Smart arse

Greetings

It has been made known to Cicero through private back channels that you have noticed that the sentiments, views and opinions expressed here are becoming increasingly populist. This is most certainly not the intention and while Cicero is keen that his words remain accessible to all it was not a conscious policy to dumb down or seek popularity. Instead these words are intended to stretch minds, challenge sacred cows and provoke thinking. An effort has been made this week to restore stature and gravitas. Please advise if this has succeeded.

And in keeping with this policy of refusing to court popular appeal or to seek mass adulation, Cicero will proffer no comment on recent events in South Africa. There are plenty of other outlets to cater for those seeking nationalistic news, OTT analysis and jingoistic hysteria on events in that region. Needless to say it looks like that chariots will continue to bear aloft flags for a wee while yet.

Last week’s big news in the VTSSBs and TSSBs and other places where the Apparatchiks gather, was the Caesars’ big plan to reduce the amount of our hard earned money they want to spend. For Marketing Grands and Petits Fromages, the biggest implication of said plan was the almost complete freeze on marketing investment. And please note that Cicero sees spend on marketing as an investment and not a cost. Many should see it this way too.

Now we could spend a lot of time and expend significant amounts of energy debating the wisdom of the Caesars’ policy but it will change nothing-marketing investment is to be minimised. End of.

This is not something to be feared but should be viewed as an opportunity for marketing Apparatchiks to step up to the plate, to think creatively and laterally, and develop low cost, and preferably no cost, marketing programmes. What an opportunity to prove how good we are at marketing as opposed to briefing others to do work on our behalf at cost of course. For the era of Smart Marketing has arrived.

By chance Cicero came across a thought the other day that might help those seeking to practise Smart Marketing. There are more thoughts out there on this, and we might re-visit this subject in the coming weeks, but here is something to get you going.

Too often little thought is really given to what we want our marketing communications programme to deliver. And too often when planning these programmes we pay limited attention to where we are today. Are we trying to build brand awareness? Or improve purchase propensity? Or close the sale?

But do you really understand how well you are converting awareness to purchase propensity to sales? Have you looked at your awareness, propensity and sales numbers recently and done the ratios? Do you really understand where the weaknesses in the buying chain are? Are you sure? Do you want to go 50:50 or phone a friend?

It might come as a surprise to some unenlightened folks out there but marketing is not just about logos and pantones and pictures. Real marketers do this but also need to think more strategically about what they do. And for this they need an abacus or a modern calculator.

Let us look at one example.

In high growth, low share markets with plenty of potential it might make great sense to spend large dollops of shareholder or taxpayer money on fancy pant, and expensive, advertising programmes to build brand awareness because it looks efficient when you divide cost by impact or prospect.

But think again.

If the brand is already well known why spend more on getting more people to know you or to get the market to know you better. Surely the challenge is to better understand why high levels of awareness are not translating into purchase propensity and sales. And with this knowledge design a marketing intervention programme to drive up the numbers in these areas. Perhaps investing in programmes to close the sale might improve growth and cost effectiveness.

Conversely in or low growth markets where it might look too costly to advertise to build awareness, no amount of investment in programmes to close the sale will be effective until awareness and consideration reached higher levels. Here you should think about investing in a fancy pants advertising programme to build awareness.

Think about it. It might sound obvious but no one is going to buy you unless they know you exist and you can give them strong reasons to buy you. You need the interventions in place that make you better or different to your competitors.

Smart Marketers understand the buying chain and can identify the barriers to growth in the chain and then choose the messages, vehicles and other interventions required to overcome these barriers. Simple really when you think about it. Smart Marketing is only common sense but sense is rarely common. So to do Smart Marketing don’t be afraid to be common. It does pay dividends. Trust me. And if you do you too can become a Marketing Smart Arse

Batty? Or Brilliant? Do tell.

Is it only me….but is there nothing else on the telly?

And no, on this occasion this is not more words on the World Cup though no doubt such sentiments are being expressed in households across the land.

Instead we are going to return to the environmental and business disaster that is the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

As many have already pointed out this is also a PR disaster for Tony Hayward and the wider company with a series of insensitive and undiplomatic remarks from him and the other Grand Fromages at BP.

It is astonishing that throughout this episode BP has kept the camera running showing the black gold spewing forth and gushing from the broken pipe. As a result the news media, and no doubt You Tube, are able to beam a live feed of the disaster unfolding and continuing. It might not be riveting TV but it is highly damaging TV for BP, its managers and it shareholders, reminding all and sundry that the disaster remains un-fixed and worsening.

Now this might only be me but you would think that one of the first things BP would have done, and it is not too late, would have been to turn off the live video feed or even to switch channels to show the people of the world what a well functioning well head looks like. Why persist in showing you are still polluting? Why persist in showing the damage as it unfolds? Sure the BBC is similarly showing the disaster that is the England World Cup attempt unfold, but that is different. Lives and livelihoods and the fishes are not being damaged by this.

Would you still be showing the live feed if this was your business, and you were hated and reviled by the country you were polluting, and you had just been sliced, diced and skewered by its politicians?

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.