping with industry and privacy standards.

With messageREACH, all of ADMA’s email messages are delivered with speed and accuracy.

Similarly, faxREACH eliminates printing and mailing costs as ADMA creates fax

”

messages on PCs, including graphics, and uploads the fax messages to Premiere Global Services for distribution.

Premiere Global Services’ Campaign Management solution is also used to alert ADMA members to up-coming web conferences – the technology for which is also supplied by Premiere Global Services.

“We have a range of audio and web conferencing options for customers, giving them the ability to match their requirements with our offerings,” says McCloskey.

For ADMA, Premiere Global Services recommended a combination of Auditorium for the audio component and VisionCast for the web requirements. This combination gave ADMA a fully hosted web conference, allowing the Association’s conference presenters to concentrate solely on the delivery of their messages. Premiere Global Services look after all administrative aspects of the conference including audience registration, audience log-ins and welcome greetings, right through to the audio quality during the conference.

Alavoine says, “Premiere Global Services offers us an end-to end method of communicating important information to members and the wider business community. They look after everything from the announcement of a web conference, through the registration process, right to the delivery of the conference itself.

Premiere Global Services (02) 9338 8000 www.premiereglobal.com.au

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032 MARKETING TO THE GAY COMMUNITY Andrew Block has 10 years experience writing on business-related topics and as a media consultant to clients in industries including communications (NEC, Telstra), mining and transport (Shell, RACV) and education (Monash University). He also writes for publications including Gourmet Traveller, The Australian Way (Qantas) and Voyeur (Virgin Blue).

Lynda Edwards has been a journalist since 1999 and has worked as a news reporter for The Age, Bendigo Advertiser, Melbourne Magazine, Cleo, Domain, Fairfax Community newspapers, Australian Jeweller, the ABC and the BBC. She is now freelancing as a commercial copywriter and media all rounder.

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MARKETING TO THE GAY COMMUNITY 033 “Most marketing in this sector relies on qualitative rather than quantitative information. The statistics available on the gay and lesbian market and its potential are very limited.”

Burke believes that this is due in part to the market’s dynamic nature – because it isn’t readily identifiable, it’s difficult to quantify, however diligent or comprehensive the research conducted. This makes dedicated marketers such as Burke more determined than ever to track it. “What we found is that our qualitative knowledge in relation to other markets helps considerably in targeting this sector successfully.”

Nonetheless, given the gay and lesbian market’s flexible tendencies and the obvious issue of grouping people according to something as arbitrary as their sexuality, there are significant pitfalls for unwary marketers.

Tony Lambaart, creative director at LEAP, considers it patently unwise to stereotype spending behaviour or brand loyalty by sexual preference. “Gay and lesbian people increasingly make brand preference decisions on the same basis as any other consumer: value for money, brand equity, reliability and so on,” he says.

“For instance, I think it is foolish to assume that if someone is gay they have a lot of cash. Statistics on gay spending power tend to be over exaggerated and the concept that there is a ‘gay consumption pattern’ is simplistic. Gay and lesbian people are subject to the same financial pressures as any of us.

Certainly there are some who enjoy affluent lifestyles, but from a marketing perspective it is an unfounded assumption that they make up the majority of the market.”

Lambaart provides the following example of this market diversity. Many people in the industry define gay males according to ‘type’. These types include the ‘bear’ (usually large and hairy), ‘cub’ (young), Latino (of Mediterranean or South American descent) and the ‘home boy’ (streetwise Australian advertising agencies and marketing professionals are and also young). “With this in mind, you can’t assume that just because a ‘bear’ is gay, he will be interested in buying zeroing in on the ‘pink dollar’, and no wonder considering it’s a skimpy underwear,” he says. “That sort of thing may simply market estimated to be worth more than $80 million a year. not be on his wish list.”

Andrew Block and Lynda Edwards report.

Burke agrees. “There is definitely a danger in trying to sell to people because they are gay, rather than looking at attitudinal forces and psychographics,” she says. “You can’t o what is the ‘pink dollar’? This literally colourful term refers to assume that just because someone is gay they will buy one type of comthe collective, diverse and tough-to-reach gay and lesbian mar- puter, eat certain food or aspire to own a certain kind of car. When ket, a market flush with cash due to the DINK (double income selling to the gay market it is important to look at segments and psychono kids) factor. The sector also tends to be university educated, graphics, then determine attitudinal commonalities that will make the fashion-driven, has a preference for name brands and a similar campaign work.” penchant for large capital purchases. The latter can be anything from fine So is there any simple approach to marketing to gays and lesbians? dining and big bar tabs to flash cars, houses and holidays.

Lambaart suggests marketing to the community from within, but admits While the industry values the Australian gay and lesbian spend con- that even then there are many variables to consider. To circumvent these servatively at about $80 million per annum, strategy planning director at and focus campaigns effectively, marketers need to get right under the Clemenger, Penny Burke, says the UK equivalent makes this figure seem like small change.

Barclays Bank puts the ‘pink pound’ at the equivalent of around $350 billion a year.

“The gay market is definitely evolving all the time and is increasingly seen as a viable target market in Australia,” she says. Despite such obvious promise, Burke believes Australian marketers know surprisingly little about what motivates this market.

TONY LAMBAART, LEAP AGENCY

POCKETING THE PINK DOLLAR

S

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Gay and lesbian people are subject to the same financial pressures as any of us. Certainly there are some who enjoy affluent lifestyles, but from a marketing perspective it is an unfounded assumption that they make up the majority of the market.

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034 MARKETING TO THE GAY COMMUNITY skin of the gay and lesbian community, build close contacts and use them concertedly to target niche areas of the overall market.

“To remain outside such a fickle market and make decisions about purchasing preferences in relation to a specific product based on nothing more than the sexuality of prospective buyers is a complete mistake.”

Organisations that understand how to reach the gay and lesbian market are as diverse as the market itself, ranging from larger organisations such as Foster’s and Virgin to more basic producers of household items like pet food.

Foster’s new low carbohydrate beer, Pure Blonde, is marketed hard to gay men and lesbians and currently seems to be kicking goals within the sector. According to Pure Blonde’s marketing manager, Jacqui Moore, the product was a key sponsor of this year’s Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, Melbourne’s Midsumma Festival and the Alice in Wonderland event in Alice Springs. Foster’s also donated a percentage of Pure Blonde sales revenue to AIDS organisations and, as a consequence, received notable editorial coverage in gay media.

“As a result of our initial campaign, Pure Blonde has achieved more than 10 times our sales expectations,” Moore says. “Nonetheless, it is early days and impossible to determine what percentage of this success is attributable to the gay and lesbian market.”

The Pure Blonde phenomenon actually started out as anything but phenomenal.

Launched earlier this year, the product achieved only modest sales at first, before some kind of ‘X factor’ kicked in and, eight months later, Pure Blonde sales have skyrocketed. Just what influenced this is open to interpretation, although Foster’s isn’t discounting the beer’s popularity in gay and lesbian circles.

“Clearly the gay and lesbian market is a viable one,” Moore says. “According to our research, the combined elements of high disposable income and a tendency toward the JACQUI MORE, PURE BLONDE early adoption of new trends are a powerful force. We believe the gay and lesbian community has played a role in Moore is well-placed to offer advice on marketing to gays and lesbians. establishing the credibility of the Pure Blonde brand.”

“Above all, don’t be overt,” she says. “The gay and lesbian community is Nonetheless, the gay and lesbian community wasn’t targeted exclu- extremely marketing-savvy. For example, a beer brand developed specifisively by the Foster’s campaign. It was just one of several consumer cally for them would be too obvious and most likely rejected as a result. segments according to Moore. “Our strategy at Foster’s is to work with But it is a good idea to tweak your marketing messages to make the our customers via venues like clubs, bars, restaurants and hotels to pro- brand more relevant to their lifestyles.” vide a portfolio of beverages that are appropriate to certain segments of She suggests a good starting point is to identify commonalities like the overall market,” she says. international design, style, fashion and fitness, which are known interests In the case of Pure Blonde, other non-gay and lesbian campaign ini- of the gay and lesbian community, then go from there. tiatives included developing a partnership with the health organisation, Danny Vadasz, marketing manager at Melbourne advertising agency Fitness First, and showcasing the product at selected events. Even so, Aussie Bodies, is also in a position to provide sound suggestions on the

“

The gay and lesbian community is extremely marketing-savvy. For example, a beer brand developed specifically for them would be too obvious and most likely rejected as a result. But it is a good idea to tweak your marketing messages to make the brand more relevant to their lifestyles.

”

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topic, having spent five years project managing the largest corporate campaign to target the gay and lesbian community in Australian history.

This unprecedented campaign by Telstra, which ran from 1995 to 1999, simply focused on being ‘nice’ to the market. Vadasz believes this less than sophisticated approach wouldn’t create much, if any, impact today. “Since then, marketing to the gay and lesbian community has changed considerably,” he says. “Marketers must find increasingly clever and intuitive ways of speaking to their audience.”

That said, sometimes a product can find its ideal market almost by default, as Jenny Nolch, marketing manager of Yellowglen Pink discovered.

“When we launched Yellowglen Pink in 2003, it was pitched as a fun, sparkly drink for the youngat-heart,” she says. “The last market we thought it would appeal to was the gay and lesbian sector.”

But when sales to gay and lesbian people began increasing at an exponential rate, the penny dropped. “It suddenly made good sense that a product projecting a sense of fun would appeal to fun-loving people, whether they were gay or straight. The success of a product like Yellowglen Pink indicated that good marketing to this sector is all about lifestyle and state of mind.”

Such conclusions are consistent with perspectives from within the gay and lesbian community.

Prominent gay activist, Rodney Croome, made a similar point back in October 2001 when he wrote in Queensland Pride that all generalisations about gay and lesbian people are destructive, and that the myth of wealth is more of a grim prejudice than anything else: “…most frighteningly, the pink dollar myth and the stereotypes it props up, are increasingly used by the far right to deny us equal rights and foster resentment amongst lower income heterosexuals.”

Whether or not Croome feels quite the same today, he does believe successful marketers avoid such stereotyping of gays and lesbians. “Gay and lesbian consumers deeply appreciate being treated with the same respect and consideration as anyone else,” he says. “In the gay and lesbian community, trust is an important and marketable commodity. A business that offers genuine openness to gays and lesbians may receive hundreds of referrals simply as a result of word of mouth.”

He explains that including the gay and lesbian community in marketing and PR strategies isn’t rocket science. “Respecting all clients and providing great service is the way to boost any organisation’s reputation and income, whether its market is gay or straight.” M

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036 CREATIVE Chris Grannell is a consultant with swat>marketing. Email: chris.grannell@swatmarketing.com.au

NEW MODELS OF VALUE IN AGENCY-SIDE MARKETING

According to Chris Grannell, marketing agencies that place creativity above all else are doomed to failure in the modern age.

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any marketing agencies hold a mistaken belief that their primary means of creating value is through creativity and technology. This misconception is particularly commonplace in the advertising and design sectors, where creativity is frequently seen as the key value driver above all else.

Perhaps once upon a time marketing agencies did create value through a combination of creativity and technology. But now technology is everywhere and abstract creativity is commercially useless. Today’s marketing agencies deliver value in much the same way as any other professional services firm – through a mixture of problem solving, project management and specialist skills.

Recent discussion on these pages is evidence that many practitioners and clients have begun to question why, how and where agencies deliver benefits to their customers. As our industry matures, new models of value have crept up on us – and now is the time to take note.

Fifty years ago, those commissioning marketing services knew that when paying for creativity they were shelling out for something that their own grey-suited employees couldn’t churn out from behind their closed office doors. But today creativity has been democratised and the trick of the good marketing agency today hinges more on relevant and applied creativity than random acts of creativity. In the past, crazy random creativity was a major benefit provided by outsourced marketing – when the media was a far less complex animal; when products with fewer competitors could fall back on functional differentiators; when it took longer to replicate a competitor’s product and when customers were, frankly, more gullible. One thing seems certain: in a fragmented and complex market of billions of products and services, raw creativity is no longer the differentiator it once was.

Until a few years ago much of the value provided by a marketing agency was heavily dependent on the specialist tools required to produce ads, graphics and literature – things that could only come from a specialist company able to justify the huge capital outlay necessary. But technology has lowered the price of entry – particularly for production.

The ubiquitous desktop PC of today is more powerful than the computers used in design studios or editing suites just a couple of years ago.

Many marketers know from personal experience that the old ‘creative industry’ paradigm is being challenged. Agency managers have found

MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2005

themselves searching for new ways of generating value, looking for new and different partner businesses and recruiting new and different types of people. Many agency managers are upset and confused – why do they find themselves vacating their place at the top table of business advisers?

It all stems from new models of value: the new ways that marketing agencies deliver value to clients – even when they haven’t realised they are doing it.

Like most business services, marketing falls into two distinct categories of outsourced work. The first is focused primarily around developing strategy: the marketing consultancy. The second is concerned with implementing the chosen strategy: through mail processing, call centre management, research fieldwork and print/production management etc. Similar features are in fact important to both, although they are present in different proportions in different types of agency.

Let’s start with the marketing consultancy. This functions in much the same way as any other firm providing consulting services to corporate clients. David Maister, the guru of professional services (and formerly of Harvard Business School), has observed corporate service firms for several decades. And his observations translate directly to marketing firms. He has identified three ways that consultants create value, which he calls grey hair, brains and procedure projects. Grey hair tasks are performed by people who have ‘been there, done that’. Within the marketing world, they will often be ex-client-side marketing directors who have left to offer project-based assistance and mentoring. Their experience means that they are able to foresee problems before they happen – an invaluable benefit to a client who has relatively little experience in a particular area. Brains tasks are performed by those with powerful cognitive capability, able to think strategically (applying creativity where necessary) about problems facing the client. Procedure tasks form the remainder, and are used to solve familiar or cyclical problems. They are likely to be performed to some kind of formula or use some sort of predetermined process, but their success depends heavily on the ability to effectively project manage and to coordinate traffic (incoming and outgoing inquiries) between client and other consultants.

Procedure tasks tend to dominate the second category of outsourced marketing – the stuff that is focused on implementation or production. In cases like these, it is project management and sheer manpower that clients

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CREATIVE 037

CHECKLIST: HOW DOES YOUR AGENCY VALUE ITSELF?

(who often lack resources) crave most when requirement perfectly well – and will continue outsourcing. Here, the prime motivator for outto source specialist agencies for such tasks. sourcing is that it enables the client to reduce But agencies could do well to reflect on costs and exposure to risk by hiring an outside what they claim to offer – and to consider specialist to conduct the work more efficiently. whether the way they act supports or hinders ✒ Even if your agency claims a The final value driver (which crops up in them in delivering this promise. ‘problem solving’ positioning, does consultancies as well as implementers) comes In the case of those who do claim a generalit internally remain focused on the from specialist skills: the people who spent ist positioning, a genuine commitment to ‘creative is king’ model of work? years learning how to use graphic design softproblem solving (creative or otherwise) means ✒ Does your agency regard project ware, the qualified statisticians and researchers that the ability to provide thinking that cuts management as a value driver, or see that pull useful information out of customer across the marketing mix is important. In such it only as a glorified administration data. Without directly solving problems or cases it is worth recalling that ‘marketing’ is a role, facilitating rather than managing projects, these team members are broad discipline. By being blinkered towards partnering the creative team? still contributing significant value. But they are just one of the marketing ‘Ps’ (typically promoneither necessary nor sufficient for outsourced ✒ Is your remuneration of the agency tion), agency staff run the risk of ignoring the marketing. best solution to a marketing problem and thus based on media and/or creative Drawing on both Maister’s thinking about compromising the quality of their problem output, or real consultancy? professional services and what we know about solving capability. ✒ If your agency claims to be a outsourcing generally, value in outsourced For the same reasons, those commissioning marketing generalist, does it make marketing is generated through a combination marketing services are beginning to think more assumptions about how problems of experience and problem solving underscored critically about where and who they buy their will be solved (e.g. through by effective project management. It may marketing advice from (see breakout box). As a defaulting to advertising, corporate include specialist skills and, yes, creativity result, senior marketing consultants who wish identity etc.)? might be required within the ‘brains’ part of to disentangle themselves from a structure problem solving. But it seems fairly clear that ✒ Is there a strong resemblance geared around promotional creativity will conbetween the work that your agency value in outsourced marketing does not come tinue to look for homes elsewhere. develops for different clients? If so, from random idea generation, isolated creativMany other lessons from these new models they are probably not producing the ity or even specialist tools and equipment. of value are equally relevant to all marketing best solution for the unique Where creativity plays a role it is always agencies – be they generalist or specialist. together with one of these – creativity with Remuneration, for example, is typically strucproblems facing your business. project management, problem solving through ✒ Is your agency a little too keen on tured within professional service firms around creativity, creativity with experience, and so on. some kind of head hour rate. Although things winning creative awards?

Technology plays a role only insofar as it supare already changing, many marketing agencies ports these activities. still don’t work in this way, and remuneration And here’s the disconnect: problem solving? Project management? is frequently linked to creative output. Under this structure it is difficult This isn’t the way that most of today’s marketing agencies see themselves. to offer consultancy, which ends up euphemistically deemed a ‘value add’ Just think about project management. In terms of managing process, although it is actually thrown in for free. And, as marketers, we know many of us in agency-side marketing know anecdotally that a good- intuitively how hard it is to demonstrate value where no cost is involved. quality project manager is one of the most important assets an agency can The danger is that failing to treat problem solving as a value driver may possess, but reflecting on professional services outsourcing suggests that actually lead to less strategy being offered, or the same ‘strategy’ being rather than merely supporting the creative process, project management offered to all the clients of the agency. can actually become a value driver in its own right. And this requires a New models of value – problem solving and project management – substantial shift against the grain of typical marketing agency thinking. have already brought change to this industry. Today, technology is imporLet’s also reflect on problem solving. Many agency people casually use tant, but not generally a value driver and, while creativity is a critical the language of ‘problem solving’ without a moment’s thought. In future, component to many outsourced marketing services, it is neither a comrather than jumping straight to a favourite outcome or the solution that mon requirement of all agencies nor sufficient to differentiate between appears most ‘creative’, we should take care to actively engage with clients’ them. Where it does exist, creativity must be both relevant and applied. issues and develop solutions that best suit their requirements.

There will always be exceptions – not least because marketing itself This doesn’t mean that every marketing agency needs to be a gener- is a vague and poorly-defined concept. On its periphery will be IT conalist – able to think within the broadest possible frame of reference. sultants (who do lead on a technology positioning) and indeed artists There is nothing in these new models of value to suggest that the end is (who are occasionally commissioned to draw pretty pictures). But if hirnigh for specialists (design agencies, NPD advisers, advertising agen- ing a marketing agency is no longer about plugging into a random cies, naming consultants and so on). A problem solving or project creativity generator, then judging from the way that the industry talks management approach does not automatically point towards a compre- about itself, it clearly has some catching up to do. Agencies that continue hensive media neutral planning approach for every outsourced to place creativity above all else will struggle to maintain their place at marketing firm. Clients frequently understand the nature of their that top table. M

MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2005

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038 SPONSORSHIP

SDP PHOTO/SHANEY BALCOMBE.

Since 1997, Simon Baggs has been the CEO of event management company Lateral Marketing and Management. He was the promoter of the Tennis Masters Cup at which Lleyton Hewitt claimed the World Number One title at Sydney’s SuperDome and is a former director of marketing of the ATP, the worldwide governing body of men’s tennis.

Contact him at simon.baggs@lateralmarketing.com.au, call him on 02 9251 2205 or visit www.lateralmarketing.com.au

A TALE OF TWO SPONSORSHIPS Simon Baggs reports on how Kia Motors and Garnier have set about courting great results at the Australian Open.

GARNIER. Serena Williams said it, with the Australian Open trophy firmly grasped in her arms. Lindsay Davenport said it too. Even Marat Safin said it in his Muscovite accent after defeating our own Lleyton Hewitt. The marketers were agog; the wearied and worn player agents were amazed. The tournament officials beamed and all the girls and young 20-somethings in the packed arena earnestly agreed. “I would like to thank Garnier for all the wonderful things they did for the tournament, for the players, for the spectators.”

It was heartfelt, it was warm and real and everyone knew it. I have spent the best part of six years cajoling players to thank and acknowledge tournament sponsors on the winner’s podium. Either it did not happen or it was said with the sincerity of a “have a nice day”.

Garnier somehow managed to make its presence felt at the Australian Open and, better than that, it endeared itself wonderfully to the spectators and players alike. How did it do it?

MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2005

The 2005 Centenary Australian Open was a success every which way you look at it. From a tennis perspective it was regarded by many insiders and the global tennis media as the best major tennis tournament ever. The crowds set all-time records with 543,873 flowing into Melbourne Park over the fortnight. The cumulative TV audience in Australia rose to 26.4 million compared to 18.9 million in 2004.

Lleyton Hewitt did a power of good for the tournament, reaching the final before Safin worked his magic. Hewitt may not have won the title, but he did win Bec Cartwright, proposing to her right after his Centre Court appearance. There was love in the air and it showed. The Seven Network made sure of that.

Could Garnier’s three-year Associate Sponsorship of the Australian Open be the start of a global trend toward beauty product marketing through tennis? Certainly the fit is a good one – legions of healthy-looking young girls flock to the Australian Open each year; not to mention the glamour, natural beauty and appeal of the toned and tanned players.

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Garnier is in the same space with its range of skin-care, self-tanning, hair-care and hair colour products.

Was Garnier’s success at the Australian Open due to the appropriateness of the product for a large part of the fan base and the players themselves? Partly. It’s certainly the reason why Garnier and its competitors will be looking at taking the concept to the other three major tennis tournaments (the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open) and perhaps the WTA Tour too.

So the fit was good, but there was no guarantee that spectators, who had invested their time and money in going to the tennis would then spend time queuing to get a Garnier experience. But they did. This says that both the fit and the execution worked.

Mark O’Keefe, Garnier’s general manager Consumer Division, says that the primary objective of the sponsorship was awareness. Garnier has

“

Then there were the invitation-only Garnier Girls’ Day Breakfasts with fun, frivolity, entertainment and more goodie bags. Indeed a total of 62,000 sample packs were distributed over the fortnight through the various leverage initiatives.

Over 180 players received treatments in their behind-the-scenes enclave complete with beauty advice and stylists. Hence all those heartfelt on-court mentions.

The players can be a jaded lot. They have a total focus on their personal performance and the world in which they live is a little otherworldly, and no more so than at a Grand Slam event. They are not easily impressed. Yet somehow Garnier won their hearts.

The tennis media are also a difficult lot for a sponsor to crack. They are there to report on the tennis, and they have been given every conceivable bit of sponsor merchandise imaginable as they travel from city to city all over the globe. Their world revolves around gaining access to the key player of the moment and a tournament sponsor is of little relevance to them. The media room had daily competitions to win Garnier sample bags and massages in the Garnier World marquee.

With one leverage dollar for every dollar spent on the sponsorship, the Garnier investment was funded partly from Paris and partly locally.

The benefits were felt locally in both awareness and sales, and internationally through the worldwide broadcast branding. A small boy watching TV in Paris noticed the Garnier presence and remarked on it to his Dad, who happened to be the Garnier chief. These little things help justify marketing dollars however good the reporting and hard data.

Was the Garnier sponsorship worth the money it paid? The only report card that matters in sponsorship evaluation is the actual outcomes compared to the objectives of the sponsor. Too many external commentators pass judgment on the success or otherwise of a sponsor’s performance based on their personal perceptions or from a perspective of their particular orientation. I am having a dig here at advertising agencies who will sometimes only evaluate a sponsorship investment against a media outcome. Garnier’s sponsorship was multifaceted, however, from a brand awareness viewpoint.

A post-event survey revealed a 33 percent unaided awareness of Garnier’s sponsorship, and a 60 percent aided awareness.

The sponsorship delivered the target 15 to 34 age group, but importantly also made significant grounds in the lucrative 45 to 54 age group, an area on which Garnier has been working.

Next year will be tough for Garnier. As a newcomer it has had a tremendous start to its three-year sponsorship and it has benefited from a great tournament. Now expectations are high and it will endeavour to lift the bar in 2006.

Garnier somehow managed to make its presence felt at the Australian Open and, better than that, it endeared itself wonderfully to the spectators and players alike. How did it do it?

”

sponsored TV productions such as Australian Idol and the Logies, but this was the company’s first major foray into a live tennis sponsorship.

Garnier’s execution was part traditional, part lateral. There was the oncourt signage, tickets, hospitality and the association with Australia’s largest sporting event. There was an outdoor campaign in Sydney, media placements and street promotions. But where Garnier excelled was in providing both players and spectators with a series of treatments. ‘Garnier World’ at Garden Square in Melbourne Park was a large marquee that provided a series of mini treatments – a pamper fest, treating 21,000 spectators in one of the most impressive relationship marketing exercises of recent times. Thirty staff worked in two shifts for 14 days non-stop.

At one end of the marquee was a long and patient queue of beautiful young things and at the other end was a trickle of delighted people emerging from the treatments with a goodie bag. Top marks for the way in which the Garnier event managers looked after the queue, providing them with umbrellas to ward off the sun’s damaging rays.

KIA MOTORS. What do Garnier and Kia Motors have in common? These companies were both attracted to the Australian Open as a youthful, popular and worldwide entity.

Despite the Australian Open’s Centenary celebrations, the event has a youthful feel about it and it’s this phenomenon, coupled with the power of global TV that makes the Australian Open sponsorship work for Kia Motors.

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040 SPONSORSHIP network. Now there is a healthy demand for the special vehicles each year. The original choice of Jelena Dokic’s father Damir as the spokesperson for Kia Motor’s TVCs was a touch bold, but it did establish Kia Motors as the new major sponsor of the Open, throwing back the shadow of long-time title sponsor Ford. Damir was a risk because while the TVC played on the humour of the situation, there is nothing very funny about a highly disruptive parent who has already been on the receiving end of the Grand Slam of tournament evictions. I was there at the Wimbledon Damir incident and for me it was too disturbing to be turned into a comedy.

Andre Agassi featured in the Kia TVCs the following year and in 2005 Kia moved towards a lounge scene with a family watching a Kia TV advertisement. The strong focus on a price offer in the TVC within the TVC worked a treat. If Kia Motors can attribute strong sales to the Australian Open sponsorship, then it speaks well for the sustainability of the sponsorship.

Automotive sponsorship of tennis is tried and tested. Mercedes-Benz has had a long association with the ATP and particularly the elite Masters Series events. The Mercedes logo that first appeared on the tennis net in

“

The Kia Motors $5 million sponsorship was funded by Seoul, but leveraged locally. According to Kia Motors general manager Ed Butler, the carmaker wanted to build brand awareness and brand confidence so that families would buy its products with confidence.

Of the four Grand Slam tournaments, Australia is at a great disadvantage given it needs to compete with the other three majors, and yet it only has Australia’s tiny population and economy to support it. The US and French Opens and Wimbledon not only have massive local markets, they also have kinder time zones for selling their international TV rights.

Paul McNamee, the Australian Open’s CEO and a former player, was right on the money when he positioned the Australian Open as the Grand Slam event of the Asia Pacific region. Korean car manufacturer Kia Motors is testimony to the value of the Australian Open as an Asia Pacific event and as a global property.

The Kia Motors $5 million sponsorship was funded by Seoul, but leveraged locally. According to Kia Motors general manager Ed Butler, the carmaker wanted to build brand awareness and brand confidence so that families would buy its products with confidence.

While Kia Motor’s leverage program was not as in-your-face as Garnier, it was targeted at the touch-points that provided the greatest financial return. Dealer sales managers worked hard all year to exceed the sales targets that would see them travel to Melbourne for the Open and walk on water for a few days. Sixty of Kia Motor’s principal dealers from across Asia were flown to Melbourne and Australia’s motoring journos were wined, dined and provided with the best seats in the house for the semi-finals.

Special deals on cars were offered through tennis themed TVCs, which worked so well that the deals were extended, and have contributed to 27 consecutive record sales’ months. Imagine that! Each month for 27 months breaking the sales record.

From 12,500 car sales in Australia in 2002, Kia Motors sold 24,500 in 2004 and is looking at a significant rise on that in 2005. While the excellent sales cannot solely be attributed to the Australian Open sponsorship, it does demonstrate that Kia Motors is doing things right in Australia.

The 140 vehicles provided to the tournament as courtesy cars each year are fitted with upscale extras and pre-sold through the dealership

”

Sydney in the mid nineties started a tennis branding trend that has now encompassed the WTA, Davis Cup and some Grand Slam events. Its inception was in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida where a group of ATP marketers came up with the idea and asked, “Can we do that? Can we put a logo on the net? Of course we can. We’re the worldwide governing body of men’s tennis!” The then ATP’s COO Larry Scott went off and sold the idea to Mercedes and the rest, as they say, is history.

Porsche is the worldwide automotive sponsor of the Women’s WTA Tour and Ford was so synonymous with the ‘Ford Australian Open’ that the annual investment in stating the obvious came into question.

Enter Kia Motors, firstly with the Australian Open and then the Davis Cup. While Mercedes and Porsche are at the prestigious end of the market, Kia Motors is selling a product that people ‘need’ to buy rather than a product to which they aspire to owning. It is selling cars in such vast quantities that it should make other automotive brands wonder if tennis as a sponsorship property would be more financially effective in the mid range than at the top end.

Kia Motors in Australia has decided that tennis works so well for it that it has added a new sponsorship to its portfolio – the grass roots program.

Called ‘the Kia Tour’, this encompasses the Australian satellite, challenger and futures circuit – the stepping stones for players to get onto the ATP or WTA Tours. Ed Butler says that the Kia Tour enables the company to have a greater regional reach, to include its rural dealership network and also to give something back to the sport. This is no moot point. Australia desperately needs as many inspired, talented and hungry players coming through the ranks as possible – to give us more Lleyton Hewitts and Alicia Moliks, who in turn will give us great Grand Slam tournaments.

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WHO WINS? Mark O’Keefe and Ed Butler would both say that neither party is competing with the other, that the more either of them does the better it is for the tournament, and therefore everyone benefits. A rising tide lifts all ships. They both have enviable sales records, and have leveraged the Australian Open in a way that best suits their businesses. Both have been proactive.

ENTER THE NEW PARADIGM – TIVO. The clear winner is the Australian Open, which now has an active major and associate sponsor on board.

Environments change, however, and very soon all three parties will be grappling with a new paradigm. Affordable technology sweeping the US and UK will enable TV viewers to download programming onto a hard drive and to watch it in a way that suits them. They can put live TV on hold while they answer the phone, and they can come back and continue to view where they left the program. They can delete all the TV commercials. They can watch Sixty Minutes in 48 minutes with no TVC interruptions. TiVo is a Personal Video Recorder (PVR) that will change the way people watch TV. TiVo will learn that a person likes tennis and will download all the tennis it can find across the multitude of networks and time zones. In theory this should mean that the Australian Open will find an increased market in North America and Europe, and that Australians can go to work throughout Wimbledon without sleep deprivation.

If Kia and Garnier cannot guarantee that their TVCs will be watched, they can at least be happy that their on-court branding will be visible.

They can come up with new and lateral ways to get their message across through the programming itself. Australian Open chief Paul McNamee will be happy that he owns TV programming that sponsors will find more valuable, but then his domestic and international broadcast partners will be faced with new challenges if their advertising revenues fall – will this affect the value of TV rights?

If I was a marketer spending millions with a network, and I knew people weren’t watching my ads, I’d go looking for new ways to reach my target audience.

Perhaps politics, counter technology or legalese will resolve this before TiVo comes to Australia, but clearly the integration with the programming is the way to go and the winners will be those that are ahead of the game as our world changes, yet again. M

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042 STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS Antoni Lee is a communicator, media skills coach and consultant with Red Agency. He is a member of the Public Relations Institute of Australia, the International Association of Coaches, and enjoys the variety and challenge of working in multiple sectors. Contact Red Agency on 02 9955 7877 in Sydney or 03 9670 8350 in Melbourne.

MEDIA STORM DYNAMICS

Antoni Lee braves the tempest to report on how effective responses can protect an organisation’s brand and reputation.

“Glass, china and reputation are easily cracked, and never well mended.”

Benjamin Franklin

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n the right combination, wind, heat and water can generate a cyclone. Likewise, information, intimation and public perception can generate a media storm. Anyone who has been in the eye of a media storm will agree that the old saying “any publicity is good publicity” no longer applies. Not even in Hollywood. How long the storm lasts and how much damage it does to your organisation depends on the fuel in the issue and, increasingly, on your organisation’s readiness and response to today’s communication dynamics.

In a world where word-pairs such as political bribery, government lies, corporate greed, military abuse and church scandal go together as easily as beer and pizza – how should organisational spokespeople respond to protect their brands and reputations?

PUBLIC DISTRUST IS HIGH. You may have heard of the cynical journalist who claimed to know how to tell when politicians were lying. The giveaway: “Their lips are moving.”

It is not hard to understand why journalists rank among society’s most cynical. As a former News Ltd boss wrote, “The people who gather the news must extract it from people who are determined either to suppress it or to misrepresent it; they must deal with legions of axe-grinders and not a few pathological liars.”

Sadly, some organisations and their spokespeople have only themselves to blame in the face of media and public distrust. Because of their socially, environmentally and economically poor behaviour, they suffer a lack of standing today. What’s worse is that the excess, deception and corruption of a few batters public trust for the many.

MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2005

In our vigorous democracy, no organisation is exempt from public scrutiny. Politicians, bureaucrats and big business are fair game. Even charitable and religious institutions are suspect. The media is eager and able to provide public scrutiny: this is part of their role. And some people even take their allegations and complaints straight to the media, rather than to the organisation concerned.

IMPLICATIONS The best defence is an impeccable record. It only takes a hint of impropriety, one potentially credible accusation, to publicly tarnish your reputation. Unfortunately, even if your organisation is eventually cleared of misconduct, the scent of scandal tends to linger.

Organisations should not presume too much public trust. Expect the public to be at least wary of your claims. The onus is not on the public to believe you because of who you are – the onus is on your organisation to prove itself in public.

To do this, avoid wild hyperbole and back up your assertions with reliably sourced and factual data. As a measured corporate PR manager recently said, “We don’t expect the public to start loving us, but hopefully they’ll start hating us a little less.”

MEDIA UBIQUITY. The combined accessibility of radio, television, newspapers and the internet makes news nearly ubiquitous. We can see, hear or read the news from the moment we wake, during our travel to work, in the office, while we exercise, in the park, on a plane, until the moment we sleep at night.

Such pervasive media sets the agenda for much of what is talked about. It creates a desperate ongoing need for content in the form of news, background and information.

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The media is eager and able to provide public scrutiny: this is part of their role. And some people even take their allegations and complaints straight to the media, rather than to the organisation concerned.

”

IMPLICATIONS. The media demand for news can work for and against your organisation’s legitimate communication objectives. Well-prepared organisations package and time news to piggyback on topical issues. They prepare and provide information to fill pre-determined feature and supplement schedules. They plan and disseminate their own ‘news’ in the form of business announcements, program and product launches, etc.

EDITORIAL BELIEVABILITY. Even with declining media credibility and believability, people still perceive what is presented in the news as fact. The media will admit, if pressed, that news is the facts available at the time. Sometimes, even the facts available before the time, as when a prominent news and current affairs magazine recently declared Prince Rainier of Monaco’s death… a week before it happened.

Through the media, captains of industry, sportsmen and women, entertainers and politicians, become household names. Most of us will never meet and personally get to know these people in the public eye. We form our view of them by what the media tells us.

IMPLICATIONS You and your organisation may view what is being published and suggested about you as specious, but unless you respond quickly and effectively, no one else will. If you effectively present your position to the media, you may be able to use the media’s own persuasiveness to your advantage.

People under close media scrutiny must understand media power to form opinion and reputation beyond the realm of limited personal and business associations. The whole world could be watching you.

MEDIA SPEED. Technology enables media speed, and intense competition drives it.

Consequently, nowhere is the word ‘deadline’ felt with more frequent and real impact, than in the media . Reporters work to absurdly tight time-frames to meet instant, rolling demand for news coverage. Late night sports writers may have less than an hour to write and file 1200 words for tomorrow’s paper. As Robin Cohn pointed out in The PR Crisis Bible, “Reporters can be on a company’s front steps before the CEO knows there’s a problem.”

IMPLICATIONS. A big part of issue management is simply predicting the predictable.

Anticipating troubling scenarios will help an organisation respond more quickly and effectively. In the lead-up to the year 2000, most large technology companies, including Microsoft and IBM, developed clear communication strategies to address the range of Y2K bug contingencies.

Organisations should not always wait for all the facts to come in before releasing a comment through the media. In a media confrontation, acknowledging your organisation’s awareness of a potential situation in a

statement highlighting important background, current priorities and action, may alleviate community concern and media criticism.

Sometimes your organisation is unwilling or unable to comment before a media deadline. This can play for and against you. Unless you are under media attack, having no comment on an industry issue will minimise your organisation’s appearance in resulting coverage. No problem if the issue is not one you want to stand on. If you are under attack, it’s usually better not to look like you are trying to duck from attention.

MEDIA OUTLETS ARE OFTEN UNDER-STAFFED. Smaller media outlets in particular, including multitudes of specialist, trade and local media, are short-staffed. Consequently, they lack in-depth reporting ability. Although serious journalists believe resource pressures hurt news quality, what can be done? Competition, deadlines and financial pressure are not going away.

IMPLICATIONS. Desperate for content, and on deadline, journalists don’t have time to plumb every issue. Unfortunately, they sometimes get details, or whole stories, wrong. You may want to write a letter of complaint or clarification, but often it’s not worth it: a typo in your CEO’s name may not be funny, but neither is it earth destroying; the prominence of the correction won’t match the prominence of the original story and the original audience is unlikely to notice the follow-on correction. You will annoy reporters and editors. Let the error’s significance and ease of correction guide you.

To minimise the risk of misunderstanding, always make your information understandable and usable on the level at which the journalist is reporting. Even a small mistake in grammar, can lead to a big misperception of meaning.

INTERPRETATION OF WHAT IS NEWS. Journalists are ethically obligated to be fair, but remember, journalists do not primarily serve you or your organisation. Their first duties are to their immediate superiors and their audience – not to your organisation.

They see themselves as public watchdogs and rightly value their independence. Successful journalists often display curiosity, suspicion, even outrage.

IMPLICATIONS. Beyond certain inescapable events – disasters, government elections, celebrities misbehaving, the media defines and controls what is news.

News at some levels is subjective and usually relative: a matter of reporters’ and editors’ judgments. What is news today may not be news tomorrow, or on any other day. Your organisation’s activities and announcements may be all-important to you and certain audiences, but your news can also be eclipsed by bigger, unanticipated stories. In the end, media audiences and owners are the judge.

CONCLUSION. Environmental factors and dynamics may be outside your control, but often you can influence media opinion and content with clear and quick information. Effective responses can strongly and positively influence the public’s perception of your organisation and its spokespeople, minimising damaging negative coverage, and protecting your hard-won reputation. Getting your organisation’s communication right can be painstaking, but it will be worthwhile. M

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044 BRANDING Dominic Walsh is marketing director at Landor.

IS YOUR BRAND GOING TO HEAVEN OR HELL?

Dominic Walsh braves the world of branding and moral standards, revealing the power of conservatism in determining commercial fate.

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ussies may be a nation of love and kindness, but when it comes to inappropriate behaviour, they are not particularly forgiving. It seems the Australian brandscape has become a battleground between right and wrong and, if a brand is not towing the moral line, it will be punished. The ImagePower® research study is a collaboration between Landor Associates, Millward Brown and Lightspeed Research. The study identifies news-making brands that have both thrived and suffered during the past year and the Australian public’s perceptions of these brands. Key findings to come out of the study are an intolerance for badly behaved brands, our intimate love/hate relationship with celebrities, a sustained health trend and a slump in interest for some of our most well-known television programs.

James Hardie, Paris Hilton and the Canterbury Bulldogs were among the losers, while iPod, Google, Bec Cartwright and Subway were considered to be big winners. Losing brands showed a common trait of bad behaviour that demonstrates an unforgiving conservatism in Australian society. It seems that we are happy to watch bad behaviour in the fantasy world of television such as the hugely popular Desperate Housewives, but it’s another thing entirely to see it play out in real life.

While our intolerance acts as a warning sign for brands trying to build equity, there are a number of learnings that can assist with building a strong brand able to weather a moral maelstrom.

UNDERSTANDING BAD BEHAVIOUR. Whether it’s distasteful or downright unethical, respondents had no patience for brands that don’t behave. Losing brands consistently scored low on trust, intelligence and ‘someone I admire’. Unethical behaviour

MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2005

was also strongly linked to negative favourability. Not surprisingly, James Hardie and the Canterbury Bulldogs scored particularly highly on these dimensions as well as celebrities such as Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Willie Mason. Perhaps the greatest lesson is the fact that consumers have long memories. The study found that consumers predicted a dim future for most of these brands.

OUR LOVE/HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH CELEBRITIES. A mongrel, ego maniac, trashy, blood sucking leech – just some of the words used to describe celebrities. In contrast, they were also described as delightful, classy, friendly and courageous. There is no doubt that Australians are passionate about celebrities. They elicit polarised responses and it seems that everyone has an opinion. Interestingly, we talk about celebrities as if we know them personally, with as much animation as we’d talk about a best friend or worst enemy. In a society that is increasingly less community focused, we seem to use celebrities to supplement real life relationships.

The most volatile celebrities of the past year have been those that rely on wild antics for publicity, while the strongest are those who have a particular talent or have made headlines for a positive reason. ‘Hot’ celebrities such as Richard Branson and David Koch score highly on intelligence and authenticity. Ethical is also a dimension that follows winners closely. Britney and Paris registered high scores on trendy/faddy, overexposed, spoilt and immature. This seems to put to rest the old saying ‘any publicity is good publicity’. The central flaw of the ‘losers’ was arrogance. Aussies simply will not tolerate arrogance. On a positive note, the future looks bright for Lleyton Hewitt and Bec Cartwright. The

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BRANDING 045

IMAGEPOWER® NEWSMAKER BRANDS SURVEY PAST YEAR WINNERS (NON CELEBRITY) 1. iPod 2. Google 3. Desperate Housewives 4. Australia 5. Subway

PAST YEAR LOSERS (NON CELEBRITY) 1. James Hardie 2. ALP (Australian Labor Party 3. Big Brother 4. Canterbury Bulldogs 5. Telstra

PAST YEAR WINNERS (CELEBRITY) 1. Bec Cartwright 2. Missy Higgins 3. Rove McManus 4. Lleyton Hewitt 5. Geoffrey Rush

PAST YEAR LOSERS (CELEBRITY) 1. Mark Latham 2. Michael Jackson 3. John Kerry 4. Britney Spears 5. George Bush

HOT* Bec Cartwright David Koch Desperate Housewives Google iPod Lleyton Hewitt Missy Higgins Richard Branson Rove McManus Subway

NOT* ALP Big Brother Britney Spears Canterbury Bulldogs George Bush James Hardie John Kerry Mark Latham Paris Hilton Michael Jackson

*Listed in alphabetical order. Measured across a number of indicators including news coverage, favourability, past year, coming year.

METHODOLOGY Millward Brown conducted 1001 interviews using the Lightspeed Research online consumer panel, among a representative sample of the general population in Australia.

Interviews were conducted between 17 and 28 February 2005.

most sacred domain. Healthy brands are showing a strong upward trend, with respondents anticipating this will continue into the upcoming year.

Brands at the intersection of health and convenience, such as Boost Juice and Subway, are poised to capitalise on this continuing trend.

Juice bars, which are popping up everywhere, have a faddish aspect, but are considered cosmopolitan, which indicates that people see this as a global phenomenon. Nudie juice is perceived to be highly unique and is gaining in popularity. It seems the market is prepared to reward brands that have an original approach to their health message and break category cues such as the mandatory piece of fruit on a juice label.

Even though we’re moving towards what we consider to be healthier brands, we’re also willing to make exceptions. Krispy Kreme, which has the same stigmas as some of the unhealthier, traditional, fast food brands, manages to largely avoid consumer health concerns by positioning itself as a treat. By staying out of the meal space, Krispy Kreme is able to attract those who want a tasty bite without the guilt factor that a hamburger or deep fried chicken meal might elicit. We think nothing of having a Sumo Salad and Boost Juice for lunch and then allowing ourselves to indulge in a Krispy Kreme doughnut for afternoon tea.

NETWORK WARS. The ImagePower® study found some interesting results for the television networks. The major network results indicate that Seven looks poised for a strong ratings year, with the polarising hit Desperate Housewives and the strong Sunrise hosted by presenter David Koch. From a brand perspective, it seems Seven, Nine and Ten all suffer from a lack of differentiation.

The stars seemed to line up for Channel Seven during the summer with Lleyton Hewitt’s climb to the Australian Open final. Meanwhile, Home and Away’s Bec Cartwright watched starry-eyed from the grandstand. Certainly a cross-promoter’s dream reached a crescendo when Bec and Lleyton announced their engagement and Bec won Dancing with the Stars! In contrast, Channel Nine is suffering from high ambivalence, while Ten looks like it may flatten in the coming year, with results predicting both Australian Idol and Big Brother on strong downward trends.

Seven, Nine and Ten’s attributes appear to be very similar, with Seven leading slightly on attributes such as sincere and ethical and Ten leading on hip and cool. The networks scored low on unique, which would suggest that they may be relying too heavily on trendy programming for short-term appeal. For the networks, working to build differentiation can give added credibility when introducing new shows, and can help them weather a rough ratings season. SBS, however, has a strongly differentiated profile with high unique and intriguing scores.

ACHIEVING THE HALO EFFECT. merging of these two celebrity brands seems to have created a new entity in its own right. We could be seeing the emergence of Australia’s answer to Posh and Becks.

OUR BODY IS A TEMPLE. Increasingly we consider our bodies to be temples. Who would have thought that it would become fashionable to live a healthy lifestyle? It’s now trendy for teens to be seen walking down the street with a Boost Juice. In the future, only the bravest of brands will dare to harm this

So what does all of this mean? If good behaviour is simply a matter of common sense then why is it that so many brands seem to get it wrong?

Truly great brands are focused, skilled and determined. This requires a disciplined approach to managing your brand. Moreover, it requires an in-depth understanding of your brand’s promise and how you deliver on that promise. This is not simply a matter of communicating the right message. It’s also a case of delivering through operations, product and services and behaviours. It seems that faith and focus are the key to heaven’s door. M

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046 SALES MANAGEMENT Beverley Jones is managing director of Objective Assessment, which specialists in sales-specific online evaluations and pre-hiring tools. She is an expert on sales performance issues, having spent 25 years developing and hiring salespeople across three continents, including recruiting entire teams for some Top 100 companies. Contact Beverley on 02 9025 3980, email bjones@objectiveassessment.com.au or visit www.objectiveassessment.com.au

BACK TO THE FUTURE FOR SALES MANAGEMENT

Beverley Jones explains how new profiling software is allowing companies to effectively ‘x-ray’ candidates and existing sales teams to maximise sales growth.

I

n 2005 Australian businesses are finding it harder to recruit and retain sales talent than at any other time in the past 30 years. For businesses such as marketing agencies and their clients, whose growth depends on high calibre sales teams, this shortage may have a significant impact on the way they identify and develop sales talent. Given the vagaries of available talent, forward-focused companies are taking stock of their existing sales force by turning to powerful new assessment tools that effectively x-ray their sales organisation and deliver a blueprint for development to fuel sales growth.

SALES – THE SKILLS SHORTAGE THAT DIDN’T MAKE THE HEADLINES. The challenge of sales recruitment and retention for Australian businesses is highlighted in a national quarterly survey from The Executive Connection (TEC), an organisation with a membership of 800 chief executives in Australia. TEC’s first-quarter 2005 report revealed that although one-third of those surveyed foresaw worsening economic conditions in the next year, 74 percent predicted increased sales revenue. Yet the CEOs ranked sales and marketing people, those they need to help attain the projected sales growth, as the second hardest personnel to recruit and retain.

Several factors conspired to create today’s problem. Back in the 1970s, sales was considered a solid career choice with excellent prospects for climbing the corporate ladder to the top job. By the mid-1980s, a business degree was the new passport to senior management and sales continued to fall from favour in the 1990s as companies failed to develop a career path to retain talent. Consequently, salespeople jump ship or opt for a role in marketing with better perceived chances of advancement.

In 2005 there is still no degree course in sales and, in more than 25 years of working in evaluating and developing people, I’ve rarely come across a career counsellor who suggested a sales career to an aspiring business graduate.

Further compounding the lack of sales talent is that, as a consequence of fewer talented people entering sales, there are fewer outstanding performers for junior salespeople to emulate. In fact, statistics gathered by the Objective Management Group in Massachusetts, US – whose tools

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assessed over 200,000 salespeople between 1994 and 2005 across the US, Canada and Australia – reveal only 26 percent of salespeople surveyed could be considered good to great. In short, around three-quarters of salespeople, the study authors concluded, rated as average to weak.

X-RAY YOUR ENTIRE SALES OPERATION. Given the shortage of available talent, employers are taking a hard look at their incumbent sales team. In an employee driven market your best salespeople can be more easily enticed away. Meeting their career and financial expectations is less costly than losing them in the long-term.

Traditionally, evaluating the sales organisation was the province of external consultants; however, the process was costly and slow.

New tools for analysing an organisation’s sales operation are now emerging that take advantage of today’s online environment to deliver fast, cost-effective analysis of the enterprise’s sales strengths. Key among these is the online assessment that profiles an organisation’s entire sales force, sales processes and systems, measuring individual and team findings against what it takes to be successful in sales in your business. It will also pinpoint opportunities for development.

This tool, which is increasingly gaining traction in the Australian market, removes the subjectivity of the manual process, while making analysis more affordable and very fast. How to choose the right tool for your company? While you can ‘Google up’ any number of options, the key is to choose one that can be tailored to your product and customer profile. Beyond that, other tips on the top 10 check-list include assessing the tool’s capacity to pinpoint common weaknesses in the sales team and development opportunities linked to the findings.

TOP 10 CHECKLIST – SELECTING THE BEST SALES ORGANISATION ASSESSMENT. 1. Are sales managers included in the assessment?

2. Is the assessment linked to your product and customer profile?

3. Does it examine the state of your sales pipeline?

4. Will it identify the capability of the team to support your strategies?

5. Will it uncover common weaknesses in the team?

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SALES MANAGEMENT 047 6. Can it identify who on the team should be performing better?

7. Does it recommend changes to your systems and processes?

8. Will it check on your hiring criteria?

9. Most importantly, is it objective, compliant, affordable and fast?

CASE STUDY SNAPSHOT: DEXION LIMITED. Dexion Limited, which delivers world-class storage systems for retail giants Coles Myer and Bunnings, gained powerful new intelligence on its sales organisation by putting its entire national sales team through an online sales force evaluation.

Graham Eastick, Dexion’s executive GM – key accounts, explains, “The result is an exact assessment of each person on the team, against the same criteria. The report uncovered common weaknesses amongst the team that hadn’t been pinpointed in any previous test and that would’ve remained hidden... all areas for improvement for our salespeople.”

He adds, “Individuals received their own report outlining their particular strengths and weaknesses and identifying their potential for growth.” From a macro perspective, Eastick comments, “It’s given us a framework to address our long-term training expenditure, and we’re now able to benchmark sales performance at a national level.”

ADDING NEW BLOOD TO YOUR SALES TEAM. All companies need to plan for adding new blood to the sales effort.

Whatever your business, it’s vital to hire correctly. There are obvious costs associated with any mis-hire, but in sales the greatest hidden costs include aggravation of an existing customer and loss of potential new business to the tune of potentially millions of dollars.

So how do you track down the sales superstars your business needs when you’re feeling the pressure from competition, have bullish sales targets to meet and the interview is the salesperson’s stage?

WHAT PSYCHOLOGICAL, PERSONALITY, BEHAVIOUR AND APTITUDE TESTS WON’T TELL YOU. A factor in the rise of online pre-hiring tools is their ability to free executives from the lengthy and confusing process of trying to make an assessment – based on résumés and traditional screening tests – of the right hire.

Screening tests are widely used with 42 percent of CEOs (TEC survey 2005 Q1) reporting they are part of their company’s hiring process. I’ve reviewed and worked with countless permutations of psychological, personality, behaviour and aptitude tests and all deliver useful information.

Depending on the test, they will tell you how balanced a candidate is, their ability to build relationships, whether they will comply with your procedures and policies, or their theoretical knowledge.

What they won’t tell you is whether the person in front of you will sell your product or service in any economic climate, against any amount of competition. Herein lies a potential danger when HR is managing the initial screening for sales and relies heavily on a candidate’s past experience and traditional tests, resulting in sales talent falling through the cracks.

RADICAL CHANGE AHEAD – REVERSING THE SALES SELECTION PROCESS. I predict that within the next five years you will see few companies relying on résumés or conducting initial screening interviews to select salespeople.

Today’s employers are going online for smarter recruiting and testing tools. Companies were moving towards expert online systems in 2000, but with the dotcom fallout confidence waned. These online tests eliminate many time-consuming steps in the recruitment process, including wading through the résumés and initial interviews of those applicants unsuitable for the job in question.

The most effective screening tools for sales are those that have been developed specifically for, rather than adapted to, sales. To screen candidates accurately, the tool should be customisable to your unique product and market profile. The key here is that you, the employer, provide the specific product and market profile, which is then added to the backdrop of sales competencies and a set of elements considered crucial to sales success.

The result is an online test tailored precisely to the job you seek to fill.

Candidates typically do the test in 20 to 30 minutes and results are emailed to you within minutes of test completion. Only those candidates identified as having what it takes to sell your product or service progress to an interview.

The best tests go as far as making a hiring recommendation with a full explanation of the candidate’s strengths that support selling, their learned skills, the hidden weaknesses that could neutralise their strengths, their self-limiting beliefs, compatibility with your organisation’s profile in specific areas and whether or not the individual will benefit from training. All before you’ve even read a résumé or been subjected to their inimitable charm.

If the primary benefit of online testing lies in reducing the risk inherent in hiring, secondary factors include legal compliance. This process is objective and adheres to EEO requirements, whereas companies may be exposing themselves to legal liability with more subjective hiring procedures. If your sales force is spread across several states it also enables you to establish a uniform approach to hiring.

CASE STUDY SNAPSHOT: FORTYTWO INTERNATIONAL. One company embracing the online approach to hiring is Sydneybased email marketing specialist FortyTwo International, a steadily growing organisation that looks for ‘hunter’ type salespeople. Lee Hawksley, sales and marketing director for FortyTwo, says, “I tend to recruit people with far too much reliance on gut feel. Salespeople are excellent performers in interview situations, but the Express Screen pre-hiring tool we now use cuts through any performance and you get the real answer.”

Hawksley adds, “It uncovers belief systems people hold that are difficult to get to in a traditional interview situation... and allows us to get to the real heart of issues very quickly in the interview process.”

All online tests are not created equal, Lee cautions, “We looked at basic online tests, but what really appealed to us was an online test backed by the personal service of an expert to help us interpret the results... much more useful than a report that’s just a load of words from a website.”

GOOD NEWS FOR SALES PROFESSIONALS? Should sales professionals be worried about the arrival of these tools in the Australian market? No. It’s a two-way street and as much as companies need to identify and keep the right sales talent, salespeople want to land the right job with development opportunities to fulfil their career aspirations, potentially re-opening the gates to senior management. M

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048 INNOVATION Vikki Dahl is a former marketer at IP Australia and a freelance writer. She continues her association with IP Australia, writing articles and case studies that highlight the key role IP plays in business.

IP RIGHTS – THE REWARD OF INNOVATION

It’s called ‘intellectual property’ and the smartest thing to do is to make sure yours is adequately protected, writes Vikki Dahl.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY MATTERS TO YOUR BUSINESS. In order to achieve key business goals – profitability, productivity and market leadership – you need to profit from your innovations by protecting, managing and taking advantage of your intellectual property (IP) effectively.

Businesses that accept the risk and expense of innovating can reap great rewards with the proper IP protection as IP rights provide a position of ‘exclusivity’. Exclusivity means limited competition for a limited time. This provides businesses with an opportunity to establish market position and market share.

Remember to keep your innovation secret, via a confidentiality agreement for example. If you reveal your innovation before it is adequately protected, you may forfeit your right to IP protection and/or lose your innovation to copycats.

Understanding how to protect your IP and taking precautions against infringing another’s IP is not a luxury – it’s a business necessity. As Peter Willimott, acting director of marketing and customer strategy at IP Australia emphasises: “If you’re not in control of your IP, you’re not in control of your business. It’s important for a business operator to know what their IP is, what it is worth and to commercialise it.”

You may not be aware of the IP your business owns. Your business name, ideas, logo, customer lists and databases, and the skills and experience of your people are all part of your IP portfolio.

Strategic use of IP rights can provide your business with unique rights of commercial leverage in the marketplace and offer you protection against competitors. As an IP owner, you can create relationships with others to commercialise your innovation and prevent others from exploiting your innovation without your permission. For many businesses – large or small – this may be a key to survival.

Without IP protection, competitors can copy your innovations without fear of retribution. Effectively they can ride on the coat tails of your intellectual effort and this scenario leaves you to compete only on price rather than on product differentiation.

IP IS A BUSINESS ASSET. IP rights formally recognise creative effort and commercial reputation and goodwill in the market place. The long-term value of your creativity and innovation can be substantial and greatly enhanced if protected by

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IP rights. This is because your innovations have value in terms of function/purpose, but they also have intrinsic worth as IP. For example, consumers associate a logo, jingle or phrase with a particular product or company and that brand awareness can be enormously valuable. Think about the big name brands, Holden, Qantas or Foster’s and you will quickly recognise their value. Ownership of a powerful brand can clearly establish a competitive edge.

Ownership of IP also adds another dimension to your business, which can equate to increased value in the event of its sale, much like tangible assets add value. You may also generate additional profits for your business through licensing your IP.

WHAT IS MY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY? By protecting your innovations via a single or any combination of IP rights, you determine the way your ideas can be used and by whom – and you increase their value.

Essentially, anything that falls within the IP categories of patents, registered trademarks, designs, copyright, trade secrets and domain names constitutes IP. Other types of IP include circuit layout rights and plant breeder rights; however, in terms of marketing, primarily you need to understand trademarks, designs, copyright and domain names.

TRADEMARKS. Registered trademarks protect a letter, number, word, symbol, picture, sound, smell, shape, logo, aspect of packaging or a combination of these, which can be applied to a phrase or slogan and are used to distinguish goods and services from competitors (e.g.‘Just do it’ associated with Nike sportswear).

Be aware that trademarks can be registered or unregistered.

Registered trademarks create and maintain a market position and a successful brand – they also provide a stronger legal defence than an unregistered trademark, should infringement occur.

For registration, a trademark must be capable of distinguishing a company’s goods and services from its competitors. Trademarks are granted for 10-year periods and may be renewed. That’s why trademarks are so valuable; provided the trademark is used, it can have an infinite life.

When you consider the cost of product development and advertising, the cost of trademark registration is a good investment. All up, the cost to register a basic trademark begins at $300. The more goods and services you specify, the more it will cost you. Weighed against the potential costs

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INNOVATION 049 of litigation, you will find that trademark registration is well worth it.

Remember to register the trademark as a domain name because domain names are another important building block in any brand development strategy.

DESIGNS. Designs protect the shape or appearance of your goods, but not their function. Given that art has been used ubiquitously by marketers for decades, it is difficult to ignore its proven role in building intense consumer brand relationships.

A registered design that has successfully passed examination is a legally enforceable right to use a product’s design or packaging to gain a marketing edge, and prevents others from using the design without agreement.

To be registrable, a design must be new and distinctive. Design rights are intended to protect designs that are applied industrially rather than in a single artistic work, which would be protected by copyright.

There were major changes to the Designs Act introduced in 2004. One major change was the introduction of a publication option as an alternative to registration. Publication does not give any rights, but will prevent others from obtaining registration for the same design.

Design rights are granted for an initial period of five years from the filing date, but protection can be extended for a total period of 10 years.

TOO BUSY? AT LEAST REMEMBER THIS MUCH ABOUT IP… ✒ IP is a valuable business asset, both in terms of risk management and commercial advantage ✒ don’t talk about your ideas without confidentiality agreements – once your ideas are in the public domain they may be ripped off and/or ineligible for registration ✒ seek information on protecting your IP from IP Australia’s website and/or IP professionals such as a patent or trademark attorney ✒ you can use a combination of IP rights to maximise protection and profits ✒ search the IP databases on IP Australia’s website to ensure your new innovation does not infringe an existing piece of IP ✒ IP rights are critical to long-term brand development – they are also a saleable property, which adds value to your company’s bottom line, and ✒ pursue copycats and understand your responsibilities for avoiding infringing others.

expenditure because someone else owns the brand or one similar. If trademark clearance procedures are neglected and someone else is already using an identical or substantially similar trademark, your business may end up having to withdraw a product to ensure another’s trademark is not infringed. For a fee, you can engage a commercial searching agency to conduct a search on your behalf and avoid this painful and potentially costly lesson.

An IP search is also a strategic tool for keeping an eye on competitors.

DON’T WAIT FOR SOMEONE TO INFRINGE YOUR IP. An IP infringement strategy should be part of your overall business strategy. A crucial part of an infringement strategy involves determining the value of your IP and to what extent you should reasonably go to in order to protect it.

Make sure that you: ✒ maintain accurate IP records; ✒ search IP Australia’s databases and any relevant industry sources (even the Yellow Pages) to ensure your idea is not already registered or in the marketplace – then you can apply for protection and avoid infringing another’s IP; ✒ attribute ownership (i.e. use the registered trademark symbol ® or if unregistered use ™); ✒ consider IP insurance; and ✒ investigate potential IP infringements immediately.

If you find your IP is being copied or used For more information, visit IP Australia’s by someone else without your permission, website www.ipaustralia.gov.au COPYRIGHT. there are a number of actions you can take.

Copyright protects the way information or an or call 1300 651 010.

These range from a letter of warning from your idea is expressed, whether on paper, electroniattorney to negotiations to settle out of court cally or in some other reproducible medium. For example, artistic and or, if this fails, court action. In all infringement actions you must prove literary works, film and sound recordings, computer programs and engi- that the IP exists under legislation and substantiate ownership of the IP. neering drawings are all protected by copyright. Note that this protection Whatever action you do take, pursue it vigorously and make sure any is automatic – you do not need to apply. infringer knows you are serious about protecting your IP. Beware – if you suspect infringement, but take no action, you might DOMAIN NAMES. eventually lose the opportunity to seek remedy. For most IP rights, the A domain name is your online identity and your address on the internet; limitation period is six years from the date the infringement occurred, for example, www.bigpond.com.au. Like other aspects of your business, not the date the IP owner became aware of it. effective use of your domain name is important to your success. A domain Don’t risk infringing another’s IP. Always seek permission to use name can be promoted and protected so that customers can easily find another’s IP and acknowledge. appropriately. your specific goods or services.

If you are accused of infringement, cease using the disputed mark, seek clarification from the accuser, conduct a search of IP Australia’s USE IP KNOWLEDGE TO YOUR BUSINESS databases and obtain legal advice.

ADVANTAGE.

IP knowledge can help you to expand your business and keep an eye on competitors.

Strategic use of the IP system is also sound risk management, particularly for a marketing business. For example, failure to search the Trademarks Register before launching a new brand can result in wasted

IP SAVVY CONTRACTS. In engaging third parties for the purpose of marketing your company or any of your innovative products, you should delineate ownership of any IP created. Will your company retain ownership? Will there be royalty fees? You need to be clear about IP ownership from the very beginning. M

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050 PUBLIC RELATIONS Peter Mills is a PR and marketing planner. He talks to industry groups and broadcasts a monthly commentary on media and marketing topics on ABC Radio’s nationwide NightLife program. To subscribe to Peter’s free topical e-newsletter, call 02 9439 9089 or email contact@petermills.com.au

BUILDYOUUP, TEARYOUDOWN

If your business has benefited from a positive media profile, then you’re definitely riding for a fall. With due care, this need not be fatal, writes Peter Mills.

I

t was a sobering spectacle. Steve Vizard’s admission of illegal share trading provoked a media savaging that holds lessons for all people, products or organisations that rely on a favourable public profile. As one organism, the media turned against Vizard and not one of the dozens of commentators had a good word to say. This was in contrast to the sheaf of positive character references that the disgraced Melbourne personality managed to extract from his mates in business.

Vizard’s fall from grace was similar to the fate of former Sydney stockbroker Rene Rivkin. There were also echoes of Michael Jackson, even though the entertainer was acquitted. All three people lived through the media and were shrewd shapers of a public persona. All were ultimately destroyed by the same vehicle.

This is not to say that celebrities such as Vizard are purely news phenomena with no grounding in reality. But the media are willing aiders and abetters. They cheer on the rising aspirant by beaming light on his or her triumphs. Later, they hasten the inevitable departure by dancing on the fallen idol’s coffin lid.

IT’S NOT PERSONAL. Ernest Hemingway said that every living person owes nature a death. The media work on a similar principle. Why is this so? Change is why we keep on reading and listening to the news. We’re transfixed by the flux and flow of fortunes, the rise of young hopefuls and the fall of the mighty. Once the media decide a person or product is in decline, they hound it out of favour.

‘Lynch mob journalism’ is the term for this pack behaviour. Remember, this isn’t personal. Building up people and products sells newspapers and boosts television and radio ratings. So does tearing things down.

Mark Latham was the media’s darling as late as October last year, even after federal Labor’s election failure. But Latham was hung from the nearest tree when he wouldn’t communicate with the public after the tsunami catastrophe at Christmas.

HONEYMOON ENDS. How can you protect your persona, product or organisation? It helps to remember that if you’ve built a positive media profile, then you owe them. You didn’t get to the top on the strength of your brilliance alone.

In fact, you’re riding for a fall – at the first opportunity, the media will try

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to tear you from the pedestal. The honeymoon is over. They start carping and criticising. They don’t seem to love you anymore.

When this happens, your courting and good manners mustn’t end.

Don’t hide behind walls, be devious or treat them with contempt. Look for ways of building goodwill. Be a willing source of good quotes. Tell the truth – or at least your version of it. Remember, you owe them. And try to avoid getting into a fight with the media, because that’s a battle you can’t win. Take the rough with the smooth. Make your point if you must, but live to work with them another day.

BIG REVERSAL. Former New South Wales Premier Bob Carr went through hell after newspapers exposed the failings of the state’s hospital system and train services. This was an amazing reversal, in the wake of Carr’s stunning election victory in 2003. But the Premier didn’t lose his head. He knew he was riding the inevitable cycle of build-you-up, tear-you-down. Carr endured the harsh times and finished his political career on a strong note, without any pressure on him to depart.

Steve Vizard incurred the public’s anger by being on holiday in Europe when news of his transgression broke. He committed the Latham sin of being unavailable. Later, to his credit, Vizard was open with the press, which may help his future rehabilitation.

DICK AND JAMES. Dick Smith Foods was lucky to survive media scrutiny of its claims that locally owned companies are better for the economy than foreign ones.

Smith, after all, made his first fortune selling imported electronic goods sourced from Asia. But in his favour, the entrepreneur has always been careful to maintain an excellent relationship with the press.

The media campaign against James Hardie Industries is a concerted effort that won’t end until shareholders have agreed to compensate the company’s unfortunate asbestos victims. This is forecast to happen in late September or early October 2005. As marketers, we can take comfort from the fact that no outcome is inevitable, that with good management the media juggernaut can be slowed or turned around. That’s why we try to control perceptions and the media who filter those perceptions. But, as Hemingway said, what’s owed must always be paid. M

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052 CAREERS Jacqui Pollock is an executive life coach and business mentor. She specialises in coaching marketing and agency professionals in career planning, time management, communication skills and work/home balance. Jacqui is business mentor to marketing recruitment company Stopgap (www.stopgap.com.au) where she coaches and mentors staff, candidates and clients.

Email Jacqui at: jacqui.pollock@stopgap.com.au or coach@jpollock.com

WE NEEDED SOMEONE… YESTERDAY

How can you best apply effective time management to the recruitment process? Jacqui Pollock examines the barriers that slow down the hiring process and how to overcome them.

H

ow often do you hear people say: “we needed someone yesterday” in relation to recruitment? But should time really come into it when you’re looking for the right person? Our ‘to do’ lists can be varied and long – the key to getting through them effectively is to identify your goals and then prioritise your actions. But how do you prioritise between actually completing the tasks on your list and looking to hire the right person to do them for you?

“I only ever get to think about recruitment at the end of the day, when things have quietened down a bit and the phone’s stopped ringing,” says one marketing manager who urgently needs a new product manager to join his team.

Recruitment becomes an urgent task when a position is vacant and the workload is temporarily carried by other team members. The vacancy itself creates an extra strain, let alone the job of finding the right person to fill it… quickly!

When I ask recruiting marketers and agency professionals what gets in the way of finding new staff, their top reason is their own heavy workloads. Kathryn Illy, marketing manager at Macquarie Margin Lending, explains her frustration. “The sheer volume of CVs that need to be deciphered, reviewed and culled into a shortlist, and my busy workload makes it very difficult for me to respond.”

Lisa Purcell, group account director at Clemenger Promotive, says that her major barrier to hiring is “dedicating the right time it deserves when you are busy with everything else”. This is echoed by Judith deGroot, operations manager at the International Fund for Animal Welfare: “My workload is too varied; I don’t have enough time to devote to HR needs!”

The everyday workload of marketing/agency staff is also the main barrier for companies who have their own HR departments. David Werner, manager of the people and culture department at Ernst and Young, says that time is lost via “the competing demands of the recruiting manager, candidate and HR pulling together a brief and then arranging interviews”.

There’s an interesting time disparity, isn’t there? When we ourselves are job seeking, we’ll spend hours considering the position, salary, the organisation’s culture, our promotion prospects and how it compares to current or previous jobs we’ve had. When the shoe is on the other foot – our available time diminishes dramatically and recruiting becomes one of many tasks that we need to fit into our day.

When I coach clients within the area of time management, we start by identifying what (or who) are their ‘time stealers’. During the recruit-

ment process, the time stealers are probably the many factors outside of your control. Just to name a few: uncontrolled quantity and quality of incoming CVs, unavailability of the people who need to attend the interview, diaries that can’t be accessed, lack of lead-time, changing briefs, salary negotiations, inaccurate information from candidates, getting senior management commitment and getting approval etc. These kinds of tasks don’t lend themselves easily to a quick tick on your ‘to do’ list!

Purcell adds other barriers to her list of things that take too long when hiring: “Coordinating interview times with everyone’s schedule and wading through CVs if not using a recruitment agency.”

Illy adds, “It takes up even more time to actually find the information you require when CVs lack the relevant information upfront, i.e. skills/experience relevant to the job being advertised.”

Marketers also admit that when it comes to hiring new staff, some of them are untrained or doubt their capabilities. Marketing professionals aren’t hired to hire people, but it becomes an important part of their role. A lack of confidence in any particular task can severely slow down performance.

The hiring process is a heavy time absorber. Everyone knows that getting it right means doing it right. But how can you best remove the barriers that slow it down?

Here are some tips on how to apply some reliable time management skills specifically to the recruitment process.

SET DAILY OBJECTIVES. If your vacancy is producing a crisis situation, then respond to it with a crisis strategy. Set yourself daily objectives, then prioritise your tasks in order to achieve them. Use short-term strategies: block out diary time, divert phone calls and delegate to release more time for your immediate objective (remember these are temporary; things will be different again when you’ve filled the vacancy).

M

REDUCE PROCRASTINATION. One of the biggest time thieves is procrastination – it’s especially obvious when recruiting people; which of your two final interview candidates will really be better for the job? Reduce procrastination by making it easier for your people to make decisions about candidates, use personality profile testing, introduce structured interviewing, agree on appropriate interview questions for each and every position that reflect your company values and provide refresher training to those conducting interviews.

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USE APPROPRIATE COMMUNICATION.

PROVIDE SPEEDY FEEDBACK.

You have the choice of reaching a candidate by email, text, phone or letter. The key is to reach them immediately so that they can respond immediately. Whenever you need to communicate with candidates, and all the other people involved in the hiring, find out as much as you can about where they are. Check daily for the best way to reach them before you send any further communication.

Marketers lose strong candidates when they are kept waiting for interview feedback. Most commonly this occurs when a candidate has been interviewed by more than one person. Coordinate feedback immediately after an interview, be clear about the next action and make sure any follow-up meeting is scheduled when the feedback is given.

MAKE A REALITY CHECK.

Consider conducting the first interview by telephone. It’s much easier and quicker to set up a date and time for this than a face-to-face meeting.

It gives you a chance to check out the accuracy and suitability of a candidate’s experience and capabilities very quickly.

Put the vacancy into perspective. Wise up on the marketplace regarding the position for which you are recruiting. If supply is short, be prepared to be flexible. Waiting for the perfect candidate in an imperfect market can waste time, and you may miss some great talent if you’re unprepared to be flexible.

ONLY WORK WITH COMPLETE INFORMATION. A huge barrier that prevents us working efficiently is when we don’t have all the information we need. When recruiting you need an accurate brief.

A brief that’s inaccurate, incomplete or out of date will waste your time and your candidate’s. Regularly update your brief to reflect the changes that can occur along the way. And here are some tools, specific to the recruitment process, which may be helpful as you manage hiring new staff as well as your other job responsibilities:

PARTNER WITH A RECRUITER YOU CAN TRUST. Choose and brief an agency with a track record for action. Find a recruiting partner that you trust – and then leave them to do their job for you.

Experienced and professional recruiters will not only save you time, but manage the whole process for you.

TELEPHONE INTERVIEW.

COMMUNICATE YOUR AVAILABILITY. A candidate may only have a spare hour at lunchtime to try and reach you. While you are in the hiring process, make sure your phone voice recordings provide daily updates about your availability and the best way you can be reached. Always allocate a second point of contact for when you are unavailable – it could be an assistant, colleague or HR.

PROVIDE REFRESHER TRAINING. Enhance your recruiting skills by refreshing your approach. I have observed great performance improvements after only a couple of short training sessions. Staff need direction, practice and confidence. Also consider reworking your interview structure – explore your process and questions, improve the efficiency of information retrieval from the candidates you meet. M

MAKE OUR GLOBAL REACH YOURS New jobs listed daily by 70 Aquent offices in 16 countries www.jobs.aquent.com

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054 WHO ARE YOU TALKING TO? BY TONY LAMBAART OF LEAP AGENCY.

EYES OFF THE PRIZE

I

think one of the most challenging jobs you can take on in this industry is that of a creative director. It’s a job that requires incredible vision, determination, discipline and the iron-fisted will of an English nanny. A creative director has to be larger than life and more generous than a saint to succeed, sifting through the ideas in an attempt to lead an agency to glory.

Judging the merits of a good idea is one thing; discussing what is a good idea in an ad is entirely another. As a defender of the faith, it is the creative director’s job to encourage creative brilliance and ensure it will see the light of day. The problem is that not every brilliant idea deserves that squirt of sun block, especially if it fails to answer the brief. As Ron Mather once said, “Two nuns standing on a cliff flashing their fannies could be very creative, but if it doesn’t answer the brief, it’s just a funny idea.” I’m often caught in discussions around how good the idea is, and how important it is that we get this one through.

When I ask where the product benefit is or what is the ad actually saying, however, I’m treated like a pathological axe murderer.

I don’t think my creative department is any different to any other.

While I may whinge about my role, being a creative can be just as frustrating – it is an incredible challenge to come up with the goods day in day out. Finding a brilliant cut through idea can at times be near impossible when communicating to a society where nothing shocks and it’s all

been seen before. What I find strange about all this is how creative departments in Australia can’t see that upping the anti from shocking to obscene isn’t brilliant, but boringly predictable.

Recently I took a look at a creative review on the New Zealand industry by Ad News. The spread of work demonstrated a warm and gentle sense of humour. None of the ads were confronting or shocking; they were clear, very clever, engaging and refreshing. Like the ads for Beetle, GAS energy and Vodafone.

I then looked at the Australian work. You guessed it. Much Australian creative seems to be addicted to the outrageous and grotesque. Like Lean

“

I often look back at my old friend David Ogilvy and his very specific rules about everything advertising and wonder if any of that stuff is still relevant, such as: get your message in the headline, use simple layouts and let the picture do most of the work.

MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2005

”

Meat with a crusty top – a very funny and confronting idea, but is that supposed to make me want to eat that crap? The Radio Rentals ad is not clever – just childish, and the Listerine oral strips ad is just flat out revolting. Do these ads work? Well I guess they’ll get the attention they deserve at the next award show, but are they clever or just brazen?

What seems to be more prevalent as time goes on, is how the creative idea is now king and the product or service is just there in the back-

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ground paying for it. It appears the creative wants you to engage in their private joke not the product he/she is meant to represent. Some may say that this is brand building using an aloof, sharp and edgy tone meant to reflect the nature of the brand. Funny how so many brands are all sharing that same edgy tone.

A good honest idea seems so hard to find. Is it all the fault of the creative? Is it poor creative leadership, or is it a reflection of poor briefs, weak strategies and desperate client expectations? I’m as guilty as anyone else of starting many briefs with words like, “Guys, this brief has a lot of opportunity in it.” Opportunity? For whom? For what? Well I guess I originally meant that there was the openness in the brief to create an outstanding ad with a stack of creative cut-through. That statement has come to mean here’s a chance to win an award. I think that’s sad and dishonest. Our clients depend on us to represent them and articulate their message in a way that will further their business, not out careers.

I often look back at my old friend David Ogilvy and his very specific rules about everything advertising and wonder if any of that stuff is still relevant, such as: get your message in the headline, use simple layouts and let the picture do most of the work.

It seems to me that the New Zealanders manage to do all that and still create beautiful award-winning ads. It’s sad that there are no gurus out

there anymore to remind us that advertising is a great business and we are meant to work hard for clients, showing them brilliant creative direction and outstanding results. Ogilvy often said, “I try to recruit the highest quality people at all levels to create the hottest agency in town.”

‘Highest quality’ for someone like Ogilvy meant someone like himself.

Ogilvy cared about the client’s business, not just the ad he was producing that day. He wanted to know when something worked and why. That’s what made him a great creative and a great agency leader.

We live in a fast competitive world and we often find ourselves too tired to think. Here are a few little rules of my own you may want to adopt when looking at the next campaign your agency presents... ✒ the work must reflect the brand personality ✒ the work should not look the same as that if the competitors ✒ if the claim in the ad could be equally made by your competitor you may need to work harder on your brief; find a USP – there’s one there somewhere ✒ the idea should be secondary to the product or service – if you don’t get it, your target audience won’t either (yes, you can think like a teenager, we do it every day), and ✒ the emotional charge in the work should reflect the brand and your customer (not the creative team working on your business). M

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056 RECIPE OF THE MONTH

They’ll do almost anything to make saving easier Agency: Leo Burnett Melbourne Client: Esanda Product: Esanda Online Saver BACKGROUND. Esanda, a wholly owned subsidiary of ANZ Banking Group Ltd, has recently launched a new product, Esanda Online Saver, into the online high interest savings market. Esanda is Australia’s largest asset-base finance company with total assets of more than $10 billion and is a wellknown and trusted brand in vehicle finance and asset management.

Esanda Online Saver marks the beginning of the company’s expansion from a focus of putting people in cars to having a greater involvement in their day-to-day money management. Esanda, together with advertising group Leo Burnett, formed a campaign to target internet savvy consumers who recognise the benefits of an easier way to save.

The Esanda Online Saver product offers a variable interest rate of 5.55 percent per annum with no fees and no minimum balance. There was also a special offer for customers who open an Esanda Online Saver before 31 July 2005 of $20 bonus interest.

In a marketplace cluttered with financial institutions and their products, the Esanda Online Saver brand needed to stand out from the crowd.

Traditionally Esanda has been known for its asset and automotive finance products and issuing debentures stocks to raise funds for its lending arm. By offering a flexible savings product, the Esanda Online Saver, the business has a chance to break out of the mould and move into an area usually associated with the big banks.

Research showed that in addition to high returns, customers wanted an easy, no fees, no minimum deposit and a flexible product.

Every aspect of the product development cycle – from design and development through to sales force composition and advertising – was considered before bringing the product to market. According to Esanda the resulting product is simply based on “what people want”.

OBJECTIVES. The campaign aimed to: ✒ reach and acquire new customers via a campaign that was young, fun and focused

MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2005

✒ provide an additional source of funds available for lending through the introduction of a new product ✒ add a new kind of customer to Esanda’s traditional client base, and ✒ increase brand awareness and build on the company’s prevailing image as that of a leading lender, particularly in the automotive market.

METHODOLOGY. A universal and overwhelming insight from consumer research was simply that people find it extraordinarily difficult to save and that there is always something to tempt us whether it be new shoes, clothes or CDs. This drove the overall proposition that Esanda will do almost anything to make saving easier.

This led to an integrated campaign to be recommended by both Leo Burnett and Mitchell and Partners to help achieve the awareness and acquisition objectives. A number of channels were utilised to effectively communicate the key message of “We’ll do almost anything to make saving easier”.

The media buy was focused on television, press and online advertising. The online mix was particularly important given that this was an online product and enabled consumers to apply immediately. Direct mail and targeted door drops were used to really drive acquisition with the hero being the one-off $20 bonus interest offer. This activity also allowed for explanation of how the product works. Targeting was based on internet use and likely propensity to save.

Ambient media was also used to build awareness and create an impact. Chocolate coins were given out at the railway station communicating the $20 bonus interest offer as a ‘sweetener’. A busker was tied up and placed at the station with the sign “We’ll do almost anything to make saving easier”.

The campaign was phased so the above the line was launched first to encourage awareness, followed by the direct mail and door drops to drive acquisition.

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CONCEPT. The “We’ll do almost anything to make saving easier” tagline was used across print/online and television, but with a different creative solution for each.

Research has shown that one of the hardest aspects of saving is curbing impulse spending. The television creative depicts Esanda staff as ‘wayward guardian angels’ prepared to go to any lengths to help customers reduce their spending – they may go overboard in their methods, but their motivation cannot be faulted.

The first of the TVCs sees an Esanda staffer release a box of rats into an up-market shoe store causing the customer to flee the shop in terror.

The second shows an Esanda employee reversing the direction of a shopping centre escalator to prevent a couple from reaching their shopping heaven at the top. In the final, and most extreme, spot a petite Esanda worker knocks out a man-mountain with chloroform to stop him entering a record store.

To encourage early take-up of the product, the one-off $20 bonus interest was offered. Using this ‘bonus’ as a call to action, the series of print and online ads took a different, but equally humorous approach.

In one brochure, the “We’ll do almost anything…” tag is followed by the line “Like dangling $20 under your nose” hidden behind a fold-out of a $20 note rolled up like a carrot. Another tells it like it is – “A shameless promotion”.

The $20 bonus interest portion of the campaign concluded at the end of July. The “We’ll do almost anything…” TVCs ran until August.

MEDIA USAGE. A broad range of media was used by Esanda to advertise its new product.

Television was considered the most appropriate way to fully utilise the company’s quirky advertising motto of “We’ll do almost anything to make saving easier”.

Due to the product being that of an online offering, Esanda thought it natural to advertise on highly-hit web pages, e.g. www.ninemsn.com.au.

Advertising spend also targeted major metropolitan press and specialised financial/consumer publications.

RESULTS. From both an acquisition and awareness perspective, the results were very good. A new product was successfully launched in an environment where other online products were aggressively in the market. M

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058 GUERRILLA GUIDE Geoffrey McDonald Bowll is MD of The Starship, a Melbourne-based ad agency. Besides running mainstream campaigns since 1991, he has conducted hundreds of marketing and advertising research projects for major corporates. Email geoffrey@starship.com.au or call 03 9428 4411. www.starship.com.au

LIFE AS A MARKETER

I

t’s eight am on a Sunday. The phone goes. I panic, assuming someone related to me has died. I roll over in bed, scrambling towards the direction of the phone. Realise I’m on my own, think that’s a bit strange, then remember that Prue and the kids will be at Rotary’s Camberwell Sunday Market (world’s biggest garage sale) and I’m being summonsed to pick them up.

“Yes, I’ll have a coffee. Yes, I’ll only be 10 minutes. Yes, I’ll move more money onto the ATM card.”

I eventually find a park a fair way from the market and start walking.

There are hundreds of people trundling slowly past me in the other direction with plastic bags full of crockery and lamps, carrying fishing rods, wheeling bikes and reading record covers they’ve just bargained for.

At Camberwell Market, it’s the done thing to grumble a little, to offer a few dollars less. It’s one of the few places in Australia at which you can bargain and it’s almost impolite not to haggle. Given that it’s middle class Australia, you can only go so far. You are never rude about an item. You never say, “That’s a joke, it’s only worth about five bucks” when they are asking 20. You say, “Oh, I had in mind a bit less than that, it must be a really good piece.

Thanks anyway.” To the inevitable blonde Hawthorn housewife with her teenage kids who are clearing out the garage for Dad’s new Merc or Range Rover, selling the ‘junk’ – old skis, last year’s jumpers, Nintendo games etc. – at their local, famous, market. Asking too much for one thing, not enough for something else, not used to pricing things. They normally shop at Minimax or Chaddy – wouldn’t know what these things go for at a garage sale. But they’ve been here since five am; it’s cold, drizzling and it’s such an adventure.

There is every kind of person here, all demographics, dress options.

Gay men semi-naked from last night’s rave party shopping for skin-tight

MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2005

fluorescent t-shirts chatting to lightly-stoned hippies in Bali bright colours selling smelly candles to suburban suckers who are completely goggle-eyed at the entire scene.

This is trading at its most basic. This is something you and I naturally find interesting, are naturally comfortable with.

So why do I feel a sense of embarrassment when I’m having my coffee and the person next to me says, two minutes into a conversation about what they’ve ‘found’, “Geoffrey, what is it you do?” And I say, “I’m in marketing.”

They look blankly – sort of untrusting. So I say, trying to be more specific, “I run an advertising agency” and they truly pull back, visibly moving a good 10 centimetres away. So I ask, “What about you?” and they reply, “Oh, I’m OK. I’m a chemist” or whatever they call themselves.

And I know, they’re a marketer too. They just don’t like to see themselves as a lowly marketer.

You’d think these people, who enjoy the finding and bargaining, who love the function – people exchanging items for money – and the sweaty, exciting performance of the whole thing, would like those who bring marketing to their lives. But no. They’re scared of us. They look at us like we harbour some strange disease. That we’ll corrupt their young, steal their money, rape their environment. Or am I just paranoid? Have I been a marketer too long to see life as a civilian does?

LIFE AS A MARKETER. Living as a marketer is one of a higher consciousness about the world of business and communications. Due to countless sessions cooking up strategies, we are more aware of what’s being ‘done’ to us, how organisations try to manipulate us. We are trained to look at most situations in an

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analytical way – almost as an observer, at the kids’ footy, on the tram, most often when doing the shopping. Sometimes this leads to selfconsciousness. Sometimes it gives us a clearer head, a sharper mind’s eye.

MORE AWARE. At the same time, we appreciate the world more visually. Yes, we’ll know the real goal of the price squeeze or the bun-fight going on among the board, but we see things as they are, and are more aware of the nuances.

From years of dealing with designers, ad agencies and psychologists, we are trained to appreciate the meaning of the art, the line of the car, the quirkiness of the copy on the drink bottle.

MORE POWERFUL. We are more empowered than any other profession to change the course of destiny across all industries and government services. A good marketer can change an entire industry and how it’s perceived in a matter of weeks or months. Were there marketers involved in the launch of iPod? You betcha. Look what that’s done to the music world. We are the brain behind business. Any successful business is so mainly because it has its marketing act together. Most of the time professional marketers like you and me are driving the show. We commission the research, interpret the findings, brief the agencies, price the products, massage the production and distribution, satisfy the accounts department and feed our brethren.

IF WE FAIL, THEY ALL FAIL. We are the lynchpin in business success. When a marketer is not doing their job, an organisation stumbles. Sales dry up, people get laid off.

When we are, we can drag an otherwise undeserving product or service along by the sheer force of our will, our ability to find an appeal that works on the public, regardless of the product’s shortcomings. Why do Harleys sell? They are inefficient, too heavy, too slow. Old-fashioned.

Mad designs. But they sell because they capture a spirit – they embody freedom and the concept of ‘get stuffed’. Those are not engineering, accounting or design disciplines; they are marketing ones.

CAPACITY. Do you notice how many more things you are capable of than the other professions? We have to be capable of planning, designing, budgeting, writing, managing, reporting. Hopefully with a sense of public interest and one eye on the lawyers.

REWARDS. There are real benefits to being a marketer. Marketers can fly on the wings of airlines, swim at islands they manage, eat at the world’s best restaurants and own the biggest yachts. On a day-to-day basis, our working lives are more interesting, we meet more people and often do fascinating things. How many people would give their eye-teeth just to be on a TV shoot, let alone control it?

DRIVING YOUR CAREER. Do you love driving the world’s biggest train set – your career? Or is the train too slow? The journey boring? Do you feel empowered, or frustrated?

Do you enjoy what you are doing, feel stretched, challenged? Do you find yourself working with go-ahead people or those who are just paddling to

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060 GUERRILLA GUIDE stay afloat? Remember, there are two kinds of people on this planet – people with vision and goals and desires, and scared rats. There are many rats. Don’t mix with the rats.

WHAT ARE YOUR CAREER DESIRES? What is it you want to leave behind better? What is your destiny? Do you ask yourself these questions? Do you contemplate them deeply or give them a moment’s thought, then shrug and move to chopping the carrots or turning the wheel. Do you lie awake at night debating your next move, your week’s work, your budgets, objectives and options? Do you work in an area that will fulfil those dreams? Do you dare to harbour dreams at all? Or do you slot life into the achievable and the not so, on a day-to-day basis?

AN OPEN CAREER GATE.

Harley-Davidson – concrete proof brand personality can out-sell technology any day of the week. I’d pin this article up in the R&D department.

Almost anyone can be a marketer and they flow in and out of our profession like clown fish in weed. This has some good effects, like fresh blood and new ways of looking at issues, but it also means many professional marketers’ opinions are questioned because it’s too hard for the majority of the public to know whose opinion counts and whose is crap. But what can we do? Make it illegal for an entrepreneur to book an ad or launch a product?

EVERYONE’S AN EXPERT. Everyone wants to be a part-time marketer. All business owners and their spouses. Taxi drivers to factory hands, mums to dads. Commenting on ads, products, prices. We are never alone. We live among a world of experts on marketing.

COMPETITIVE PROFESSION. We live in a world full of competition. Of our own kind hunting for market share. Signs, sms ads, cars with slogans on them. Shops, sky writers, radios blaring. I can’t get away from ads. (I notice some clown’s trying to get people to wear ads on their foreheads – have humans no dignity?) Anywhere I look, there’s a marketer trying to get me to buy something, love something or save something. And while we’re competitive in media, we’re truly shocking as a profession. Marketers are not like lawyers, accountants or even real estate agents who can’t hit on each other’s customers. Our members will happily knife a colleague in the blink of an eye. They get a buzz out of it.

Which is possibly one reason the other professions question our right to call ourselves a ‘profession’. But aren’t engineers competitive? Aren’t chemists?

SEGMENTS CAN DETERMINE YOUR CAREER. Any segment can taint the way you are positioned. “We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done” (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow). Careful what you work in – how many of you marketing directors reading this would happily employ an ex-tobacco industry marketer?

THE FORMULA CHANGES. In any other profession you can follow rules for years. Dentists can use the same filling material for decades. Economists watch imports, exports, interest rates. The factors don’t change. What works one month in marketing doesn’t always work next month. Other professions, especially accountants and engineers, can’t believe there aren’t hard and set rules – they think you just don’t know them. But our business is in constant evolution. It’s thus by

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definition the hardest profession of all to be ‘right’ in. To be right you have to gamble on a trend… and trends don’t go in straight lines.

VITAL PEOPLE. We chat with our brains open, learning as we go, contributing where we can. And, yes, we are often the life of the gathering. Especially the party.

We’re the people organising the music, pouring the drinks, telling the jokes and kissing the stranger.

LEOPARDS DON’T RUN IN PACKS. Marketers are sometimes subdued among their own though, sensing rivalry. You often detect a hesitancy among marketers at functions. But being party animals they usually allow nature and socially acceptable drugs to let their hair down and mingle. (How many marketers reading this do coffee, alcohol, party drugs depending on the people, the occasion or the time of day?)

WHO MAKES A GOOD MARKETER? I can remember walking through the trading floor of Goldman Sacs in New York, as you do, with a mate from Australia who has an MBA, a couple of other degrees and wears impeccable suits. The rest of the floor looked like him. Neat. Polished. Quiet. Refined, considerate. He told me there were some 200 MBAs on that floor. Then he asked me if they made his company money, and I didn’t know. Then he walked me through another floor where the staff were in louder suits, with messier hair, screaming or laughing down the phones; the place was a mess – pandemonium. He said, “This is where we make our money – these are people we find on the track, betting the horses or the dogs, or working the streets. Selling real estate, cars. We teach them to sell shares. They make us money. My floor is just for show.”

Marketers are born. You either have an affinity for people and a natural ability to work with them, get them to do things, or you don’t. While we are all marketers at certain times and we are all sometimes antimarketing, real marketers were marketers when they were at kinder. They are the three-year-old swapping a piece of chocolate for a sandwich. One day she’ll be a brand manager in health food.

Really good marketers have a smattering of training from a number of key sources. Broad working experience – an exposure to a wide variety of industries makes for an empathy with people and an understanding of their different disciplines and of different commercial goals. Exposure to

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GUERRILLA GUIDE 061 psychology training is helpful – a marketer with that background learns to listen and to think about people’s real agendas. Ditto for market research – without that sort of disciplined analysis of trends and perceptions, it’s hard to draw broad conclusions accurately. A degree in marketing from a well recognised uni helps; in fact, ought to be compulsory. Same with short courses to keep yourself up-to-date on methods, theories.

Importantly, good marketers have sales experience. I’m shocked when I meet so-called professional marketers who don’t spend at least a few hours a week actually selling – who don’t rub shoulders with their current customer base. They are, by definition, out of touch.

WHAT PERSONALITY CHARACTERISTICS ARE NEEDED? In general marketing you also need patience, mathematical skills, creativity and tenacity. But most of all, you need to be able to relate to people’s problems and how they see themselves in relation to your company or client. You need to be a great people person to be just an OK marketer.

WHAT DOES THE PROFESSION NEED? I know you’ve all read articles on this issue before, so I’ll keep this brief.

Marketers have little boardroom activity. This has to be changed. It dooms a company to failure. It should be compulsory for a public company board to have a qualified marketer. How many don’t have an accountant and a lawyer?

Governments are actively against us, which is ridiculous, given they use our people all the time. We need a PR machine like the AMA has, lobbying to help our cause. This also reflects in little, petty but telling things that I think need fixing, like our ability to sign statutory declarations. It’s assumed that an accountant, a bank manager or a dentist is a member of a trustworthy profession, but we’re not?

There needs to be better regard for disciplined marketing. Untrained, shoot from the hip cowboys sully our profession and make it hard for our clients and the public to know the difference. And our professional credentials need to be better recognised. Who the hell knows what B.Bus (Mar), ASMI, ADMA or AMRSA stand for? We need to promote our profession like the CPA and Chartered Accountants do. Here we are, the

How many marketing directors would hire an ex-tobacco marketer?

most exciting of professions, with the other professions openly ridiculing us constantly. Is it jealousy? Envy that we work in an area that is vibrant, risky and fun? (Let’s face it, what kid in the kinder playground says they want to be an accountant? And why do we waste the country’s best brains making them into doctors who spend all day bored to death, writing out prescriptions for antibiotics?) The other professions know our occupational lives are more interesting, so they bitch about us.

And no one knows what to call us. People selling chips at the footy call themselves ‘marketers’. We need a single, simple, recognisable, respected term for us everyone can use, like doctor or chemist. Any suggestions welcome; any thoughts about who can put it together, even more welcome. Where do I start? Please help.

Next month. I’m writing about dancing with your customers. Not just maintaining a relationship, but getting them off properly, regularly.

So if you want to know how to really increase brand loyalty, subscribe to this brand. And if you’ve got a good story about a satisfying customer experience, email geoffrey@starship.com.au or call on 03 9428 4411 and we’ll do lunch. M

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062 RETRO MARKETING

NOW

TODAY’S VIEW: MATT PERRY, DIRECTOR OF REALCONNECTIONS, BELLAMYHAYDEN When this piece was written in 1995 I had just started my first marketing job as an intern with British Telecom (or BT) in the UK. I worked in a department called the Customer Communications Unit, which aimed to deliver integrated communications across BT’s different business units – standard practice in today’s marketing departments, but quite forward thinking at the time.

One of my first projects on arrival was to help manage a conference in Manchester called Global ’95 and an event, which ran alongside it, dubbed ‘The ISDN Show’. The most memorable moment of the week was getting freebie tickets to a Blur concert in the exhibition centre next-door one night.

What I failed to recognise at the time was the significance of the event and the subsequent impact it would eventually have on my career path. Apart from a doomed attempt to video-link with Santa’s Grotto in Lapland via an ISDN 2 connection (it was December), we did succeed in broadcasting a live satellite link of the keynote speaker from the US – his name was Vint Cerf.

Again it was not until years later that I realised how influential this guy’s work was going to be on marketing communications in the future – his ‘invention’ was the internet no less! So while I was dancing away to ‘Park Life’ next door, Vint Cerf was telling everyone else in the BT conference how to become a dotcom millionaire overnight… damn! The road to riches, I am sure he was telling his audience, was recognising that media, marketing and communications would soon be in the hands of the consumer, and understanding this was the key to the success of a brand in the future.

Much of what was written in September 1995 absolutely applies today. It is, however, the influence that digital technology, particularly the internet, has played in fastforwarding us to the multi-channel, multidimensional, customised media world in which we are now operating. While many marketing departments and media agencies still find it easier to ‘cope’ with the “standardised, mass, shotgun, oneway” approach, some of us are lucky enough to be working with clients who realise now is the time to take advantage of consumer controlled communications. M

Today’s views on yesterday’s news THEN

MARKETING SEPTEMBER 1995: ‘OLD’ MEDIA ON THE WAY OUT?

There are three fundamental trends sweeping the marketing world at present: interactive media, atomising markets and integrated marketing communications. But nowhere is the dynamic of change more obvious than in media. The ‘old media’ – press, TV, radio, outdoor – is characterised by being standardised, mass, shotgun, one-way and capable of only low level information. Some marketing people can only cope with old media. It’s comfortable, easy to manage, easy to buy, easy to create for and there is a lot known about it.

The ‘transitional media’ – mail, telephone, cable and satellite TV – are fragmented, segmented, personalised, targeted, responsive, transactional and capable of delivering a higher level of information.

The power has shifted from the marketer – who in the old mass model could decide media scheduling and herd large groups of consumers together to subject them to their messages – to the consumer.

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MEDIA ZONE 063

media zone

078

The essential quarterly advertising guide.

Edited by Tami Dower. Email: mediazone@niche.com.au Phone: 03 9525 5566

064

082

EDITORIAL Spicing up the romance.

065

HEAD TO HEAD Are we being duped by inaccurate circulation figures?

068

MEDIA PEOPLE Stuart Mitchell, Sydney MD of Mitchell and Partners, and son of the legendary Harold.

070

SOUND-OFF Integration – are media agencies merely paying it lip service?

072

TELEVISION What do people really do in the ad break?

090

076

MEDIA STRATEGY How to gather competitive intelligence without hidden cameras.

078

IN-GAME ADVERTISING Insights from the US on a new marketing phenomenon.

082

PODCASTING Could podcasting be the new breed of radio?

086

NEWSPAPERS Why newspapers need to reinvent themselves.

094

090

OUT-OF-HOME New awards recognise creative excellence in outdoor.

094

MAGAZINES MPA Awards highlight the value of partnering with publishers.

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064 UPFRONT

EDITORIAL: SPICING UP THE ROMANCE Television. It’s the medium advertisers love to hate. Can’t live peacefully with it. And if current ad rates are any reflection of market forces, can’t live without it. But now, more than ever before, television and its old mass media counterparts – radio and newspapers – are being called upon to demonstrate why they shouldn’t be traded in for younger, sexier New Media models. In this issue of Media Zone, we look at the future of TV and newspapers and how they are going to need to spruce up to keep the romance alive.

Crikey’s Stephen Mayne and former Fairfax marketing director Sue Zerk also go head to head on the issue of alleged newspaper circulation rorts.

On the New Media front, we bring you some snippets of ‘adulterous temptation’ with features on in-game advertising and the ‘new breed’ of radio, podcasting.

Continuing Martyn Thomas’ theme from previous Media Zones – probing the inner workings of media agencies – guest columnist Mac MacDonald takes aim at agencies for failing to convert rhetoric about integration into implementation. Mac’s piece marks the first of a regular opinion column called ‘Sound-off ’.

Watch this space for more thought-provoking insights into the machinery of the media

MEDIA SCHEDULE ADVERTISING, MARKETING AND MEDIA SUMMIT 21 to 22 September This two-day summit covers key issues and the latest trends in advertising, marketing and media, including: maximising campaign effectiveness; case studies on effective brand building; creativity, risk and innovation in advertising; and the future of TV and radio in Australia.

Venue: Sydney Convention Centre, Sydney Contact: Glen Frost, 02 9460 2123, glenf@acevents.com.au 2005 CAXTON AWARDS 7 to 9 October Now in their 31st year, the Caxton Awards were created by the major metropolitan newspapers to honour and reward Australia’s best newspaper advertising.

MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2005

agency and tips on how to get the best out of your media investment.

Also, in Media People, we turn the spotlight on Stuart Mitchell, son of the legendary Harold.

As always, we welcome any feedback you might have on Media Zone. So if anything in these pages should inspire or raise your ire, drop us a line at mediazone@niche.com.au. M Tami Dower Editor – Media Zone

IN THE ZONE…

…WITH BRAM WILLIAMS The greatest misconception about advertising at the moment is… that it can’t work like it used to.

The relationship advertising agencies have with TV as a medium is like… my relationship with fried prawn-toast at yum-cha – impossible to resist, even if there are actually stacks of better options.

Now that the Government has control of the Senate, it should… block its own supply and have the Governor General dismiss the Prime Minister.

You can spot a director of strategy by… a furrowed brow atop designer eyewear and an over-reliance on corduroy.

Anyone aspiring to a career in advertising should be made to read… all of

Venue: Hayman Island, Great Barrier Reef, Queensland Contact: Pip Ward, pip@twodeforce.com.au MEDIA FEDERATION AWARDS 13 October Venue: Wharf 8, 53-59 Hickson Road, Sydney Contact: mfa@twodeforce.com.au NATIONAL RADIO CONFERENCE 14 October A range of speakers from Australia and abroad – including guest speaker Barry Humphries – will cover topics including sales, marketing, creative, research, electronic measurement, digital, programming and engineering.

Venue: Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, Sydney Contact: Commercial Radio Australia, 02 9281 6577, mail@commercialradio.com.au

Bernbach’s quotes.

The key to success in advertising is… doing enough of what you truly believe in to counter-balance all the abhorrent time-wasting and politicking.

My most embarrassing professional moment was when… 300 grand’s worth of completed TVCs were completely rejected by the client.

If I wasn’t in advertising I’d be… working behind the Henson Park Hill Bar at Newtown Jets home games.

If there’s one thing I’d like to be remembered for it’s… having a bit of ticker.

Bram Williams is director of strategy at Euro RSCG Worldwide. M

NATIONAL MEDIA REPRESENTATION AWARDS 26 October The National Media Representation Awards recognise excellence in media representation.

Venue: Plan B, The Bourbon, Sydney Contact: Catherine Labbate, 02 9281 8788, catherine@twodeforce.com.au 2005 INTERNET AWARDS 27 October The Internet Awards recognise and reward outstanding innovation, creativity and results for online advertising and marketing initiatives carried out between 1 July 2004 and 31 July 2005.

Venue: Overseas Passenger Terminal (OPT), Circular Quay West, Sydney Contact: www.awwwards.com.au/event.html

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HEAD TO HEAD 065

Are media buyers and marketers being duped by inaccurate circulation figures?

YES

NO

STEPHEN MAYNE, FOUNDER AND BUSINESS EDITOR OF CRIKEY.COM.AU

SUE ZERK, FORMER DIRECTOR OF GROUP MARKETING, FAIRFAX

Crikey has published dozens of stories this year lifting the lid on circulation rorting in the publishing industry, which has been either ignored or covered up for far too long.

Inflating newspaper and magazine ‘paid’ circulation figures only serves to deceive advertisers who pay for their ads based on the official circulation figures.

If you believe an avalanche of anecdotal evidence, the one percent leeway for error allowed under Audit Bureau of Circulation rules has been gamed by the industry for years through various deals involving hotels, schools, universities, airlines, major events and poor returns management, especially when you move beyond newsagents to the likes of supermarkets.

The audit reports are signed off by auditors who inspect the publisher’s records – but the alleged fraud takes place before the auditors see the records, through the exclusion or massaging of information.

If the publishing industry gives away hundreds of thousands of copies for free or at ridiculous discounts – but included as fully ‘paid’ circulation on the audit – this is a fraud on the advertisers. These dumped copies are far less likely to be actually read and once you tolerate thousands of copies being given away at a major event, where do you draw the line?

The US publishing industry has been stung by a series of frauds, fines, refunds and legal settlements totalling about $250 million over the past two years, so it is about time the Australian advertising industry stepped up to the plate.

Newsday exaggerated its weekday circulation by 40,000 copies (seven percent) and Sunday circulation by 60,000 copies (10 percent) over the past year. Spanish language paper Hoy overstated its circulation by 19 percent.

The Sun-Times admitted to cooking its numbers over the past couple of years, reportedly inventing 78,000 daily copies, or 25 percent of newsstand sales. And the respected Dallas Morning News overstated five percent on Sunday and 1.5 percent on weekdays for a six-month period in 2003.

Lo and behold, the US has the same soft regulatory system as Australia with an industry-stacked regulator who lacks real teeth. How can News Ltd’s director of strategy, Dr Stephen Hollings, possibly be the chairman of the ABC when his employer controls up to 70 percent of Australia’s paid newspaper circulation?

The ACCC is having a look at the industry and the ABC has promised its own ‘review’, but it’s time the advertising industry stepped up and applied some real commercial pressure.

No – and emphatically no. There are two major issues: do the audited circulation figures have integrity? And what are advertisers buying?

Circulation figures for major newspapers are a significant issue because of the scandals in the US, where figures were deliberately rigged by some newspaper publishers. They were caught, fines have been paid, executives sacked, and write-downs made to their books because of adjustments to their advertisers. Those scandals have prompted a harder look at circulation figures here – and properly so.

Fairfax has supported a full review – an audit of the audited reports, if you will – to ascertain that the figures are properly composed. Fairfax supports the audit rules, complies with the audit rules and reports accurately under the audit rules. We do find, in some of the more sensationalistic commentary on this issue, that many people outside the industry do not understand the audit rules. Those rules do provide for some limited – and I emphasise limited – circulation to be attributed to newspapers-inschools programs, and for promotional purposes, such as through hotels.

Fairfax also supports more transparency in reporting on circulation. Currently, audited results are conducted twice yearly, in December and June. We support expanding that to four quarterly audits, with no exclusion periods (such as the television networks have in their program ratings). Expanded audits will provide more consistent reporting. Continuous reporting periods, with no blackout weeks or exclusions, will prevent the gaming of results and other anomalies that distort the true circulation picture.

We have taken our proposals to the Audit Bureau of Circulation, to our fellow publishers and to advertisers. While these issues are important, they are not affecting our advertisers, because advertisers are not buying circulation – they are buying our readership. Readership – not circulation – is our currency. The Roy Morgan Readership surveys are comprehensive, in-depth and measure demographics as well as the total audience. While there are always issues about methodology, the Morgan survey is considered the authoritative measure of newspaper reach. As a result, our advertisers rely on it.

Our advertising revenues and yields reflect our success in attracting a significant share of the AB demographic. So we want to see more audited circulation figures, and we will work through those issues. But this has not affected the proven tool for the appeal and effectiveness of our publications in the market: their readership reach.

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066 SPOTS

YES, IT WAS BIG… If you didn’t receive the Carlton Draught ‘Big Ad’ via email, you must have been living on another planet. One that doesn’t have email.

Set to the roaring crescendo of a lyricallyaltered Carmina Burana, it has definitely delivered on its promise of being ‘big’. The ad was produced for Carlton Draught by George Patterson Partners Melbourne and was initially launched in July via a ‘sneak peek’ email to 4000 Foster’s and George Patts employees.

Within five days, it had zipped around the world to more than 500,000 viewers, before migrating to the ‘big screen’ on 7 August. It is also being supported by outdoor and print advertising. The campaign was the first beer ad in Australia to be launched using Vividas full screen streaming technology, which allows viewers to experience the ad in all its cinematic glory without special software. Vividas media player technology has also been utilised by a number of global companies including Buena Vista International, United International Pictures, Ripcurl, Ford and Honda.

View the Big Ad at www.bigad.com.au

NEW ASSOCIATION TO REPLACE OAAA The Outdoor Advertising Association of Australia (OAAA) has changed its name to the Outdoor Media Association (OMA), following a recent restructure. The name change was designed to shift the perception that the association represents all forms of outdoor advertising, such as skywriting. The OMA will represent large format, poster, street furniture and transit advertising. Companies engaged in the display of those media are eligible to become full members of the OMA. Other membership categories include honorary, life MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2005

and associate including outdoor print suppliers. All full members will contribute to marketing the outdoor sector, be responsible for revenue reporting and continue to support the development of the outdoor audience measurement system MOVE (Measurement of Outdoor Visibility and Exposure).

According to the OMA, the new structure will enable a more proactive management of issues in each state.

REGIONAL TV DRIVES CAR SALES New car sales in regional TV markets grew 6.8% year-on-year for the six months to June 2005, according to Regional TV Marketing.

This compares with growth of 4.7% across the five main metropolitan capitals and continues a trend that has seen regional markets increasing their share of new vehicle sales for the past three years. Regional TV Marketing attributes the higher growth in regional areas to an improvement in overall financial well being and the changing demographic profile of regional Australia. It says the greater proportion of regional families with children – of which almost a quarter have three or more – has seen substantial growth in the People Mover and SUV segments, while cashed-up baby boomers are largely responsible for increases in the Small, Sports and Prestige

vehicle segments. In the first half of the year, Audi substantially increased its regional TV investment to support the launch of the new A4. Audi apparently sold 15% of all new A4s in regional markets, up from 11% in the same period last year.

US: NET REVOLT Internet consumers are using their mouse to protest against frustrating online obstructions, according to a US survey of ‘net peeves’. Some of the top offenders are pop-up ads, registration log-on pages and Flash software. The survey found that 93% of consumers feel popup ads are annoying or extremely annoying; 89% are annoyed at the need to install extra software, and 83% are annoyed with registration log-on pages that block access to online content. More than 70% of respondents said they’re unlikely to purchase from, or even return to, a website after experiencing these grievances. Worse still for online businesses, only 25% said they would bother complaining to the company about the use of these timeconsuming obstacles.

CALL FOR ENTRIES: SIREN AWARDS Entry for Round Three of the Siren Awards is now open for material aired on radio between 1 March and 30 September 2005. Entry is free via www.sirenawards.com.au/entry_form.cfm.

The winners of Round Two will be announced in early September. The Siren Awards were launched last year to recognise excellence in radio advertising. M FOR MORE UPCOMING MEDIA AND MARKETING EVENTS, SEE

www.marketingmag.com.au

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068 MEDIA PEOPLE In May this year, Stuart Mitchell became the Sydney MD of leading media agency Mitchell and Partners. Tami Dower spoke to him about being part of the Mitchell media dynasty and forging his own professional identity.

Son of a gun.

W

hen Stuart Mitchell joined the family business in 1992, he had no real concept of just how much weight stood behind the Mitchell name in media circles. For nearly two decades before his arrival at Mitchell and Partners, his father Harold had been solidifying a reputation as one of Australia’s most powerful media buyers.

“When I was younger I didn’t realise just how big a profile my father had,” he recalls.

“Although I do remember seeing his photo in the newspapers and we did have a rather large scrapbook at home, which was added to weekly. When I entered the industry 13 years ago, I began to understand exactly how much my father had achieved, and how deserving he was of the media attention.”

But, like most offspring who follow in their parents’ famous footsteps, Stuart would prefer to be recognised for his own achievements. “Lots of people ask me about living in the shadow of Harold, but I don’t see it that way. Harold will always be my father, and for many years has also been a major figure in my professional life. However, I have worked very hard to get where I am today, and I think Harold would like me to be known as Stuart Mitchell, with my own achievements and my own profile, rather than just as Harold’s son,” he says. “Few people have equalled Harold’s achievements over more than 30 years in this industry, and I am proud to be involved with such a successful family company.”

Even though his younger sister also works for Mitchell and Partners, Stuart says they were never pressured to pursue careers in media. In fact, he actually started his career in banking and finance, working at the Bank of Tokyo. After his stint in banking, Stuart embarked on the typical ‘Young Aussie

MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2005

Pilgrimage’ – taking a year and a half off to explore the world. From his base in London, he travelled extensively across the UK, Europe, North America and Africa, picking up work along the way to support himself.

Stuart’s debut on the media scene probably had more to do with convenience than long-term aspiration. Having just returned from his travels, he joined Mitchell and Partners simply because he “needed a job”. His first role with the company was as a media assistant. At the time he was the 20th employee in the Melbourne office and the 33rd employee overall. Thirteen years later, Mitchell and Partners has 170 employees across all offices (Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Auckland) and was the top billing agency for 2004, booking an enviable total of $670 million worth of advertising for the year.

In 2002, Stuart became the chief operating officer of Mitchell and Partners Australia, a position he still holds today, along with various other roles in Mitchell companies Stadia Media, Drive Communications, emitch and MPG Australia. Originally based in the Melbourne office, he relocated to Sydney fulltime late last year and was appointed managing director of the Sydney office in May this year.

Despite a seemingly ambivalent entry into the profession, Stuart appears to have comfortably slotted into senior management at Mitchell and Partners. And, like his father, he doesn’t shy away from a seat at the negotiation table. “My media career has taken me all over the world, in search of the best partnerships, the best technology and opportunities for the Mitchell Group of companies,” he says. “Most recently, I had the opportunity to negotiate a partnership with global media agency brand MPG, which is owned by Havas, the world’s fifth largest media communications group. We have launched the MPG brand in Australia,

with the Mitchell Group’s Media First becoming MPG Australia.” MPG Australia now has 20 staff and billings of $115 million, with “serious expansion plans” in the pipeline.

Pressed to reveal what the nature of those ‘plans’ might be, Stuart is decidedly evasive: “I can’t say anything at present, but by the time of publishing this issue it will be known.”

In terms of his vision for expanding the profile of Mitchell and Partners in Sydney, Stuart says he will be guided by the values that have driven the success of the Melbourne office. “Mitchell and Partners is Australasia’s largest media independent, while all of our competitors are owned by multinationals. This is a very important point of difference that we believe works to our clients’ advantage,” he says. “Harold started Mitchell and Partners in Melbourne with the belief that he could help smaller clients by pooling their media requirements together to enable them to benefit from scale like a big client. This and the strong family values helped to establish Mitchell and Partners Melbourne as Australia’s first and most successful media independent. I have the opportunity to bring both those values and a similar clientele to the Sydney office, in a city that is often dominated by big-spending advertisers.”

While many local media buying agencies have allowed themselves to be swallowed up by large global agencies over the past decade, Mitchell and Partners has remained steadfastly

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MEDIA PEOPLE 069 independent. Stuart is adamant that this philosophy will not be compromised by the company’s alliance with Havas. “Mitchell’s will remain 100 percent family owned, while the Havas partnership brings in a global perspective for our clients.

Retaining ownership of Mitchell’s is very important to my family,” he maintains.

While he remains committed to keeping ownership of Mitchell and Partners on home turf, Stuart has every intention of encouraging the expansion of Mitchell’s operations offshore, particularly in light of the proposed relaxation of cross-media and foreign ownership laws. “Powerful media owners mean we must have powerful media buyers,” he says. “A relaxation of the [media ownership] laws could see even larger media companies – Ten could buy Fairfax, PBL and Nine might buy all of Foxtel, Seven could move even further into magazines and maybe more of Foxtel if their court action is successful. With bigger media companies it’s important that media buyers are highly efficient, worldly in their understanding of new media, but more importantly very large. Our long-term plan involves spreading out to our immediate market in Asia and remaining large.”

Although he admits a relaxation of the media ownership laws may present challenges for media agencies, Stuart says Mitchell’s is well-placed to deal with those challenges.

Given that Mitchell’s is currently the topbilling agency in the country, it’s not entirely surprising that the company would welcome a relaxation of the laws. “Competition will bring

greater levels of efficiency and that is good for advertisers, viewers and readers,” he adds. “At the moment the law says a company can own either a television network or a newspaper, but no more than 15 percent of the other. At the same time foreign owners can own no more than 20 percent of any Australian media company. A relaxation of the laws would mean Australia would operate at a level of the best in the world, as we’d need to compete on a world scale. That is not to say that we don’t have world-class companies. In fact we do. Our own companies might be encouraged to go out to the rest of the world and make themselves even larger. Cross-media ownership and separation as it is now is no longer appropriate because the introduction of the internet and broadband means that the old style media are not as powerful as they were once.”

While the media landscape is in a state of flux, Mitchell and Partners itself has experienced its own share of turbulence over the past year, with a number of senior managers moving on. Among them were Paul Blatchford, a managing partner who had been with the company for 11 years, as well as Chris Nolan and Mal Dale.

Asked whether he sees smoother seas ahead for the company, Stuart takes a pragmatic view of the recent restructures. “We have 170 staff across all offices, and we also have one of the lowest staff churn rates in the industry. However, people do leave, including senior people, for whatever reason, and often this creates opportunities for others.”

If Harold stands by his recent pledge to take a step back from the running of Mitchell and Partners, the top job may even be one of those opportunities up for grabs. Stuart, however, sees the withdrawal of his father’s direct involvement in the company as being more of a gradual process. “Harold is still very much at the helm of the Mitchell Group of companies,” he says. “His role as chairman is at the top of the table, and he is very active in the management and direction of the organisation, but he is slowly allowing the next generation to play a bigger part in the company’s leadership.”

Stuart is circumspect about whether he sees himself actually taking over as the top dog at Mitchell and Partners. “I have many goals in life and, yes, taking over from Harold is one of those. But we need to remember that what used to be the job of one individual is now handled by many. I have a great team of people around me who are all working to improve and grow the Mitchell Group of companies.”

For the moment though Stuart’s attention is firmly focused on first-time fatherhood with his new baby son. Could his son be the next link in the Mitchell family media dynasty?

While Stuart has no plans to pressure his child into following a career in media, some things have a tendency to run in the blood. If you’re still taking an interest in media in another 20 years or so, you may just find yourself reading a story about a young Mitchell setting out on a career path marked by two rather sizeable sets of footsteps. M

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070 SOUND-OFF ‘Integrated, media-neutral planning’ might be the catchphrase of the moment, but how many media planners are actually putting it into practice? Not many, says Mac MacDonald.

Why traditional media planning is failing to deliver.

M

ore than ever before, the average marketer’s communication mix has become increasingly complex.

This has been driven not least in part by traditional media advertising continuing to diminish in its ability to connect brands with their intended consumers.

Channel planning has emerged as the panacea to this evolving challenge and yet the majority of planning functions within agencies still struggle to deliver on the promise of integration, bound as they are by their more traditional approach.

The past few years have seen a quiet, though pronounced, journey of evolution embarked on by both clients and agencies in the quest to deliver integrated, media-neutral planning on behalf of the brands in their charge. Most though, would appear to be still firmly stuck in the mire of complacency. And no wonder.

Navigating a successful path through the myriad channel possibilities poses an almost Herculean challenge for all of those involved in planning, managing or evaluating integrated communications programs.

First and foremost it requires a highly developed and attuned understanding of how today’s consumer actually relates to, uses and responds to the various channel contact points. Further, this requires not only the necessary consumer data that supports this understanding to be available, but also the means to evaluate the effect and efficacy of individual channel components, the sum of their parts and the interdependent relationships that exist.

As the digital tsunami approaches, media continues to fragment and channels have continued to evolve and grow in complexity, range and specificity of consumer preference. Yet mainstream media-planning progress has

MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2005

failed to evolve at the same headlong pace.

Instead it has followed a more sedate and, at times, stumbling journey of its own.

True, a variety of technological advances has led to improved automation of the planning process and several new tools have been added to the average planner’s repertoire.

There still remains, however, a notable dearth of usable, practical cross-media tools (and the corresponding respondent level data sets that support them).

While most of the global media agencies have rolled out their own versions of crossmedia optimisers, market-mix modelling tools and frameworks for measuring brand communications outcomes, these are ultimately all dependent on input derived from consumersupplied recall data or alternatively they fuse or integrate disparate data sources from single-media research.

In this market, as in others (with the notable exception of Roy Morgan Single Source), that data is nascent at best – rendering the tools effectively impotent.

The resulting situation is one where (as yet) the majority of systems are unable to accurately track and manage the cross-channel exposure and experience of individual consumers, failing in areas such as duplication and interrelationships.

In general, these tools have so far also failed to help agencies realise the benefit of understanding how exactly to plan and build integrated campaigns for maximum effect.

Many clients have also struggled to evolve their own organisation’s capability to embrace and benefit from even the simplest tenets of integrated communications planning. This failing is caused not least in part as a result of their own rigid internal silos. And let’s not start on the open internecine warfare that still occurs come budget allocation time.

So how do we free ourselves from the mire?

How do we fully embrace, incubate and nurture what is still essentially an infant art form within our marketing arsenal? How indeed do we deliver value from adopting an integrated approach?

I believe the answer lies in re-evaluating our existing view of the challenge and reengineering our planning processes. Creative and media processes must move towards tighter joint planning, and this in itself requires a broader skill set and approach to be developed on both sides.

Logically, media agencies have already begun to offer creative resources as part of their service offering and this latest swing of the ‘bundling’ pendulum makes a lot of sense (if not easy reading for the majority of advertising agencies). We must also encourage silos to die their natural death, and then move quickly to establish new ways of working together to deliver integrated marketing communications on behalf of our brands.

Ultimately, the challenge remains to develop and deliver a robust planning process that acknowledges, evaluates, understands and harnesses each channel’s individual contribution as well as the overall brand benefit delivered as a result of the campaign.

It is a tough nut to crack. But it is going to get even tougher for brands that do not sit up and take notice of the fact that the market continues to fundamentally change around them, and the old planning models built to service it simply will not deliver the ever increasing results required. M Mac MacDonald is head of Direct and Digital at the Moult Agency.

Tell us your view.

Email:mediazone@niche.com.au

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072 TELEVISION Think you know how many people are watching your TV ads? Think again. Mark Ritson exposes some smoke and mirrors behind television audience measurement.

What do people really do in the ad break?

W

hy not study real people, in their own homes, watching actual TV ads?

If, like me, you are a marketing academic then this is a revolutionary idea. For 50 years marketing professors have generated a huge theoretical corpus of consumer behaviour that explains how consumers process advertising. But the vast majority of these theories have been generated from experimental research in which college students are shown fictional ads, for invented products, in artificial laboratory settings. These students complete these advertising experiments either in total isolation or surrounded by their fellow classmates, but forbidden from interacting with them. In short, the way business schools have studied advertising bears little or no resemblance to the manner in which ads are actually experienced. These theories are rarely based on reality.

Marketers reading this article are probably smirking right now and thinking ‘bloody academics’. But the reality of industry research on advertising audiences is no more impressive.

Advertisers rarely attempt to understand the manner in which their ads are experienced by the target market. Instead they focus their attention on the design of the ad itself and its eventual impact in the form of consumer behaviour and sales. While these are valuable areas of study, they have obscured the potential of looking beyond the inputs and outputs and also studying the advertising audience itself.

Perhaps there are insights that can be taken from studying the moments when advertising and audience meet that could improve the design of ads and their eventual impact?

Even the media agencies that take prime responsibility for planning TV advertising campaigns are highly suspect when it comes to

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Activities during the commerical break How the retired bank manager spends his time while the ads are on (%)

4

23

20

How the young single spends her time while the ads are on (%)

Tasking 31

15

Reading Flicking 10

22

Advertising interaction Social interaction

24

Watching

47

Source: London Business School

measuring and understanding actual audiences for advertising. Australian media agencies depend on OzTAM, which, despite the acronym, does not actually measure television audiences at all. Instead OzTAM, like every other system based on People Meters, actually collects two other variables: the channel being broadcast in a household and the number of people in the room at the time of broadcast. This may sound like a perfect measure for television audiences, but actually it is no such thing.

OzTAM measures room population. In the media industry this is often referred to as OTS (opportunities to see). What OzTAM provides is a representative panel of Australian households and a minute-by-minute record of which members of this panel are in a room and what is being broadcast on the television at the time.

What it fails to provide is any insight into what these panel members are actually doing while the broadcast is occurring. Are they watching an ad intently? Or are they looking out the window absorbed in a world of their own? The system we use to price and plan advertising media simply cannot tell us.

Media agencies argue that they are fully aware of this weakness in audience measurement. Of course, they say, not everyone watches all the ads every time. All of this, they claim, is taken into account in the planning stage. In effect the OzTAM data is seen as a ‘currency’. Like any currency, audience data is recognised by everyone as the standard and then, depending on the particular ad and brand being featured, the currency is adjusted according to factors such as program type and audience demographics. Media agencies assume that they do not actually need to know what proportion of the audience actually watches the ads. Whether it is 20 percent or 80 percent, it remains standard. Twice as many people in a room equates to twice as many ‘opportunities to see’ and that, in turn, means twice the advertising impact. There is no direct need to know what people are doing when a program break occurs, just the quantitative data on how many people are present during this period.

Five years ago this led me to a remarkable conclusion: despite the billions being spent around the world on advertising, nobody

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TELEVISION 073 really knew what consumers did when they encountered advertising. For different, but equally damning reasons, academics, advertisers and agencies were all in the dark.

Working with two colleagues, Professor Patrick Barwise from the London Business School and Karolina Brodin from the Stockholm School of Economics, I set out to explore this everyday but unknown world of advertising. Our goal was to attempt to use ethnographic research to understand how households behave during the program breaks when advertising appears. Ethnography combines long periods of observation and group interviews, and focuses on smaller sample sizes and greater levels of insight. We recruited eight households in London that provided us with different audience types, including a retired couple, a single mother and a household of five 20-something office workers.

A miniature camera and microphone were placed in the main TV viewing room of each house. Each household was informed that the camera would record everything that happened in that room for several weeks. A feed was also taken from each household TV and this was recorded directly onto the footage of the living room as a picture-in-picture. This enabled to us to simultaneously capture the audience and TV content. While the households had no idea why they were being filmed (until a debrief at the end of the research) they were obviously conscious of the cameras. We therefore discarded the first week’s data and used the remaining seven-day period from each of the eight households as the basis for our study. Some of the behaviours recorded during this period and a member-check at the end of the study suggested that by then the mini-camera had become unobtrusive and generally ignored.

Hundreds of hours of data were recorded and this was edited down to a single videotape for each household that contained every program break (and within it every single ad) that had been experienced during the week. Each household was then revisited, shown video excerpts of their own behaviour and interviewed in depth. The videotapes and interviews were then analysed and eventually six distinct themes emerged from the study that captured the full range of audience behaviours that occurred when advertising was encountered. At various times the informants engaged in tasking (the completion of work or home-related activities), reading (all kinds of

printed media), social interaction (everything from conversation to deliberate acts of physical affection), flicking (changing the channel), advertising interaction (talking about or responding directly to the ad) and finally advertising watching (eyes on screen during the ad).

Each household’s videotape was then reanalysed, this time with the quantitative goal of measuring the preponderance of each of these behaviours for each informant. The end result was a framework that we called a ‘footprint’, a breakdown of the range of behaviours that an informant engages in during their total exposure to advertising during the week of the study.

An empirical picture gradually emerged of how different people actually behaved when they encountered advertising in naturalistic locations. The first big surprise was the pro-

portion of advertising that our informants actually watched. Industry estimates have ranged from 20 percent to 90 percent, but our informants appeared to vary between 20 percent and 35 percent. Ours was by no means a representative study, but our methodology inspired the Dutch Association of Advertisers to complete a wider study of 100 households in the Netherlands this year and the Dutch study calculated that on average 19 percent of ads were watched.

We began to realise, however, that this traditional binary method for measuring advertising audiences as either viewing or avoiding ads was fundamentally flawed. While it was clear from our study that watching advertising intently was a relatively minor activity, it was also clear that TV advertising often worked in a more peripheral manner.

Even when our informants were reading or tasking, for example, they were still partially or audibly exposed to an ad. Rather than the black and white of viewers and avoiders, audiences can be located on a much more complex continuum that ranges from almost total igno-

rance (talking with a friend during an ad) to total attention and interaction (singing along to a jingle).

It was also clear that each informant’s footprint was very different from the next, even between people with shared demographic profiles or who shared a house together. One man, a retired bank manager, watched a lot of television on his own. Consequently he was more likely to engage in singular behaviours like flicking and reading when he encountered ads.

Another participant, in contrast, was female, younger, more social and usually watched television with her housemates. Almost half of her footprint was taken up with social interaction – bad news for advertisers. The better news was that she reacted with others to 15 percent of the ads that she encountered. It’s important to note that all of these behaviours, aside perhaps from flicking, would have been completely missed by a People Meter system like OzTAM. The hundreds of ads that made up each of these informants’ footprints would simply have been recorded as an OTS and the individual added to the advertising ‘audience’ irrespective of whether they had been reading, talking or actually watching the ad.

The biggest finding in our research came from an entirely different insight. With the footprint data collected we analysed how an informant’s behaviour changed as the day wore on and in the presence of others. We noticed two distinct and surprising effects.

The first we called ‘The Friends Effect’ and it provides embarrassing evidence that the People Meter system that dominates global advertising measurement is, at best, occasionally inconsistent and, at worst, dangerously flawed. Take the behaviour of the aforementioned young woman for example. When she encountered advertising on her own she watched more than 70 percent of the ads. But if someone else entered the room, her behaviour changed and less than half that proportion were watched. The reason for this reduction is obvious: social interaction would now take up more of her time and attention, but the implication of this finding is potentially enormous. When media agencies plan and buy media they do so under the assumption that 1+1 = 2. In other words, no matter what proportion of the ads are actually watched there is an inherent advantage in having more people in the room. But in the woman’s case this simply is not true. In actual fact, she watches less than half the ads she

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074 TELEVISION would have watched if she had been on her own. In effect in this household represents 1+1 = < 1.

To be fair, her lower level of advertising watching is supplemented by the increased level of advertising interaction that now occurs when she reacts with her friend to some of the ads they see. But this behaviour soon deteriorates when there are even more people in the room. When there are four or more people in the room there were no recorded instances of any ads actually being watched during the whole period of study for this household. Literally a case of 1+1+1+1 = 0. Bear in mind that this is usually the most expensive media to buy because according to a People Meter this is when the audience is biggest. But remember that this isn’t actually an audience at all; it’s room population and it’s a population not watching ads. The stark reality facing many Australian advertisers is that they may be paying top dollar for advertising audiences that are actually not audiences at all.

While Big Brother may have resulted in busy living rooms, this heightened social context may actually have been to the detriment of the advertising impact.

The other key finding we labelled ‘The Late Night Curve’. In all eight households, again by no means representative of the broader population, we observed a marked increase in the

amount of advertising that was watched as the evening wore on. The dominant logic of media planning usually places a premium on the Prime Time day part (6pm to 10.30pm) when People Meters record the highest levels of room population. This may be true, but again our study suggests that as the evening wears on and the informant gets more tired the ability or motivation to engage in alternative behaviours like social interaction and flicking begin to decline. The overall number of people in the room may well be smaller, but sheer exhaustion means that the likelihood of viewers actually watching an ad might rise considerably. SBS recently attracted more than two million very late-night viewers for the Ashes. Advertisers were justifiably pleased with such a huge audience, but they should have been even more delighted. This audience was not only large, but probably also more likely to watch the ads that they encountered compared to earlier in the evening.

The world of advertising is now experiencing extreme change. Flawed People Meter measurement systems like OzTAM now face even greater challenges as audiences, advertisers and brands evolve at a remarkable rate.

PVR technologies like Fox IQ are not just reducing the quantitative size of the audience for advertising, they are also changing the qualitative manner in which that audience behaves

and the manner in which advertising does and doesn’t work. Issues such as time-shifting, broadband access and interactivity are effectively reformulating an audience landscape that had remained unchanged for a generation.

Major advertisers like P&G are growing increasingly frustrated with the limitations of current measurement systems and, in P&G’s case, are now openly touting new measurement approaches like the Apollo System.

Meanwhile, millions of dollars continue to be spent by major Australian corporations on misguided and underperforming advertising campaigns because of a continued ignorance of real-life audience behaviours.

I have just started work on a new ethnographic study of Australian TV audiences, this time including those with PVR technology.

The next exploration of the everyday unknown world of advertising begins. Watch this space. Or alternatively you could always task, flick, interact… M Mark Ritson is an associate professor at Melbourne Business School where he teaches on both the MBA and Masters in Marketing programs.

Beg to differ? Agree wholeheartedly?

Don’t be shy. Tell us about it.

Email: mediazone@niche.com.au.

The Late Night Curve

The Friends Effect The young single pays less attention to the ads when there are more people in the room

The later it gets, the more ads the young single watches

100

100

Tasking

80

80

Reading 60

Flicking

60

Advertising interaction 40

Social interaction Watching

20

0

1

2

3

Number of people

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4 or more

40

20

0

1800 1900 2000 2100 2200 2300 2400 Viewing time

20096_1 Dynamite.indd 1

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076 MEDIA STRATEGY You don’t need hidden cameras and tracking devices to gather competitive intelligence for advertising and media planning, writes Bronwyn Higgs.

Industrial espionage – the legal way.

T

o the uninitiated, gathering competitive intelligence can seem like a mysterious task. Even the word ‘intelligence’ conjures up dark images of cloak and dagger espionage activities. Yet gathering competitive intelligence is just one of the standard tools in any good planner’s repertoire.

The commercially sensitive nature of competitive information adds to its aura of mystery. As a result, some marketers incorrectly think that little of value can be learned about competitors without resorting to active surveillance and industrial espionage of dubious legality. In reality, however, business intelligence is concerned with the ethical and legal gathering of information about the competitive environment.

There is much that can be gleaned using standard sources and a systematic approach.

You will also need a preparedness to analyse data and bring your interpretative skills to the table. This article describes a basic approach and suggests a range of sources to get you started.

IDENTIFY YOUR BRAND’S POSITION WITHIN THE CATEGORY. The primary aim of any competitor analysis is to understand the dynamics of the category in which your brand competes. That is, understand your brand’s position relative to its nearest rivals. What is unique or distinctive about your brand?

An obvious, but often neglected, issue is to define the boundaries of the total category.

While this sounds simple enough in theory, there are practical problems. If you define the category in narrow terms, there is a danger that you will overlook emergent substitutes and other potential threats. An overly broad category definition, however, can present far too many rivals and an overwhelming research task.

MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2005

include ice-creams and breakfast bars. Mars not only competes with chocolate manufacturers Cadbury and Ferrero Rocher, but at a broader level, it also competes with Arnott’s, Uncle Toby’s and Streets.

Deciding where to draw the line around category boundaries requires some intellectual effort.

Once the boundaries have been clearly delineated, it is time to start identifying individual competitors. You will want to prepare detailed competitor profiles for close or direct competitors. Indirect competitors should be monitored in broader terms to test the pulse of market trends and identify emergent threats.

IDENTIFY EVALUATIVE CRITERIA.

Product categories are dynamic – products that were once close rivals drift apart, substitutes can sneak up to become close rivals, while new product concepts can burst open the entire category. In short, market trends can lead to substantial redefinitions of the competitive landscape.

Consider, for example, the Mars chocolate bar. At its most basic level, Mars competes with other chocolate bars where its closest rival is Cadbury. Recent market trends, however, have placed confectionery into a much broader competitive environment – energy bars and biscuits retailed in individual packs now form part of the competitive landscape. Some analysts might even extend the competition to

Identifying the key criteria used to evaluate your competitors’ performance sets the foundation for a robust and systematic process of data gathering. As such it is worth spending time on this stage.

It is not possible to prescribe a universal set of criteria to fit every situation. Depending on your purpose, there will be different information needs. Whereas a corporate planner might be interested in share growth, profitability and return on investment, the advertising strategist will have entirely different information requirements.

Theoretical insights can provide ideas about issues that should be included in your list of criteria. At the very least, the advertising/ media strategist will want to locate information on competitors’ advertising expenditure, media expenditure and brand shares. Ideally, this should also be placed into the context of the overall category. So you should also try to locate information on category value, growth and ad spend.

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MEDIA STRATEGY 077 THINK ABOUT SUITABLE SOURCES OF INFORMATION. Much of the data used in competitive intelligence can be found in the public domain.

Given that intelligence relies on data gathered from multiple and disparate sources, there are several basic rules. Firstly, important facts should be corroborated with reference to at least two sources. Secondly, data evaluation is paramount. In evaluating data, consider both its relevance and the source reliability.

Thirdly, learn how to analyse data to render it more meaningful.

It is important to get to know your sources and understand their limitations. In his book, Offensive Marketing, Hugh Davidson identifies three broad classes of information: published, observational and opportunistic.1 Published sources are well-known – including traditional publications such as business directories, newspaper articles, trade press etc. The advent of electronic databases has made searching very straightforward. A library card is your ticket to a rich array of useful databases and reference works.

Observational methods involve you going into the field and looking around. Store visits, random price checks and attendance at trade fairs can provide a wealth of information not available from other sources.

Opportunistic methods include an array of traditional and non-traditional techniques. Chance discussions with suppliers or ex-employees can provide valuable competitive insights.

A major problem with opportunistic sources rests with their erratic nature. In their eagerness to control opportunistic research, some companies engage in data collection methods of dubious ethical standing. No doubt you have heard of practices such as combing through industrial waste bins in search of inside information about rivals.

Eavesdropping on employees’ conversations while they drink at a favourite watering hole is yet another source of information used to gather intelligence. Although many such techniques are perfectly legal, you may find them distasteful. You will need to decide on your own ethical stand in relation to opportunistic data collection and surveillance.

BUILD DATA FRAGMENTS INTO COHERENT PROFILES. Competitive intelligence is not just about profiling competitors: it’s about understanding your competitive environment. The key to pro-

filing is to combine data from disparate sources into a coherent and meaningful narrative about each major rival and its likely impact on your advertising and media strategies.

It is unlikely that you will find all your information needs in a single location. Be prepared to cast around for bits of data in multiple sources. The very nature of competitive intelligence means that analysts work with fragmentary bits of data and weave them together to build a big picture. Piecing the bits together can be like solving a good detective story. Use data to build your understanding of the competitive landscape and of the main players within the category.

ANALYSE DATA. Data analysis is without question the most important stage of the process. In their book, Competitive and Strategic Intelligence, Craig Fleisher and Babette Bensoussan suggest that planners typically spend a disproportionate amount of time on data collection, often at the expense of data analysis. They recommend inverting the order so that 40 to 60 percent of total time is spent on analysis and interpretation and only 20 percent is spent on data gathering.

Most strategists make an important distinction between data and intelligence. Data are simple facts, figures or observations.

Analysis is the process by which facts and figures are distilled to make them meaningful and actionable.

To illustrate this distinction, consider the observation that Competitor A has an advertising budget of $20 million as a simple fact.

On its own, this fact has little meaning. If, however, we consider this budget as a proportion of the total category expenditure to arrive at a measure of share of voice, this has more meaning. To say that this budget represents 40 percent of all advertising in the category means any rival advertiser has a formidable challenge to be heard. Facts, located into some kind of context, have a great deal more meaning than facts taken in isolation.

Analytical techniques that can be used are all around you. Some theoretical reading can be used to suggest an array of analytical techniques or to refresh your memory. Scenario analysis, portfolio analysis, perceptual maps, trend analysis and many other techniques are regularly used in competitor intelligence. Most good texts on strategic marketing or competitor intelligence provide step-by-step instructions for a battery of analytical techniques.

At the end of the day, facts are facts. Moreover, most of them are known to competitors. It’s what you do with the data and how you turn it into information, that adds real value to the facts. It is this added value that has the potential to give you an advantage. M

SOURCES OF INFORMATION FOR AUSTRALIAN CI. Electronic sources Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) www.asic.gov.au Australian Stock Exchange www.asx.com.au Australian Business Directory Online www.aussie.com.au Australian Bureau of Statistics www.abs.gov.au Department of Industry www.industry.gov.au Productivity Commission www.pc.gov.au Australian Bureau of Statistics www.abs.gov.au ACNielsen, Top Advertisers Report www.acnielsen.com.au ACNielsen, Top Brands Report www.acnielsen.com.au ACNielsen, Grocery Report www.acnielsen.com.au Get to know your library The following references should be readily available from state, university and local libraries: Business directories (e.g. Kompass, Jobson’s) The Business Who’s Who of Australia Company Annual Reports (Database) Australian indexing services (ABIX. APAI, FACTIVA) International indexing services (ABI/INFORM, ProQuest, Emerald) Retail World (especially see the annual report in the December edition, which contains market shares for FMCG) Trade press (Marketing, AdNews, B&T Weekly) Australian Strategic Market Research and CI Specialists Mindshifts www.mindshifts.com.au Forseechange www.forseechange.com Bronwyn Higgs is a lecturer in marketing and advertising at Victoria University in Melbourne.

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078 IN-GAME ADVERTISING Fresh from his recent visit to the E3 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, James Grant Hay reports on the implications of advertising in video games.

Playing the game.

T

here’s a saying now in Hollywood, “If you’ve seen the movie in summer, chances are you’ll be playing the game by fall.” Video games are big business, even by Hollywood standards.

Advertising in video games is set to become even bigger. Just ask War of the Worlds director Steven Spielberg. In the lead-up to the 29 June worldwide theatrical release of WOW this year, Paramount Pictures initiated a series of interactive virtual movie poster billboard advertisements within Ubisoft’s online video game thriller Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. Millions of networked gamers interacted with the campaign, recording countless numbers of audience impressions worldwide.

The studio had migrated with its audience. As an emerging new advertising medium, ingame advertising poses as many challenges as its does opportunities for marketers intent on finding their audience. If we are to strive for relevance in the digital age, then we must learn how to play the game.

Some television network executives may be reluctant to admit it, but viewership of broadcast television programming among the coveted 18- to 34-year-old male demographic has fallen in recent times. Increasingly, members of this demographic have migrated to playing video games. In fact, video games overall can command an even greater mindshare of audiences than a major television network. In its June 2004 US report, Nielsen Interactive Entertainment recorded its analysis of average primetime usage data and found that video games as a whole received ratings among males 18 to 34 on par with or greater than three of the four major networks and their affiliates.

Among 18- to 34-year-old males in June 2004, ABC scored a 2.3, Fox scored 1.9, video

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games scored 1.9, NBC scored 1.8 and CBS scored 1.4. Among teens aged 12 to 17, video games dominated the June data with a whopping 2.8 rating followed by ABC (1.5), Fox (1.4), NBC (1.3) and CBS (0.9). The Nielsen’s research revealed that from 4pm to 8pm weekdays, 18- to 34-year-old males are spending 4.3 hours (out of a possible 20 hours) on average playing video games. From the start of primetime television weeknights 8pm onwards, males 18 to 34 spend an additional 5.1 hours on average playing video games during the five weekday evenings.

The reason for this migration is, quite simply, fun. Video games are great entertainment and immerse users in an alternative interactive universe. With the adoption of mainstream broadband internet, game play will increasingly take place online. In its 2005-2009 Global

Entertainment and Media Outlook, PricewaterhouseCoopers forecast that video games and the internet will remain the fastestgrowing E&M industry segments. With the advent of next generation game console hardware (such as Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PSP PlayStation Portable), this will lead to an invigorated new round of console game software spending by consumers worldwide.

Wireless applications will also become important distribution channels for video games, with new mobile phones that will be used as much for entertainment as for communication.

According to the PwC report, globally the video game market will expand by 16.5 percent and be worth an estimated $55 billion by 2009, driven by growth in the Asia/Pacific, the largest single market. With these forecast growth figures, it’s not surprising to learn that the global

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IN-GAME ADVERTISING 079

Screens from Ubisoft's ‘Tom Clancy‘s Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory’ with dynamic advertising placements served via Massive Incorporated's in-game network.

market for advertising in video games could top $2.5 billion worldwide by 2010.

So, you ask, what’s it all about and how’s it going to work? Advertising in video games isn’t like marketing on television or radio.

Each video game title is a world unto itself and brands tend to be matched by genre or game title. Striking a relationship with an accommodating game publisher is one of the first challenges, and not offending the gaming audience is another. According to Nielsen’s 2004 study, 70 percent of heavy gamers and 55 percent of active gamers said that the inclusion of real-world products makes games more real. So at least you know you are welcome. Heavy gamers were defined as those playing at least 10 hours per week while active gamers were identified as those playing five sessions of at least 30 minutes per week.

Striking a deal where advertisers pay for their products to appear while allowing the game developers some leniency in use of the brand or product also needs to be taken into account. For example, in EA’s arcade-style snowboarding game SSX, the environment includes panes of glass emblazoned with the SSX game logo. Players could potentially steer their snowboarding character to smash through the glass en route while executing an

“

aerial display for points. Instead of the SSX logo, those panes of glass could contain a Pepsi or KFC logo.

An example of a more involved scenario can be found in Take-Two’s Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. One aspect of the game involves making certain the character eats food in order to sustain player energy levels. What he eats will determine his body type. If he frequently dines on fast food, he will become obese. With that obesity comes rude commentary from female passers-by. Not surprisingly, the game’s dining establishments include the fictional The Well Stacked Pizza Co and Burger Shot, rather than Pizza Hut or Hungry Jack’s. While fast food executives reading this may only find the negative in knowing a game character becomes obese from eating their food, game publishers could theoretically sell them on the practice of visiting a restaurant in a game that will result in more frequent real-word visits by the gaming audience to their real-world fast food restaurants. With so many games now onlineenabled, restaurants could simultaneously launch TV ads for a new menu item and allow it to be consumed at their in-game restaurant.

Until now, ads in video games have appeared only occasionally and rather haphazardly. Static in-game advertising or SIGA,

According to Nielsen’s 2004 study, 70 percent of heavy gamers and 55 percent of active gamers said that the inclusion of real-world products makes games more real. So at least you know you are welcome.

”

which called for the advertiser to place its product, service or logo into the gaming environment shipped on its CD or DVD and thus permanently archived in the game, is now being replaced with dynamic in-game advertising or DIGA. DIGA utilises the latest in online ad serving technology and can deliver rich audio, video and advertiser content live to the gaming environment in real time.

The DIGA technology will greatly enhance an effective in-game advertising model for marketers. Firstly, it will be key to calculate the number of hours gamers are playing on each title. The frequency and length that an ad, brand or product placement is shown needs to be tangible to advertisers before a value can be determined. With a shorter adventure game such as Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, gamers on average have spent fewer than 10 hours completing the title. With the almost infinite replayability of online sports titles, such as PS2 and Xbox versions of EA’s Madden NFL 2005, many gamers are likely to spend hundreds of hours over several months playing alone, with friends or against multiplayer opponents online.

One of the major global players carving out this model with a presence in the local Australian market is Massive Incorporated.

Massive is a New York-based technology company that has created its own ad-serving network based on the DIGA model for advertising in video games. The network’s technology automatically downloads advertising images after a gamer installs the video game on his or her PC. The game ships with

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080 IN-GAME ADVERTISING

the Massive (ad-receiving) technology. Ads can then be inserted and played online as well as games played on the user’s PC. The Massive system can target campaigns geographically, by day parts, number of impressions served, reach and frequency.

When an image is presented to a gamer during game play, Massive’s Ad Server records data from the game to determine if certain thresholds are met and whether an impression can be recorded. The server records the length of time an image appears on screen in accordance with those thresholds and aggregates the total time the gamer has been exposed to the image. One impression for that campaign is then recorded in Massive’s client database.

The company began the roll-out of its new system back in October 2004 when it signed deals with game publishers Ubisoft, Atari, Universal and Take-Two Interactive that enabled it to build its anchor and targeting code into the physical software of the games themselves. Massive and the publishers have entered into a revenue-sharing agreement.

Advertisers pay the network on a costper-thousand basis. Massive’s network guarantees a 15-second impression and invoices only executed campaigns. Massive provides its clients and agency affiliates with full metrics support and has recently added an in-game auditing service through Nielsen Interactive Entertainment in an attempt to standardise the measurement of gamers’ response rates to advertising. So far, an impressive list of advertisers – including Coca-Cola, Dunkin’ Donuts, Intel, Paramount Pictures, Verizon, Honda and Universal Music Group – has signed up.

Of course the next evolution of in-game advertising is what is becoming known as ‘advergames’, where advertisers create a game

MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2005

around their own product rather than place their brands within a well-known game title.

According to the Yankee Group, more than one-third of all advertising in-game will come from ‘advergaming’ by 2009. Of all the kinds of in-game advertising, advergames involve the most complete integration of the product or brand message. The hottest segment of this market is the casual gaming of online downloadable games.

One Australian campaign worth noting was recently produced by Brisbane-based interactive marketing outfit WebResource for Tourism Queensland, the PGA, Sunlover and the Hyatt Regency Coolum. The sponsors commissioned a golf-based advergame from WebResource to help test the viability of the medium. The Tourism Queensland game is designed to promote both Tourism Queensland websites and the Australian PGA Championship. The game features a Tee-Shot Challenge, where players vie for a prize pool by indulging in a short, fast ’n’ furious online game. The game can only be completed if the players elect to ‘challenge’ a friend, and clever viral tactics are utilised throughout. For example, if a player makes a poor shot he or she can ‘buy a ball’, which will open a specifically targeted website under the game, or send more viral challenge emails. A leader board is dynamically published to the Queensland Holidays site, encouraging players to return and check their position on the board.

The game is a good example of advertainment.

It allows multiple sponsors to absorb costs, markets directly where consumers are going online and delivers its messaging wrapped in entertainment.

WildTangent, a US-based studio, is bringing downloadable games into the mainstream of interactive advertising with the implemen-

tation of 24/7 Real Media’s Open AdStream ad management system across its games network.

The first downloadable game to feature this new technology, Snowboard Super Jam, will literally put two prominent international brands, Jeep and Oakley, in the game.

WildTangent is at the forefront of the rapidly growing downloadable games market. While primarily known for the development and distribution of custom games for leading national advertisers in the US, it has quickly become the dominant publisher of downloadable online retail games.

We visited its booth at E3 to inspect its latest advergame instalment, Mojo Master, the new online game, sponsored by AXE, maker of men’s grooming products. The game lets players prepare for female encounters with AXE products and during an encounter, when in danger of running out of mojo, players can use AXE Unlimited spray as a power-up to get them back on track.

Mojo Master is the first Unlimited threedimensional mating game that reasserts the age-old question in the minds of single guys everywhere, “What do girls really want?” The game launched online on 20 June and is available for free download at www.mojomastergame.com Combined with expanding online distribution, broadband internet will be the major growth catalyst of in-game advertising. Like online advertising itself, the confluence of these trends is likely to make product placement in games even more appealing to advertisers in the future. M James Grant Hay is the founder and managing director of Australian product placement and branded entertainment agency www.inshot.com.au. James can be contacted on 03 9826 9000 or email james@inshot.com.au

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082 PODCASTING The global obsession with MP3 players has spawned a new phenomenon — ‘podcasting’. Tami Dower reports on what is fast becoming the new breed of radio.

A new pea in the radio pod.

E

ver heard of ‘Wicca’, a modern religion based on ancient witchcraft traditions? How about the geomorphological term ‘talik’? These are just a couple of the more obscure ‘podcast’ topics available for download at podcastdirectory.com. The word ‘podcasting’ comes from a contraction of ‘iPod’ and ‘broadcast’ and refers to the delivery of digital audio content via the web for users to download to an iPod or MP3 player and listen to at their leisure.

Fuelled by the massive global uptake of portable music players, podcasting is rapidly emerging from the depths of obscurity into mainstream culture. And while it might have once been the exclusive province of computer geeks and technophiles, commercial broadcasters and advertisers are quickly starting to cotton on to its enormous potential. It may even be set to revolutionise the way we consume radio.

The first mainstream radio broadcaster to hit the ‘podosphere’ in Australia was the ABC’s Triple J with its current affairs program Hack, in late January. “We added a couple of programs like [science show] Dr Karl, but really the main start for the ABC was when our national talk network, Radio National, got into it in early May,” says Gordon Taylor, program manager of Radio National, who oversees podcasting at ABC Radio. “We put eight different podcast feeds up and immediately got a phenomenal response.”

So far, Austereo – which operates national radio networks Today and Triple M – is the only commercial broadcaster to have stuck its

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left: With the Battlestar Galactica podcast, you can listen to exclusive commentary by executive producer Ronald D Moore about each episode, while you’re watching it. right: Austereo launched its first podcasts in March.

toe in the podcast pond. Its first podcasts were launched in late March with excerpts from 2Day’s popular Kyle and Jackie O Breakfast Show and the Hot 30 Countdown. Triple M wasn’t far behind with highlights of its evening drive show The Shebang and special editions of breakfast show The Cage.

Another local business snaring a piece of the podcasting action is The Podcast Network (TPN). Initially TPN offered only technologybased shows, but the line-up quickly expanded to include a range of topics like AFL, health, employment and parenting. TPN was launched in February by co-founders Mick Stanic, former manager of Singleton OgilvyInteractive, and Cameron Reilly, formerly of Microsoft.

While podcasting had clearly been gaining momentum of its own accord, the launch of Apple’s iTunes 4.9 in late June sparked a huge

surge in popularity. The new iTunes software has a built-in ability to locate and automatically download podcasts. In just two days iTunes customers subscribed to more than one million podcasts from the new iTunes Podcast Directory. “Apple has single-handedly brought hundreds of thousands of extra listeners to podcasting,” says podcasting software developer Garth Kidd. “It’s a massive shift. The release of iTunes 4.9 increased the size of the audience by 40 percent overnight.”

Beneficiaries of the boost in audience numbers have included everyone from the teenage kid podcasting from the garage, right through to major broadcasters, like the ABC. According to Taylor, the week that the new version of iTunes came online with its podcasting software, the ABC’s downloads doubled from about 50,000 programs a week

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PODCASTING 083 to over 100,000. By mid July, the number of downloads of ABC podcasts was up to 122,000 per week, with about 100,000 through Radio National, around 15,000 through Triple J and the remainder from other parts of the ABC. Taylor attributes the relatively low uptake from the Triple J audience to the fact that podcasting has so far basically been limited to non-music content, due to licensing issues.

Podcasters are currently in negotiations with record companies, but Taylor believes the issue could take some time to resolve.

Licensing issues are a problem worldwide, but it doesn’t seem to have put too much of a dampener on the uptake of podcasting, particularly for talk radio broadcasters. One station in the US has even morphed into an all-podcast station. San Francisco’s KYCY-AM now compiles all programming from podcasts submitted on its website.

WHAT’S IN IT FOR ADVERTISERS? The worldwide podcasting audience is currently estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands and is growing daily. And of course, wherever there are audiences, advertising is never too far behind. There are currently two main ways to advertise via podcast. The first is to use the podcast itself as a self-promotional tool. The second is to sponsor existing entertainment podcasts. New models of sponsorship are constantly evolving, but this form of ‘podvertising’ typically involves a short audio ad embedded within the podcast content.

Self-promotional podcasts are generally hosted on the company’s own website and range from basic infomercials through to entertainment vehicles in their own right.

These kinds of podcasts have proven especially popular among actors and music artists trying to push new CDs and films. Even Paris Hilton has managed to work it out, with a podcast promoting her movie House of Wax. One promotional podcast that has already attracted a cult following is Battlestar Galactica www.scifi.com/battlestar/downloads/podcast/.

This site allows the user to download a podcast of the director’s commentary to play back alongside the episode with the sound turned down. Other marketers successfully using podcasts to promote themselves include General Motors Corp and Heineken. General Motors distributes an infomercial on its own corporate blog (http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/) with a 12-minute radio show called Fast Lane, while

Heineken has been distributing podcasts at its website www.heinekenmusic.com since December last year.

On the sponsorship side, Volvo is believed to have put up more than $70,000 to sponsor the recently launched autoblog.com podcast for six months. Four months into the deal, the podcast had been downloaded 20,000 times, according to Euro RSCG 4D media director Anna Papadopoulos. Ford Motor’s Swedish unit is using the same strategy by sponsoring the engadget.com podcast, an extension of a blog that covers gaming, home entertainment and home computing.

Condom maker Durex also launched a brand integration campaign featuring unscripted xrated banter on popular podcast program The Dawn and Drew Show. Toyota USA’s Lexus division is another one about to join

“

interview during the sponsorship period, which could involve questions posed by the listeners. The advertising scenario is much more of a traditional style of marketing. In a one-hour show, the advertiser might get two to four ads of 15 to 30 seconds duration each.”

Austereo is also offering a range of podcast-related marketing opportunities for advertisers, including umbrella sponsorship packages as well as individual podcast-based sponsorships. “The packages include dominant brand positioning and brand presence within the podcast section of our websites, opening and closing billboard commercials of about five seconds within the podcast broadcast and, if the portable listening device has this capability, the client’s logo can appear on the screen,” says Martin Jones, Austereo’s group special projects manager. “We also have

One station in the US has even morphed into an all-podcast station. San Francisco’s KYCY-AM now compiles all programming from podcasts submitted on its website.

”

the ranks of brands jumping on the podcast bandwagon. Next month, it will be launching a 26-week deal to sponsor podcasts on Californian radio station KCRW. The deal is reportedly worth six figures US. While the podvertising frenzy has been gathering speed in overseas markets for some time, the commercialisation of podcasting is only just beginning to take hold Down Under.

“We are currently in conversations with a number of advertising/communications companies, media buyers and clients around the world about sponsorship and advertising opportunities,” says TPN’s Stanic. “We made a decision early on to wait until we had a few months of figures behind us to go out and approach the market and we can now show solid and consistent growth since we started.” TPN has set up a ‘media-casting’ consultancy and production service to assist clients in finding ways to use podcasting as part of their marketing activities.

“We offer what we are calling both ‘sponsorship’ and ‘advertising’ opportunities within the network,” explains Stanic. “Sponsorship provides a much better way to ‘interact’ with the listeners. For example, a mobile phone manufacturer sponsoring The Mobiles Show might offer up its key designer for a 30-minute

what we call a ‘podvert’, where an advertiser can insert a short commercial advertising message within the podcast broadcast itself.”

One thing that might present issues for advertisers and podcasters is listener backlash against advertising. After all, one of the great advantages of MP3 audio content as compared with radio is the lack of ads. Kidd – a self-confessed ‘podcasting geek’ himself – believes the listeners will tolerate a certain amount of advertising within podcasts, but only if it’s at the start or the end of the podcast. Jones believes the key is balance. “It’s all about ensuring that an overload of marketing and promotional messages doesn’t kill the desire for the consumer to continue to consume podcast media,” he says. “As long as podcasters continue to broadcast engaging content the future of podcasting is guaranteed.”

WHO’S LISTENING TO PODCASTS? Earlier this year, international agency Zenith Media authored a white paper titled ‘Podcasting 101: the future of radio or the latest eight-track?’. The paper emphasised that one of the main benefits of podcasting was the ability to target early adopters. “Advertisers

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084 PODCASTING who embrace the technology and communicate to consumers in meaningful ways through podcasts may be viewed as innovators, forward-thinking, cutting-edge, and the envy of the neighbourhood,” it stated.

“The average TPN listener would at this stage still be considered an early adopter,” says Stanic. “In most cases they are tech savvy, welleducated, influencers within their group of colleagues and have a high disposable income.

MP3 player purchases also seem to be higher in the 18 to 34-year-old market. However, this will change as we see more and more users come to us through tools like Apple iTunes and Windows Media Player, which is giving everyday web users the ability to easily find and subscribe to podcasts.”

Jones says current research indicates that more than one million people own an MP3 player in Australia, of which the gender bias is weighted towards males approximately 60:40.

“What we also know is that 13 percent of people who own an MP3 player are in households with an income of $70,000 plus,” he adds.

Jones agrees with Stanic that the 18 to 34 demographic is driving podcasting uptake although, interestingly, podcasting on the ABC

phy. Research conducted by the ABC via online surveys indicates that a significant part of the audience is based abroad, largely in the US. “We also have a lot of evidence from the surveys that people are sending the audio files to their friends overseas,” says Gordon. “It’s interesting because it shows that someone making a podcast in Australia can actually achieve a very substantial international audience through this technology.”

TPN also has a significant overseas podcast audience, the bulk of its listeners being based in the US, the EU, Canada and China, as well

“

Current research indicates that more than one million people own an MP3 player in Australia, of which the gender bias is weighted towards males approximately 60:40. What we also know is that 13 percent of people who own an MP3 player are in households with an income of $70,000 plus. site has been significantly more popular among Radio National listeners, who fall predominantly within the 35 to 55 age range, than the younger Triple J audience. “It’s surprised us a bit because most of the activity with buying iPods and downloading music has been in the younger audience. Also, if you look at radio listening figures in this country, and particularly in the US, you see a real decline in radio listening by young people. Part of that is they’re just bypassing the radio and listening to music on iPods and MP3 players. We thought that our podcasting would be skewed very much to that younger audience, but it’s interesting that once they’re introduced to it, the middle-aged audience and older audience are also embracing it in a huge way.”

One of the defining features of the podcast listener base is that it’s not limited by geogra-

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”

as here in Australia. Having an international audience, however, does present some challenges. “One of the issues we do have is that we cannot currently target audio ads to specific countries within our shows,” says Stanic. “This is something we are working on rectifying through the creation of our own media serving engine.”

THE NEW BROADCAST MEDIUM? Will podcasting ever rival radio as a broadcast medium? At least until popular music is widely available for download, the answer is almost certainly no. Even then it’s unlikely that podcasting would ever be able to garner the same sort of audience numbers as broadcast radio.

“While podcasting threatens to eat away at the available media time that people normally put aside for listening to radio, it certainly won’t be the death of it,” says Stanic. “I think when you look at the content available through podcasting, it makes much more sense to compare it to niche magazines. The audience is not normally looking for generic news, comedy or music – though that is available in the podcast world. What they are looking for is information on topics that they find interesting and where they can gain an insight into what is going on through people like their peers, friends and experts.”

Joan Warner, CEO of Commercial Radio Australia, sees podcasting not as a threat to radio, but more as a complementary medium.

“Podcasting is simply another tool for radio to use to reach its listeners, similar to the telephone, websites, SMS and email,” she says.

“Radio has always been adept at adopting and using any technology that helps it to connect with its listeners. In my view, podcasting will be a useful tool for radio.” Taylor agrees: “What something like the ABC has is an incredible amount of content. So we see it as another opportunity to get that content to people on a different platform.”

Jones doesn’t believe that podcasting will ever supplant broadcast radio, but he warns that broadcasters that don’t have a proactive strategy to address the issue may be left behind. “At Austereo, we believe podcasting has a complementary role to play in the future of traditional radio broadcasting and that podcasting will only help to increase the reach and frequency when used in conjunction with a traditional radio advertising campaign.

Podcasting represents an exciting opportunity for those forward-thinking ‘broader-casters’ and marketers who are prepared to take risks and think innovatively.” M

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086 NEWSPAPERS There’s nothing more out of date than yesterday’s newspaper, says Martyn Thomas.

Beyond 2040: can newspapers survive?

P

hilip Meyer, author of The Vanishing Newspaper, has suggested that extrapolating the current level of declining newspaper readership means the last paper ever printed will be in April 2040. This assumes, of course, that publishers continue to produce the same newspapers in the same format, with the same content. The winds of change are fortunately upon us.

I like newspapers. There’s something curiously calming about spending time ‘just reading the newspaper’ and they are incredibly good value at less than the price of a coffee.

Newspapers can be with us in the future if they challenge established media orthodoxies and continue to innovate. Rupert Murdoch said recently, “We have to free our minds of our prejudices and predispositions and start thinking like our newest consumers.”

In this article we look at the tectonic plates of the newspaper industry – format, content and distribution.

DEATH OF THE BROADSHEET? Does size matter? Maybe. The broadsheet format was introduced in the UK in the 18th century as an initiative to avoid paying taxes.

As Parliament passed a tax based on the number of pages printed, publishers expanded the physical size of their pages – same number of stories, but with as few pages as possible.

During World War II countries rationed the number of pages printed, so many newspapers made certain they were printing in the broad-

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est format imaginable. This also gave rise to the Berliner format, a size between broadsheet and tabloid, a miniature broadsheet in form and style, popular in Western Europe. Hence, today, the notion that a larger format reflects quality and respectability is without foundation.

In September 2003 the UK’s 17-year-old broadsheet The Independent launched a tabloid edition alongside its broadsheet edition. Two months later the 218-year-old The Times fol-

lowed suit. The marketing rationale from both was akin to a consumer product being available in different sizes based on a consumer’s preference. The Independent’s national daily circulation increased 27 percent in the first 10 months after launch. The Times’ sales went up to 69,000 of the tabloid edition from a start-up of 30,000 in one week.

Although this had an impact within the UK, it is outside the UK that a broadsheet to tabloid conversion of this scale is likely to have the biggest effect.

It’s not difficult to envisage a compacted Berliner format of The Sydney Morning Herald or The Age being sold in parallel with the traditional broadsheet model. The risk-evasive newspaper industry has generally resisted the ‘switch’ because of resistance from editorial departments, heavy investments in printing presses, reluctance to change from advertisers, uncertainty about reader and advertiser reactions and, of course, the notion that tabloids equal ‘popular’ or worse.

The Murdoch family began experimenting with the switch from broadsheet to tabloid in the 1940s. In 2004, according to a report by the World Association of Newspapers, a record

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NEWSPAPERS 087 56 broadsheets made the switch to a more compact format. Where has this momentum come from? Some may argue that research on consumers indicates that women and young adults show a marked preference for compact formats, especially in heavy commuting markets. This is coupled with the perception that smaller equals better from a more mobile and more space-conscious consumer.

reading enough of a broadsheet newspaper during the week? But on the weekends love to explore the multi sections available? So why not provide a well-edited compact format newspaper Monday to Friday and luxuriate in the weekend edition?

Having said this, there are genuine concerns about the environment among young people. In a survey by The Washington Post the main reason given by young people (one of the ‘newest consumers’ referred to by Rupert Murdoch) for not buying the paper product was its bulk and the wastage associated with purchasing something that weighed up to seven pounds on a Sunday.

In the late 1990s Le Matin, the quality mass-market daily newspaper, which covers all of French-speaking Switzerland, converted from a Berliner format to micro (magazine size). This

ARRESTING THE DECLINE. The real issue is the fact that circulation figures have been heading south for a while and nothing short of radical change will do. For example, in mature western democracies worldwide circulation was down seven percent between 1993 and 2003. It’s nine percent down in the English-speaking world. Eight percent in North America. Nine percent in the South Pacific. In Western Europe it’s approaching 10 percent.

Since the introduction of the internet, free commuter newspapers and mobile devices in the late 20th century, the rate of decline in Western Europe has increased nearly 400 percent (source: International Newspaper Marketing Association).

Consumer preference for content and distribution of content will guide the industry going forward. Paul Hamra, managing director of the recently emergent Independent Weekly in Adelaide, agrees. “We believe that a path forward for newspapers will be based on ‘niche’ rather than ‘mass’. Like all other media, newspapers will continue to refine their market segments and tailor their products or new products to the needs and opportunities in those markets. The Independent Weekly is an example of a niche newspaper. It specifically targets a market with content and distribution strategies that are based on being complementary to existing media consumption, but relevant and different. As we continue to penetrate our market, I can see a time when we will converge with others trying to do the same and we will form a family. It might be a little dysfunctional, but we will work together in the same space.”

Twelve months ago the Deutsche Bank analysed 40 metropolitan daily newspapers in the US and discovered that the primary value proposition sold to advertisers (i.e. that fullcover price, stable home-delivered units of

“

In 2004, according to a report by the World Association of Newspapers, a record 56 broadsheets made the switch to a more compact format. circulation are more likely to respond to an advertiser’s marketing message) is declining quicker than anyone had thought. It discovered to no one’s surprise that overall circulation declined nearly two percent over two years. It also identified, however, that fullprice or low-discounted price newspapers declined five percent while heavy-discounted or free distribution newspapers grew 44 percent. The ramifications of this are that US newspapers are relying less on circulation revenue (i.e. the cover price per copy) and more on distribution penetration.

The expansion of the free distribution MX from Melbourne into Sydney last July and into Brisbane later is testament to the acceptance and relevance of a ‘lite-edition’. Content is of critical importance in establishing brand values and in motivating consumers to the effort of picking up a title.

How often when you read a newspaper do you get the impression that a journalist has not considered whether anyone is going to be interested in reading their story; it’s just there to fill space? Do you ever feel guilty about not

”

was in the face of declining circulation and the launch of two free commuter newspapers in Switzerland. Within two years circulation increased by over 13 percent, with most new readers being between 14 and 34 years of age and female. Before the format change Le Matin had a strong sports component and 60 percent male readership. After the format change Le Matin became the newspaper of the young urban female and linked to a variety of new media.

A significant challenge for broadsheet newspapers contemplating the switch to a more compact format is the potential impact on advertising revenue. Most tabloid pages contain about half the ‘single column centimetres’ of a broadsheet page. Doubling the rates is not a satisfactory solution. Le Matin decided that the page’s impact would be the same and reduced the cost of a full-page ad by 25 percent.

Subsequently, in the face of qualitative research that reflected strong consumer advocacy, adver-

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088 NEWSPAPERS tising grew 13 percent, while the rest of the Swiss market saw declines. In retrospect Le Matin executives say they would have reduced the cost of a full-page ad by only 10 percent.

It’s arguable that if a newspaper’s format is going to change then so should its advertising structure. Compact newspapers (tabloid/Berliner/micro) can optimise advertising exposure by selling modular units (pages and portions of a page) and by using disproportionate pricing for smaller ad sizes.

The debate to be had centres on ‘is a page a page?’ – if we make the quantum leap of assumptions and conclude that a page is a page then newspapers could generate about the same revenue per page, but with the lower costs and improved operating practices that come from a tabloid. It is most likely that advertising revenue will fall in the short-term until advertisers accept they are getting the same impact, but in the smaller format.

Classified advertising also needs to be considered. Despite the concern that tabloid classified advertisements break traditional

The current method by which most newspapers are distributed is restrictive and outdated. It relies upon consumers making an active trip to make a purchase rather than being available at the point at which people want them. The need today is to go to your audience. A classic example is podcasts. For

“

Young people (i.e. 14 to 35 years) don’t have any issues picking up a ‘lite’ edition such as MX in Sydney and Melbourne or Metro in London.

Young people are now choosing to source their information from outlets other than traditional full-cover price, morning-based newspapers. dimensions, the portability of tabloids may benefit classified advertising. Easy to carry tabloid classified sections as part of a host broadsheet offering are not new.

Newspapers’ centuries-old monopoly on disseminating news is no longer sustainable in the face of the internet and fragmentation of media generally. Getting the distribution is likely to be the definitive factor for the industry.

Young people (i.e. 14 to 35 years) don’t have any issues picking up a ‘lite’ edition such as MX in Sydney and Melbourne or Metro in London. Young people are now choosing to source their information from outlets other than traditional full-cover price, morningbased newspapers. They still want news, they just want it presented and delivered differently.

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”

example The Denver Post is one of a growing number of newspaper brands that offer iPod downloads. The following is from its site…

“Check every morning at 7am and we’ll have the top headlines from The Denver Post, presented in an audio version that you can take with you on your commute or whenever you’re on the go. You can choose the full podcast (usually about seven to eight minutes) or download just the business, local, nation/world or sports news. We’ll also keep an archive of feature podcasts like the Alligator Farm, Mercury Project and Cherry Blossom Festival stories below, so be sure to check back to see what’s new.”

Aside from making newspapers available where people naturally congregate, such as The Times’ initiative with Starbucks in London, there is also the rejuvenated reliance from some titles on providing DVDs, CDs or books to increase circulation. Nothing new here.

Promotions have been prevalent in newspapers since the 1930s with the lure of free bibles and encyclopaedia sets. If a promotion does not result in a long-term newspaper buying commitment from readers, however, then the result is no more than a circulation spike illusion.

More innovative promotions that tap into younger readers’ lifestyles involve free music downloads through websites by gaining a password from the newspaper. This might work well with MX as it increases its distribution and encourages trial from new newspaper readers.

So should newspapers be more widely distributed and smaller in terms of content?

Should they also change their tone to more accurately reflect people’s expectations of how they want their information delivered for today’s evolving consumer? Long-term, the newspaper market is likely to polarise into high circulating free distribution ‘free-sheets’, lower circulating, analysis-rich paid-for titles and multimedia branded news distribution.

Some publishers believe they are in the news on paper business, but believe the paper is the problem. Others believe they are in the niche marketing business and are aiming different products at new demographics. We can be confident that newspapers will successfully be around in various forms beyond April 2040. They will, however, need to go beyond current thinking and, most crucially, listen the market, not get the market to follow them. M Martyn Thomas is managing director of FRANk media.

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090 OUT-OF-HOME In January 2006, the outdoor industry will honour its best creative executions in the deciding round of the ONE Awards. But, as Tami Dower reports, the work showcased at the Awards is just the tip of the iceberg for outdoor.

Rewarding great outdoor creative.

1 2

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hat’s the secret to great outdoor creative? According to Michael Simons, executive creative director of Foote Cone and Belding, and chair of the recently launched ‘ONE Awards’, ‘the gut’ is the best overall barometer.

“Essentially, [outdoor] is an easy category to judge,” says Simons. “Posters are supposed to convey their message pretty much instantly, so if you don’t understand what the idea is within about three and a half seconds, it’s not a good poster. Presuming the idea and execution pass the ‘instant understanding’ requirement, then it needs to be relevant to what we know of the product. If it’s a teenage boy joke about a feminine hygiene product, it’s probably not a good poster either. Originality is a good thing to look for too. As is clever use of the medium. In other words, if someone finds a way to say something about a product in a way that they could not in any other medium, that is certainly worthy of credit.”

The ONE Awards – deriving their name from the acronym of ‘Outdoor, Noticeable and Effective’ – were launched earlier this year by the Outdoor Advertising Association of Australia (OAAA) to recognise and foster creative excellence in outdoor advertising. In the

MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2005

past, outdoor companies have run their own awards, but this is the first time the industry has come together to collectively recognise stand-out creative in the medium.

Steve McCarthy, chair of the Outdoor Marketing Group (OMG) and CEO of Adshel, says the aim of the Awards is to raise the standard of outdoor creative in Australia. “Outdoor is only as effective as the impact the creative makes,” he says. “By raising the standard we’re hoping to give more clients the confidence to add outdoor to their media schedules.”

The ONE Awards are an initiative of the OMG (the marketing arm of the OAAA), represented by APN Outdoor, Adshel, JCDecaux, Eye and Network Outdoor. The initiative follows on from the group’s recent high-profile POW (Proving Outdoor Works) campaign and the investment into the Roy Morgan ‘Out and About’ research.

The Awards are being judged in three categories: Large Format and Poster; Street Furniture; and Transit. At the end of each quarter, a panel will judge finalists and then, at the end of the year, an overall winner will be selected. The prize for the Best Overall Advertisement, determined by the judging panel, is $10,000 for the creative team and $500,000 of outdoor media spend for the client.

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Headed by creative director, Michael Simons, the judging panel comprises seven representatives from different disciplines including a strategic planner, marketing director, media planner/buyer, outdoor media operator and a Sydney cab driver (selected on the basis of wide exposure to outdoor). Finalists in the first round of judging were announced in July.

At the end of the judging rounds, there will also be a People’s Choice Award, voted for online. The People’s Choice winner will receive a case of Moët champagne. Anyone in the marketing and advertising community can nominate candidates for the People’s Choice Award (simply go to www.oaaa.com.au and register to vote).

THE CHANGING FACE OF OUTDOOR. While the ONE Awards are a huge step towards greater recognition of outdoor creative, recently there has also been plenty going on in terms of innovations in outdoor formats and technology. According to Anthony Xydis, marketing director of Adshel, many of these innovations have been made possible due to the strength of advertiser adoption and support over the past few years.

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“Format innovation has been a key driver of the success of the medium and a number of production techniques are now regularly used by advertisers to generate added impact and creative cut-through to complement their broadcast or targeted campaign,” says Xydis.

“Our most popular creative innovation is the ‘wrap’, which allows advertisers to wrap the entire shelter with a tailored creative execution. This has been used by such advertisers as BVI for the launch of The Incredibles, 20th Century Fox for Star Wars, Sensis for White Pages and Xbox for Halo 2.

“In addition to wraps, advertisers have also taken the process a step further by theming the shelter. An example of this was for the MasterCard ‘Endless Summer’ campaign, which featured palm trees on top of the shelters.”

In terms of technical innovations, Xydis points to hypertag technology as being one of the most important milestones for outdoor in the past 12 months. Based on infrared and Bluetooth technology, hypertags allow consumers to interact with an advertising panel by downloading information about a product along with wallpapers, ring tones and other interactive components. The technology was used recently for the War of the Worlds campaign. United International

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Pictures and Mediaedge:cia partnered with Adshel and AURA Digital Communications to create a number of War of the Worlds themed shelters. Hypertag technology allowed the public to interact with the advertising panel through the infrared device in their mobile phone.

In another recent Australian first, Adshel partnered with DMG Radio to bring the launch of the new Nova 106.9 FM radio station to audiences in the Brisbane CBD, using new sound technology that allows the public to listen to a live stream of Nova through headsets attached to bus shelters.

Ed Harrison, general manager of JCDecaux Australia, says another significant development in recent years has been the rollout of scrolling technology. “JCDecaux WorldLink (the company’s international marketing and research division) commissioned the ‘Sutton Study’, which quantified the effect of introducing movement to previously static panels. Unsurprisingly, movement increased the likelihood to see and, therefore, recall the advertising,” says Harrison.

“Print technologies have also provided interesting opportunities, in particular the ability to show one image by day and a different one by night,” adds Harrison. “This works

LARGE FORMAT AND POSTER Roadside billboards. External – airports, railways, shopping centres 1. LOVE HANDLES Client: Coopers Creative: kwp! Advertising Media: kwp! Advertising 2. UNLEASHING THE RASPBERRY Client: Absolut Vodka Creative: Whybin TBWA Media: bellamyhayden

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3. TARGET TOY SALE Client: Target Creative: The Campaign Palace Media: Universal McCann STREET FURNITURE Bus shelters, railway platforms etc.

Internal – railways, amenities, shopping centres, car parks 4. SUCCESSFUL POSITIONING Client: Australian Financial Review Creative: Love Media: Initiative Media 5. SHARE A CAB Client: Hardy Wine Company Creative: MMAdvertising Media: Mediaedge:cia TRANSIT Buses, taxis, trams. Internal – airport terminals, railway, elevators 6. RELEASE YOUR INNER GEEK Client: Berocca Creative: The Campaign Palace Media: Carat 7. TAKE THE TUBE TO LONDON Client: Kraft Foods Creative: JWT Melbourne Media: MindShare MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2005

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092 OUT-OF-HOME by printing a different image on the front and on the back of the poster. At night, when the light comes on, the back image shows through.

Cadbury Schweppes used this to great effect.”

Other technologies gaining momentum in outdoor include movement of bubbles, as used for Recharge by Sprite and Yellowglen, and vacuum moulding (3D effects) techniques.

THE LAST BASTION OF BROADCAST? As the formats and technology in outdoor have evolved, so too has the way advertisers are using the medium. Outdoor has clearly gained credibility over the past few years, with increasing numbers of advertisers including it as a core part of their media strategy. “Many are even using outdoor as the primary medium,” says Xydis. “The Pepsi campaign was a defining moment for the industry with its dedicated focus on a multi-format strategy. Pepsi has become one of the most high-profile out-ofhome campaigns in history, with its attempt to own the out-of-home environment in the carbonated soft drink beverage category – a strategy that has delivered market share gain against leader Coca-Cola.

“It is being acknowledged that traditional media has become less effective in reaching target audiences and, with the growth of online and the increasing methods of filtering advertising, outdoor is now being planned far more strategically,” Xydis continues.

“The much-talked about decline in TV audiences and fragmentation of many media forms leaves outdoor well-positioned as arguably the only remaining broadcast medium,” adds Harrison. “This is, however, only one-half of the story, as without the huge investments made by – largely global – outdoor companies, the current level of growth could not have been achieved.”

While Harrison agrees that outdoor is definitely gaining more attention on the advertisers’ radars, he believes the lack of a comprehensive audience measurement system has restricted the medium’s true growth potential. “The inability to provide clear reach and frequency figures can cause a degree of nervousness among clients when faced with signing off on large spends,” he says. “However, once they have made a sizeable commitment to outdoor, the results often speak for themselves.

Every year we see the amount of outdoor being used for each campaign growing substantially.

Where clients used to be happy with a single

MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2005

week of activity, they now frequently run multiple weeks either consecutively or in bursts.”

Gerry Thorley, CEO of Eye Corp, says the major shift in the way advertisers view outdoor has been the move from ‘buying signs to buying audiences’. “This has been assisted through the application of products such as ROAM as well as the use of existing products like Panorama and Morgan research,” he says. “Currently Eye is using this approach to sell packages to clients for the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne to target visitors through airports, roadways and shopping areas in a coordinated manner. This reflects the clear understanding that out-of-home is an essential and powerful place-based lifestyle media option and very important in the overall media mix.” M

ONE AWARDS: DIARY DATES 30 September 2005 Entries close for outdoor advertisements appearing during Q3 of 2005 at 11.59pm.

1 October 2005 Call for entries opens for Q4 2005: 1 October 2005 to 31 December 2005.

31 December 2005 Entries close for outdoor advertisements appearing during Q4 of 2005 at 11.59pm.

January 2006 Voting by registered voters for the People’s Choice – Best Outdoor Advertisement takes place.

Judging takes place for Best Overall Outdoor Advertisement appearing during 2005.

top to bottom: > ‘Wraps’ have proven popular with advertisers. > New print technologies have provided the ability to show one image by day and a different image by night. > Hypertag technology allowed consumers to download War of the Worlds ring tones and wallpapers. > DMG recently took advantage of new sound technology to launch Brisbane’s Nova 106.9 FM.

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ore than 60 million passengers passed through Australia’s international and domestic airports in the 12 months to May 2005*, up nearly 14 percent on the year before. Not only were there more people at the airports, but they were also spending more time there.

With security measures on the rise, airport dwell times have been steadily increasing over the last four years. Wait times for international departures are now approaching three hours in most major airports, while domestic travellers have an average of 25 percent longer to linger in the airport terminal prior to take-off.

Good news for advertisers who’ve discovered Eye Fly. Eye is the leading airport media specialist in Australia and New Zealand. Through its airport division, Eye Fly, it has the largest footprint of air travellers across both countries, incorporating the vast number of terminals and approach roads at major airports in the region. In Australia alone, Eye Fly covers 90 percent of all metropolitan and key regional airports. Eye Corp also holds advertising rights in and around the Indonesian gateway airports of Jakarta, Bali and Surabaya.

With Eye Corp’s recent announcement that it will be extending its advertising agreement at Melbourne’s international and domestic terminals well into the next decade, Eye Fly is also poised to take advantage of the city’s many major events –

COME FLY WITH EYE including the Formula One Grand Prix, AFL Grand Final, Melbourne Cup, Australian Open Tennis and, of course, the Commonwealth Games in March next year.

Eye Fly’s market-leading position is reinforced by a strong emphasis on R&D, technology innovation and accountability, backed up by its ongoing commitment to industry and proprietary market research.

The latest addition to Eye Fly’s external inventory – which includes some of the largest outdoor sites in Australia – is a new scrolling Super 8 site outside the Sydney Qantas domestic taxi rank. As part of its interminal offering, Eye has also introduced scrolling eyelites.

In addition, the Eye Fly product range has been significantly enhanced over the past year with the roll-out of advanced digital media technology. One of the most notable developments has been the implementation of the Business First digital network, which enables advertisers to use animation and dynamic content to strengthen their campaign message.

Positioned at the exit and entry points of premium airport lounges throughout Australia and New Zealand, the Business First network delivers a captive audience of high disposable income earners – the perfect environment for advertising up-market luxury goods and services.

Other products in the global Eye Fly inventory include large scale light boxes, static eyelites, internals and externals of aerobridges, business lounge signage, wall

wraps, light projections, large window decals, promotional areas and sampling, as well as a wide range of ‘out of the box’ options.

In addition to the high-end corporate travel segment, recent years have seen significant growth in the Australian air travel market overall, attributable to the increased availability of discount airline tickets. For example, Sydney’s T2 terminal – which houses Virgin Blue, Jetstar and Rex – now services nearly 9.5 million passengers per year, up from just over five million only a few years ago. The increase in domestic passenger traffic has broadened the reach of airport advertising, making it even more attractive to mainstream advertisers.

With longer dwell times, airport terminals are also increasingly functioning as destination shopping points. This means Eye Fly in-terminal offerings are ideally positioned for point of sale advertising. In recent years, there has been a substantial increase in leased retail space in airport terminals. Importantly for advertisers, this has translated into a corresponding increase in per-passenger retail spend.

Whatever your campaign objectives, Eye Fly can be tailored to suit your needs. And with a specialist team of sales executives, concession management and asset development experts on hand to guide you, the sky’s the limit. *Source: Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics

MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2005

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094 MAGAZINES The Magazine of the Year Awards, presented recently at Sydney’s Hilton, highlighted the value of partnering with publishers to get the best results from magazine advertising. Tami Dower reports.

From mags to riches.

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ho magazine’s national advertising manager, Bronwyn Martens, is not afraid to get her hands dirty in the pursuit of pleasing an advertiser. Literally. Together with Time Inc creative director, Carolyn Innis, Martens spent several months making a weekly trek out to the client’s building site – donning hard hat and construction boots – to ensure the vision of the campaign they were piecing together matched that of the client’s emerging flagship store.

Their efforts were rewarded recently at the Magazine of the Year Awards, where they picked up the award for Best Use of the Magazine Environment for Advertising. The category attracted 36 entries and was judged on the basis of ‘originality of the campaign and its effectiveness in meeting the advertising objectives’.

MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2005

The winning campaign was designed around the launch of Domayne Alexandria, a premium furniture and homeware superstore. The concept, which involved multiple executions over an eight-month period, was developed in-house at Time Inc, in collaboration with Domayne.

“Our proposed objective, with which Domayne agreed, was to showcase Domayne Alexandria’s design emphasis in a way that complemented their own retail campaign,” says Martens.

Martens and Innis initiated the campaign on hearing about the upcoming launch of Domayne’s flagship store, tipped to be the biggest furniture floor space in the southern hemisphere. They approached the company with a campaign idea that would take the client outside of its traditional advertising focus.

“Rather than concentrating on retail, we wanted to showcase Alexandria’s flagship design element,” explains Martens. “We then presented various ideas about how we could sell this con-

cept. We didn’t just go to them with an offer to insert a catalogue into our titles – it was more about creating ideas that integrated Domayne’s key design principles into our stable of magazines. There was so much thought, planning and design that had gone into Domayne’s flagship store, so all parties knew it would have been a shame to just say ‘20 percent off sofas’.

“The strategy was to add a designer dimension to Domayne’s communication and to showcase the spectacular showrooms with a sensory experience that expressed the store’s impressive scale and designer living element.

Each execution was tailored around the core values of Who, Time and In Style readers, whether it be fashion, celebrity and people, or the latest technology. Each idea and execution provided layering touch-points throughout the campaign.”

Spending time on-site at Domayne was one of the key aspects of putting the campaign

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MAGAZINES 095 together. In fact, one of the first initiatives in the multidimensional campaign was inspired by an early visit to the construction site.

“Standing on the concrete slab, we realised how big it all was and that customers would need help in navigating their way around the store. So the first thing we did was to include gatefold maps of the store that were part of a 48-page mini-magazine tipped onto Who, Time and In Style,” says Martens.

The mini-magazine was followed up with advertising features within Time, Who and In Style on high profile designers associated with Domayne Alexandria, as well as a postcard series – tailored to the individual titles – showcasing different parts of the store. In keeping with the tone of the magazines, later issues of Who and In Style carried a fashion-focused 36-page ‘Home Chic’ mini-magazine.

Time Inc also partnered with Domayne for the store’s launch party, designing invitations and customised satchel bags for the evening, and providing photographers on the night.

Afterwards, Who and In Style ran double-page spreads covering the launch.

Guided by the client’s objectives, Time Inc basically engineered the campaign from start to finish. Time Inc started providing full in-house creative services around three years ago, when Innis joined the company. And it’s a service, Martens says, clients are increasingly seeking out. “Advertising is changing,” she says. “Clients don’t just want to have the same ad in every magazine. The whole concept of us identifying what our clients want to do and how our magazines can do it for them is really valuable because we know our magazines and our readers so well.”

Another finalist in this category of the awards was the MBF ‘Be Positive’ campaign in Pacific Magazines’ Men’s Health. The MBF campaign impressed the judges with its twotiered approach – a co-branded MBF/Men’s Health swim goggles giveaway, followed by the launch of the MBF-sponsored Men’s Health Fitness Challenge.

Every copy of the January 2004 issue of Men’s Health was shrink-wrapped with a large sticker promoting the goggles and the MBF brand. The goggles themselves displayed the Men’s Health logo and MBF ‘Be Positive’ on each head strap. As well as reinforcing MBF’s brand message, the goggles were in keeping with the Men’s Health tagline – ‘heaps of useful stuff’. Part of the campaign strategy was to reinforce MBF’s relationship with Olympic swimmer Geoff

Heugill. To this end, there was a direct link back to Heugill and MBF via a double-page advertorial within the magazine. Point-of-sale support was also used to create in-store awareness.

Magazine support for the fitness challenge was achieved through editorial coverage running from the July launch until the end of the year, with the MBF logo appearing on every page supporting the challenge, as well as a double-page advertorial that ran in the November issue. There was also an online component through a Men’s Health Fitness Challenge website, including MBF ‘Be Positive’ tips. For the duration of the campaign, the website ran a link to the MBF website, giving readers easy access to information on private health insurance with MBF. “The Men’s Health/MBF co-branded swimming goggles giveaway was an opportunity that MBF saw immediate benefit from in terms of effectively reaching one of our key segments (young health conscious males and females) as well as delivering on the ‘Be Positive’ brand positioning,” says MBF’s Michael Vilnis.

Also making the cut of finalists in this category was the ‘Red Promotion’ by Pacific Magazines’ Marie Claire. The promotion was launched in the magazine’s June issue to raise awareness of heart disease, the number one killer of Australian women. According to Marie Claire’s national advertising manager, Carolyne Gowen, the aim of the strategy was to “raise awareness of heart disease by bringing together fashion and features and

delivering the message to younger women in a form they would listen to, while driving PR and cementing Marie Claire’s own fashion positioning”.

As part of the ‘Red Dress Day’ campaign, Marie Claire approached clients whose brand featured the colour red. The end result was seven pages of advertising in the Red’ Promotion’, incorporating Dior, Jane Debster, Piper Heidsieck, Revlon, Cartier, Baume & Mercier, Vodafone and Schwarzkopf. One percent of the revenue was donated to the National Heart Foundation.

The other two finalists in the category were Pacific Magazines’ Girlfriend with ‘Optus Project Barry’ and Time Inc’s Time magazine with the Harvey Norman Digital Camera Guide.

One of the main highlights on the night of the awards was the Editor of the Year category, won by Marie Claire’s Jackie Frank. The tearful eighth-time nominee was greeted with rapturous applause and a standing ovation from colleagues. ACP’s The Australian Women’s Weekly was awarded Consumer Marketing Campaign of the Year, while the top gong – Magazine of the Year – went to ACP’s teen girl ‘bible’, Dolly. M For a full list of winners in the Magazine of the Year Awards, visit www.magazines.org.au The Magazine of the Year Awards are open to members of Magazine Publishers of Australia. There are currently eight members: ACP, Time Inc, Pacific Magazines, Derwent Howard, Emap, Reader’s Digest, Northern & Shell Pacific and Lovatts Publications.

MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2005

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096 SUPPLIERS GUIDE

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098 PROSE & CONS WITH CON STAVROS

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Con Stavros is a senior lecturer at the School of Marketing, RMIT University. Email: con.stavros@rmit.edu.au

It’s a blog world A LEGEND OF TIME

A recent visit to marketing Mecca – Times Square in New York City – brought me smack bang to what must be the hottest retail marketing property in the world. You’d expect maybe a Nike store? A McDonald’s outlet? Sony shop? They were all there somewhere, but on the corner of Commercialisation and Capitalism, it was a Swatch store that held pride of place and it got me thinking. How did this once small Swiss brand with what was considered a crazy pricing strategy rise to defeat not only the Japanese hi-tech invasion, but also the watch world; along the way acquiring a range of 17 other notable brands, including Omega and Longines? The answer lies more in the remarkable ability of the company to not only read trends, but to also create them.

By leveraging the Swiss reputation for quality and focusing on affordability, Swatch has flourished when in many respects it should have been a fad. The move to jewellery in recent years is a question mark, but in every other respect you would have to say that Swatch is one of the most remarkable marketing success stories of our time.

Ill-fitting suit?

Keen readers will have noted that I am a big fan of cutting edge fashion retailer Zara. The Spanish clothing giant not only makes great, affordable merchandise, but has a superb marketing and business model built on rapid response design and distribution.

While Zara has expanded globally, an exclusive local deal with a Solomon Lew family company has so far not materialised into any stores on our shores. the appearance of the Zara label into 61 Myer department stores in recent weeks, however, has caused quite a controversy. Lew, who has been a staunch critic of the Coles Myer board after being ousted in a bitter boardroom battle, has grounds to be concerned at the move. The Myer deal is particularly worrying since the stock is all overrun and unsold merchandise, which may damage the longer-term standing of the brand in Australia, if it is perceived to be of inferior style or appeal. From a marketing perspective, Zara runs the risk of having a hyped and hip brand failing to meet expectations, which will come back to bite it and Solly Lew, when he finally gets around to opening the traditional flagship stores that the retailer commands in prime retail space across the globe.

MARKETING SEPTEMBER 2005

BIG AD, BIG MOVE Chances are by now you have seen Carlton Draught’s ‘Big Ad’, if not on TV, then most likely on the email rounds. The ad, a humorous parody of British Airways famous moving human montage commercial has been well received by the increasingly choosy underworld of internet ad forwarders. It’s a nice ad no doubt, but the concept of parody ads from beer brands is not exactly new. US brands Budweiser and Miller have a long history of irreverence in their advertising as do European brands Carlsberg and Heineken. It is a big deal, however, from a local branding perspective as it suggests a distinct movement from Foster’s to put the big bucks behind Carlton Draught and less emphasis on traditional star Victoria Bitter. The heavy reliance on the market share of VB has long been a strategic problem in an increasingly competitive market. The move to build Carlton Draught up, with some reports suggesting it will overtake VB as the market leader, will help spread the load and give rival brewer Lion Nathan headaches in the search to find a counterattack. Ironically, Lion Nathan had helped fuel the cheeky beer ad concept in Australia with its acclaimed Hahn Premium advertising.

With the term ‘blog’ (short for web log) growing in popularity in the corporate world it is a good time to visit the concept from a marketing angle. While blogs have been thought of as personal means of communication in the past, many companies are using them these days to personalise their connection with parts of their target market. A blog is an online, easily published, rapid dissemination of opinion and information that can be quickly commented on. In essence, it’s a diary that allows interaction and that of course means an ongoing dialogue with customers that can give companies who actively seek strong relationship marketing an edge over their competitors. Blogs are not for everyone though. Blogs by their very nature are rebellious and non-traditional and that may not sit will with the brand values of some corporations. Similarly, companies that seek to use the approach must also be sincere in their desire to provide information and avoid the temptation to use them as a Trojan horse for PR and marketing. The online community is savvy enough to distinguish puffery from genuine information and will be savage in their condemnation if they feel tricked. For an example of a great blog visit General Motors “Fastlane” site http://fastlane.gmblogs.com, which features contributions from as high up as the company vice-chairman.

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