Trends for 2009: #2. Bankruptcy (the penalty for not advertising)

The second trend in Advertising for 2009 ...

BANKRUPTCY
Wow - that is a strong and scary word. But, bankruptcy for who? I think that firms cut Advertising budgets to be "low cost" are those who are most at risk. If you look way back to the time of the GREAT DEPRESSION, you find that firms who survived that and who built brands that dominated the next decade(s) are those who advertised.

So, while the trend may be to reduce costs throughout the company, if you are in the Marketing Department you should carefully research the history the Great Depression and Advertising and then make a passionate plea to your CEO, CFO, and COO to not axe your Advertising budget. At the same time, you are ultimately responsible for ensuring that the advertising you produce actually works. It better get customers wanting and buying your product, and also build healthy demand for the time when the economy warms up again.

Will I be right? The year will tell!

• Follow this blog and watch for the next 8 trends I'm forecasting for 2009.
• Feel free to contact Market GoGo to discuss this further.

Top 10 Marketing Trends for 2009: #1. Integrated Interactive Campaigns

I'm assuming that I'll get about 10 posts in between now and Dec. 31. So, in that time I'm going to try to list out ten things that I believe will become prevalent marketing / advertising / branding / web practices in 2009. To start things off:

Accelerated Shift from traditional advertising to Integrated Interactive Campaigns
As newspapers continue their slow march towards death, along with other traditional forms of print, and TV's market becomes more fragmented (and consequently less effective), and the economy continues to crater, Marketers are going to be searching out the most efficient advertising media. What is that? Online web advertising is the key. It is measurable (making the Finance department happy), and it works (making the CEO and investors happy). But, let's face it, people still continue to consume massive amounts of media through the TV, print, out-of-home, mobile, and other types of advertising. What is the best way to use these?

1. First off, what is the goal of advertising? To get your prospect to take action and become a customer.
2. Secondly, what is the goal of the campaign? Retail / Convert? Sign-up? Brand awareness?
   

One big trend in 2009 will be Integrated Interactive Online + Traditional Campaigns. I believe that in 2009 campaigns featuring traditional media that will include a call-to-action to participate in interactive campaigns through the web and mobile devices will become a standard way of:

• Allowing prospects to become customers (e.g. participate with us to get your instant coupon),
  
• Getting prospects and customers to sign-up for promotional emails (e.g. sign-up for an instant saving, and also for future savings ... the "flyers" of tomorrow), and
• Building an ongoing relationship with the brand (e.g. play with us and learn more about our products and services).
  

Will I be right? The year will tell!

• Follow this blog and watch for the next 9 trends I'm forecasting for 2009.
• Feel free to contact Market GoGo if you'd like to plan out your own Interactive Integrated Campaign.

Marketing Jokes?

Okay - I'm looking for a few good, clean, non-offensive, fun and self depricating Marketing Jokes. I'm thinking along the lines of "How many Advertising Executives does it take to screw in a light bulb?" (Anyone have a punch line for that?)

Holiday season is fast approaching ... and I need some good material!

Please post a comment to this blog with your favorite Marketing Joke.

What went wrong with the Big 3?

What went wrong with the "Big 3"? If you think of any company being made of three core functions:

1. Marketing - Determining the target market, determining what products the target wants, communication with the target, and ensuring that they live up to their Brand Promises,
2. Finance - Determining how to pay for the inputs, ensuring that the outputs are produced as efficiently as possible, and making sure that there is enough money in the bank to keep things running, and
   
3. Operations - Producing products that meets the needs of the Marketing Team, and doing so in a way to keep the Finance team happy.

Then, where did the Big 3 go wrong?

1. Marketing - They had no Brand Promise. What does GM stand for? Big cars? Little cars? Big trucks? Cheap? Luxury? They are trying to be everything to everyone. Taking on the Luxury German market and the low-cost Kia market. Yuck. Stuck in the middle. They stink, and thier products suck. Why would I buy a "luxury" Cadillac that was based on the same platform as the "work horse" GM truck? The Big 3 lost a grip on who their target market was, what they wanted, and how to reach them.
   
2. Finance - Was no one watching the books? It is disheartening that in light of recent financial scandals like Enron, and with all the subsequent "SOx" and Governance oversight that is supposed to be in place, that NO ONE from these Big 3 was sounding the horn louder and sooner that they were all headed for bankruptcy. Who is at fault here? The Finance teams in these companies should have hit the big red button several years ago. Surely it was evident that costs were spiralling out of control.
   
3. Operations - Are the unions to blame? They clearly need to share the blame. Mind you, some MORON in the Finance department must have agreed to the ridiculous contracts that the unions have negotiated over the years. Also, the MORONS in Marketing continue to get the Operations team to build products that their market might have wanted 3-10 years ago, but doesn't give a rats ass about now. So, as long as the Operations teams are building out the automobiles that they are told to, and doing it under the agreement of the Finance team, I'd have to think that they should carry less of the weight. That said, responsible Unions and Management teams should be constantly working together to figure out the most efficient and practical way to produce.

My verdict ... The auto sector has to be "bailed out" simply to prevent them from bringing down the entire economy. However, conditions on them being allowed to receive bail-outs should include:

• Bail-outs should be either high-interest loans (they are risky after all), or equity
• Executives should be forced to resign (with no golden parachutes) and should be replaced with people with real vision
• Each company and each sub-brand should have to put a REAL marketing plan in place with a real brand position. Overlapping brands should be eliminated. (E.g. Big-ass Chrysler SUVs and Big-ass Jeeps? Big-ass Chrysler cars and Big-ass Dodge Cars? GM, Pontiac, Buick, and Cadillac? GM Trucks, Cadillac SUVs, and Hummer?)

I'm no expert on Finance matters, so I won't comment on those, except to say that the classic Porter strategies state that these companies should either be low-cost, differentiated, or niche. The automobile market is mass-market, so they had better all be thinking Low-Cost. To review ...

Low Cost: The low cost leader gains competitive advantage by being able to produce at the lowest cost. You can sell things for the same price and have more profit, or more cash to do battle with, or win a price war and still make a profit.

There's my rant for today. If you are from one of the Big-3, and want help doing a Brand Audit in order to get on track with your marketing plans, don't hesitate to contact Market GoGo.

Expect Failure but Plan for Overwhelming Success

The internet is a neat place. It is pretty simple to dream up new concepts and create new things provides. Or maybe you mashup some existing concepts and create something new. Revolution, evolution ... change!

But, the internet is also a tricky place. There is no guarantee of success. You might believe that you have THE neatest concept and it might be put together brilliantly. But, if no one visits it and if the people who visit it don't like it, then you are doomed to failure as a result of your concept's failure. On the other hand, if it takes off it can really take off. Your site could become a viral success and overwhelm your servers, your payment processing, your supply chain, or your customer service. Now you find that you are doomed to failure as a result of your concept's success.

When you start a Web Marketing Project you will normally start by putting together a business case. A business case is (in it's most basic form) simple math:

-(Startup Costs + Year 1, 2, 3, ... n Operating Costs)
+ Year 1, 2, 3, ... n Sales or Savings
= Net Benefit

The costs and benefits you use for the business case should be as comprehensive as possible, and should be as conservative as possible. This requires suspending your belief in your concept and attempting to be as objective as possible. If the Net Benefit is positive, then you should do the project!

A few notes:

• To be technically correct on this, you should really use a "cost of capital" and calculate a Net Present Value. You can calculate this easily in Microsoft Excel.
• For a web project, I wouldn't look out more than three years to see the Net Benefit turn positive. Two years may even be pushing it.
• Operating costs include fixed and variable costs covering everything from IT development and operations, to software licenses, to handling customer service inquiries, to processing orders, to handling returns, and so on.
• Be sure to factor in planned growth for things like additional servers, licenses, customer service costs, and so forth.

That will give you your base case. Now it is time to apply the Web Business Success Law (I just coined that phrase). It is simple ... "Expect Failure, but Plan for Overwhelming Success."

Applying the Web Business Success Law:

• Expect Failure - What if your conservative estimates are too optimistic? If you launch the concept and nothing happens, what is the worse thing that can happen to your business? Be prepared for that.
• Plan for Overwhelming Success - Alternatively, what happens if your estimates are much too conservative? If the concept takes off and you become an overnight internet success story how will you scale the business? Plan carefully for that.

What does all this mean for you? First of all, you will need to really understand your Web Strategy in order to plan the path to success for your concept. Then you will need to put together a solid Web Marketing Project Work Plan, including:

• Project Charter - Describes what the project vision is, how the project will be performed, who is involved in the project and in what roles, what the risks are and how they will be mitigated, and other similar factors.
• Project Plan - The GANTT chart which shows what will be done, task dependancies, who does what, how long each task will reasonably take, and even how much the project resources will cost.
• Project Budget - The budget describes the financial implications of the project including software, hardware, expertise, training, system maintenance and system growth over several years.

Contact Market GoGo for help with your Marketing Project.

So, you want to be a VP of Marketing?

A few weeks back I wrote a blog about how I stumbled upon a job posting trend for GoGo dancers. I compared that to VP of Marketing positions, and found that GoGo dancers may have better prospects. Well - just kidding a bit.

In any event, I went back to Simply Hired and ran a few more searches. An interesting one is to run a comparison of hiring for VP of Marketing, VP of Operations, and VP of Finance. From that you will see that the VP of Marketing jobs are hot from about February to October. In contrast, the VP of Operations jobs & VP of Finance jobs are relatively hot all year long.

Anyhow - here's the "live graph". It might be interesting to watch this over time.

Vice President Marketing, Vice President Finance, Vice President Operations trends

Vice President Marketing jobs | Vice President Finance jobs | Vice President Operations jobs

(Hey ... what's going on. That graph has shown VP of Marketing jobs as being hot from Feb to October for a couple of weeks now. I just looked at the graph after publishing it, and now it is a nice steady line. Bizarre. Anyway, ... that's data from a third party.)

Come back to this blog often to see the graph in action.

Visit Market GoGo to find out how we can help you with your Marketing plans and execution.

What will happen with your Marketing Budget?

According to a new survey which is featured on BtoBOnline.com most Business-to-Business (b2b) Marketers intend to maintain or grow their budgets next year. This is interesting - even exciting - news when faced with the ongoing reality of the growing recession.

From the article:

"The online survey of 211 b-to-b marketing professionals was conducted in November. It found that 31.1% of marketers plan to boost their marketing budgets next year, while 43.5% plan to keep budgets flat. About one-quarter plan to decrease their marketing budgets next year.

"Significantly, of those planning increases, one-quarter intend to raise them by more than 20%, and nearly 9% plan increases between 15% and 19%."

Echoing the results of a MarketingProfs survey featured in this blog last week, the BtoBOnline study found that marketers will focus on web marketing, with 66.5% of marketers planning to increase their online spending. The reasons are pretty straight forward - online costs less than traditional media and delivers trackable results.

It is time to get started on your online marketing and advertising. Market GoGo can help you plan your Web Strategies to help you attract prospects, convert prospects to customers, upsell and cross-sell, serve your customers online, and get your customers to come back for more.

Contact Market GoGo to get started.

Have you seen Hancock?

Hancock was released earlier this year and is out on video now. In summary it is a story about a down-on-his-luck superhero who has fallen way out of favor with the public. That's one way to look at it. I was more intrigued by the Branding theme in the movie. Really, the superhero in this movie is the Marketer!

As a quick overview:

• Hancock is loathed by the public
• Hancock is "discovered" by a PR consultant
• PR consultant recognizes that Hancock's brand is way out of line
• PR consultant works with Hancock to revitalize the brand
• Hancock is golden!

Want to be a Marketing Super Hero? I recommend two things you need to do to start that:

1. Watch the movie.
2. Do a Brand Audit of your own company, product, or service to find a path to becoming golden.

In today's economy, The Low Cost Strategy will Win (Part 2)

Yesterday, you and Market GoGo took some time for some deep thoughts about Porter's generic business strategies, and focused in on the Low Cost Strategy. Today, we will spend some time together thinking about the factors that make up a Low Cost Strategy, and thinking about some things you might consider for some Marketing Projects in the near future.

A Low Cost Business Strategy features tactics which emphasize efficiency, including:

1. Products designed for easy manufacturing
2. Emphasizing low-cost advantages in promotions
3. Efficient distribution channels
4. Incentives based on quantitative targets
5. Process (re-) engineering
6. Investing in technology to reduce costs
7. Standardization, resulting in economies of scale and experience curve effects
8. Tight cost controls and continuous search for cost reductions
9. Sustained access to inexpensive capital
10. Preferential access to inputs such as raw materials, components, labor, and so on
11. Close supervision of labor

• Items 1 to 4 are things that a Marketing Team is responsible for, and which it brings to Finance and Operations.
• Items 8-11 are owned by Finance and Operations they bring these back to the Marketing Team.
• Items 5-7 are things that are universally applicable.

Let's look at items 3, 4, 5, and 6. You can kill these four birds with one stone, and that stone is Web Marketing. Here are examples of each in action:

• Efficient distribution channels - What could be more efficient than the web? For a moment, consider the web exclusively as a sales channel - that is just your website and not the opportunity for advertising. Typically you have a relatively fixed cost for your website. It doesn't matter if you sell one widget or a billion. Once you scale for your sales, the cost will remain fairly consistent, and will be very small relative to the costs you'd need to spend for a similarly sized store-front or sales team. Similarly, go out and price an advertising campaign in the (dying) newspaper industry, and compare that to action-based keyword advertising on Google. The order of magnitude lower cost difference you will find in web-based advertising and the order of magnitude action difference you will find there too is boggling.
• Incentives based on quantitative targets - Imagine you are an airline, and you pay a 10% commission to Travel Agents. If you have $1Billion in sales, you'd be paying your travel agents $100 MILLION. Imaging what you could do with your website for $100 million. Now you can't replace your entire traditional Travel Agent team with your website, but you can go a long way in doing so at a substantially lower cost. Some food for thought ... maybe the budget for your web marketing should be set as an incentive! The better your Web Marketing does, the more cash is available for it do to better.
• Process (re-) engineering - To put your business on the web, one of the first actions you need to take is to map your business processes. This applies to every activity that you are putting on the web. Let's say you are going to reallocate your advertising budget from traditional newspaper and out-of-home media to that new-fangled web stuff. The first thing you should do is figure out how you conceive, create, approve, and publish your ads for the traditional world. The next thing is to look at how you will do that for the web world. Then apply those lessons back to the traditional world and cut out all the fat you can from all processes. In the end you will have processes that are aligned, and engineered for efficiency.
• Investing in technology to reduce costs - If the web isn't technology, what is? It is time to invest in fixed assets to reduce your business costs. Map out business processes for attracting prospects to your site, closing sales, upselling and cross-selling, serving customers, and getting them to come back to your store again. Then turn theses business processes into a technology road-map that will help you automate your business processes for advertising, selling, and serving your customers online.

You and Marketing Team need to get going on Low Cost Business Strategies. Contact Market GoGo to see how we can help you do this.

In today's economy, The Low Cost Strategy will Win

It is time to invest in technology and do a marketing project that will both:

• drive costs out of your business, and
  
• serve your prospects and customers better.
  

Why? Well - there's an "old" book by Michael Porter that is simply titled Competitive Strategy. In it, he talks about the three generic business strategies. Once you've read the three, you find you sit back and say to yourself, "Well, that was kind of obvious." But it is kind of like Newton and gravity. Sure, everyone knows that an apple will fall. But, making the observation and then learning from that is what gives you the advantage moving forward. So, the three strategies are:

1. Low Cost: The low cost leader gains competitive advantage by being able to produce at the lowest cost. You can sell things for the same price and have more profit, or more cash to do battle with, or win a price war and still make a profit.
2. Differentiation: Making things "special" will satisfy the needs of a segment of customers and create a sustainable competitive advantage that will make customers less price sensitive. It will also allow a producer to charge a premium. Some of that premium will need to be used to pay for the additional costs in making the product or service "special".
3. Focus or Niche strategy: The producer focuses on a narrowly defined target market. Inside the Niche strategy, a company can either focus on a sub-strategy of differentiation or low cost. Typically, a Niche strategy is adopted by a small firm.

(As a side-note, it is important that a producer chooses ONE of these three strategies only. If a firm attempts to pursue two or more of these strategies, they end up stuck in the middle and are DOOMED to failure.)

So ... let's look at this in practice. As the recession takes grip on shoppers, they are heading to the low-cost alternatives. Want to buy electronics? Where will you go?

• Will you go to a specialty TV Home Theatre store? Not likely. There are few, if any, stand-alone home theatre stores anymore. You will find some Service Providers (not even Retailers really) in the Yellow Pages who can help you out if you are spending $50k on a home theatre. Where they do exist, these Service Providers are purusing the Niche strategy
• Will you go to a big-box electronics store? Maybe. These Retailers are struggling, and while they want to be Differntiating their services, Electronics are getting much easier and much cheaper. Plus, the price concious consumer is really shopping around. And where they are finding themselves is in the Electronics department of ...
• THE LOW COST SUPPLIER. That's right, the place you are likely to end up now to buy your Electronics is Wal-Mart. Reuters reported today that Wal-Mart is about to sell an iPhone for $99. $99!. In that article they make special note of:

"Wal-Mart has been gaining market share and clout in the recession as cash-strapped shoppers seek out its low prices."

What does all this mean for you? First of all, you will need to really understand your brand, and the business strategy you are pursuing. Also, you will need to understand the maturity of your industry and your positioning in the group. Subsequently, you will need to look at how you manage your brand to gain competitive advantage in an economy that appears to be slumping for the next year or more. Finally, you will need to launch Marketing Projects that will help you achieve your Brand and Strategy goals.

Be sure to check back tomorrow for "part 2" of this post, and more thoughts about Low Cost Business Strategies, and what you can do to win!

Google Analytics is EASY

So - I've been doing web stuff for a while now. But, it has been a long time since I've actually been hands on with anything (in fact, I'm to the point where it is dangerous to give me any passwords, as I might just try to do something on my own).

For some time now I've been a "concept guy", with the ability to craft a credible business case, the capability to pull together a comprehensive workplan, and the experience to put together sound and complete business requirements. However, I've been lucky enough to have a team of people that I could rely on to design user interfaces, write code, test things, and implement changes. So much for that. This is all on my own now.

Every day I plug away and do "a little bit more" of one thing or another to tweak my site or this blog. Every day I up my "technical" challenge to myself. Of course, I know that the technical stuff I'm doing is still all child's play!

But yesterday I took on the challenge of setting up Google Analytics. I headed into it tentatively. I took small steps. I waited to see if it would work. It DID.

I would recommend to you that if you haven't set up Google Analytics or something similar yet ... don't wait any longer. Go get it done today. The implementation is easy, and the results are fascinating.

Enjoy.

Fruitcake Bashing Season has arrived

Where does time go? I can't believe we are back into December again. There is a funny website over at The Great Fruitcake Recycling Project that pokes fun at Fruitcake in a whole new way.

Will this go viral? Who knows. Certainly by blogging about it I'm helping it to go viral. However, I do think they have some work to do to really make it viral. There just doesn't seem to be enough fun stuff to do or experience when you hit their site.

The trick to "viral" is that you can't really force something to be viral. You can plan the stink out of a project with the great wish that it becomes viral. But, really, viral just "happens". It happens because people are so intrigued with an idea or an emotion that they want other people to share in it with them. In any event, attempting to become viral is just one of the tricks of the trade of Web Marketing.

All-in, the Great Fruitcake Recycling Project is worth a look.




Contact Market GoGo for help with your Web Advertising Strategy.

Britney Spears and Barak Obama were talking with Angelina Jolie the other day ...

Did you hear that Britney Spears and Barack Obama went to a Miley Cyrus concert? Britney discussed lots of intelligent things with Barak Obama (and his wife Michelle Obama who met them there too). Their conversation included Gas Prices, Oil Prices, Gold Prices, the IRS Stimulus Checks, the Stock Market, and (of course) WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment). Earlier in the day they watched American Idol, and played a little RuneScape. After the Hannah Montana concert, they called up their friend Jessica Alba and she told them that she and Lindsay Lohan were reading a little Naruto. In the end, Angelina Jolie came in and went Lara Croft on everyone. It was like a Hurricane swept a Pregnant Man all the way from Afghanistan, across Iraq, through Pakistan and finally touched him down in China. That would have been just outside the view from Sara Palin's house in Alaska. Then while they were all recovering, Angelina Jolie sat them down and told them all that they had come up in Yahoo!'s top 10 search terms last year. Unfortunately they were all over at Sallie Mae's house at the time, and had to get the heck out fast as George Bush was coming over to perform some foreclosures in the neighborhood.

Was that a ridiculous paragraph? I was trying to jam as many of the Yahoo!'s top 10 search terms into it as I could, and trying to make it sound like it made sense. How'd I do?

Why did Yahoo! publish this result? Well - let's face it, it is kind of fun and it certainly will drive a lot of traffic and links to their site. Check it out ... I linked to them. And what a great article to link to. It has all the major search terms for the last year. Now, those terms will change over the next year. But, this document will end up ranking pretty well in all the other search engines.

Perppering a document with these types of terms - in a relevant manner - is a good choice as part of a Search Engine Optimization strategy (which should be part of your overall Web Marketing and Advertising strategy).

Contact Market GoGo for help with your Web Marketing, including SEO, SEM, banner ads, affiliate programs, and more.

Why would you send me an email full of graphics?

Are you involved in email marketing? If you are, then this blog is all for you ...

Dear Email Marketer:
Please, please, please don't send me another email that is full of nothing but graphics. Sure, it looks pretty if I take the time to download all of your images. But, let's face it, I'm not going to.

Good old Microsoft Outlook - which dominates corporate email systems, and probably has a very high market share of personal email as well - does not by default load all your images. So, when your email lands in my inbox I just sit and stare at your blank looking email. I have a choice to make. Delete? Download? Delete takes about .5 seconds. Download takes about 5 seconds to load the images and then peruse your email before I delete it (because, honestly, I'm already in that mindset now that I have to download the good bits).

So - either way, I've deleted your email.

How can you make your email so that it is more likely that I'll read it. TEXT. TEXT. TEXT. Did that message come through? Put your important message in text in the body of the email. You can surround it all you want with pretty images and branding. I don't care about that. And, why should you care if I care? Your job is to get me to read your email and take action because of it.

So, to summarize:

• Fill your email with text
• Avoid and minimize the use of graphics
• Make the email work on its own without the graphics (i.e. who is it from, why should I care, what action should I take, why should I take action now)
• Add some graphics as necessary (e.g. your branding).

Thanks in advance for helping me to read your email.

Yours truly,
Dave Jones
VP Marketing and Sales
MarketGoGo.com

The biggest mistake you can make doing a Brand Audit

... is to do it yourself. Perhaps a bigger mistake is to let your Advertising Agency do it for you. Why?

• When you do your Brand Audit yourself you are much too close to your own reality to understand the brand perception reality. You come into the audit with a preconceived notion of what your brand stands for and how you believe your customers should perceive the brand. If you are executing the audit and interpreting the results, you are much more likely to miss the "big picture" that the Brand Audit presents.

• When your Advertising Agency does a Brand Audit they only look at a very narrow slice of what your Brand represents. Typically that comes down to your Brand standards - the colors, shapes, fonts, etc. that you use in your logo and ads. Hopefully they will stretch and try to determine what your brand means. But, your brand is like an iceberg. Only the top 10% is represented by the brand standards. The remaining 90% that your Advertising Agency will typically miss includes the perception and experience your customers have with your product or service, the interactions your customers have with people representing your company, review of your brand plan and your marketing plan, and so forth. There's a lot. You will want a holistic view to make sure that you get the "big picture".
  

For similar reasons, if you were in your company's Finance Department you would not be allowed to audit yourself, and similarly if you used outside accountants they would not be allowed to perform an audit of themselves. That analogy holds true for a Brand Manager performing a Brand Audit.

A Brand Manager's responsibility as part of a Brand Audit is to believe in the process, oversee the project, understand the results, and take action to improve brand perception. By improving the brand perception you will improve sales and profitability.

If you are a Brand Manager, you need to select a company who can help you plan, execute, and interpret a Brand Audit. That may mean bringing in a 3rd party to help you out, or ensuring that your Advertising Agency brings in a 3rd party to help them out. Then sit back, enjoy the ride, and take in the scenery along the way, so that you have a fresh view of your brand and can make the right "big picture" decisions.

Contact Market GoGo to find out more about how we can help you with your Brand Audit.

What is Market GoGo?

Market GoGo is a specialized Marketing Consultancy, based in Calgary. Market GoGo focuses on a few things that will help you to make your company more successful. Those things are strategic in nature, and focus on things that many companies just don't have the experience or the depth to do. Those things are:

• Brand Audit: A review of the "personality" of your company or a particular "brand" your company represents. It covers a wide swath of customer interactions and experiences with your brand from brand standards (signage, lettering, colors, etc.), to advertising, to customer service representatives, to your website, to your positioning statement, and so on. The goal of a Brand Audit is to help you understand your brand's assets and customer perceptions and subsequently to make decision and changes that will ultimately help you to drive more sales.
• Web Marketing and Advertising strategies: Web Marketing is all about doing five things as part of your Web Portfolio: Get prospective customers to your website, Convert prospects to customers, Up-sell and cross-sell to customers, Provide online service to customers, and Get customers to come back to buy from you again. This portfolio runs the gamut from bidding on Google text ads, to banner ads served by Advertising Networks, to mapping the web sales process flow, to researching customer behaviour on your website through analytics and customer research, to opt-in email marketing, and on, and on, and on!
• Project Management of your Strategic Marketing Projects: Marketing Project Management ensures that projects are delivered on-time and on-scope by the "delivery partner" (e.g. an IT Development Team or a Product Development Team). The Marketing Project Plan also ensures that the Marketing specific tasks - such as Communication and Advertising - are put in place at the right time.
• RFP Response for your B2B opportunity: Writing an RFP response is an arduous task. It is also one that you may not get to do enough, and consequently you aren't practiced in crafting a great response that will catch the attention of the team that both crafted the RFP and will review your response. Your response should get you noticed, and get you to the "next step" in the negotiating process.
• Aligning your Contact Center's Behavior with your brand: Most Contact Centers or Call Centers focus on technologies and practices that will drive cost-cutting through their business. For example, the use of Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems has been lauded by the Call Center industry as a great way to cut costs. But just find a customer who REALLY likes dealing with an IVR. Wouldn't you like your Call Centre's behavior and technology to provide the appropriate brand experience that your customers expect? That's the goal of Market GoGo's Contact Centre Strategy Approach.

Contact Market GoGo to find out more about how we can help you with your Branding and Marketing.

What's so important about a Marketing Project?

Is planning, running, and delivering a project for a Marketing department any different than delivering for a Finance department or an Operations Department? One short word ... YES!

There is a dramatic difference between a Marketing project and any other project. A Marketing project is a time-constrained activity that needs to deliver so that:

• Press Releases, Advertising, and other communication can be coordinated for the launch,
• Sales teams can be made ready to go,
• Call Centres can be informed of the change, and
• You can make a whole bunch more money!

On the other hand, if a Finance project runs late, the CFO gets a little bent out of shape. Sales don't plummet or jump. No one goes to jail. (Well, okay, I guess that could happen but typically it won't be the fault of the project. Unless of course the project required a big paper shredder.) Similarly, if an Operations project runs late you can forecast the delay, and people can get ready for the whole thing.

That's why things need to be handled a little differently for a Marketing project.

Have a look at how Market GoGo will help you plan, manage, and deliver your Marketing Project in order to make it (and you) successful.

Nintendo Wii Fit Balance Board - I wish I'd thought of that first

Don't tell my wife (shhhh...). For the last week I've been looking for a Nintendo Wii Fit Balance Board for her for Christmas.

Congratulations to Nintendo for creating the MUST HAVE Christmas gift for three years running. For the last two years the Wii and a wide variety of their games have been THE hot item at Christmas. This year it is the Wii Fit Balance Board.

I've tried searching the web. I can't find any Balance Boards anywhere for their real retail price of about $100 Cdn. I could buy several of them on eBay for about 3x that price. And, I could buy them from Amazon's resellers (again for several times their actual price). I found a couple of US-based e-stores that are selling them for several hundred dollars as a kit with different types of software and accessories. But, I just can't bring myself to do that!

Then I searched every retail store in town. Strike out! They are sold out everywhere. A few stores pointed me to other stores when they heard a rumor that the other guys might have the Wii Fit. My hope soared. I checked. NOPE.

But, I did find out the other day that a Toys 'R Us location was going to have 50 of them this morning. They expected line ups. They didn't even advertise it. They only went with word of mouth. By 9am the line had about 300 people in it. I wasn't one of those 300.

Going back nearly 20 years, one of the jobs I held down while in school was front-line retail. It just happened that those were the years of the Care Bear frenzy. I remember line ups in front of the store, and people literally fighting for their space in line.

So - aside from the fact that my Wii Fit Balance Board search continues, and I only anticipate it to get more desperate (and I expect that I'll have to change out my gift giving aspirations sooner rather than later) - at some point I want to be involved with the opportunity to help create a brand like the Care Bears or the Wii that absolutely changes consumer behavior.

The Renaissance of Web Advertising?

"Renaissance" according to Wikipedia comes the French and means "rebirth".

Since about 2001 when the big internet bust took place it has been hard to convince hard-core traditional marketing people that they should be turning their hard-won advertising dollars to advertising "experiments" on the web. Even in the face of grossly successful tests, hard-core traditional advertising people still believed that their dollars were better spent on out-of-home bill-boards, prime-time TV spots (plus production, etc.), and weekend newspaper inserts.

But, new research from MarketingProfs.com shows that the tide might be turning. The renaissance for Online Marketing could be the current Financial Crisis. In the MarketingProfs research report Benchmark Research on Marketing in the Economic Crisis ($199 for members, and free for Premium Members (the Premium Membership pretty much pays for the research report)), they note that 16-26% of firms are looking to reallocate their marketing budgets among alternatives. The big winner stands to be Web Marketing. From their report ...

Digital marketing vehicles may provide an opportunity to stretch a marketing budget. Those marketers who can best position themselves vis-à-vis the competition and can capitalize on creative and innovative use of online marketing tactics may be able to reap the greatest return on the shift in allocation to this new media.

So - the time is right to plan your web marketing and advertising strategy.

• If you are a traditional advertising person ... don't delay, get online now.
• If you are an online advertising person ... the time is right. Strike while the iron is hot.
  

Brand Audit Sprints

I was inspired by a blog by Neal Stewart this week. In short, he did a great job of quick brand audit for Cracker Jack. Based on that, I am going to follow in his footsteps, and do a quick weekly brand audit of a company.

How will this Brand Audit Sprint be different than a regular Brand Audit?

1. First and foremost, where a real Brand Audit would take several weeks to do right, my goal is that these Brand Audits should only take a few hours.
   
2. Also, where a real Brand Audit would include substantial market research, these will rely solely on the social element of the web to provide me user reviews, etc., and consequently give me an indication of the perception of the brand.
   
3. Finally, where a real Brand Audit would require substantial face time with a company's Marketing Department and several of their front-line operations teams, this Brand Audit will only be based on my guesstimates of the company's Marketing Plan and Brand plans.

The outline for the audit will start out as:

• Select a Brand and take or find photos of it in use. Purpose = a Visual "record" of the product.
• Learn about the Company's Strategy by figuring out what I can from publicly available documents (e.g. Annual Reports, etc. from their website). Purpose = a background on what the Brand should reflect.
  
• Analyze Porter's 5 Forces (really briefly). Purpose = A snapshot of Competitors, Substitutes, Suppliers, Customers, Potential for New Entrants
• Research public perception of the Brand & Direct Competitors using the Internet. Purpose = a cheap (and likely poor) substitue for real research
• Review Brand Identity Standards by taking a closer look at the product, it's packaging, it's web-site, and it's advertising. Purpose = a "Guesstimate" at the brand book for the Brand.
• Review Brand Expression at Touch Points: Test out the Brand's 1-800 number, their email, instore, help, etc.. Purpose = Understanding of how Brand is engrained in employees, e-contacts, etc.
• Review Advertising & Promotion including YouTube, Press Releases, any other media campaign I can easily find. In addition I will look for commentary on the Brand's advertising from Marketing and Advertising sites. Purpose = Understanding of how the brand is advertised.
• Evaluate Brand Positioning and Differentiators. Purpose = Understand what "word" the brand owns, and how it supports that differentiation.
• Review brand extensions. Look at how the Brand is used (or misused) on extensions. Purpose = A guess at how and why the company has stretched the Brand assets.
• Summary & Recommendation: After looking at all of that, I will provide my summary and recommendation. Purpose = A bit of satisfaction at a dive into a brand.

"Check this space" frequently to see how the Brand Audit Sprint experiment works out!

Bad Call Centers

I used to have the worst job in the world. I designed IVR and CTI systems. If you don't know what that means, try this for a scenario ...

I called this frickin 1-800 number for my insurance company and got one of those darn automated systems. It wanted me to tell it what I wanted. After several failed attempts I told it that I wanted it to F-off. That didn't work. Then it asked me for my policy number. I read it in. It got it wrong. I tried again. It got it wrong. Finally it transferred me over to a real person. That's what I wanted right from the start. A real person.

Yah - IVR and CTI are those cold systems that make call centers and contact centers run. And, they are the systems that everyone hates. Even the people who created them hate them. The first thing all of us do is attempt to zero out.

At a party, the best way to end a discussion is to tell people that you create IVR and CTI systems. Typically an Internal Auditor or a Colorectal Surgeon will have better luck starting an interesting conversation than an IVR and CTI consultant.

But, I have seen the light. What do I mean?
Improving a call center or contact center is not actually about shaving a second off each call. While operations personnel in a call center believe that it is, the Marketing department knows better. Improvement in a call center is all about synchronizing the experience at the customer touch-point with the brand's promise.

The process to synchronize a Call Center's operations with a Marketing Department's brand aspirations starts with a mini brand audit, and ends with a road-map for improvement. The road-map provides a call center an appropriate technology, process, training, and "people" plan that will empower the call center to deliver on the brand promise. It also involved educating Finance, IT, HR, and other departments along the way about the need to align the brand promise, and the cost and (even bigger) benefits of doing so.

The road-map can include IVR, CTI, and other technologies. However, it will specify the brand alignment that is critical for success. In the end, you can have your branding and save some seconds too.

I was reading a great blog and LinkedIn question today by Patrick Byers. In it he posed the question "Will the economy kill creativity?"

My answer to that ...

The economy may not kill creativity, but it will beat it around for a while.

It is time for the accountants to do battle with the marketers. For the past 15 years or more the Accountants have had to dream up projects to suck the life out of companies (SOX, Y2K, etc.). Meanwhile, Marketers have been able to run rampant with poorly performing ad campaigns and nary a concern for their own brand. It didn’t matter. The economy was so strong and people were so crazy about spending every last dime and then some (a lot of some apparently), that no marketer could do wrong.

Now it’s time for the Accountants to have their revenge! Over the next year or more every Marketing effort will be pecked to death and creativity will die.

So - it is time for Marketers to “start again” and do some navel gazing to make sure they are doing the right thing. The right place to start is to clearly understand your brand and to be able to own a word in the consumer’s mind with respect to your brand. From there, you can start again on your marketing plan, and ultimately some great and successful marketing projects.

What will you do for the next 18 months?

According to the latest buzz from our world leaders, this economic "crisis" will end in 18 months. The CBC reports:

The global financial crisis will be overcome by mid-2010, say leaders from the 21 member countries attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Lima, Peru.

The leaders issued the optimistic forecast at the end of their two-day summit in the Peruvian capital.

"We are convinced that we can overcome this crisis in a period of 18 months," the leaders said in the statement. "We have already taken urgent and extraordinary steps to stabilize our financial sectors and strengthen economic growth."

The words of confidence were added early Sunday to a joint declaration that APEC leaders originally issued Saturday.

One delegate, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said the changes were made at the request of the summit's host, Peruvian President Alan Garcia.

All very interesting. I wonder if it is at all credible. What is credible is that the dip and sway in the economy has put Accounting departments all over the world back in charge of the corporate controls. That means that if you are in a Marketing position, you are really going to have to watch your activities to ensure that they are providing great payback.

Where does that start? I think it starts at the top of your Marketing mission - ensuring you have a solid brand. To do that starts with really understanding your brand and how you stack up against your competitors. One way to achieve this is through a Brand Audit.

• The goal of a Brand Audit is to put a line in the sand with respect to "getting" where you are with your brand, and where you need to take it.
• Flowing from this you can set your Marketing Strategy, Advertising Tactics, and so on.

Another thing it means is that every project you take on will need to be successful. That means that Project Management will take on an entirely more important role. You need to be sure that you have:

• A great business case,
• A solid project plan,
• A skilled and coordinated team executing on the plan, and
• An inspiring Go-To-Market communication plan.

You have 18 months to take a breather and get the important stuff done. I hope you just enjoyed that breather. That 18 months needs to start Monday morning.

Looking for a job in Marketing ... maybe you should look for something else

I've been working on the Search Engine Optimization for MarketGoGo.com, and in running at test I searched the simple term of "Market GoGo" on Google, I'm not ranking very high yet.

In scrolling pages of Google search results, one of them caught my eye. I ended up looking at a site by Simply Hired, that showed the trend on hiring GoGo Dancers. Based on hiring trends, it looked promising. Not that I'm really going to be a GoGo dancer in any way shape or form (fortunately for everyone). That led me to do a search comparing the demand for "Vice President of Marketing" personnel versus the GoGo Dancer.

As it turns out, the Gogo Dancer kicks butt.

Check it out. Since March 2007, the following has occurred:

• Vice President Marketing jobs increased 2%
• Gogo Dancer jobs increased 361%

Okay - the numbers might not be telling the whole story here. First off, people who are qualified to be a VP of Marketing probably won't land any of those GoGo Dancer jobs any time soon. Secondly, there are 107 VP of Marketing jobs on SimplyHired, and only 5 posted for GoGo Dancers.

There has to be a deep marketing lesson in here somewhere. Maybe it is that you can always fine a way to use numbers to support your case. On the other hand, you really shouldn't ever try to make numbers tell a tall tale rather than the truth.

Great Reads

Looking for a good book about Marketing? Head on over to your favorite online book store and buy a copy of:

• David Ogilvy - Ogilvy on Advertising --> this book is a bit dated, but as soon as you crack the cover it calls out to you "Read me and don't put me down until you're done." It is full of some terrific insights from one of the greatest visionaries in the field.
  
• Pretty much anything with Al Ries' name on it, including... - The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding, The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing --> I found that as soon as I started reading my first Al Ries book I was hooked. It was fun to read through his laws and start to apply those to the work I was doing (man - was I ever off track on some things). It was also fun to start thinking aobut some of the other brands that are close to my heart and seeing where they were winning and losing. Once you apply these laws, it is so obvious "why".
  
• Alina Wheeler - Designing Brand Identity: A Complete Guide to Creating, Building, and Maintaining Strong Brands --> Here's a great book that will give you that Popular Mechanics "How To" for creating your brand look and feel. This is a fun read. Every page will give you something to take away, think about, and use!

The 222 Immutable Laws of Branding and the Designing Brand Identities books each provide great input into putting together a Brand Audit.

Market Gogo is open for business.  This small business is being put together to do a few things.  Those few things are strategic things that many companies just don't have the experience or the depth to do.  What are those things?

• Brand Audit, 
  
• Web Marketing and Advertising strategies, 
  
• Project Management of your strategic marketing efforts, 
  
• RFP Response for your B2B opportunity, or 
  
• Aligning your Contact Centre's Brand to the real image your brand should project.
  

"Watch this space" for articles on these and other topics.