|
|
Thanks to Phil Birchenall for sending me this article about the Flip Video camcorder. It's about a simple and inexpensive camcorder that's "good enough" rather than being "the best". It has just the right range of features to be usable and useful, at a reasonable price. It's opened up a new market of 'ordinary' users, not just video enthusiasts.
It got me thinking more about Quality.
Creative people in business are rightly concerned about Quality. However, quality is subjective, not objective. And in business terms, the customer's perspective is vital. Sometimes creators add "too much" quality, not because the customer demands it but simply because the producer wants to - or thinks they ought to.
I recently bought a digital camera. Not the 'best' or the most complex, but one that is small and light enough to take with me without having to decide every day if I really want to carry the extra weight. As a Nikon, it's well built and I expect it to be reliable. Also it was easy to obtain and sold at a reasonable price. It does the job for me, it's 'fit for purpose', therefore it's 'quality'.
Quality has many dimensions because the consumer takes into account price, convenience, speed of delivery, maintenance costs and usability in deciding their own definition of quality. So we need to think about offering Quality in different dimensions.
For example:
- Artists sell limited-edition prints. Not as good as the original but good enough for many people.
- A product can be designed to be biodegradable - so it deliberately doesn't last too long.
- Publishers can offer an eBook version now instead of the paperback delivered by Amazon next week
- Websites can be designed without too much technical complexity so they are accessible to blind people using speech synthesis software
- Film-makers can also create short videos instead of a full documentary, quickly, in an internet-ready format, on a fixed budget, without compromising quality.
Not everyone wants the biggest, longest, most expensive or most complex version of what you can offer.
Is a Rolls Royce better than a bicycle? It depends on what the customer actually wants.
Is a bicycle a poor-quality Rolls Royce? No, it's a different product and can be even 'higher quality' in many ways.
By understanding customers' perspectives on quality, the most successful creative businesses use their creative talents to produce goods and services which fit customers' definitions of quality as well as staying true to their own sense of artistic integrity.
---
Manchester band The Get Out Clause used CCTV as PR - and then were publicised on Sky News!
With the help of public relations expert Liam Walsh of AskMe PR, the band performed under Closed Circuit TV cameras in various places around Manchester - then demanded the footage from the CCTV operators under the Freedom of Information Act.
They then used the footage to make their promotional video!
This 'guerrilla marketing' stunt resulted in the band's video being featured on Sky News. Watch video here.
---
Congratulations to one of my client creative businesses, Sparkle Media on their successful projects in Australia !
The visual effects and animation company has recently worked in Australia with Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett and Joseph Fiennes, producing video footage for the multimedia theatrical performance Minutes of a Separation.
Sparkle Media also worked for Reebok whilst in Australia on an 'advanced fitness' website project.
It's a pleasure to work with creative entrepreneurs like Glenn Maguire and Andy Cooper, who are the company's directors.
Over the several months I have been involved in their business growth, I have been able to advise them on matters such marketing, intellectual property and enterprise development.
Sparke Director Glenn Maguire said:
"Since attending David's workshop and then engaging him as an adviser, Sparkle Media has gone from strength to strength. The company now operates on a global level, going head to head with world wide agencies - and beating them. We've never looked back and have a lot to thank David for."
Working internationally from their base in Liverpool, Sparkle has worked closely with creative industries support agency Merseyside ACME.
Would you pay 50,620 Euros for a bed?
(That's over £40,000 GBP, about $78,000 USD)
Probably not. But apparently some people do. Why? What's going on here?
I'm fascinated by pricing strategies and run workshops for creative businesses on the subject.
There are different ways to decide on your pricing strategy and I'll be writing more about them soon.
Certainly, customers are often buying more than the just the bare object - they are buying into something much bigger.
See What are you selling, really?
In the case of a Hastens bed, you are invited to buy into the story of a small family firm in Sweden.
The advert asks "Who would spend 50,620 Euros on a bed?"
It continues "Most people would not or could not. A select few could and would..."
Are you one of the select few?
---
I'm interested to hear from you about pricing strategies - especially about businesses in the creative industries.
Advertising genius Paul Arden died on 02 April 2008.
Some of his most influential work was done while he was executive creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi for 14 years. Paul was responsible for advertising campaigns for clients such as The Independent ("The Independent. It is - are you?"), Toyota ("The car in front is a Toyota"), British Airways, Fuji, and the slashed purple silk images for Silk Cut cigarettes. Earlier in his career he worked for Ogilvy and Mather and other agencies, developing his reputation as a leader in design-led advertising.
His books are wonderful.
Bestsellers such as 'Whatever you think, think the opposite' and 'It's not how good you are, it's how good you want to be' provide plenty of insights and provocative 'upside down' thinking: 'It's wrong to be right' and 'Compose your ad from the weakest point' jump out at me as I flick through my copies just now.
(I'm going to put them into my briefcase to dip into when I need a quick dose of inspiration.)
A real maverick and often difficult to work with, he relished getting the sack and was proud of his lack of formal education. He was a Beckham fan, notably Victoria Beckham's wanting to be "more famous than Persil Automatic" and praised Elizabeth Esteve-Coll's controversial decision to adopt the slogan "An ace caff with quite a nice museum attached" for the Victoria and Albert Museum when she was director there.
His creativity lives on...
Creative entrepreneurs often ask me how they can make money from their music or computer games when MP3 files and software is so easy to copy.
One answer is to use the fact that people copy your stuff to change a threat into an opportunity.
Banda Calypso's music is copied onto CDs and sold on street corners in Brazil. They don't get a cut of this income but they don't mind. In fact they supply theses street-sellers with master CDs to copy! And they organise things so that there is a plentiful supply of their music for sale in each town on the route of their tour, before they arrive to perform. They see this copying and selling as an advertising function and they don't have to pay these street-corner entrepreneurs. Their gigs are always full and they've made enough money to buy a private jet to take the band on tour.
Timothy Chan, one of the richest men in China used to get ripped off by copyright pirates. His computer game CDs were copied illegally and sold cheaply. He could have tried in vain to stop this. Or he could have let his business go bankrupt. Instead he changed his business to take advantage of the copying. He decided to make his money from online connection fees instead of CD sales. He changed the game so people had to play online and pay a very small fee per minute. The copied CDs spread like wildfire and so did his customer base. Every CD copied now helped his business.
Smart entrepreneurs see opportunities when others see only threats.
They change their business models to take advantage of changing technology, economics and social trends.
Instead of dreaming about having millions of fans, nurture one thousand 'true fans'.
That's the advice for creative individuals from guru Kevin Kelly.
He writes:
"A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author - in other words, anyone producing works of art - needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living."
True fans are the people who will buy whatever you produce or drive out of their way to see you perform.It's a feasible target and these people become the core of your customer base. You can then build up from there in partnership with a publisher, distributor or agent.
The article has lots of examples of creative people using cool business methods to build a customer base and generate income streams at the same time.
The full article is online at Kevin Kelly's Technium website/blog.
The Duvel Cafe in Stockholm is a bar which sells a range of Belgian beers. 
They are tasty, strong and expensive (compared to England).
I was fascinated by the beer glasses as much as the beer itself, so I took a couple of photos.
Part of what I was buying and enjoying was the packaging and the experience, as well as the golden alcoholic liquid.
In Sweden, they use the term 'Experience Industry' for what is known as the 'Creative Industries' in the UK and elsewhere. What I like about the Swedish term is that it refers to what the customer gets out of the deal, rather than what the producer puts in. This understanding of how the customer benefits is a crucial marketing perspective.
I asked the barman about the glass and he told me how the Tripel Karmeliet glass had been designed to improve the taste of the beer. It's shaped a bit like a brandy glass so the beer can be swirled around. For the price of a beer I was getting some information about design as well as the story of the brewery.
"We don't sell beer," he said "We sell knowledge."
The customer's experience is not just a drink of beer.
They come away with a story - about the beer and the glass.
And a story to tell their friends about their experience at the Duvel Cafe in Stockholm.
An incident in the the BBC TV programme 'The Apprentice' provided an excellent example of a marketing error.
It also demonstrated how the term 'marketing' is often misunderstood and used simply to mean 'advertising' or 'selling'.
In fact the marketing process goes much deeper than selling.
In one episode, Sir Alan Sugar sent his teams of would-be apprentices to sell English food toat a farmer's market in the centre of a French town. One team did particularly badly and they were invited by a furious Sir Alan to explain themselves. The team leader pointed his finger at a member of his team, blaming the team's 'marketing manager', saying that the banner advertising the food stall was the problem. He tried to deflect criticism from himself by blaming it on his 'marketing department'.
In my opinion, the problem was indeed a marketing problem - but not the one the team leader identified.
When given the task of selling English food to the French, the team leader had decided to go to a 'cash and carry' food wholesaler and buy a huge slab of processed cheese, wrapped in plastic. They then took it to France, cut it into small cubes, and presented it to prospective customers on cocktail sticks. Then the good people of France were invited to buy chunks of processed cheese!
Needless to say, the French customers refused to buy. More than any other nation on earth, the French know about their cheeses and are very selective about what they eat.
Trying to sell processed English cheese to French consumers was always going to fail. Even if they had a multi-million Euro advertising campaign, the French would never buy the stuff. The problem was not the advertising and promotion (the 'marketing department'). The real marketing problem was choosing the wrong product to sell to customers - the marketing strategy. There was a fundamental mis-match between the product and the target customers!
If you have a flawed marketing strategy (ie business formula) , then no amount of operational marketing (adverts, promotion, banners, brochures etc) will save you!
On the other hand, if you get the marketing strategy right - perhaps by choosing to sell English chutneys, pickles and marmalade to the French - then the advertising doesn't matter as much. You could say that if you get the [strategic] marketing right, then the product doesn't need [operational] 'marketing'.
The biggest marketing mistake of all is to think that 'marketing' is just about clever advertising, colourful banners, websites etc, without checking first whether the underlying strategic marketing formula is right. In other words, marketing is not about 'selling anything to anybody' using clever techniques, but about carefully matching your products or services to the right customers.
The lesson is: get your strategic marketing right first, then think about your operational marketing (marketing communications).
---
Let me know about your own experiences of strategic marketing.
If you are talking to a potential customer and they say (or maybe just think) "So What?!", then the chances are you are talking about features, not benefits.
It's a trap we can all easily fall into. We are enthusiastic about our creative businesses and want to tell people about what we do and how we do it, to produce products or services - and forget to sell the customer benefits.
The customer will ask themselves "What's in it for me?" and if we fail to explain what's in it for them (customer benefits), and just talk about the facts or features of the product or service, they will walk away.
An example. I was talking with a web designer and asking how he could help me with a project I was working on. He went on at length about the open source software he used, the capability of the programs, his skilled staff etc, etc. I was thinking "Good for you! But what's in it for me?" I had to ask him directly before he explained the benefits to me, the potential client, of his using open source software.
Marketing is about looking at things from the customer's point of view. That means emphasising customer benefits they are interested in, not the features of the product or service we are interested in ourselves.
---
Let me know of your own experiences or stories about features vs benefits, from your own creative business or your experience as a customer.
Telling Africa’s story from Africans’ point of view is the mission of Africa Media Online, the agency representing African media professionals to the global market.
“In the ‘information society’, if we are to create some semblance of global information democracy, it is important that Africans are heard from their perspective,” says Africa Media Online’s David Larsen
His company has created systems to gather, market and deliver media to users and markets around the world. For the benefit of their world-wide customers, media from a comprehensive range of African picture libraries, museums and archives are available in one place, and managed in conformity with global standards. As well as using the latest digitisation technology, e-commerce systems make financial transactions easy, secure and quick.
The technology driving all this is MEMAT 2.0 (Media Market Technologies), which is an online content management system, developed in-house using open source technology, and launched in 2004. This software provides each member organisation with the facilities to organise their libraries and archives, backed up by training and technical support.
As well as being relatively inexpensive, it is highly scaleable. This means that it can power the collections of individual photographers such as South African news photographer, Rajesh Jantilal, but also the multiple collections of a media organisation such as Cape Town’s Oryx Media and the world-class Bailey’s African History Archive, based in Johannesburg, South Africa.
In addition to running their own websites, African picture libraries and media archives recognise that they benefit by working together in a form of ‘co-opetition’. They can do this by also offering their images through ‘africanpictures.net’, which David Larsen describes as an ‘online superstore’.
Clearly this offers great customer benefits as the global audience can find most content in one convenient place.
David Larsen, a photographer and journalist, set up Africa Media Online Pty. (Ltd.) in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa in 2000, along with Paul De Villiers, an internet entrepreneur. Paul sold his shares in 2006 and new investors were attracted to the company, including Kabusha Technology Investments Pty. (Ltd.), a black-owned enterprise which now controls the single largest shareholding in Africa Media Online. This relationship demonstrates a clear commitment to social transformation, according to David Larsen. The investment structure brings financial resources to the company and at the same time creates an organisational structure which is fitting to the local cultural and political environment.
In its first seven years of business, Africa Media Online has concentrated on photographic images but its systems have always been designed for multiple media forms. The company is aligning itself to the convergence of media so that it will be able to also offer documents, sound and video files. This will mean an even better service for its global distribution partners and clients all around the world.
---
Link to Africa Media Online
More about Co-opetition
More about Organisational Structures
---
Download this article (PDF, 134K)
How can creative entrepreneurs benefit from using social networking systems such as MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, del.icio.us, Second Life – and others?
Leanda Ryan is the director of Leanda Ryan Graphic Design, in Manchester, UK. Her story is an interesting one:
“Flickr was the first service I signed up for 2005. I posted a few pictures but at this point I wasn’t really thinking about using online social networking for business purposes. However there are no hard edges when you are a designer or other type of creative person, your leisure and professional worlds tend to be inextricably linked.
“I picked it up again in 2006, fuelled by a renewed interest in photography. I wanted to be able to create images quickly, publish them and get some feedback. At this point I realised that in order to get a response to an image I needed to join flickr groups and submit my images to those groups. From there my contact list grew – individuals and groups brought together based on affinity and mutual interests. flickr became, and still is, my online scrapbook. It’s a place to share visual ideas, new developments and trends in design and technology.
“Then I joined last.fm, a website that tracks what I’m listening to and connects me to users that have a similar music profile. Here users can recommend and discover new music, meet up at music events and join groups.”
Leanda says that she became an ‘online social network junkie’. “You name it and I’ve probably signed up for it”, she said. “The ones I find most useful as working tools are probably social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us, flickr – which I couldn’t live without – and of course twitter. Twitter is the modern day water cooler. I work from home and can sometimes feel isolated, but with twitter I can throw out a question or a comment and get an instant response from contacts spanning several time zones. It’s become invaluable for sharing, learning, advice, and for finding people to work on projects with. “
Essentially, business takes place between people, and Leanda emphasises the importance of the ‘personal profile’ in social networking sites. This is the equivalent of the ‘small talk’ which happens in face to face business networking and meetings. It is these snippets of information which help people to bond, like each other and build trust between them. The message must be right for the medium and so in contrast with business websites, the information on social networking sites is more personal, the atmosphere is more ‘laid back’, and the etiquette much more informal. Significantly, Leanda says she is an introvert in real life but very much an extrovert online. Photos also tend to be more quirky and fun so Leanda uses the one below on social networking sites.
Leanda’s social networking through last.fm and other networks led to winning a contract to design a logo and hand tag for her first overseas client, Little Miss Inc., a lingerie company based in New York.
“I’m constantly asked about how I find time to manage all the online services” says Leanda. “It’s true that building an online social network takes time and those relationships have to be nurtured in much the same way as physical networking, but the rewards are so great that I would definitely recommend it.”
-----
Link to Leanda Ryan Graphic Design.
Link to 'The Message must be right for the Medium'.
----
Download this article as a PDF document (PDF, 125KB)
*Let me know about your own experiences of online social networking for business.
The message must be right for the medium - and vice versa.
The "3 Ms of Marketing" are the Market, the Message and the Medium (in that order!).
In other words, firstly be clear about the Market you are targeting, secondly decide the precise message for that particular market segment or customer type, and thirdly, select the medium which is the best vehicle for delivering that message.
It's common sense, really. There needs to be a harmony between the target market, message and medium for any marketing campaign to be effective.And so the message must be right for the medium too.
Having selected a medium, the 'style' of the message must be appropriate to it. We all know that email allows a different 'etiquette' or writing style than a printed letter. Similarly, social networking media tend to be very laid back and informal. The message might be the same but its style should fit the medium.
For example, my photo on my website is different from the one I use in facebook. They are both true images of me, to show people how I look, but the one in facebook shows me bathing in the hot volcanic waters of the Blue Lagoon in Iceland. (Not a photo I would have chosen for my official website!)
Graphic Designer Leanda Ryan uses an informal photo for social networking purposes, and in a separate article she discusses the benefits of social networking for business, using the informality of social networking to make business contacts. See Online Social Networking for Business.
TÉLO is the first public telephone especially designed for public transport vehicles. Using a card for payment, millions of people using public transport are already
using the phone on buses, trains and underground transport networks.
Founded in August 2004, by Paulo Lerner and André Averbug, Brazilian company PV Inova (Public Vehicular Innovations) invented the system and have registered a patent to protect their intellectual property, initially
in Brazil.
“Writing the patent was very time consuming, having lasted about six months”, said Leonardo Gadelha Sampaio, “we had the support of a patent lawyer for the writing of the patent itself, and of a respectable law-firm for the registration of it. We registered the patent in Brazil and internationally through the PCT”. The Patent Co-operation Treaty provides a standardised method of registering a patent, initially in the country of origin, and paves the way for easier registration of the same patent in 137 countries which have signed up to the Treaty. Despite the PCT, there is no such thing as an ‘international patent’ – a further separate registration is required for every additional member state.
Photo: Inova’s executive partners: Paulo Lerner (Technology), André Averbug (Planning) and Leonardo Gadelha Sampaio (Marketing).
In choosing further countries for patent registration, PV Inova will be targeting other countries with similar social profiles as Brazil, in Latin America, East Asia and Africa. In these countries, millions of people use public transport and rely on public communication networks rather than personal mobile phones. They will also register the patent in Europe and the USA for strategic purposes – to deter competition for as long as possible.
PV Inova has a social mission – to make communication accessible and affordable to the masses. They also have commercial objectives and recognise that these customers, though not wealthy as individuals, collectively have massive amounts of money to spend. The company has used socio-economic statistics combined with transportation data to analyse the Brazilian market. Instead of focusing on the wealthy elite, their income streams will come from the aggregated spending power of millions of ordinary people. This is a ‘base of the pyramid’ or ‘BoP’ strategy, selling services in high volume but at low prices.
Innovate in product design, Leonardo and his colleagues at PV Inova have used a novel combination of strategies to raise funds for their projects. Investors see the potential of the company and PV Inova has had two rounds of investment, firstly from a ‘business angel’, and later from an ‘investment club’ of seven smaller shareholders. 80% of shares are owned by the three executive partners, with the remaining 20% shared by 11 others. The company’s business plan forecasts an outstanding return on investment. PV Inova also plans to reinvest its profits in further technological developments, including digital TV.
Apart from the huge Brazilian public transportation market, growth will also come from international strategic partnerships with telecommunications companies, based on the provision of the service and the licensing of their intellectual property.
Download this post as an article. (PDF, 115KB)
Download article
Link to PV Inova website.
Please contact me with other examples of creative enterprises using interesting marketing strategies and intellectual property to develop their businesses.
Combining traditional Vietnamese fine art with pioneering technology has created success for VietnamArtist.com, a virtual online gallery based in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).
Tran Thi Anh Vu (pictured, right), an art gallery proprietor, set up VietnamArtsist.com in 1999, seizing the opportunities offered by e-commerce to develop her business. She engaged the services of an Indian web company and a design consultant from the USA to create one of the first websites in Vietnam to accept credit card transactions from all around the world.
The business currently promotes hundreds of works of art, at prices ranging up to $10,000, by 20 artists, including the most famous artists in Vietnam, such as Nguyen Thanh Binh, Bui Huu Hung, Do Xuan Doan and Ho Huu Thu.
One of the problems all art galleries face is that there is never enough room to display all the art available. However, in contrast to a walk-in gallery, the virtual world of the internet offers almost infinite ‘gallery space’. This means that all the artwork, not just a select few, can be promoted online. These other works form what Chris Anderson calls the ‘long tail', the many items that would never win gallery space yet can collectively achieve remarkable sales online. Unlike physical shops and galleries, online retailers can be ‘scaled-up’ without traditional constraints of space, cost and staffing.
VietnamArtist.com represents two galleries plus some individual artists. Anh invites other artists and galleries to join, even their competitors, because by working together to reach international markets, they can all benefit. “We have an open door policy” says Anh, “we call it co-opetition, friendly competition.”
By being creative with her business model, Anh has transformed her enterprise from physical to virtual – ‘from bricks to clicks’ – replacing old problems with new opportunities. 50% of sales are online. No longer local, it’s now truly global. Limited space is now infinite; previously seasonal trade is now perennial. Inventory is ‘virtual’ – artworks can be displayed without the gallery having to store or buy them until they are sold to a customer. Trading globally on behalf of local artists, VietnamArtist.com has turned competition into co-opetition.
Image: Schoolgirls with Lotus Flower 2 by Nguyen Thanh Binh
Download this post as an article (PDF, 132KB)
Download
Link to VietnamArtist.com
Please let me know of other examples of co-opetition, e-commerce and international marketing in the creative industries.
One of the subjects discussed at the meeting of the Marketing and Advertising Global Network (MAGNET) in Munich recently was viral marketing. I was there as a guest speaker and one of the other presentations was from Gabriel Szapiro, whose Paris agency Saphir also specialises in marketing - especially permission marketing and viral marketing.
He showed a viral video which people were still laughing and talking about an hour later in the bar - that's real 'buzz marketing'!
The viral video is for Berlitz language schools and you can find it easily with a Google search because it's all over the Internet - which is exactly the idea of course.
I'm sure you'll want to forward this to a few friends!
That's what viral marketng is all about.
---
Cassandra Postema and Dong Shing Chiu (pictured) are in the business of selling hope, wrapped up in t-shirts called ‘Hope Tees’.
Their Hong Kong creative enterprise is called ‘Dialog’ because it embodies an exchange of conversations between marginalised Asian textile craft wisdom and modern western design. The result is an attractive and fun range of resort apparel, bags
and accessories.
Dong Shing Chiu was born in Malaysia’s Borneo, grew up in Malaysia and London, and studied fashion with printed textiles there at Central St Martins with Cassandra. She has won accolades throughout Europe and New York with her print designs. Cassandra grew up in Singapore, Japan, Vienna and other cities. She was a New Generation Award winner at London Fashion Week prior to returning to Asia.
Dialog’s fashion is purpose-driven and interwoven into their fabric designs are values which embrace both fair trade and recycling. Their design hub produces fashionable products which also help micro businesses in impoverished areas, for example a women’s empowerment project in Sham Shui Po, the garment district of Hong Kong.
Their fair-trade fashion label has also developed a recycled fabric trimming which is incorporated into the design of accessories. Some of the people producing the trimming are teenagers who have come off the streets, and drugs, to learn new skills in a ‘halfway house’ project. The enterprise ensures that producers are paid a price which covers the cost of sustainable incomes for them and provides decent working conditions.
Hope Tees is a Dialog project which began when Cassandra was inspired to design a t-shirt to raise funds for the children of the Asian Tsunami disaster of 2004. Hope Tees now design and produce a t-shirts to raise funds on a project by project basis, in limited editions of 200.
Simply by buying a t-shirt, customers are participating in a dialogue with the producers but this communication can go much further because Hope Tees also has a blog which links Dialog, its consumer and its suppliers.
When the customer spends £10, they are getting much more than a garment in the package.
Crucially, the consumer is also buying a ‘story’. Wrapped up in the t-shirt is a description of the project the Hope Tee supports. The benefits to the customer include a feel-good factor which is much more than the skin-deep feeling of the cool cotton fabric. Other consumer benefits include a recyclable packaging tube which is consistent with the values and objectives of the company and its customers.
So what Dialog are really selling, in this neat little eco-friendly package, is hope. Hope for the future of marginalised culture, hope for the future of the planet, and hope for a fairer balance of trade between producer and consumer.
---
Download this post as an artilce (PDF, 141KB)
Download dialog_hope_tees. Ideas in Action. David Parrish. T-Shirts and Suits. 220507.pdf
Link to Dialog Ltd
Link to Hope Tees
Link to 'What are you selling, really?'
Photos used with permission.
*Please contact me with other examples of What you are Really selling.
If you're a creative business or cultural enterprise, you are selling goods or services to customers, whether it's graphic design, fashion, architecture, music, or books.
But what are you selling, really?
Or to put it another way, what is it that the customer is really buying from you?
It's often the case that there is a difference between what you think you are selling and what the customer is actually buying. Customers are often buying into a lifestyle, a feelgood factor, or a 'story'.
The most aware businesses fully understand what the customer is buying from them.
For example, Tom Peters quotes the Harley Davidson executive who said: "What we sell is the ability for a 43 year old accountant to dress in black leather, ride through small towns and have people be afraid of him." A naive observer might think they sell motorbikes.
In the cultural sector, London's Victoria and Albert museum researched customers' views and recognised that one of the greatest attractions of the museum was its cafe. What visitors want is to see some of the exhibits (it's too overwhelmingly big to see everything) and to have some tea and cake with friends. Controversially and bravely, Director Elizabeth Esteve-Coll adopted the marketing slogan "An Ace Caff with quite a nice Museum attached." It's not what the Museum is supposed to be about - but it's exactly how many visitors see it.
Dialog Ltd, in Hong Kong, run a project called Hope Tees which designs and manufactures t-shirts to raise money for worthy causes. The customer is buying much more than a simple garment: they are investing in hope. Hope for the disadvantaged communities the project supports. The customer might never wear the t-shirt, but the feel-good factor they take away makes the investment excellent value for money.
In his book Buzzmarketing, Mark Hughes tells the story of Miller Lite. Research found that the appeal of this low calorie beer to heavy drinkers was not its low calories at all (most were proud of their beer bellies), but the fact that it didn't "fill them up" as much as regular beer - so they could drink more and stay in the bar longer.
From my own experience of working in international book distribution and marketing, I know that many books are bought not [only] to be read, but as interior decoration or as a symbol of cultural sophistication. That's not me being philistine - it's [at least part of] how real customers think and behave.
The point is that in the creative industries, just as in other business sectors, we must learn to look at things from the point of view of customers, because it brings new insights which might be subtly (or radically) different from our perspective as the creator of our goods or services. We need to understand the customer benefits in the way the consumer sees them.
So what are you selling, really?
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could see our businesses through the eyes of customers? Or, as Robert Burns wrote:
“Oh, that God the gift would give us
To see ourselves as others see us.”
To what extent are they buying into a lifestyle, a feelgood factor, or a story?
The answer, as so often in marketing, is to Ask the Customers! (Market research doesn't have to be expensive.) Go and talk to them, observe them and watch how they actually use your product or service.
You might be surprised...
---
* Please contact me with your own examples about what you have found you are really selling.
Buzz Marketing is another term for 'Word of Mouth' marketing, ie creating a 'buzz' as people spread the word about a product or service.
Buzz Marketing could be described as turbo-charged word-of-mouth marketing. The difference for me is that word of mouth advertising can happen at a low level. It's great, and many creative businesses have developed using word of mouth recommendations between customers and their friends and colleagues. If my joiner does a good job fixing my gates, I'll certainly recommend him when anyone asks about a good joiner. But this is not buzz marketing. For it to be buzz marketing, the joiner would have to do something so amazing that I would feel compelled to tell as many people as possible.
In other words, there would have to be a 'story' that I would want to tell and people would want to hear.
This is what Mark Hughes talks about in his book "Buzzmarketing: Get People To Talk About Your Stuff". It's also what Seth Godin writes about in his book "All Marketers are Liars" - which really should be called "All (Great) Marketers are Story Tellers" but that's not such a catchy title. Nice one, Seth.
The point is that buzz marketing works by giving people a STORY that benefits THEM by telling it. They benefit because it's a great story and people want to hear it - and the teller's status is raised by telling it. To get a buzz going, you need to give people something to say which begins: "Hey! Have you heard about ...."
Buzz Marketing is about feeding the network with a great story about your product or service. It's about true, authentic tales that people want to tell.
And though you can start a story, you cannot control it. The power is with the people. Customers are in control of the messages about your business, not you. Work with them not on them. Don’t advertise. Don’t shout your slogan. Instead, tell customers your story. Let your customers do the plogging (yes, 'plogging'). They will anyway. So help them.
* Please contact me with your stories about successful (and even unsuccessful) buzz marketing campaigns so that I can share them with other creative enterprises - and publicise your business.
The term 'viral marketing' describes any strategy that passes a marketing message from one person to another - and goes on to spread 'like a virus'.
In other words, the message must spread automatically as one person contacts another (like a virus). To be able to do this, the marketing message must be built into the communication itself.
'Word of mouth' marketing and 'buzz marketing' are similar, but these depend on the person remembering and/or choosing to spread the word as they contact friends and associates. Viruses don't spread like this - we don't choose or have to remember who to 'infect'.
So the power of viral marketing, as opposed to word of mouth or buzz marketing is that it is somehow built into the mode of communication itself.
The classic example is Hotmail. At the bottom of every message sent through Hotmail was the message "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com". Users automatically spread the message to other email users, many of whom signed up to Hotmail, then spread the virus further.
Another example is Online Originals, the internet's original e-book publisher. which promotes its business as friends share works of literature online. Yet another is GetJealous.com, used as a blog by my cousin Sara as she travels around the world.
In both cases, the medium IS the message.
Creative businesses can use viral marketing by building the message into the heart of their products and services.
*Please contact me with examples of how you've used viral marketing in your creative business or cultural enterprise. I want to share your great ideas - and give you publicity at the same time.
Advertising is so last century!
Advertising doesn’t work any more.
Instead, customers talk – like never before.
It used to be the case that the advertiser was in control of the message. That was when the advertiser had more power than customers and could control the message. Nowadays, customers are in control. Customers have always talked, of course, and word of mouth has always been a factor. But in this century the power balance has switched. Customers don’t just talk, they communicate big-time. Using email, text messaging and various dimensions of the internet (websites, forums, blogs) customers are connected and word of mouth is mega.
The marketplace has gone global – we can now reach more customer than ever before. But that goes for customers too. Customers can talk to other customers like never before. Customer power is awesome. Word of mouth – both positive and negative – can spread like wildfire, and will.
Would you dare to hand over the management of your advertising campaign to a bunch of the most talkative of your customers? Does this idea make you nervous – or excited? The reality is that these talkative customers will control your marketing messages anyway. The truth about your products and services will be found out and customers will talk – and talk, and talk. So why not accept that the customers are in charge of your communications and help them a little? You won’t get away with telling lies – you’ll be found out and punished. But the truth should be good enough. (If it’s not, your business is in big trouble anyway.) Tell your customers your story and let them talk. Tell it directly to the gossips because they talk more and more people listen to them. And make the story interesting – interesting for the gossips, that is, not for you.
Word of mouth advertising is back – and it’s more powerful than ever. The combination of people’s timeless need to talk, combined with the timely arrival of new digital communication media, means that word of mouth is back at the top of the marketing agenda.
Professionals talk about ‘viral marketing’, ‘buzz marketing’ or ‘community marketing’ etc. Whatever term you want to use, it’s all based on the recognition that our customers are better connected and better respected than we are.
The best marketing never was about talking at customers (monologue) but talking with customers (dialogue). We’ve progressed from monologue to dialogue but now that customers are talking with each other as never before, we need a third word for it. Based on the Greek, we should call it ‘poly-logue’. It’s hard to say but could be shortened to ‘plog’. Let’s call it ‘plogging’. Yes, customers talk – and are talking like never before. Marketing has moved from monologue to dialogue to plog. Word of mouth has just gone global. Talkative customers + the internet = Plogging.
Customers are in control of the messages about your business, not you. Work with them not on them. Don’t advertise. Don’t shout your slogan. Instead, tell customers your story.
Let your customers do the plogging.
They will anyway. So help them.
Download article (PDF. 92KB)
Download let_your_customers_do_the_plogging. David Parrish. T-Shirts and Suits. 240407.pdf
* Contact me with your own experience of how customers plog about your products and services.
Analysing Competitors and Charting your Competitive Strategy
The technique of 'charting the competition' is extremely effective in analysing competitors' strengths and weaknesses in relation to your own business. Using clearly understandable charts, it dramatically illustrates the competitive landscape. Most importantly, however, it allows executives to develop competitive strategies which will beat the competition and from which clear and realistic action plans can be derived.
The methodology is as follows:
1. Decide the 'factors of competition', ie the things a customer takes into account before deciding to buy from your business (eg location, price, reputation, service, etc). Of course these will vary according to the industry you are in.
2. Give every competitor a score (out of 10) for each factor of competition. Plot these scores on a chart (graph) to give a distinctive 'profile' for each competitor. (Ideally this process should involve extensive research, but can work well using the existing knowledge of experienced company staff.)
3. Score your own business against the factors of competition. Evaluate the current position honestly. Plot the chart.
4. Looking at all the charts together, decide the profile your business needs to have in order to compete successfully. Remember that you need not (and indeed cannot) be the best at everything. Choose the factors of competition at which you can excel, and which will give your business a clear market position. Plot the chart.
5. Now remove competitor data to clearly see the gap between (a) where your business is now, and (b) where you need it to be.
6. Draw up action plans to close the gap for each factor of competition.
References and Further Reading
W.Chan Kim, and Renee Mauborgne. Charting Your Company's Future. Harvard Business Review, 2002
Marketing Warfare - Focusing on Competitors as well as Customers
Whilst conventional marketing theory states that businesses should be customer-focused, the concept of Marketing Warfare argues that businesses should be competitor-focused.
Since the marketplace is dynamic, the actions and reactions of competitors must be taken into account, as well as the needs of customers, when devising a business strategy. Marketing Warfare uses military metaphors to understand the dynamics of business competition.
In the book 'Marketing Warfare', Al Ries and Jack Trout argue that there are four possible strategies for fighting a marketing war:
- Defensive Strategy. Suitable for market leaders defending a dominant position.
- Offensive Strategy. Appropriate to businesses able to challenge the market leader's postion.
- Flanking Strategy. Not a direct attack on the market leader, but a new product or service in an area not dominated by the market leader.
- Guerilla Strategy. Ideal for small companies which do not have the resources to attack the leader, but are nimble enough to respond quickly to select and win a small, defendable market share in a niche market.
A practical technique for analysing competitors' strengths and weaknesses, in order to devise a winning competitive strategy, is Charting the Competition.
Remember that competitors are not only a business's immediate rivals; competition may come from new entrants, substitute products, etc. See Porter's Five Forces Model of Competition for more details.
References and Further Reading
- Ries, A and Trout, J. Marketing Warfare. McGraw-Hill. 1997
- Sun Tzu. The Art of War
Some recommended reading on Guerrilla Marketing:
The Guerilla Marketing Handbook
by Jay Conrad Levinson, F.X. Nine, Seth Godin
9780395700136
The four friends formed a band at college but it didn’t work out, so they call themselves ‘Autobahn’ as a tribute to the band that never plays in the film The Big Lebowski. Instead they focus on what they excel at – using their best creative talents to design publications and websites that have something extra. Autobahn are based in Holland with a studio in Utrecht and have achieved impressive success in their first few years in the design business.
Their style and values could be described as ‘bold’ or even ‘cheeky’. They like to be different and help their clients to get noticed, using innovative and edgy designs. Their team of four, despite different skills and approaches to their design work, is held together firmly by their shared belief in doing things differently. They are also held together in a corporate structure which gives each of them equal ownership, control and reward. 
Autobahn (left to right): Jeroen Breen, Maarten Dullemeijer (outside), Rob Stolte and Giovanni Grado (pictured – he wasn’t in when I visited!)
Clients gain from their unusual designs, and they have produced innovative publications for a mix of clients including Thea youth theatre, a university, a musical institute – and even the Dutch Ministry of Justice.
After spending a lot of time and effort using conventional ‘cold calling’ techniques to win new customers, they decided to used their ‘cheekiness’ to help their enterprise grow. They selected ten potential customers who they thought would be receptive to their style and would gain from their design talents. They then used ‘guerrilla marketing’ to win those customers in an inexpensive, direct and cheeky way.
Travelling by pushbike, they attacked in broad daylight, and with adrenalin pumping, they climbed up to the windows of target clients’ offices – and then attached their posters. A huge exclamation mark caught the attention of the people inside who then read the small print: “We want to work for you!” Two of the ten targets became clients as a result – an impressive 20% success rate. (The other eight were more amused than offended.)
Autobahn select their clients carefully and even in the early days when cash was short they were prepared to turn down business from a client who didn’t share their values and connect to their way of thinking. They pride themselves on helping customers by challenging the clients’ assumptions and helping them to draw up an even better brief that fits with the customers’ organisational objectives.
And obviously they work best with clients who value their bold, mouthy and cheeky style.
For the Autobahn guerrillas, cheekiness is profitable!
Download this post as an article (PDF 118KB)
Download autobahn. Ideas in Action. David Parrish. T-Shirts and Suits. 200407.pdf
Link to Autobahn website.
Please contact me with further examples of guerrilla marketing in the creative industries.
Creative businesses and organisations can often use 'guerrilla marketing' tactics effectively.
Imagination and unconventional approaches are the hallmarks of both the guerrilla marketer and the creative entrepreneur - and the low budget approach of guerrilla marketing often suits creative businesses and cultural organisations.
Guerrilla Marketing has been described as "unconventional ways of performing promotional activities on a very low budget" and "achieving conventional goals, such as profits and joy, with unconventional methods, such as investing energy instead of money", by Jay Conrad Levinson, author of the book 'Guerrilla Marketing' and guru of the guerrilla marketing movement.
An example of effective guerrilla marketing by a creative enterprise is described in my blog post and article 'Cheeky Guerrillas in Utrect', featuring Dutch design company Autobahn.
For books on guerrilla marketing see Book List
"Marketing is not just a posh word for 'selling'. It's much more radical than that. Marketing in its widest and best sense is about aligning your whole business to the changing needs of your customers."
The above is an extract from 'The Magic of Marketing', chapter 4 from the book 'T-Shirts and Suits: A Guide to the Business of Creativity' by David Parrish.
Download The Magic of Marketing (PDF, 92KB)
Download PDF
You can download this file and distribute it freely (subject to a Creative Commons licence).
Strategic Marketing is about Aligning the Whole Business to Customers' Changing Needs.
"Marketing is not only much broader than selling, it is not a specialised activity at all. It encompasses the entire business. It is the whole business seen from the point of view of its final result, that is, from the customer's point of view."
- Peter Drucker.
The term 'Marketing' is widely misunderstood. Many people think of marketing simply as advertising and promotion. This is merely one aspect of marketing, ie 'operational marketing' or 'marketing communications'.
At a much more fundamental level, Marketing is about aligning your whole business or organisation to the needs of customers.
'Strategic Marketing' is not about producing brochures but asking the serious and difficult questions, such as 'What business should we be in?'; 'What do customers really want?'; and 'What can we excel at in a competitive marketplace?'
As David Packard of Hewlett Packard said: "Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department."
In short, Strategic Marketing requires a complete change of thinking, from:
'How can we sell what we want to produce?' to
'How can we use our skills to produce what the market wants?'
This requires both an accurate understanding of market needs, and a willingness to shape the organisation and its products around customer needs (instead of trying to shape the customer to fit the organisation's products and services.)
"To satisfy the customer is the mission and purpose of every business".
- Peter Drucker
Strategic marketing embraces the whole organisation, its core competencies, its structure, its goals and its values.
Download chapter from 'T-Shirts and Suits: A Guide to the Business of Creativity' (PDF, 92KB)
Download the_magic_of_marketing. Excerpt from T-Shirts and Suits. A Guide to the Business of Creativity.pdf
|
