It is good to see you again and I hope you are well.
I have received an objection to my use of the word ‘dribble’ when referring to these fine and intelligent words. It has been pointed out that this conjures up images of old senile people. I do apologise. It is clearly not my intention to conjure up such a powerful connotation. In my defence I would point out that Cicero is an old man as the profile in the column on the right will testify. At the last count Cicero was over 2000 years old. I hope you look this good when you are my age. I may be old but I hope you don’t think I am yet senile. That was of course a rhetorical question.
And moving swiftly on.
You will know that this month is the 40th anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s wee trip to the moon when he and his mate, Buzz, went for a stroll across the Sea of Tranquillity. And so this week I look to space for my inspiration for my dribble. Sorry, it just slipped out.
Having worked across a few marketing businesses, large and small, and not yet been found out, it never ceases to amaze me how frequently marketing people complain that their budgets are never big enough. Do you know what? Your budget will never be enough so get on with it. And this is especially so in these recessionary times.
In the 1960s when man was first thinking about going to the moon, they quickly realised that their pens would not work in space. The Americans brought the finest minds to the work on the problem and threw money at the challenge and after millions of pound of technological investment came up with the finest pen that would work in space. It was a technological marvel. An engineering tour de force. The Russians took a pencil.
This is a very powerful demonstration that it is possible to have too much money and resource which can breed lazy thinking and stifle intellectual creativity.
Have you seen Apollo 13? A great film. And a masterclass in problem solving that every aspiring business man and marketing professional should watch. No amount of money was going to get these guys back to earth. It was all down to their collective brain power and creative thinking. It was only the repeated ability of the team to think creatively and differently that meant the mission was, in Tom Hank’s words, ‘a successful failure’.
So the next time you think you or your business aren’t investing enough in marketing, try to think beyond the norm to find new and different ways to reach and engage with your customers.
Once Cicero was developing a campaign to businesses and wanted to make sure all businesses in a specific area got the message. This had to be done at low cost. TV was certainly out. Press maybe but this would not guarantee that all businesses would get the message and it still was expensive. Direct mail too was not going to be cheap. There was only way to make sure every business got he message at low cost. The solution was to ask the VAT people to enclose some information with their correspondence to businesses. Result. All businesses reached at low cost and website traffic increased.
Similarly the people who brought you Innocent smoothies did not have in the early days big research budgets. Their solution was to have big bins at festivals and the like and customers were asked to give feedback by putting their empties in the appropriate bin. Result. Instant low cost customer feedback and the start of a legend.
And I even know of one company who unable to afford TV or press to advertise their wares pays for students to talk about their brand on tubes and trains and buses in London. They get great reach for the price of a few pints of beer. Brilliant.
Marketing people are supposed to be creative. It is what you got the job in the first place. Try to think your way through and around the problem. Put yourself in the shoes of Tom Hanks and Ed Harris. You know you can do it. The obvious solution is not always the best and is bound to be the most expensive. If you put your mind to it better and more cost effective solutions can be found. And I know that when you crack it, it will be one giant leap for you, your business and for your customers.
Is it only me?
Now I am not naturally a patient man. I am the kind of person who will press lift buttons two or even three times. I am the man who will press the button on the crossings when it is clear to even those with sight impairments that a previous pedestrian has pressed the button and am clearly being told to wait. Why do we do this? Do we really think that the lift is going to come or the lights change any quicker? However has anyone else noticed how long it takes to get a cup of coffee?
When you buy a coffee on the High St these days there is much pushing and pulling of levers and gushing of steam and wiping of dispensers before a small droplet of hot caffeine emerges into your polystyrene cup. It takes ages. And when I am looking for my fix, I want my caffeine hit now. I don’t wait to wait.
And it is not even as if there is any direct correlation between the length of time it takes for the dribble of caffeine to emerge and the quality of the end product. Why it is not possible as in ye olden days for Café Costabucks to have a jug of filter coffee on the go to help speed up the process? I am sure that it is not only me who thinks that all the technological apparatus now employed to make a cup of coffee, the fancy name given to those artisans who dispense our coffee into our polystyrene disposable cup and the length of time it takes, are all designed to convince us that the quality of the end product must be good. It is called marketing.
Have a great week.
Sit felix. Et sit fortunatus.
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Monday, 27 July 2009
Monday, 20 July 2009
Sit up and pay attention
Cicero Speaks
Sit up and pay attention
Greetings.
It is good to see that some of you are now using the comment functionality to send paeans of praise to Cicero for his enlightening and entertaining dribbles. It is good to know that there are others out there reading these fine words and not afraid to write words of their own. All feedback and all ideas of future dribbles are most welcome. Use it or lose it.
I have also been asked for a lift update. Well there is good news and bad news. The lift that has been out of order for most of this year has been fixed and continues to work well and seemingly without incident. The bad news is that one of the other two lifts is now out of order and has been for a few weeks now with no date known when it will be able to go up and down again, a key requirement for any lift in any organisation. I know this has been keeping you awake at night.
It is not the lift that is important but the symbolism that broken lifts communicate to all those working in my state bunker and to visitors. It communicates an organisation that does not really care and where an ability to move fast to resolve issues is not a capability that is highly prized. It is a primary rule of Cicero that everything communicates and what does a chronically broken lift communicate?
Now I want you to sit up straight and pay attention. And yes that does mean you. I want you to pay attention.
You will recall that last week I talked about interferences and how they got in the way of potential being realised. If you don’t remember then read my column on the left ‘You do the maths’.
And you might even recall that a few weeks back I talked about my running technique and how I managed to blot out the pain, the breathlessness, the distance to go and all the other interferences that got in the way of me running to my full athletic potential which in truth is not very great. Now let me pull all these threads together and give you my secret to minimising interferences. And to do that you must pay attention.
Let me tell you a story. A friend of mine went to a coach for a golf lesson. The coach was not a golf coach and knew little about the technical aspects of golf but he knew about coaching, he knew how to stop the interferences. My friend on the other hand had been playing golf for many years, had loads of thoughts on what to do when he stood over the ball but despite this wealth of knowledge and understanding, could never get the ball to go in the direction he wanted.
The coach could not and did not try to add to the technical clutter and noise in my friend’s head. He told him not to worry about the goal but to pay attention to what was happening. He just kept asking what he was noticing when he hit the ball and asked him to be as precise as possible with his descriptions. What did he mean when he noticed his hips were moving?....that there was jerkiness in the swing?......where did it feel jerky?......and many more similar questions And lo and behold and without a word of technical instruction the ball started to go straighter and straighter.
It may sound like magic but it is not. Remember fear and doubt are two of the biggest interferences we face in our sporting, personal and professional lives. The job of the coach, and anyone in a leadership role is a coach whether they like or not, is to help identify and eliminate interferences. By encouraging our people to pay attention to what is going on, awareness builds and crowds out their natural instinct to generate interferences. With their thinking powers distracted and by noticing and focusing on what is going on rather than trying to process the data as per normal, the natural process of learning will kick in.
Believe me this works. Maybe you are trying to improve someone’s golf handicap, their ability to present well or to influence others. If so get them to pay attention, encourage them not to think, and watch the interferences diminish. I know, I was that golfer.
Is it only me?
I bring you more true tales from the Royal Institute for Incredibly Stupid People, a society dedicated to make Britain a safer place for the incredibly stupid. And once again if you work in the health and safety industry, I almost called it a profession, you might like to look away now and skip to the last few words of my weekly dribble.
I bring you news of a farmer who has been successfully prosecuted by a happy wanderer with knapsack on back for failing to teach health safety to his livestock. I kid you not. It seems a rambler wandered into a field of cows and was injured when the cows decided to fight back. Seemingly the farmer had not taught the cows how to behave when happy day glow cagoule wearing wanderers invaded their home. Or had done more to keep them under control.
Now it might only be me who thinks like this, though I doubt it, but cows are not meant to be kept on a leash. Cows are meant to graze freely. And while cows may not be the most intelligent of creatures, I would ask you to consider what you would do if a happy camper wearing a bright day glow cagoule wandered through your home while you sat down to eat your dinner. I may be wrong but I am pretty sure you would not be best pleased.
In my book if you enter a field already occupied by any other animal, the onus is on you to take care and pay due attention. It is not the responsibility of the cows, sheep or pigs to take due care. And so yet another victory for the incredibly stupid. Another defeat for common sense.
Have a great week.
Sit felix. Et sit fortanuus.
Sit up and pay attention
Greetings.
It is good to see that some of you are now using the comment functionality to send paeans of praise to Cicero for his enlightening and entertaining dribbles. It is good to know that there are others out there reading these fine words and not afraid to write words of their own. All feedback and all ideas of future dribbles are most welcome. Use it or lose it.
I have also been asked for a lift update. Well there is good news and bad news. The lift that has been out of order for most of this year has been fixed and continues to work well and seemingly without incident. The bad news is that one of the other two lifts is now out of order and has been for a few weeks now with no date known when it will be able to go up and down again, a key requirement for any lift in any organisation. I know this has been keeping you awake at night.
It is not the lift that is important but the symbolism that broken lifts communicate to all those working in my state bunker and to visitors. It communicates an organisation that does not really care and where an ability to move fast to resolve issues is not a capability that is highly prized. It is a primary rule of Cicero that everything communicates and what does a chronically broken lift communicate?
Now I want you to sit up straight and pay attention. And yes that does mean you. I want you to pay attention.
You will recall that last week I talked about interferences and how they got in the way of potential being realised. If you don’t remember then read my column on the left ‘You do the maths’.
And you might even recall that a few weeks back I talked about my running technique and how I managed to blot out the pain, the breathlessness, the distance to go and all the other interferences that got in the way of me running to my full athletic potential which in truth is not very great. Now let me pull all these threads together and give you my secret to minimising interferences. And to do that you must pay attention.
Let me tell you a story. A friend of mine went to a coach for a golf lesson. The coach was not a golf coach and knew little about the technical aspects of golf but he knew about coaching, he knew how to stop the interferences. My friend on the other hand had been playing golf for many years, had loads of thoughts on what to do when he stood over the ball but despite this wealth of knowledge and understanding, could never get the ball to go in the direction he wanted.
The coach could not and did not try to add to the technical clutter and noise in my friend’s head. He told him not to worry about the goal but to pay attention to what was happening. He just kept asking what he was noticing when he hit the ball and asked him to be as precise as possible with his descriptions. What did he mean when he noticed his hips were moving?....that there was jerkiness in the swing?......where did it feel jerky?......and many more similar questions And lo and behold and without a word of technical instruction the ball started to go straighter and straighter.
It may sound like magic but it is not. Remember fear and doubt are two of the biggest interferences we face in our sporting, personal and professional lives. The job of the coach, and anyone in a leadership role is a coach whether they like or not, is to help identify and eliminate interferences. By encouraging our people to pay attention to what is going on, awareness builds and crowds out their natural instinct to generate interferences. With their thinking powers distracted and by noticing and focusing on what is going on rather than trying to process the data as per normal, the natural process of learning will kick in.
Believe me this works. Maybe you are trying to improve someone’s golf handicap, their ability to present well or to influence others. If so get them to pay attention, encourage them not to think, and watch the interferences diminish. I know, I was that golfer.
Is it only me?
I bring you more true tales from the Royal Institute for Incredibly Stupid People, a society dedicated to make Britain a safer place for the incredibly stupid. And once again if you work in the health and safety industry, I almost called it a profession, you might like to look away now and skip to the last few words of my weekly dribble.
I bring you news of a farmer who has been successfully prosecuted by a happy wanderer with knapsack on back for failing to teach health safety to his livestock. I kid you not. It seems a rambler wandered into a field of cows and was injured when the cows decided to fight back. Seemingly the farmer had not taught the cows how to behave when happy day glow cagoule wearing wanderers invaded their home. Or had done more to keep them under control.
Now it might only be me who thinks like this, though I doubt it, but cows are not meant to be kept on a leash. Cows are meant to graze freely. And while cows may not be the most intelligent of creatures, I would ask you to consider what you would do if a happy camper wearing a bright day glow cagoule wandered through your home while you sat down to eat your dinner. I may be wrong but I am pretty sure you would not be best pleased.
In my book if you enter a field already occupied by any other animal, the onus is on you to take care and pay due attention. It is not the responsibility of the cows, sheep or pigs to take due care. And so yet another victory for the incredibly stupid. Another defeat for common sense.
Have a great week.
Sit felix. Et sit fortanuus.
Friday, 10 July 2009
You do the maths!
Greetings.
And welcome back. I guess Cicero must be doing something right for you to come back each week to see what Cicero is up to and what fine words of wit and wisdom are being spouted this week. I will try once again not to disappoint.
Please note that the facility for you to pass comment on my observations or to ask Cicero questions is now back. My apologies if you have been trying to use this in recent weeks to let me know what you think about my dribbles. Please feel free to make full use of this facility which the good folks at Google have laboured long and hard to make available for your use and pleasure. It seems I had inadvertently turned this off. I thank you for bringing this to my attention but Cicero and technology have always been uneasy bedfellows.
It is good to see other big names coming round to my way of thinking. I am not going to make a habit of referencing others but thought you might like to check this out as evidence that we are not alone in our thinking.
www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/borisjohnson/5754533/health-and-safety-fears-are-making-Britain-a-safe-place-for-extremely-stupid-people
I wonder if he links to me.
This week I want to talk maths.
From time to time Cicero is asked to pass on his advice and share his experience with others. And recently I was asked my thoughts on what makes a great leader. I have no idea why they asked me but they did and so I want to share with you my thoughts on this important topic. For great marketing leaders not only have an intuitive feel and understanding for the techniques and tools of marketing but also have the ability to help lead their organisation and their team.
And for me management and leadership is not about vision, it is not about motivation, it is not about managing resources. Sure these are all important ingredients but truly great leaders can do maths.
Let me introduce you to a simple sum and this is the sum that all great leaders understand and can instinctively do:
Performance=Potential minus Interferences.
Even the most ordinary activity at a business or a personal level can be done better. There is always a gap between performance and potential and this can at times be quite a large gap. And there is always something in that gap and these are called interferences. It therefore follows that if we can reduce the interference we increase performance and more of the potential becomes available.
Interferences can be intrinsic or extrinsic. They might be about the physical environment where people are expected to do their best work, the equipment they might be using or the resources available to them. Even the right for state employees to have a working lift is an interference if this right is not met. These are the extrinsic factors. Or as is more usual they might be intrinsic due to factors like fear, lack of self confidence, boredom, trying too hard and the like.
Great managers help people and businesses identify the interferences that are stopping potential being realised. Great managers have the ability to work with people’s capacity to learn and can re-introduce this capacity to individuals and businesses.
Think of children. Children learn fast. They do not stop to consider interferences; they are far less afflicted with fear and doubt. As a result they learn fast. At what point exactly do we lose this capacity? At what age did the interferences start? If we had been born with fear and doubt we would never have realised our potential to walk.
Great managers have the ability to focus the attention of the business and the individual so that the fear and doubt that causes interference are minimised as an issue. Because when we focus attention on one aspect we forget all about the interferences that are stopping us doing our best work. Our mind gets distracted and we focus. When we were learning to walk as toddlers we concentrated so hard on getting onto our feet and copying those around us that the fear of falling receded from our attention. Our focus was somewhere else. Great managers have the ability to bring back this focus to eliminate all the interferences that stop businesses and individuals from doing great work each and every day.
Think about it the next time you or a colleague are held back from doing something great for whatever reason. Find your focus and you will be fine. Try it out. It really does work and next week I will try to describe an exercise you can do to help and to demonstrate the power of focus to restore our capacity to learn. This really does add up and as we would say back home ‘quod erat demonstrandum’.
Is it just me?
Did you read recently about Bernie Madoff who has been sentenced to125 years in jail for swindling lots of investors, lured by the greedy promise of easy money, out of billions? It seems he was running a Ponzi scheme, a kind of pyramid selling scheme, whereby higher returns than the market can sustain are offered to investors and when investors want their money back they are paid not from the investment fund but from money paid in by other investors. There is only way such schemes can end and in Madoff’s case it ended with a long spell in the pokey. Such investment schemes are illegal.
Now consider this. And this might only be me. But is this not the same approach employed in this country by successive Prime Ministers and Chancellors towards pensions? Just like the money Madoff received from his investors, our national insurance contributions are not invested in some super investment scheme to earn high returns to give us a comfortable retirement. Now this might come as a shock to you, and if you are of a nervous disposition it might be better if you took a seat, but these ersatz taxes are used in exactly the same way that Bernie Madoff used the money he was given. They are not invested but used to pay the pensions of current pensioners. And we who are fast facing our destiny with Saga, Werthers Originals, stair lifts and pensions, will be reliant on those at school today to pay our pensions. And there will be less of them to support me and others of my generation. It is a worry. Is this not just a state sponsored Ponzi scheme? What is the difference between Bernie Madoff and Messrs Brown, Darling, Cameron and Osbourne? I think we should be told. It would be a tragedy if our politicians were to be incarcerated along with Mr Madoff. Or would it?
And on that bombshell, have a great week.
Sit felix. Et sit fortunatus.
And welcome back. I guess Cicero must be doing something right for you to come back each week to see what Cicero is up to and what fine words of wit and wisdom are being spouted this week. I will try once again not to disappoint.
Please note that the facility for you to pass comment on my observations or to ask Cicero questions is now back. My apologies if you have been trying to use this in recent weeks to let me know what you think about my dribbles. Please feel free to make full use of this facility which the good folks at Google have laboured long and hard to make available for your use and pleasure. It seems I had inadvertently turned this off. I thank you for bringing this to my attention but Cicero and technology have always been uneasy bedfellows.
It is good to see other big names coming round to my way of thinking. I am not going to make a habit of referencing others but thought you might like to check this out as evidence that we are not alone in our thinking.
www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/borisjohnson/5754533/health-and-safety-fears-are-making-Britain-a-safe-place-for-extremely-stupid-people
I wonder if he links to me.
This week I want to talk maths.
From time to time Cicero is asked to pass on his advice and share his experience with others. And recently I was asked my thoughts on what makes a great leader. I have no idea why they asked me but they did and so I want to share with you my thoughts on this important topic. For great marketing leaders not only have an intuitive feel and understanding for the techniques and tools of marketing but also have the ability to help lead their organisation and their team.
And for me management and leadership is not about vision, it is not about motivation, it is not about managing resources. Sure these are all important ingredients but truly great leaders can do maths.
Let me introduce you to a simple sum and this is the sum that all great leaders understand and can instinctively do:
Performance=Potential minus Interferences.
Even the most ordinary activity at a business or a personal level can be done better. There is always a gap between performance and potential and this can at times be quite a large gap. And there is always something in that gap and these are called interferences. It therefore follows that if we can reduce the interference we increase performance and more of the potential becomes available.
Interferences can be intrinsic or extrinsic. They might be about the physical environment where people are expected to do their best work, the equipment they might be using or the resources available to them. Even the right for state employees to have a working lift is an interference if this right is not met. These are the extrinsic factors. Or as is more usual they might be intrinsic due to factors like fear, lack of self confidence, boredom, trying too hard and the like.
Great managers help people and businesses identify the interferences that are stopping potential being realised. Great managers have the ability to work with people’s capacity to learn and can re-introduce this capacity to individuals and businesses.
Think of children. Children learn fast. They do not stop to consider interferences; they are far less afflicted with fear and doubt. As a result they learn fast. At what point exactly do we lose this capacity? At what age did the interferences start? If we had been born with fear and doubt we would never have realised our potential to walk.
Great managers have the ability to focus the attention of the business and the individual so that the fear and doubt that causes interference are minimised as an issue. Because when we focus attention on one aspect we forget all about the interferences that are stopping us doing our best work. Our mind gets distracted and we focus. When we were learning to walk as toddlers we concentrated so hard on getting onto our feet and copying those around us that the fear of falling receded from our attention. Our focus was somewhere else. Great managers have the ability to bring back this focus to eliminate all the interferences that stop businesses and individuals from doing great work each and every day.
Think about it the next time you or a colleague are held back from doing something great for whatever reason. Find your focus and you will be fine. Try it out. It really does work and next week I will try to describe an exercise you can do to help and to demonstrate the power of focus to restore our capacity to learn. This really does add up and as we would say back home ‘quod erat demonstrandum’.
Is it just me?
Did you read recently about Bernie Madoff who has been sentenced to125 years in jail for swindling lots of investors, lured by the greedy promise of easy money, out of billions? It seems he was running a Ponzi scheme, a kind of pyramid selling scheme, whereby higher returns than the market can sustain are offered to investors and when investors want their money back they are paid not from the investment fund but from money paid in by other investors. There is only way such schemes can end and in Madoff’s case it ended with a long spell in the pokey. Such investment schemes are illegal.
Now consider this. And this might only be me. But is this not the same approach employed in this country by successive Prime Ministers and Chancellors towards pensions? Just like the money Madoff received from his investors, our national insurance contributions are not invested in some super investment scheme to earn high returns to give us a comfortable retirement. Now this might come as a shock to you, and if you are of a nervous disposition it might be better if you took a seat, but these ersatz taxes are used in exactly the same way that Bernie Madoff used the money he was given. They are not invested but used to pay the pensions of current pensioners. And we who are fast facing our destiny with Saga, Werthers Originals, stair lifts and pensions, will be reliant on those at school today to pay our pensions. And there will be less of them to support me and others of my generation. It is a worry. Is this not just a state sponsored Ponzi scheme? What is the difference between Bernie Madoff and Messrs Brown, Darling, Cameron and Osbourne? I think we should be told. It would be a tragedy if our politicians were to be incarcerated along with Mr Madoff. Or would it?
And on that bombshell, have a great week.
Sit felix. Et sit fortunatus.
Saturday, 4 July 2009
Michael Jackson and swine flu
Salvete atque avete.
My use of Latin in my text has been questioned and challenged by people out there. I have been accused of making up Latin phrases to add authenticity to my wise words. How dare they! How very dare they! Cicero needs to add nothing to ensure authenticity. If you doubt Cicero’s mastery of the Latin tongue, check my words out. You will find as is always the case that Cicero is correct.
You may recall that a few weeks back I questioned why it was not possible to make a universal adapter so that travellers were not required to fill their trolley dolly suitcases with plugs and adapters to fuel their mobile appliances.
It has come to pass. Cicero now has the power to move governments and other supra national bodies. Maybe I am the new Bono. Last week it as announced that the EU have decreed that there must be a universal plug for mobile phones. It is not all I wanted but it is a start. You might think that when I ask ‘is it only me’ that I am having a rant. But as this example demonstrates it is a rant with purpose designed to fill all our lives with common sense and logic. Now all I have to do is convert the eco warriors and health safety obsessives and the world will be a considerably better place. And I seek no reward for my efforts.
The death of Michael Jackson may not have escaped your notice and while trying to detach oneself from the attendant hysteria that surrounded this seminal event, or should that be terminal event, this moment has relevance to marketing professionals everywhere and I would like to draw some learnings from this event. Indeed I would also like to link Michael Jackson, swine flu and marketing. And I can say with great confidence that none of the great business schools will be doing this thereby demonstrating Cicero’s unique way of thinking and approach to improving our marketing competence.
I am sure you will by now be scratching your head and will have concluded that Cicero has now truly lost it. Bear with me and let me explain.
By 7.30am the morning after Michael’s death I had received my first Jackson joke. By noon I had received a further 10 and by the end of the day I had received 20 texts and 18 e-mail jokes, resulting in a total of 21 unique jokes. All were in very bad taste and so naturally I passed them on. It did make me wonder who sent the first joke, where and how did it all start. But my real point is that just like swine flu Michael Jackson jokes were rapidly circulating around the world, being passed on and mutating. We rapidly had a pandemic. And no amount of hand washing and catching it and binning it was going to stand in the way of this pandemic.
And so to marketing.
As I have said before one of the most powerful channels of communications, because it is both cheap and effective in achieving its communication objectives, is word of mouth marketing or peer to peer marketing. And a great way to use this channel is through viral marketing where, just like my Michael Jackson jokes and swine flu, social networks are used to achieve marketing objectives through self replicating virus and messaging processes which get passed on and sweep through the market.
It is surely the goal of any marketing programme to reach as many people as possible cost effectively and by targeting individuals with high social networking potential to seed the idea with a highly creative and engaging viral message it will be passed on and others will become infected. Clearly people out there think I have high social networking potential. I am honoured.
And if you don’t believe this works in real life, let me prove my point. Was Susan Boyle not a perfect example of viral marketing with her YouTube video reaching parts of the world that standard marketing techniques could not reach making her a global phenomenon overnight? And you must remember a Thresher’s money off e-mail that rapidly reached pandemic proportions as the promotion rapidly run out of control though many contend that was always Thresher’s intention? And think too about the Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Gorilla ad which started out as YouTube and Facebook viral and ended up on TV as it became more popular. Indeed many films, records and computer games are now being launched and marketed through viral campaigns. One company, Blendtec in the states, has created a ‘will it blend’ viral where various items suggested by the public are blended in a Blendtec blender, guaranteeing a reach and frequency that multi million pound ad campaigns would die for and a brand awareness that only the Cokes of the world can realise but at a fraction of the cost. See it does work.
Sure the internet and mobile technology makes all this so much easier but viral marketing is not a new phenomenon. Avon cosmetics and Tupperware have both been employing the basic principles of virus marketing for decades and Cicero has been reliably informed that Anne Summers parties work in the same way too though this is not something I can vouch for at first hand.
And so as you can see swine flu, Michael Jackson and marketing can be linked. It might not be a Thriller but it is not that Bad and you can be sure that successful brand virals won’t stop till they get enough.
Sorry.
Is it just me?
If you work in the health and safety industry or have health and safety OCD read no further. Cicero would like to share with his more balanced readers the latest absurdity.
In an effort to relieve the oppressive heat under which me and my fellow co-workers were being forced to toil to ensure public safety, I opened the fenestration in my top secret bunker. Quicker than it takes to say litigation, my competence in this highly skilled task was being questioned and why I was breaching health and safety. My defence that I had been opening widows without incident since before health and safety was invented when we had common sense, cut no ice with the gauleiters who threatened to remove all privileges from me.
Ridiculous. Health and safety was invented to improve the safety in dangerous industries like mining, construction and the like. It was not designed for bureaucrats and salariats like me. In this instance common sense lost out, yet again. The world is going slowly mad. Is it only me who thinks personal responsibility is being strangled?
Have a great week.
Sit felix. Et sit fortunatus.
My use of Latin in my text has been questioned and challenged by people out there. I have been accused of making up Latin phrases to add authenticity to my wise words. How dare they! How very dare they! Cicero needs to add nothing to ensure authenticity. If you doubt Cicero’s mastery of the Latin tongue, check my words out. You will find as is always the case that Cicero is correct.
You may recall that a few weeks back I questioned why it was not possible to make a universal adapter so that travellers were not required to fill their trolley dolly suitcases with plugs and adapters to fuel their mobile appliances.
It has come to pass. Cicero now has the power to move governments and other supra national bodies. Maybe I am the new Bono. Last week it as announced that the EU have decreed that there must be a universal plug for mobile phones. It is not all I wanted but it is a start. You might think that when I ask ‘is it only me’ that I am having a rant. But as this example demonstrates it is a rant with purpose designed to fill all our lives with common sense and logic. Now all I have to do is convert the eco warriors and health safety obsessives and the world will be a considerably better place. And I seek no reward for my efforts.
The death of Michael Jackson may not have escaped your notice and while trying to detach oneself from the attendant hysteria that surrounded this seminal event, or should that be terminal event, this moment has relevance to marketing professionals everywhere and I would like to draw some learnings from this event. Indeed I would also like to link Michael Jackson, swine flu and marketing. And I can say with great confidence that none of the great business schools will be doing this thereby demonstrating Cicero’s unique way of thinking and approach to improving our marketing competence.
I am sure you will by now be scratching your head and will have concluded that Cicero has now truly lost it. Bear with me and let me explain.
By 7.30am the morning after Michael’s death I had received my first Jackson joke. By noon I had received a further 10 and by the end of the day I had received 20 texts and 18 e-mail jokes, resulting in a total of 21 unique jokes. All were in very bad taste and so naturally I passed them on. It did make me wonder who sent the first joke, where and how did it all start. But my real point is that just like swine flu Michael Jackson jokes were rapidly circulating around the world, being passed on and mutating. We rapidly had a pandemic. And no amount of hand washing and catching it and binning it was going to stand in the way of this pandemic.
And so to marketing.
As I have said before one of the most powerful channels of communications, because it is both cheap and effective in achieving its communication objectives, is word of mouth marketing or peer to peer marketing. And a great way to use this channel is through viral marketing where, just like my Michael Jackson jokes and swine flu, social networks are used to achieve marketing objectives through self replicating virus and messaging processes which get passed on and sweep through the market.
It is surely the goal of any marketing programme to reach as many people as possible cost effectively and by targeting individuals with high social networking potential to seed the idea with a highly creative and engaging viral message it will be passed on and others will become infected. Clearly people out there think I have high social networking potential. I am honoured.
And if you don’t believe this works in real life, let me prove my point. Was Susan Boyle not a perfect example of viral marketing with her YouTube video reaching parts of the world that standard marketing techniques could not reach making her a global phenomenon overnight? And you must remember a Thresher’s money off e-mail that rapidly reached pandemic proportions as the promotion rapidly run out of control though many contend that was always Thresher’s intention? And think too about the Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Gorilla ad which started out as YouTube and Facebook viral and ended up on TV as it became more popular. Indeed many films, records and computer games are now being launched and marketed through viral campaigns. One company, Blendtec in the states, has created a ‘will it blend’ viral where various items suggested by the public are blended in a Blendtec blender, guaranteeing a reach and frequency that multi million pound ad campaigns would die for and a brand awareness that only the Cokes of the world can realise but at a fraction of the cost. See it does work.
Sure the internet and mobile technology makes all this so much easier but viral marketing is not a new phenomenon. Avon cosmetics and Tupperware have both been employing the basic principles of virus marketing for decades and Cicero has been reliably informed that Anne Summers parties work in the same way too though this is not something I can vouch for at first hand.
And so as you can see swine flu, Michael Jackson and marketing can be linked. It might not be a Thriller but it is not that Bad and you can be sure that successful brand virals won’t stop till they get enough.
Sorry.
Is it just me?
If you work in the health and safety industry or have health and safety OCD read no further. Cicero would like to share with his more balanced readers the latest absurdity.
In an effort to relieve the oppressive heat under which me and my fellow co-workers were being forced to toil to ensure public safety, I opened the fenestration in my top secret bunker. Quicker than it takes to say litigation, my competence in this highly skilled task was being questioned and why I was breaching health and safety. My defence that I had been opening widows without incident since before health and safety was invented when we had common sense, cut no ice with the gauleiters who threatened to remove all privileges from me.
Ridiculous. Health and safety was invented to improve the safety in dangerous industries like mining, construction and the like. It was not designed for bureaucrats and salariats like me. In this instance common sense lost out, yet again. The world is going slowly mad. Is it only me who thinks personal responsibility is being strangled?
Have a great week.
Sit felix. Et sit fortunatus.
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