August 2009

This month we Ramble around marketing and other matters:

• £££?
• A Little Less
• Short Term Gain or …?
• Words Do Not Equate To A Plan
• Does The Glass Matter?
• More On Wet Paint
• A New Look At Sponsorship
• Three Odd Ads
• Circulation Details
• And Finally

£££?

What is the value of Random Ramblings? Despite my temporary delusions when people say nice things about it, the answer is nothing. About as much as the price of the paper on which it’s not printed. Zero. Zippo. Zilch. Or whatever terminology you may care to use.

Now open your wallet. If you are lucky you may find a rectangular piece of paper – probably a bit crumpled - with coloured squiggles on it, a picture of an old lady wearing a funny sort of metallic hat and a number in large print preceded by an odd character: £.

What’s that worth? Sorry to disappoint you but the answer is pretty much the same as for Random Ramblings. After all, you can’t even use it to jot down phone messages. But bizarrely, if you take that crumpled rectangular piece of paper into Tesco (or any other shop), you can exchange it for lots of cans of beans, or whatever takes your fancy.

Unfortunately the same can’t be said for Random Ramblings. However, it may just be possible that an item you read one day may stimulate you to change something about the way you do business. If that happens and it works out well, you may just have added value to your business. If what you read here or in other newsletters or business books never causes you to consider what you are doing, then I would suggest that there may be better uses for your time.


A Little Less

Never one for original thinking, the above was stimulated by reading ‘A Little Less’ by Tom Asacker. Tom is a US marketing and branding expert who was introduced to me by my friend Trevor Gay. Clearly Trevor thinks that I’m smarter than reality (or he’s not read the book) because I am finding it hard going. It is too intellectual for my inbuilt computing power. I am struggling to stay with it and yet … And yet there are some pearls of wisdom that I have taken in. I have this feeling that anyone in marketing should read it, as it challenges many widely held views and perceptions.

In contrast, Dee Blick’s ‘Powerful Marketing On A Shoestring Budget’ is easy to read and understand. It is filled with much common sense and obvious marketing actions. Obvious maybe, but I wonder how many marketing departments are carrying through all of the proposed actions. This really is a marketing textbook that all SMEs would do well to study. PS – I’m not on commission!


Short Term Gain or …?

“There are lots of things you can do to make the sale. They often are precisely the opposite of what you should do to generate word of mouth. I know, you can't have word of mouth unless you have a sale, but a sale that leads to pain is hardly worth it.

My rule of thumb is this: every person you turn away because your product or service isn't right for them turns into three great customers down the road. Every bad sale costs you five.”

Seth Godin


Words Do Not Equate To A Plan

In a recent edition of the Telegraph there was a very well argued case for why the Nato approach to Afghanistan is wrong and doomed to failure. Leaving aside the merits of the case, it was pointed out that the words from Barack Obama and Gordon Brown expressing lofty ideals do not equate to a coherent plan of action.

How often does an organisation have a wonderful mission statement? Wonderful that is in its use of words to describe some vague fantasy world in which the organisation would like to inhabit. But do they have a detailed plan for getting there? And if they do, are they following the plan?

Wishing does not get you to your destination.


Does The Glass Matter?

Have you every drunk champagne from a plastic ‘glass’? Oh dear, never mind, put it down to a learning opportunity. Or a bottle of decent wine from a thick rimmed, ugly glass? What a shame. I was considering all of this while sitting in the sun drinking beer from a nice glass. I believe that the enjoyment depends on the vessel from which the fluid is consumed. There are two reasons for this. Technical. And emotional. Together they create the experience.

There are technical reasons why the taste will be affected by the vessel from which it is consumed. Reidel sell very expensive glasses that are matched precisely to the wine type for which they are intended. For a technical explanation as to why these things matter, take a look at the Reidel website: www.riedel.co.uk/information/shape_and_pleasure.

Now, in my view there are more important factors that will affect taste – the temperature at which the wine is served being one. However, what we are talking about here is the emotion generated by drinking wine from a beautiful glass. In total, the experience. From a cheap and nasty glass – the sort used in most restaurants - the liquid is the same but the experience is different, blunted, short-changed.

Of course, the same applies to the products and services that we buy.


More On Wet Paint

Last month we reflected on a strange quirk in the wiring of the brain: the way it fails to register the negative, so a command such as ‘don’t do that’ is subconsciously registered, as ‘do that’.

John Batchelor of http://www.ur1stcar.co.uk/ commented, “Regarding 'Wet Paint' - it's the same with cycling & driving (and I guess skiing, horse riding), you look where you want to go, not at what's right in front of you. If you do the latter you are much more likely to hit it!”

Another angle on this is fear of failure. Looking over your shoulder – sometimes literally. This was demonstrated to me when I used to sail a dinghy. I remember leading one race by some distance, and then on the final leg I started watching the guy in second place. The more I focussed on what he was doing, the faster he caught up. I’m sure he wasn’t going any more quickly. Quite simply we were going slower because we were no longer concentrating fully on sailing our own race. In the end we won by a couple of boat lengths only. Given another hundred yards and we would have lost.

There are parallels between sport and business. Of course you need to be aware of the competition. But watching and worrying about them too much may prevent you from ‘sailing your own race’; being different, special, successful.


A New Look At Sponsorship

Don’t panic, I’m not about to run a marathon and ask you for money! One of the most interesting aspects of Jackie Stewart’s autobiography is his account of how he obtained sponsors for the Stewart Grand Prix team. Even for a three-times Formula One world champion this wasn’t easy. But what made the proposition attractive for a number of companies wasn’t just having their sticker on the cars, it was the opportunity to network with the other sponsors. For a number of them this opened up the possibility to become suppliers to some big spenders. It opened channels that had been closed previously. In that way Stewart acted as the network hub, a subject that we’ve discussed in recent Ramblings.

If you’ve been trying without success to gain an ‘in’ to a particular organisation, it might be worth taking a look at whether they are sponsoring anyone that you could support also. Of course, to make this work it does require the sponsoree (is there such a word?) to do more than take your money and stick your name on their car, programme or whatever it might be. They need to be as slick and professional as J.Y. Stewart in ‘oiling the wheels’.


Three Odd Ads

The email was entitled: ‘New Zealand Pinot Noir - Online Exclusive Parcel from Majestic’. Now, I’m quite partial to a decent drop of Pinot Noir so I opened the email. As you may imagine, I was more than a little surprised to be confronted with the information: ‘Sorry, Sold Out! This offer has sold out since we sent this email.’ Er, excuse me, how does that work? Are they expecting me to ring up in a rage so that they can then soothe me by finding a few bottles put aside for ‘special’ customers? Well, I didn’t.

Then I received a glossy postcard with a picture of a very attractive – OK, stunning – young lady called Heather. It was written in what I can only describe as a seductive style and promised to make up for whatever might have gone wrong between us in the past. Before you get too excited about what might happen next, perhaps I should point out that the card came from Printer Inks and was a £10 voucher for cartridges for my printer. To the best of my knowledge, nothing had gone wrong previously between Heather and this Rambler but presumably she was disappointed that I haven’t taken them up on their frequent offers. Well, there is only so much printer ink that you can use.

The third of my odd ads is Gillette’s for their Fusion razor. We are used to seeing product comparisons showing how a company’s product is so much better than the competition’s. But rubbishing your own product … ? Yes, Gillette have done a pretty good job in telling me that the Mach3 that I use currently is no good.

The Majestic email still puzzles me. And with Printer Inks I’m wondering whether they send pictures of attractive young men to their female customers. With Gillette I can only conclude that they want to phase out the Mach3. The problem is that they might just phase out some of their sales as well.

All three seem rather unusual approaches but have succeeded in starting a conversation, which might be considered a win. They seem like high risk strategies but maybe recessionary times call for extreme actions. Kind of double or quits. After all, marketing departments should do exciting things, not churn out the same boring stuff month after month.

And Finally

Can anyone lend me a monkey? No, not £500; the animal variety. I have been experimenting with the mailing facility offered by MailChimp. MailChimp comes well recommended and apparently got its name because it is so easy to use that even a monkey can do it. They either have very smart monkeys or this Rambler … !

Maybe next month this newsletter will arrive in its new format. Peanuts anyone?

David