Archive for the ‘Required Reading’ Category

Great video from Mark Ritson on the effectiveness of Tide’s recent campaign. And a counter from Doug Garnett. While I find the Tide work a little too self referential and not that great creatively I side with Mark that is is a clever campaign. Ultimately the result should be measured in terms of business outcomes which aren’t mentioned by either (or me) – and therein is the biggest problem I have with so many of these awards – we are celebrating strategy and creative rather than the business impact. Maybe that was buried in the award entry and didn’t make the light of day. But as they say, sunlight is the best disinfectant. 

Seems brands still struggle with marketing activity that crosses the line. Inevitable chest thumping and smirks result, social media pros quickly shout about how smart it all was, and I’m sure, a few awards will follow. But when do brands grasp that cheeky actions like North Face actually lower our (or at my) opinion of them. Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you short. Basic integrity should kick in and questions like – “yes, but is this the right thing to do” should be asked. Abusing Wikipedia is the wrong move.

If you missed it. Leo Burnett Tailor Made replaced the images in Wikipedia articles about national parks with photos they took that have North Face products in them. When searching Google for these places, the first result is then often an image Wikipedia or a link to the Wikipedia article the ad agency defaced.

Perhaps North Face needs a stronger North Star?

Wikipedia had this to say:

“Wikipedia and the @Wikimedia Foundation did not collaborate on this stunt, as The North Face falsely claimed. In fact, what they did was akin to defacing public property.”

“This is a surprising direction from The North Face, as their stated mission is to “support the preservation of the outdoors” — a public good held in trust for all of us.

What has followed is the normal corporate speak:

“Leo Burnett Tailor Made found a unique way to contribute photography of adventure destinations to their respective Wikipedia articles while achieving the goal of elevating those images in search rankings.

“We’re always looking for creative ways to meet consumers where they are. We’ve since learned that this effort worked counter to Wikipedia’s community guidelines. Understanding the issue, we ended the campaign.

“Our team has further accepted an invitation by Wikipedia to learn more about the platform and their work to share unbiased, fact-based knowledge. We look forward to working with Wikipedia to engage with them, and with respect to their network of volunteer editors, better in the future.”

“Unique” is still wrong even when “unique” and like they didn’t know what they were doing. Hardly an apology. 

Liked Tomaz’ predictions. Have been pondering for some time the idea of a new generation of “unicorns” – or just good old-fashioned startups – that begin to siphon off underserved segments of incumbent’s customer bases.

Ansarada is a great example of this. Sitting at the intersection of information, processes, and collaboration for material events (siphoning from the cloud storage providers and CRM players which offer generic solutions ill-equipped to meet the needs of a material event (IPO, M&A, Audit, etc.). They also smash the prediction that data engineering becomes the new customer success.

Same is true of HR software – which SaaS providers have done a great job of addressing the big enterprise need – but little to address (at a reasonable price) the most basic needs of an org – like, building an org chart, understanding who is on point for what, and what is happening across a team. Much like Xero has done for small business accounting, more start-ups will look to address the needs of the small to medium businesses with far more economical, simpler and easier to use solutions.

Either way, a good read of what’s ahead in 2019. Four more sleeps…

“In today’s economy, innovation means elegant theft: robbery of your data, privacy, health insurance, or minimum-wage protection”

– Prof Scott Galloway

A point well made in his most current email. Not absolutely true but, say, >80% for some Unicorns… 

Paul has a great interview with Carl Rose. Highlights well the need for marketing to own customer experience, not be purely a communications function, and to drive pricing to reflect the market dynamic – and that doesn’t mean discounting. Carl is spot on:

“It’s in business performance and the current corporate mantra for revolutionising customer experience that Rose says is where the marketing profession has missed a trick. Much of the conversation around the marketing discipline in public debate links marketing primarily to communications – media, advertising and digital marketing techniques. But Rose says it’s a “hard row to hoe” because it creates a disconnect with business units and their financial performance, particularly when new customer experience programs can be hardwired to metrics senior management can quantify beyond other softer marketing and brand measures.

“The logical place for the ownership of customer experience is undoubtedly marketing,” he says. “I would venture to say in many consumer electronics companies, the customer service component is still stuck with engineering, spare parts and repairs. If marketing had perhaps done a better job commercially in the past, it could be more trusted with the customer experience job.

“A lot of companies don’t know where to put customer experience. They know it’s not a good fit with customer service in its traditional form because it’s very transactional. The key is the chief marketing officer needs to be joined at the hip to the commercial objectives and results of the organisation.”

It’s time for CEOs to trust marketers with customer experience – then they’ll get to see the commercial nouse that most marketers have. And for all to adopt a more strategic view of the brand – invest in the brand, drive openness/memory, and look to activate demand through means other than price.

“I found myself in the middle of lots of conversations with the fluffy CMO on one side and the very basic sales discount trading executive on the other. I would say ‘please don’t talk about fluffy stuff and please don’t talk about 10 per cent off anymore, or just tactical promotions. What can we do with strategic partnerships, for instance?’ We might need a promotional element but let’s move our brand forward in a way that isn’t just 15 per cent off.“

So right. Wonder how many will have the patience to pursue this when faced with the pressure of near-term sales targets?