Channel tunnels
Posted: November 20, 2007 Filed under: cross channel, marketing 1 Comment »
Some of the most interesting innovations in multi-channel retailing are an extremely light touch from the consumer’s point of view. For instance if I’ve bought an iPod from the Apple store and I want to return it online, how do they make that work? It’s not by any complex network of DSS-style computing network to make sure I fall in this or that group of customers. It’s the serial number on the back. Indeed the in-store experience was adapted to bring it inline with the web.
And how does Apple deal with the issue of price tiering and product availability between online, their stores, franchises and other outlets? By having the world’s simplest product range and staff who really couldn’t care less where you end up buying the product. That’s a multi-channel strategy.
The challenge as soon as you start collecting huge chunks of customer data and deploying them for the customer’s benefit, is that they will start to get a little concerned about what you’re doing. What would customers think if a pimply young member of the sales team popped up to them in a store and said ‘sir I see you almost completed a customer survey on our site’ or ‘you know that banner you clicked on yesterday…’
Still in many areas, we want or need the people we’re speaking with to have this knowledge and to use it wisely.
Some of the leading exponents of this approach, like Nationwide and First Direct, are using CRM tools to initially make sure that they know at least as much as their customers about what they are saying to their customers.
Consider this example. I’ve been sent a piece of paper by my bank telling me about a new offer on loans. I go to the branch and say to the staff, ‘you know that loan you wrote to me about’? They say? Probably: ‘which one was that?’.
Or I tell someone in a branch that I’ve been on the phone to customer services about how to deal with a lost pass book. What’s their likely response? Probably: ‘what did they say?’
Do customers mind the call-center staff knowing what the branch staff have been saying to you? Do they mind you knowing what you were doing on the website? Clearly some behaviours could set the big brother alarms ringing.
Like all interactions, we need to map back the customer’s expectations to their mental model of how the organization works. So if I do a formal application online (and finish the process) then it’s reasonable for the counter staff to be able to pick that off their systems. However, if I have a casual chat with one of the staff in branch, I probably don’t want to be reminded of it next time I log in to the website. That doesn’t mean that information can’t be used, but it should be used very sensitively.
Once we’ve established the limits of what customers find natural today, we can start mining the cross-channel opportunities in earnest, modifying our conversations at all stages to provide the best information to customers and close sales early.
It’s all business benefit too, but we need to avoid confusing ourselves and our customers.
Africa: outwardly mobile
Posted: November 20, 2007 Filed under: apple, conchango20112007, financial services, mobile Comments Off
Mobile data and applications have always had a funny adoption curve. Who are the most connected in our society? A few dyed in the wool early adopters may have had 3G cards in their laptops for years now or spent many a wasted train journey like me trying to connect to the internet from their laptops via their crappy mobile phones over pitifully slow connection speeds.
It is however, the management class who got their first. They probably didn’t even they were doing it, walking around with their flashing, buzzing, chemically addictive blackberries in their pockets.
Just like the laggards who ended up at the top of the sophistication tree almost by accident in the UK, we may soon see rural farmers in South Africa leapfrogging our very own ‘digital sophisticates’ in using their phones to manage their financial affairs.
If the slow uptake of desktop computers was once seen as a barrier to internet adoption in that continent, perhaps the PC will just be overtaken by the massive ubiquity of mobile. After all, it isn’t just the desktop PC that many of these people haven’t had access to, but any form of banking at all – making these new services potentially economy and life-changing.
Finally in the UK with the price plans that have been needed to make the iPhone work, it seems customers will start to understand the genuine concept of un-metered, always-on mobile access. Companies however must design around the relative merits of levels and types of communication.
Facebook may be a great rich, iPhone (or general mobile) experience, but text messages might be just as good for simple transactions.
The promise of on-phone banking is incredibly attractive, especially if phones themselves could play a role in the needs for two (or even three) factor authentication. Providing environments potentially more secure than traditional home computers.
Perhaps one day we will even have services to rival the market leaders in Africa.
The value of experience
Posted: November 19, 2007 Filed under: conchango20112007, experience, finance, financial services, forrester 2 Comments »
I’ve talked a fair amount already about what it means for brands to differentiate themselves through experience, in particular in the context of, Lewis Carbone’s excellent book Clued In.
Well it couldn’t have been a more important topic at Forrester’s Consumer and Financial Services forum last week in Barcelona. The subject of a number of presentations including the keynote, Forrester has picked this as the deciding factor in the financial services market.
It’s easy to see why. With more and more sources of information and advice (from Goliaths like MoneySavingExpert or MoneySupermarket to your Uncle Bob who used to work at a bank), we now able to slice, dice and level the product market. The ability for providers to create competitive advantage through a cunning product set up and some nice marketing is heading rapidly out of the window.
This situation is not eased by ever more vigilant regulators. And what about when you think you’ve managed to get past the regulators but are treating your customers slightly less than fairly? Witness what happened to HSBC: while attempting a rate hike during the summer holidays they overlooked the power of Facebook and were eventually forced into humiliating defeat at the hands of the ’Stop the Great HSBC Graduate Rip Off’ group and its 1000s of members.
The customers really are revolting – and not just the spotty student types.
The answer of course is to stop fighting the customer and to start giving them what they want, but on your terms.
And, what do all human beings want?
It certainly doesn’t take just one form but we can accurately say that all customers do want one thing – they want to feel better about themselves after dealing with your company.
They want to have experiences that make them feel more confident, more fulfilled, cleverer, or just plain happier. And companies that deliver better experiences will be rewarded with happier, more loyal and more profitable customers.
There’s a reason why Krispy Kreme gets to charge more than Dunkin Donuts for exactly the same product and still have customers queuing around the block. There’s a reason why BHS closed down and M&S picked up.
And so, that is the Forrester riff. Success may be about multi-channel, it may be about efficiency, it may be about product, but above all it’s about deep customer insight and using that to create experiences that customers feel positive about, so that they then spread the news about the brand.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that every customer has to find every outcome positive. If you’re going to have to turn someone down for a loan, that can be done in better or worse ways, if someone is working out what their pension will earn them, you can’t always make the outcome happy, but you can make the experience empowering, and confidence (if not happiness) instilling.
Like all the best insights, it barely feels worth saying, once you’ve heard it but look at your everyday experiences with your bank or insurance company – on and offline – and tell me how you feel about them – or more importantly yourself - afterwards.
Leading from behind
Posted: November 19, 2007 Filed under: forrester, marketing, social media Comments Off
There were two really strong themes from the Forrester Conference last week in Barcelona. For Financial Services, it was experience based differentiation. From the point of view of consumer brands, it was all about sharing your brand, about bringing your customers inside your marketing and product efforts, and from that building a network of vocal advocates.
Good stuff, although some of the thinking seemed a little wishful. And we are, it seems, yet to find something positive for which Dove Evolution cannot take credit, although I would be highly surprised if the success of this campaign was really as planned as Ogilvy might now be saying.
We also saw some fabulously precarious positions taken by some of the speakers. In particular, a rather faltering response from Mark Taylor at Wunderman when he was asked if the rise of social media interaction meant that one of the audience members could now give up their CRM strategy which had never really started working in the first place. Taylor started with ‘No’ and then tried ‘Yes’ before realising that he wasn’t meant to have acknowledged the premise of the question!
And headline sponsor Blast Radius (big in Canada) were talking a lot to companies about, ‘the opportunity for a billion people to build your brand’. It took me a whole day to realise the fault with this slick marketing formula, even after sitting through the whole presentation which, if you’ll excuse the play on words, smelled rather too much of brand onion.
What will 1 billion people build? Will they build your brand? Nope, they’ll build their brand. And at some point it must come back down to leadership again. It reminds me of a quote from Joey Lucas in West Wing, describing the cautionary tale of ‘leaders’ in the French revolution, following a mob and saying ‘I must find out which way they are heading so that I may lead them’.
MySpace were along for the last major presentation with a very confident Jay Stevens acting much more like the owner of a major media property than the co-inventor of a new social phenomonen. A good quote though, allegedly from a MySpace user in Europe:
‘I don’t want brands to advertise to me, I want them to be my friend’
There were also lots of interesting insights too into the new typographies of ‘digital natives’ which MySpace has been researching heavily. Conveniently, for advertisers at least, we hear that MySpace’s users are there to find new and exciting things.
I think by that he means discovering new music and new films. But maybe there’s room for discovering new toothpaste brands too.
Proving the rule
Posted: November 18, 2007 Filed under: apple, forrester, marketing 2 Comments »
I’ve spent the last couple of days at the Forrester Consumer and Financial Services (combined) forums in Barcelona. Some pretty good speakers and some interesting ideas which I’ll go into in more detail later.
Overall, it seems, a consensus has broken out around the need for brands to embrace the changing nature of media to increase their relevance, and to actively involve their customers in the marketing and innovation process.
All good stuff but leaves me with one huge question unanswered – a question asked, and inelegantly side-stepped by one of the conference’s headline speakers, Blast Radius CEO, Gurval Caer: how come Apple, after-all the poster child for all things new, shinny and modern, doesn’t act in this way at all.
We hear that there is total secrecy around any new product launch. Every single piece of marketing, rather than being happily-clapping co-created by customers, is signed off directly by Mr Jobs himself. Twice a year at huge global media events, Jobs will announce the next big thing. And, when criticism comes, it’s neatly brushed under the apple carpet – never an open discussion from the company. Even when the issue was huge – buyer rights and DRM, we got a letter from Steve Jobs, posted – like a prohibition notice on the factory gates – on the front of the site.
And while we’re at it, for all it’s blogging and 80/20 time, does Google really involve its customers. Does anyone really think that OpenSocial wasn’t in discussion internally at Mountain View since the Orkut purchase, or certainly since F8 rolled out.
This isn’t a criticism of Apple, but rather a question. Given a single-minded enough focus, is there a role for more leadership from brands. Sure they’ll market to their biggest fans first but sometimes those fans would rather wait and here what the next miracle product is.
Your ad here
Posted: November 18, 2007 Filed under: advertising, facebook Comments Off
Some times these ‘new media’ don’t seem quite so far from those old ones do they?
An interesting news feed item turned up this morning in my Facebook news feed (below). I wonder quite how targeted this advertising is:
Also it would seem to suggest that there’s a bit of spare inventory at the moment.
Sense and sociability
Posted: November 13, 2007 Filed under: advertising, facebook, social media, social networking Comments Off 
There’s an absolutely cracking article on Mashable about the various social network’s monetisation strategy. The author points out that it takes an awful lot of personalisation to make up for hitting people with messages at the wrong time (and that entertainment doesn’t translate to word of mouth).
It’s a very reasonable criticism, and it’s always worth re-iterating why adWords is so powerful and lucrative in the face of alleged competitors.
However, I think all of this does potentially mask what is actually going on here by looking it at within the framework of disruptive advertising media.
In any market you need to have a buyer as well as a seller. That’s why what facebook is selling is more or less ‘advertising shaped’ opportunities; so advertisers – set in their ways as they are – stand a chance of being able to buy them.
But I think there’s something much more interesting happening too. and it’s not just what happened when loads of brands stuck up crass MySpace pages. There is an opportunity for brands to define the role they play as social objects. Clearly, that should be alot more sophisticated than the lamentable early attempts I mentioned the other day.
From there it will simply not be about how loud the brand shouts, but it’s ability to get at least some of its customers really hyped up.
Green Echos
Posted: November 11, 2007 Filed under: advertising, marketing Comments OffBe interesting if Antony or someone with access to similar software could map how John Grant’s call for publicity around his new (and undoubtedly very readable book), The Green Marketing Manifesto, played out. Was it just a re-inforcement within a closed community (the ‘echo chamber’ of planning blogs) or did it get out to the wider audience needed for a successful book launch?
Does it really ad up?
Posted: November 11, 2007 Filed under: advertising, cluetrain, facebook, web2.0 Comments Off
Another fantastically cynical piece from Andrew Orlowski: I’m a walking billboard… bitch in response to the somewhat hyperbolic claims of Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg that he’s reinvented advertising for the next 100 years.
In fact, there are three things that Facebook is doing:
- Letting brands have pages. Fair enough, we’ve seen this work well enough on MySpace and at least it’s all above board and we’re not going go get loads of made-up identities (‘flogs’). The reasoning is that users can then tell the world about their favorite bands, brands and celebrities. Nice idea but not quite sure how the marketers of engine oil and socks join that party. And let us not forget the sad fate of Burberry. Do brands really want everyone’s endorsement!? Plus, as Orlwoski points out, a lot of the early conversations are between a brands’ most enthusiastic (read: mentally ill or paid) customers and the brands’ corporate lawyers. For example, take a look at Coca-cola’s 500 fans(!!) who’ve signed up for this nonsense (graphic at top of post). 90% fake, 100% uninteresting. I’ll bet you my rotten teeth that that page doesn’t last till Christmas.
- Social ads: this is targeting. And the scenario is simple. Let’s say I want to sell 10,000 copies of Nik Kershaw’s Greatest Hits. Now I can target my ads to just those people who say they like Nik Kershaw, or those who’ve joined a related group, or those that grew up in the 80s, or those who wet the bed etc.
Apparently, ‘Facebook Social Ads allow your businesses to become part of people’s daily conversations’, perhaps as in ‘I wish Blockbuster would stop putting these f*cking ads in my Facebook newsfeed’. - A new thing called ‘beacons’. This is interesting stuff and something a lot of us have been talking about for a while. It allows actions outside of FB get into the news feed there. For Facebook it’s more content, for its users, it’s even more news (and intermittent variable reinforcement!), for brands it’s a chance to make non-social actions social. ‘Tom has just bought a dodgy Nik Kershaw album’, ‘John has just signed up to Amazon prime’. It’ll be interesting to see how this one gets used.
At the moment, predicting the next three years of advertising seems hard enough. Certainly an element of it will be like this. But not all of it will be. A lot of these sorts of initiatives seem to overlook the fundamental changes brand owners must learn to live with, rather than just how they get their message out.
Anyway, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and have a conversation with my favorite snack foods on Facebook.
Setting the standard
Posted: November 11, 2007 Filed under: development, facebook, google, opensocial Comments Off
Is it just me, or is there something a little bit desperate in Google’s response to Facebook, Open Social? Amongst all this cooked-up debate about whether Facebook will join the Open Social platform, there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the attraction of the platform.
If no one invented another application for Facebook (another annoying Spam-ridden app like Vampires or Fun Wall), would it whither and die? Hardly. Whereas, there would have to be something pretty special written for Orkut, Friendster or MySpace and the rest to get me to go back to them.
Where are all these developers who want to develop for Facebook but don’t have the time because they’re too busy developing for MySpace and Linked in?
Bear in mind that Facebook’s Event application was put together by Zuckerberg himself in one night. Photos reportedly took one week and now outguns all other online photo applications put together.
It is not a shortage of development time but a lack of good ideas which is holding applications back. And more to that point, the apps that make Facebook great, are the ones which really do extend the social graph. It’s not a coincidence that 87% of app installs come from just 2% of the apps. The other 98% are just noise.
What I want to know is why the people at Google can’t just make Orkut not shit? Or take the position they already have with documents, email, search history and everything they know about everybody and find a genuinely new way to bring people together. Competing with Facebook on its terms seems an unlikely way to win.
Update:
Just found this excellent post from Lauren Cooney which asks whether Google might have ‘complex’ motives of its own. Just how linked is OpenSocial linked to Google IDs? Just how much of that social graph juice will find its way back onto Google’s servers. Perhaps not so much doing evil, but certainly keeping an eye on the future revenue streams.
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