Thursday, January 31, 2008

It's not 50% but even more that's wasted!

An interesting little piece appeared on Jaffe Juice today with the headline "94% of my advertising is wasted, the only problem is that I keep on investing in it".


Apparently BIGresearch have discovered that only a few people pay absolute attention to TV commercials to which they are exposed. So more bad news for beleaguered TV execs - people aren't paying attention any more & your medium is dying.

Actually I think this isn't such a bad stat when the dust settles. There are precious few campaigns where consumers engage to the degree that more than 5% of those exposed will take in the message fully. If an " UK GRP costs in the region of £1,500 and the potential audience is 20m people, this still makes TV an effective way of engaging with a broad range of people effectively.

Friday, January 25, 2008

Precision Marketing

Three times this week, Precision Marketing magazine has sent me an identical piece of Direct Mail offering me a reduced rate subscription package. Three identical mailings.

As my wife rightly pointed out that this lacks Precision!

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Google and Publicis in Love

According to Adage, Publicis and Google are launching an exchange programme (see http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=123263).

The article states that:
"Publicis Chairman-CEO Maurice Levy invited a small group of journalists to lunch today at his Paris headquarters on the Champs-Elysees and surprised them with the appearance of Google CEO Eric Schmidt. He and Mr. Schmidt also sent an e-mail to the staffs of both companies today that describes plans for joint 'initiatives related to accelerating the ability of technology to make advertising more effective.'"

This is interesting because it's not WPP or Omnicom that Google are teaming with. The fact that Google need more advertising savy knowledge is not news but the fact that they teamed with Publicis is coup for the Paris based organisation.

Getting into bed with Google is a double edged sword but one agency group had to do it and it's publicis. Let's see what happens next.

Monday, January 07, 2008

New Year Predictions

Now that we're all well into 2008, it's probably time to reassess goals and targets for 2008. With a predicted downturn in the major Western economies and a proliferation of new ways to interact with customers, the chase for "hearts, minds and wallets" is going to be harder and faster than ever before.

Given everyone else is making predictions, here are mine - I'm not sure why we all feel the need to predict the future but nonetheless I thought I'd also have a go!

My Three Predictions for 2008

  1. Economic downturn adds pressure to marketing budgets again – no new news here but once again, get ready to justify each £,$,€ of investment like never before. If you need help, the first question to ask is whether each element of the marketing mix washes it's own face. What would happen if you dropped each part of the plan? Would you really loose money? If so how much. If you're justifying budgets on "soft" metrics, do you really understand how those metrics translate into meaningful business?
  2. Google to overstretch into traditional media – for a long time, I've been stressing how interesting it will be to see Google get out there any play an important part in the placement of traditional media. From what I've heard and seen, their offline offering doesn't offer the same level of immediate impact and the online one. Since Google haven't pre-brought the real estate from media owners, it's more difficult for them to prove the ROI case, Advertisers in traditional media need to know when an ad will run and where – the Google system doesn't currently guarantee this. Unless Google figure out how to make this work, they risk becoming another trading house and the incumbents will fight long and hard to maintain their existing businesses.
  3. Customer Focus is key – I don't mean any of this "we're going to focus on customer satisfaction" stuff – what I mean by this is a year when customers have more power than ever before to rate and reward good products and services. The focus is on marketers to be seen as advertising and marketing truthfully and with reason. Best not to lie because you'll get found out.

My prediction for marketing analytics is that it will play an increasing role in helping organisations make decisions about which product and customer opportunities to pursue in the coming years. With the prospective downturn in the economy, marketing budgets will come under increasing focus and short term ROI will become a more important metric than longer term branding objectives. This presents a danger for brand builders as highlighted by people such as Len Lodish – the temptation to run a business for short term ROI comes at a potential cost to longer term profits. However try telling this to a Finance Director or MD desperate for some good news for the stock markets.

And finally - for marketingQED, we will be launching some great new products, updating existing products and generally offering exciting new opportunities for marketers to get more value from their marketing investments.

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

A Nod to Gaping Void

OK - I've been really bad in updating the blog over the past month. I wish I could say that my new years resolution was to update the blog more frequently but let's be honest, I'll get it done when time permits.

I wanted to draw your attention to an article over on Gaping Void called "why the "social object" is the future of marketing". I suggest you read it if you're in any doubt as to why the face of media is changing. As always, Hugh is on the ball with his comments - i love the quote "The bad news is, most products are boring. The good news is, most word-of-mouth is boring".

The one thing that I think Hugh has missed is the economics of advertising - in other words, one thread of the argument is that media became too expensive to execute whereas the opposite should be (and probably is) happening. Media costs are falling - especially in real terms. Furthermore production costs (the real barrier to entry) can be almost negligible. With Google on the horizon for mass media, the barriers to entry are falling further and further so that "mom and pop" shops aren't that far away from being able to advertise on TV or in National Press titles (but only the local edition).