TECH
TECH
MARKETING
MARKETING ISSUE 1
December 2008
Google’s Yuri Narciss offers
2009’s ONLINE Opportunity TECH Marketing’s very own Rocknrolla Intel event gets sprinkling of
Hannover Fairs’ Jackie Taranto says:
“Difficult Times Inspire ICT Industry”
Doom &Or business gloom? as usual?
‘Divine Intervention’
Tim Smith, Senior Marketing Manager of Hitachi Data Systems tells tech marketers to get accountable or face budget cuts.
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Contents
In this Issue
December 2008
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MARKETING
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elcome to the debut issue of Tech Marketing, the only title designed specifically for marketing professionals working in the Australian and New Zealand technology sectors. There are hundreds of titles covering every facet of the IT sector, yet none for the person whose budget keeps most of these titles afloat. We thought it was about time that issue was addressed.
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Advertising
Doom & Gloom? Or business as usual? - Phil Sim
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Case Study
Intel Centrino 2 Launch Event gets a sprinkling of “Divine Intervention” - Jennifer O’Brien
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Tech Marketer
Tech Marketing’s very own RocknRolla - Jo-Anne Hui and Phil Sim
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OPINIONS
Cover Story
2009’s Online Opportunity - Yuri Narciss
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PR/Media
When Good Times Turn Bad - Geoff Hoddinott
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Events
Difficult Times inspire ICT industry - Jackie Taranto
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Direct Marketing
2009’s Direct Marketing - Damian Byrne
MediaConnect, the publisher of Tech Marketing, has been writing about the communications and media relations side of marketing for the past eight years via our ITJourno and MediaConnect web portals. As such, those tech marketing managers with responsibility for communications or public relations may already know of us or our famous media networking conferences. For those who don’t, we hope to get to know you better via the Tech Marketing e-magazine and website. Next year is obviously going to be challenging for all tech marketers. Every one is being asked to achieve more with less and the pressure to achieve quantifiable results has never been greater. We hope we can help by sharing with you the insights and experiences of your peers and throwing up ideas and concepts that might help improve your marketing outcomes. Please let us know what you think of both the magazine and website which you can find at www.techmarketing.com.au. Please send any comments to us via techmarketing@mediaconnect. com.au and feel free to pass this magazine onto any colleagues and peers you think might find it useful. You can also find us on Twitter at @techmarketingau where we’ll keep you up-to-date with breaking news and our most recent posts. We aim to update the website daily while the e-magazine will be bi-monthly with the next issue appearing in February. See you then. - Phil Sim CEO, MediaConnect Australia
Cover story
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Doom & gloom?
MARKETING Or business as usual?
An exclusive survey of technology marketing executives in Australia reveals that almost half will decrease their marketing spending in 2009. Phil Sim reports.
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s the sky really falling? Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso has already proclaimed that we’re in the “worst crisis in 100 years”. Our very own Kevin Rudd has told us that “we are going through the worst financial crisis in our lifetime”. And there are no shortage of analysts lining up to declare this the greatest economic slump since the Great Depression. Yet there are plenty of others who are more than willing to argue that things aren’t as bad as they are being portrayed, and despite the turmoil in the banking and investment sectors, business fundamentals have not dramatically degraded and are likely to recover quickly. Please standby while we return to your regular scheduling shortly. Right now, the only certainty is uncertainty - particularly for tech marketers, who not so long ago finally crept out from underneath the rubble of the tech wreck only to catch a glimpse of sunshine before this latest cloud emerged to cast yet another shadow across their annual marketing plans. So are Australian and New Zealand tech marketers bunkering down for a long, painful recession? Or is it a case of business as usual as we wait to see the full ramifications of the US economic meltdown?
would be some contraction in their marketing spends in 2009. Just over 20 per cent said there would be no change, but encouragingly 30 per cent said there would be an increase. Just 10 per cent said they would significantly increase their marketing budgets. Tim Smith, Senior Marketing manager for Hitachi Data systems is one of the lucky ones. His marketing budgets are set in US dollars and due to the crash of the Australian dollar, he will find himself with a budget approximately 30 per cent greater than it was last year. HDS is also a “bull in a bear market”, Smith said, because of its focus on helping companies reduce operating expenses. However, based on our survey results, Smith is in a definite minority. It is somewhat encouraging though, that while cuts are being made, there doesn’t appear to be the kind of wholesale slashing of budgets that took place post-Tech Wreck with just one manager from our survey predicting a significant decrease in their budget.
of our marketing dollars are “A lotgoing to be put into the backend
”
In order to gain some insight into this question, MediaConnect Australia - the publisher of Tech Marketing magazine - conducted a mini-survey with more than 40 Australian tech marketing and communications managers answering questions about their 2009 budgets, and we discovered that a large percentage of tech marketers would be working with reduced budgets next year.
For Peter Spiteri, director of marketing at Emerson Network Power, the downturn is going to see his budget hold steady for 2009. “Australia is a part of a global economy and I don’t think there is any doubt it’s going to be a tough couple of years,” said Spiteri. “But for us, what that will mean is instead of our marketing spend increasing by 30 per cent as it has in recent years, it’s going to flatten out.”
Close to 50 per cent of Australian tech marketing managers who responded to the survey said there
John Massey, managing director of tech-focused media planning and buying agency DWA Media, which
Peter Spiteri
Director of Marketing Emerson Network Power represents 40 IT vendors in Australia and New Zealand, said that about 10 to 15 per cent of his clients were cutting budgets. “We haven’t seen a knee-jerk reaction - there are a handful in there that have cut or completely stopped advertising during this 6 months - and they’ve been US companies reacting to hits in their numbers at the end of the financial year. However, most have already planned their marketing investments for next year and we’re pretty comfortable with the first half of 2009, at least.” “The second half is going to be anyone’s guess, but I’m feeling relatively positive about it.” The key for all marketers and marketing services providers, Massey said, will be generating tangible, measurable revenue from marketing activities. “If you can prove that every dollar spent equates to x dollars in www.techmarketing.com.au I
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Cover story sales then you don’t have anything to worry about - but there will certainly be more scrutinisation of marketing spending.” Our Tech Marketing 2009 survey confirmed that marketers would be almost single-mindedly fixated on return on investment when formulating their 2009 marketing campaigns. “Every activity must have a direct sales outcome”, “Need to show ROI more than ever before”, “It’s all about ROI”, “Spend is measured against lead generation” were just a sample of the responses to our question asking if marketers needed to be more accountable in 2009. Many focused their answers on the needs to measure marketing outcomes all the way through to end-sales. And clearly, more emphasis is being placed on post-campaign activities ensuring leads are converted and monetised. That will certainly be the case at Emerson, Spiteri said.
MARKETING two areas where the most dollars are likely to flow to next year are direct marketing and lead generation campaigns with close to 50 per cent of marketers indicating they would increase their spend in both of those areas. Online also showed gains across the board with more than 40 per cent of marketers expecting to increase their spend on online display advertising as well as blogs and social media, while almost 30 per cent expect to boost search-related marketing activities. Webinars were on the up with about a quarter of companies increasing expenditure on online meetings. Lloyd Borrett, marketing manager at anti-virus vendor AVG is one marketer expecting to keep spending in 2009 on the back of continued sales growth, and he puts much of that success down to the company’s online marketing activities. “We’ve directed a lot of our marketing efforts
problem is the marketing departments themselves, because there are “The very few of my counterparts willing to be held accountable to the business. ” “We’re putting a lot of our energy into our back-end so we better manage our leads. In the past, we’ve tended to wait for the phone to ring, because our rate of growth over the last two years has meant that we only had to throw our bait into the waters and we would struggle to handle all of the fish that were biting.” “So we haven’t been as pro-active about converting leads as we should have and now we’re going to be putting as much effort into the follow-up, as with the lead-generation itself. A lot of our marketing dollars are going to be put into the back-end so we get a bit more sophisticated about how we manage that next stage of customer interest.” If you look at the activities that Australian and New Zealand tech marketers intend to put their resources into next year, they most definitely favour below-the-line activities more likely to directly generate revenue. The
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towards online and search engine marketing of late and that’s paid off for us big time. It’s a pretty low risk approach whereas you can spend a lot of money on traditional brand campaigns and there are no guarantees, plus it’s difficult to track and measure.” Borrett said he believed AVG was ahead of a lot of other companies in making the move to more direct, online marketing channels. “We’ve already been doing it and we’ve had a lot of success so we’re going to significantly increase our expenditure in those areas and there are no plans to change the way we’ve been tracking.” Borrett added that AVG recently surveyed its reseller channel and 88 per cent expected to increase sales of security products in 2009 so it certainly wasn’t a case of all doom and gloom in the market. However, while direct marketing, lead generation and online look to be
Tim Smith
Senior Marketing Manager Hitachi Data Systems
Marketers scared of accountability Implementing systems and processes to track the results of lead-generation campaigns doesn’t have to be expensive or time-consuming, said Tim Smith, marketing manager of Hitachi Data Systems, who made the move to start tracking and measuring marketing results some four years ago. “Excel is a wonderful tool - it’s cheaper for me to hire a temp in to work through spreadsheets on an ad-hoc basis than to implement an expensive system we barely gain any value from,” Smith said, who explained that his team uses billing reports from accounts to track revenue as well as contacting each of the company’s branch managers to keep track of the progression of every marketing lead it passed on. “The problem for most companies isn’t systems and it isn’t the availability of information. The problem is the marketing departments themselves, because there are very few of my counterparts willing to be held accountable to the business. They’re scared of the ramifications of it being known if you’re not generating revenue or providing a viable return-oninvestment. If that’s the case, you will get your budget cut and your headcount will get reduced.” “Very few marketing managers have a sales background, so they’re not used to having a quota or meeting a target and achieving a result. My team have carried quotas so we understand the needs of the salesforce and that being held accountable is critical and we’re crazy enough to actually do it.”
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the big winners for 2009 events, print advertising and custom publishing are the most likely areas to be shaved.
all organisations, but it’s a very useful mechanism when integrated with other touchpoints to build brand equity.”
Half of the marketers we surveyed said they would reduce their spend on events, while over 35 per cent would cut print advertising. One quarter were putting less dollars into custom publishing. However, Hitachi’s Smith cautioned against arbitrarily slashing print spending in favour of online or direct marketing.
“There’s no reason why print shouldn’t be a direct response mechanism either - every one of our ads has a call-to-action and a unique URL so we can track the results we get. That also means I can go back to our suppliers and tell them exactly what value I got from a page based on the number of leads and the revenue we converted, which has allowed me to reduce costs with some but with others I haven’t argued about the price because I know the value of the spend.”
“We’ve previously done very little in print, but I’m now interested in how I can increase our print coverage because when I run a print campaign my website leads go up by 300 per cent. For brands like HDS, that are not necessarily a household name we actually get a lot of benefit from print - it’s not going to be the right choice for
“In the end, the challenge for all marketing managers is making sure you are talking to your potential customers in the right medium with a relevant message.”
John Murray who runs the Oracle Group, one of Australia’s largest ad buying companies argued that the trend towards online and direct marketing actually had nothing to do with the current economic conditions, and instead had been shifting in this direction for some time. “These have been ongoing developments for the past couple of years - margins in the IT sector began eroding years ago and for the last number of years, marketers have had to fight for budget,” Murray said. “The move to focus on ROI started with direct mail where you have more control and visibility over the ROI but things got cluttered there fairly quickly. So we shifted to eDM (electronic direct marketing) and lead generation campaigns, which we’ve been working on now for some time and we’re able to measure them very carefully This is how Australian Tech marketing managers responded in a survey conducted in early November of 2008 regarding the current effects of economic crisis on marketing budgets.
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can spend a lot of money on traditional “You brand campaigns and there are no guarantees” - we can track every website we use and monitor it daily so we know how effective our online activity is.” “So these things have been happening for a while. It’s very easy to blame the global situation for things that I believe have already well and truly been underway.” Murray cautioned that those companies who overreacted to economic concerns were risking their longerterm growth potential. “There’s a lot of quality research that says in hard times, those companies that react immediately and cut back on budgets can take 15 to 17 months longer to get back their market share. Companies that continue to do business as usual pick up market share and buyer confidence.”
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Lloyd Borrett
Marketing Manager AVG (AU/NZ) Pty Ltd
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Opinion: Advertising
2009’s ONLINE
Opportunity Yuri Narciss
Head of Technology Industry Sales, Google Australia
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oday, 92 per cent of Australians have home internet access (most via broadband) and 34 per cent log on at work. Almost three quarters of Australian internet users shop online - e-Marketer forecasts annual online sales of over $31b (business to consumer) in Australia by 2011. Australians spend 25 per cent of their media time online – researching purchases, reading about your products and services, forming an impression of you and your offerings, communicating their findings with others. Yet online advertising comprises only about 10 per cent of the total advertising spend in Australia. Getting online to reach customers - and once there, getting the online mix right - is the key challenge that tech marketers face in 2009. Online advertising was the preserve of niche agencies and adventurous CMOs. Today, we discuss online campaigns with executives at almost all of Australia’s leading agencies and businesses. In 2009, a major advertising campaign without a substantial online component will be like a TV ad without sound. Research is showing how central the web has become to Australians’ technology purchasing decisions and that in tougher economic times, consumers of technology products spend more time researching online. A recent detailed survey of tech consumers undertaken by Google Australia with Research International has shown that consumers use a range of sources to research prior to
MARKETING purchase. For example, for mobile phone purchases, 61 per cent of consumers research online, 43 per cent do their research instore, 30 per cent take word of mouth into account. For broadband purchases, 72 per cent of consumers research online. This mirrors recent research by Monash’s Australian Centre for Retail Studies which revealed that 50 per cent of Australian shoppers research their purchases online before going to the “bricks and mortar” store to buy. Search engines are used throughout the purchase process and are especially popular with high value, high spending tech-savvy customers. The research revealed that 62 per cent of those consumers that used search engines while looking for broadband services switched providers, compared to a 42 per cent switching rate among those that didn’t use a search engine. A strong digital presence – across search and other online media – complements and boosts in-store and other channels and is vital to reaching today’s tech consumer. Search marketing, in particular, has huge potential for many tech marketers in 2009, especially when budgets are tight, due to its measurability, accountability, absence of upfront costs, and because it enables the targeting of customers who are showing direct interest in your products. Advertisers know where every dollar is going and can measure results with precision. Online advertising has evolved to provide a valuable experience for users. It’s moved towards value-adding and consumer-centric formats, like targeted search ads and engaging videos. These formats provide highly relevant, dynamic, useful content to users. Good online advertising now adds to a user’s web experience, all while providing valuable information and building brand recognition and recall. Whether you’re a B2C or a B2B company, making the most of the incredible, largely untapped, online opportunity is the key challenge facing tech marketers as we enter the new year.
NEWS IN ADVERTISING HP closer to decision of global agency Hewlett-Packard’s technology solutions group is down to three shortlisted companies who are bidding to become the group’s global marketing services provider, according to an AdWeek report. The contenders are the Omnicom Group, WPP Group and Havas with the assignment covering “traditional advertising, direct and search-engine marketing, interactive efforts and media duties”, AdWeek wrote. The technology services group employs more than 2,000 marketing firms worldwide and is aiming to dramatically consolidate that under a single holding company. Final bids are expected in late December with a selection to be made early next year.
Samsung targets the young
Samsung Electronics Australia is revamping its brand in a bid to appeal to “younger-minded” consumers, according to B&T. The electronics maker will launch a series of integrated ad campaigns during 2009 which will move away from its “product-centric” campaigns of the past. B&T chatted to Samsung marketing director, Kurt Jovais, who said Samsung will extend communications beyond traditional ads and sporting sponsorships to music, fashion, design and charitable work to target consumers that have “young, open attitudes to technology, regardless of where they sit demographically.” In this way, the brand communications will take on a more “active, fresh, optimistic and inviting imagery” and be more “consumer focused”.
Pioneer’s new range is a new Pinnacle Pioneer has launched a new campaign called “The Pinnacle of Sight and Sound” which touts its new range of high-end home entertainment products as the company’s greatest achievement in its 70-year history. The campaign will run across print, point of sales and online and is part of a move by Pioneer to position itself as a niche premium brand. It kicked off in November and was created by Melbourne agency Flash.
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Opinion: PR/Media
When Good Times TURN BAD Geoff Hoddinott Account Director
Business & Technology Network PR
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n good times, PR and other marketing communication agencies often encourage technology clients to link to issues; taking a ‘Thought Leadership’ position, to raise the brand above the general media clutter. But these are not good times. And while issues such as SaaS, Unified Communications, Virtualisation and Cloud Computing will gain media coverage, these may not be 2009’s main priorities for the majority of technology companies. Whatever happens in the IT industry in 2009 will be predicated by two major factors: an uncertainty about marketing budgets, and a resulting inability to set meaningful mid-term revenue targets. Marketing activities may well be more about the organisation’s perceived health than its new product roll-outs. There will be two distinct camps affected in Australia: the local offices of multinational corporations (MNCs), and their home-grown competitors. Taking the MNC sector first, the challenge for senior management will be to fight for local budgets. I would like to think that most marketing managers have the ‘runs on the board’ and therefore the ear of their country managers. If this is the case, then marketing programs will need to be presented in a highly measurable and accountable fashion so that country managers are comfortable supporting or fighting for them with Head Office.
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MARKETING Therefore, for MNC marketing folk, the challenge will be structuring a balance between their advertising and PR budgets that is very much based upon measurable results. And if measurement is going to be the key, then we will see a considerable swing towards digital channels for both of those marketing communication disciplines. If you take a look at the recent launch of the AIMIA/Hyro/ IBM Digital Services Index, you will see that audiences, and indeed entire markets, have already moved to digital engagements – and organisations must recognise this and engage with communication partners that can make these channels work for them. Why? Simply because digital communication channels, if properly addressed, are incredibly measurable by comparison with traditional media.
NEWS IN PR/Media Media companies slice jobs
IT media companies are already battening down the hatches with Haymarket Media in Australia and Fairfax in New Zealand cutting jobs. Haymarket cut nine jobs with MD Jeremy Vaughan telling ITJourno that “ultimately, we are preparing for what we believe is going to be a fairly challenging 2009 and quite frankly, we need to be on the front foot”. CRN editor Helen Frost has left the company, independently of the restructuting to join Sky News. However, Haymarket has hired former Next editor Nathan Cochrane as managing editor for both CRN and iTnews.
That said, MNC marketing people may also have to deal with the local implications of economic impacts on head offices, such as those already seen in major traditional media coverage about lay-offs and plummeting profits. Messaging and refresher courses on media training may well be key activities in these circumstances.
Meanwhile, there have been numerous job cuts on Fairfax’s New Zealand IT publications following a major restructure after the company acquired Infego Communications, publisher of business mag Unlimited and youth title Actv8. Fifteen staff were made redundant and Fairfax is dropping the frequency of Computerworld to fortnightly and CIO to bi-monthly.
Arguably, local technology companies will have a slight advantage in Australia, as they will not be at the bottom of the global food chain when it comes to corporate budget restructuring. For them, the marketing challenge may be more about getting their own good news through the general bad news clutter – after all, media does love bad news!
New PR wire service launches
In this instance, digital channels that actually avoid media may see an increase in usage. Creating web collateral and driving eyeballs to it via smart eDM campaigns and targeted online advertising is but one example of the tactics that will be more widely employed.
Matthew Powell moves on
A final trend that favours local technology companies will be the more strategic investment in natural language SEO. Many local companies will discover that by having local control of their web site, and the associated speed with which they can publish new content, gives them a huge local search advantage over their MNC competitors which have their web sites built, controlled and managed overseas. The winners will be those marketing professionals who clearly identify the trends and challenges, and present measurable communication strategies to senior management to address them.
MediaConnect Australia (publisher of TechMarketing) has launched what it hopes will become the industry’s de-facto standard news wire service at prwire.com.au. PRWire incorporates a number of advanced features including the ability to rank stories based on popularity, email alerts and dynamic RSS feeds.
Long-time Macworld editor Matthew Powell has departed company with employer Niche Communications and is currently taking a break before looking to focus on new opportunities. Powell has worked on Macworld for more than 10 years and had just brought up his 100th issue as editor.
PR staff on the move Toshiba’s inhouse PR manager, Jo Balfour, has left the company to start her own PR business called Progressiva and has been replaced by former Microsoft and EMC PR manager Selena Adams. Meanwhile, former Panasonic marketing communications manager, Gemma Lemieux, has been promoted to the position of director, marketing communications with the electronics maker.
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Opinion: Events
MARKETING Difficult Times Inspire ICT Industry
By Jackie Taranto
Managing Director Hannover Fairs Australia
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he news coming out of the global financial sector has been so dire, and so unrelenting, it has knocked the wind out of even the cheeriest of optimists. These are difficult times indeed. And for Australia, the difficulties have only just started to take shape: The hurt in the real economy won’t truly be felt until next year. So, just to get the obvious out of the way: Yes, things are awful and yes things will get worse before they get better. But before we all throw ourselves out of the nearest window, it is worth noting a few fundamental truths about business technology, and about the tech sector generally. Firstly, the fundamental value proposition for business technology becomes more compelling during difficult times, not less. Business technology providers sell systems, software and services that make customers more productive. Customers buy it so they can do more with less. It is the same message the industry has always delivered. Secondly, there is nothing like an economic downturn to focus the mind of a business executive. When a company needs to batten down the hatches and streamline efficiencies, ICT is inevitably involved.
Problem solving becomes the new business opportunity for senior executives and business owners. As outside opportunities for growth become scarce or non-existent, a business process overhaul can deliver quick and substantial cost reductions and productivity improvements. Do more with less. It’s what we offer as an industry. And it is the basic marketing message that is being dusted off by ICT companies all over the world (Microsoft was running national full-page ads with that basic message within a couple of weeks of the October market shocks). As a part of the world’s largest event company, Deutsche Messe AG, Hannover Fairs Australia is acutely aware of the global nature of this current economic turmoil. Hannover Fairs Australia is not an ICT company, but as the organiser of CeBIT Australia, it is tied somewhat to the fortunes of the ICT industry. And like the rest of the industry, we are doing more with less, having implemented a sophisticated digital marketing platform that has really driven the success of the event in recent years. And economic difficulties notwithstanding, we are optimistic about the CeBIT Australia 2009 event. We expect to attract more business visitors through the doors of the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, not less. And we expect more delegates at our business ICT conferences, not less. The interest in finding new ways to be more productive in business is more urgent in this economic climate. It is worth noting that as unprecedented as the craziness in the financial markets has been, in the real economy at least, the ICT industry has been here before. Yes, there is a very difficult period ahead, but opportunities still exist and the ICT sector will still grow. Finally, the tech sector is populated, more than any other, with optimists, and that alone gives us reasons to be cheerful. ICT entrepreneurs are at the hyper-creative end of the business spectrum, and the industry continually reinvents itself, generating new ideas and new wealth.
NEWS IN EVENTS ABITE expands to Sydney The Australian Business & IT Expo (ABITE) will run in Sydney next October for the first time, after a successful event in Melbourne earlier this year. The show combines business services and IT exhibitors with categories for web technology, e-commerce, CRM, wireless networking and IT security along-side legal, advertising, marketing, finance and workforce planning. The Melbourne show will be held at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre from Friday, 21st August to the following day while Sydney ABITE09 will run at the Sydney Showgrounds, Sydney Olympic Park from Wednesday, 14th October to Thursday, 15th October.
Kickstart 2009 to focus on big ideas
The media networking event Kickstart Forum (which is run by MediaConnect Australia, publisher of Tech Marketing) will be held at Sanctuary Cove on the Gold Coast from February 22 - 24 and will adopt a new Big Ideas format this year. Participating vendors will get the chance to discuss the most important concepts and technologies that will impact the IT industry in 2009 in front of more than 50 Australian and New Zealand technology journalists.
CEBIT recruits newspaper man
Former Australian IT journalist Roland Tellzen is now leading CEBIT’s PR campaign. CEBIT will run from May 12 -14 next year.
Canon scoops PC Authority’s big award PC Authority held its annual Service & Reliability Awards at The Watershed in Darling Harbour, Sydney in early December. Canon, won Manufacturer of the Year and Best Printer while Apple won Best Laptop, Best PC and Best LCD. Other winners were Nikon (camera), Gigabyte (motherboard), Samsung (hard drive), Mozilla Firefox (software), Asus (Smartphone), EVGA (graphic cards), IT Estate (online retailer), Westnet (ISP), TomTom (GPS), Sony (MP3) Dynalink & Billion (wireless routers).
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Opinion: Direct Marketing 2009’s
ect Dir marketing By Damian Byrne Managing Director Traction
and Media Authority (ACMA) showed that 73 per cent of households in Australia have access to the internet and that email was by far the most common use of the internet by Australians this year. In addition, the ACMA research highlighted that internet users reported a reduction in their use of traditional forms of media such as television, radio, magazines and newspapers for entertainment and information.
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While the findings from the research are not altogether surprising, it is important that marketers realise the potential of online communication channels as successful direct marketing techniques, particularly with regards to the current economic climate. In a slowing economy which will certainly lead into the early part of 2009, measurability of campaign results becomes essential and email is a very easily measured medium.
In 2009, this information overload is set to continue and a key challenge that marketers face is how to attract eyeballs, and more so, how to attract and engage the right eyeballs. The question of how to use traditional direct marketing techniques will undoubtedly be explored in great detail over the next twelve months as marketers assess what to focus on between traditional and online direct marketing channels.
There will be return on investment pressures as marketers seek to find the most efficient and successful methods for direct marketing and this will mean that results driven campaigns will become more critical over the next year.
he growth of the ‘digital’ space including online interaction has meant a shift in the way direct marketers create campaigns to reach the right audience. The audience itself is already suffering from an information overload as advertisers continue to pepper them with information through various communications channels.
The growing importance of the online space and online communication channels has posed a number of challenges to marketers. This next year could well see the rise in significance of online channels as the most popular forms of direct marketing. What isn’t in doubt is that there will be an increasing level of activity online and a crucial decision for marketers will be how to best leverage this change. Recent research from October 2008 of internet use in Australia from the Australian Communications
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Overall, the successful marketers in 2009 will be those that not only embrace email and other online direct marketing channels but also learn how to use them more effectively in their campaigns. The economic climate is going to dictate the make-up of the majority of marketing campaigns and measurability and accountability will be paramount in this. Better results will come from a better understanding of your customers or the audience you are targeting and this, in turn, will deliver more relevant and timely information and achieve the cut through that is required. Email succeeds when results are required but particularly when the audience is well known and their behaviour is well understood.
NEWS IN DIGITAL MARKETING vivia9 scoops accounts Vivia9 has just scored JB HiFi and Betfair, which will both be running campaigns on the agency’s affiliate network Commission Monster. The JB HiFi win is the first time it has run an affiliate marketing campaign, which involves one site being rewarded for driving traffic to another site. It will be based on a cost-per-sale (commission) basis, meaning publishers will receive a percentage of all sales revenue generated.
Search grabs more share Search advertising continues to grow as a percentage of the marketing mix and will do so for at least another 24 months, according to research group Frost & Sullivan. According to Frost & Sullivan, more than 75 per cent of advertisers now spend at least 10 per cent of their media budgets on search, up from 65 per cent a year ago. Search was the fastest growing advertising segment and generated AU$897.7 million in 2008, the Frost & Sullivan report found.
Spending up big on digital: AIMIA The Australian Interactive Media Industry Association’s (AIMIA) first annual Digital Services Index has revealed that Australian businesses plan to invest more than $17.9 billion dollars in digital services in 2009. The Index, a joint initiative between AIMIA, Hyro and IBM, measures the level of investment being made in Australia’s digital economy. According to AIMIA, revenue generated through digital services has jumped by 17 per cent since 2008 and now accounts for almost one in every four dollars earned by the companies surveyed.
Online can work for branding A recent study from Nielsen Online and IAB Australia supports the validity of online advertisng as an effective medium for increasing brand awareness. The research focused on an online branding campaign around the Kellogg’s product Sultana Bran and revealed that the intention to purchase the cereal increased by 37 per cent and brand consideration increased by 17.13 per cent, among consumers who were exposed to the marketing.
Case Study: Intel Centrino 2 Launch
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Event gets sprinkling of
‘Divine Intervention’
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With the Pope in town, Intel had to navigate more than its usual share of obstacles. Jennifer O’Brien reports.
the process of finding out the logistics for the Pope’s visit, which were constantly changing. We knew there’d be multiple large scale events down in that part of the city, and pilgrims would be walking up and down Hickson all week so we had to keep on top of it on an hourly basis.” To make matters worse, the part Indeed, the event, which was themed around ‘flexibility of Hickson where the venue was located was open and speed’, was potentially shaping up to be a logistical for traffic across the week, but not every day or at any nightmare, said Michael Henderson, group managing given hour. Things could change in the blink of an eye. director for Spectrum Communications and Max Australia. Given the increased demands and potential for chaos, “Globally, Intel changed the release date by a couple of the crew had to whip on their logistical hats and liaise weeks, so we had to change the date locally. It wasn’t a with a host of players including the NSW Government, major hold-up other than the week we chose, July 15th the RTA, the Youth Day organisers, and the police to July 20th, happened to be the week the Pope was in to determine road closures. It involved checking the Sydney,” Henderson said. RTA website and sourcing Google maps, keeping in To top it all off, the world’s most popular man along with constant contact with the police and writing info packs thousands of pilgrims, would be steps away from the for the officers, along with communicating with the taxi companies in order to update them on the changing chosen venue: Simmer on the Bay on Hickson Road. traffic grid for the sake of the travelling journalists “We couldn’t back out, we’d paid for the venue and (about 50 press attended from a broad spectrum of organised the audio/visual,” he said. “So we had to start publications ranging from Atomic to Madison magazine). ven with the Pope in town, and the Pontiff cruising around in the ‘pope-mobile’ in the exact location as the chosen event venue, it didn’t stop the PR/marketing team of Spectrum Communications and Intel from successfully getting the Intel Centrino 2 launch off the ground.
“Normally you wouldn’t have to do that, but suddenly we had additional logistical considerations. How would we get the audio truck in to set up, how does the staff get in to set up, and how do we get our staff, the journalists and the Intel staff and partners in there on the day of the event.” Call it “divine intervention” or simply an act of God, but Henderson said everything worked out for the two crucial days of the event: the set-up and event show time. “Luckily on the day of the event, there was minimal foot traffic of pilgrims coming across and all roads weren’t cut off. The same goes for the day we had to set up the event. Everyone arrived on time. Lots of people ended up being early. It all came together really well. I think of all the RSVPs, only one out of 120 was a no-show,” he said. The event highlighted some useful tips. “Always do a risk analysis at any event or campaign. We went through as much as possible. We became experts to any movement that the Pope made. You have to plan for every scenario: everything from something major happening and a city in lock-down to streets being blocked off and www.techmarketing.com.au I
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Case Study: Intel Centrino 2 Launch no one showing up to see the event.” Indeed, planning around the world’s most religious figure was no mean feat, but the key to the success of the event was being flexible (which involved the entire PR and marketing team, the audio/visual crew, the entertainment and the venue staff all being open to change), as well as being well organised (being skilled at managing comprehensive check lists, refining timelines and keeping track of the budget) and relying on a number of tech tools behind the scene to keep things operating smoothly. “You really want at least three months notice to get things going with most large campaigns. We started planning back in late February/early March. The whole Spectrum team brainstormed, then the Intel team broke away and worked on the campaign, and took it to the internal marketing team at Intel. Intel likes to do launches that are all involving with media, analysts and OEM partners.” Tech tools used in the background included Google sites; Google Docs, which helped the team manage timelines along with the ability to work on documentation collaboratively with clients; the Atlassian Wiki platform; and a mixture of software as a service (Web 2.0 tools) to streamline and make the back-end more efficient. In addition to advance planning and the collaboration tools, Henderson said it’s important to get the theme right. “We had an internal brainstorm and happened upon the idea of Parkour, which is referred to as free running and is popular in Europe, particularly France. We went to Intel with the theme of free running, which blended in well with the message of flexibility and speed of Intel.” Think of it as somewhere between the underground vibe of skate culture with gymnastics/acrobatics, strength and athleticism to go with it, he said. “It’s a sport that anyone can participate in, but a key facet of Parkour is the flexibility and freedom of movement. People who practice it around Australia mostly do it in parks -- they make use of their surrounding environment to do their sport with lots of jumping, leaping and running.” “It’s making use of what you have. It’s getting from point
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a to point b in the most efficient way, no matter what the obstacles are in the path.” Meanwhile, another key aspect of the launch was the digital portion of the campaign. An online video teaser (which was shot up in Brisbane with Parkour Australia by award winning documentary maker, Duane Fogwell) acted as an invitation to the media and Intel’s OEM partners. Intel also launched a new website (www. centrino2room.com.au) for the event, which brought together a complete line-up of Centrino 2 notebooks available locally from all the manufacturing partners. And once the dust settled on the event, measuring the outcomes became key, Henderson said. Key factors to measure included looking at the volume of coverage; the retail sales figures; and the hit rates and click through rates (advertising and traffic going to the website). With an eye on the outcomes, Intel public relations manager, Anna Torres, said the marketing was deamed a success. It involved TV advertising, online advertising and advertising with the manufacturers, along with consumer/ retail (point of sale, merchandise and catalogues) and business/enterprise initiatives (including a program called “Roadmap Directions” where Intel notifed CIO customers about its latest technology via direct mail). While everything went smoothly despite the difficulties, it seems Intel has had previous experience with trying circumstances. “We seem to have been challenged with high profile overseas visitors in the past,” said Torres. “In September 2007, we had the APEC summit coincide with a server and desktop launch. We had to contest with moving our venue and major CBD road closures,” she said. “This year, we had the Pope in town for the Centrino 2 launch. The Pope’s visit wasn’t heavily covered in New Zealand and the journalists we flew over from New Zealand were a little perplexed as to why people on their plane broke out in song when they touched down in Sydney. We were still very pleased with our turn-out despite a lot of people working from home that week. I think we had some good learnings in place from the APEC summit!”
TECH
Tech Marketer: Nick Verykios
MARKETING
TECH Marketing’s very own
Rocknrolla
Nick Verykios, marketing director of Distribution Central markets like the rock ‘n’ roll frontman he once was - loud, brash and controversial. Jo-Anne Hui and Phil Sim report.
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any, many moons ago, Nick Verykios was a leather clad 17-year-old punk rock singer, touring all over the world in support of bands like Guns ‘n’ Roses, Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Billy Idol. And while he has mostly given up the leather, Verykios still manages to maintain something of a rockstar profile in the Australian IT channel. Always the showman, there have been few IT channel executives quoted as widely during the past decade or so as Verykios. He’s no stranger to controversy and has never been afraid to call it as he sees it, which has made him a favourite with many channel scribes. As a marketer, he’s never been shy of risky advertising or marketing campaigns and the ‘Mania’ events he birthed are famous (or perhaps infamous) in the Aussie IT channel. He admits that some in the industry view him as something of a “maverick”. However, he doesn’t see there being anything unusual about the marketing philosophies that have led him to build three fast-growth distribution startups and argues that outside of the IT industry, nobody would blink twice at his approach to breaking through the clutter. “Mine is not a limited approach to marketing. The problem is a lot of the marketers in our industry aren’t qualified and have no clue what marketing is. They were very succesful in operations or very successful sales or finance people before they were promoted into marketing roles. But as marketers, they suck,” he said. “So a lot of people in this industry see what I do as being maverick, but it’s not really. Maybe the way I implement
things is maverick - I tend to take the sledgehammer approach - but if you don’t get noticed, what’s the point?” Verykios is currently marketing director of Distribution Central, a company that he and business partner Scott Frew have grown to be a $54 million operation in just over four years. That makes it the fastest-growing Australian distribution company ever, overtaking LAN Systems, which he and Frew ran previously. After that, you might look to 1World - Verykios’ first distribution company. As such, Verykios is not your typical marketing director. He began his career marketing consumer goods, before joining local comms vendor NetComm where he took on the task of commoditising the modem. From there, most of his experience has been in general business management. He left NetComm to start 1World, which he sold before joining forces with ex-NetComm colleague Frew, who had founded the networking distributor LAN Systems. They grew that company to be a $100 million concern, which Frew would eventually exit from for an undisclosed amount, leaving Verykios to run the company under its new owners, Westcon Group. With so much business management experience and given his role as a partner at the front line of running Distribution Central, one might be forgiven for suggesting that the title of marketing director represents a step down from his previous titles, which have included managing director, general manager and chief operating officer. However, that’s not the way Verykios views marketing. He argues vehemently against the notion that it is just a function of the business or a set of outcomes, proclaiming marketing as being part of the “very DNA” of Distribution Central.
“Marketing is not about putting out a clever ad,” said Verykios, explaining that marketing principles could, and should be applied, company-wide to reshape business models and truly differentiate the offering that has taken to market. Asked to define marketing, Verykios responds with the answer “responsibly shaping behaviour”. And there is no better example of how Verykios has done that than with the Mania events, where leading reseller customers spend close to a week as the guest of Distribution Central (and before that, LAN Systems) getting to know the company’s vendor partners and along the way, have a roaring good time. Locations for the event have included New Orleans, Las Vegas and Japan, and tales from the trips live long and large. It has given rise to some dismissing the events as boozy junkets, but Verykios notes that criticism has never come from anybody who has participated in a Mania trip. “When you take someone away from their life for five or six days, they need to come back thinking that it was the best event they’ve ever been to and that it is going to fundamentally reshape the way they do business.” www.techmarketing.com.au I
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Tech Marketer: Nick Verykios To have any hope of achieving that you have to “cut through the carefulness and mixed messages” in order to break down the walls that normally exist between competitors and even partners, Verykios said. Not worrying about being careful is something of a mantra for Verykios. “You have to have nothing to fear and if you’ve got a superior product, why would you have anything to fear? It’s then just a matter of getting noticed - cutting through all the careful words and careful messages that no one gets - and making sure your message actually gets to your audience in an understandable way.” And so the world comes full circle. That desire to be heard was, after all, what led Verykios into music way back when. He claims to have never been that interested in the “whole rock ‘n’ roll thing”, rather he just wanted a more accessible vehicle for his poetry. “Who reads poems these days? Wrap a song around them and voila! – you get heard.” Which is as good a way as any to sum up the Verykios approach to marketing.
MARKETING ON
TechMarketing is published for Australian technology marketing managers by MediaConnect Australia.
Editor
NICK VERYKIOS
Jennifer O’Brien (jennifer@mediaconnect.com.au)
“Nick is the best IT channel marketeer in the business bar none. It’s all about results, and he gets better results than anyone.”
- Scott Frew, CEO of Distribution Central and business partner
“He’s one of the best at what he does and his success can be seen in the longevity of the companies he worked for, including LAN Systems.”
- Lilia Guan, journalist CRN
“He has always believed in marketing even when that meant doing without the implementation of alternative business strategies. That’s why he and the companies he is associated with are so successful.”
- Susan Searle, IDG President Channel Group and publisher of ARN
Journalists
Jo-Anne Hui (jo@mediaconnect.com.au) Tiffany Blatchford (tiffany@mediaconnect.com.au)
Publisher
Tamara Jawad (tamara@mediaconnect.com.au)
CEO
Phil Sim (phil@mediaconnect.com.au) 104/8 Century Cct, Norwest Central, Baulkham Hills, NSW 2153 Subscription information: visit www.techmarketing.com.au or contact MediaConnect Australia on (02) 9894 6277
media connect © 2008 MediaConnect Australia. All Rights reserved
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