Hey, we’re on the same side!
The latest discussion paper entitled “Marketing and sales fusion” from the Chartered Institute of Marketing seems to have put the cat among the pigeons if the coverage given to it by Marketing Week and the comments that followed are anything to go by. I’m not about to join the debate but it does bring back memories of a previous life. Before joining the CIM as Regional Director for Greater London three years ago I was the Director of Marketing at a regional media company. I was responsible for the development of a number of valuable print and online media brands, as well as newspaper sales and distribution.
The basic business model went something like this: marketing was responsible for developing offline and online audiences to enable the advertising sales department to sell press and banner ads.
The media business is closely linked to the economic cycle – when the good times roll it isn’t hard to make money but when the economy dips so does revenue. So when things started to get tough, and our ROS went south, inevitably “marketing” took a back seat to sales. Unfortunately, at the same time that I was trying to get the Board to look at a range of metrics related to the long-term health of our brands, including net promoter scores, the only thing the senior management team was interested in was this week’s newspaper sales and advertising revenue figures.
The pressure to deliver audience numbers, whatever it took, meant that compromises had to be made and the marketing focus shifted heavily towards short-term sales promotion, despite my protests that this could damage the brands in the longer-term.
I guess the point I am making is that whether sales and marketing are “friend or foe” not only depends on the culture of the organisation but also the KPIs set by the senior management team. There has to be a balance between long-range marketing objectives and short-term sales targets for there to be any hope of the two disciplines “fusing” together for the long-term benefit of the organisation.
{ 0 comments }
I’ve been feeling a lot of love just lately – for some of the fantastic ‘social marketing’ being accomplished in both the public and private sectors.
One of the highlights of the Good Marketing Conference was a presentation by Depaul UK a London based charity working with young homeless people. Their brilliant iHobo App campaign, costing a mere £6,000, took a ground breaking and award winning approach to raising awareness and generating donor income, particularly among young people. By downloading the App you carry a homeless young person around on your phone for three days over which time you have to look after him to 
help him get off the street. If you ignore him his situation deteriorates quickly. At the end of the three days you are prompted to make a donation. If you’d like to know more take a look 
Something else you might like to look at is Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan. Also at the Good Marketing Conference Matthew Neilson from Unilever shared their vision for a better world and to spread the word Unilever has now published a guide to the 
There’s also some great work on health and obesity. The Fit for Life campaign, for example, is still going strong despite the cuts to marketing budgets introduced by the coalition government. However, I couldn’t help thinking that there was something missing from all this good stuff. I believe youth unemployment is the root of many evils so couldn’t leading CSR advocates put some of their energy into creating new job opportunities for young people too? Just a thought.
Paid, Earned and Owned
But what really got me excited the other day was the way Pret A Manger leverage their ‘Owned’ media. In other words the way they utilise the assets they already own to deliver brand and promotional messages.
A couple of weeks ago we were in Windsor and found a nice Pret in the town centre for lunch. Instead of the sort of generic pictures of coffee beans you might find on the walls in other similar establishments Pret display unique and often amusing images of the ingredients they use which cleverly promote their brand values. If you are unfamiliar with Pret this is what the brand promises:
A couple of other good examples of ‘Owned’ media thinking: Metro Bank has a branded van that drives round London delivering stationery to their branches. The same idea is used by a firm of Solicitors in my home town of Ipswich, which has a small fleet of vans in corporate colours displaying the company name and logo. And how many of you have business cards that are blank on the reverse side?
Last month I wrote about the outstanding service provided by the staff on the Celebrity Eclipse – a text book example of exceptional Customer Experience Management. If you missed my ramblings you can find the article 
It was at 4:35pm on a Sunday, when the coffee shop shuts at 5:00pm that I asked for a small cappuccino and a small americano with milk. The barista informed me that the drinks would be served in a paper cup because the place “closes in half an hour”. She wasn’t joking.
Wouldn’t we all want to receive customer feedback like this (from a very satisfied Metro Bank customer).
Redemption
But if you are really going to win hearts and minds you have also got to deliver exceptional customer service as part of the whole package. This is where Celebrity Cruises also excelled – or to be more precise, redeemed themselves.
Last night I watched “Made in Dagenham”, the true story of the late sixties campaign by women at the Ford car plant in Dagenham for equal pay. It wasn’t until 1970 that the Equal Pay Act was passed by the UK Parliament – a fundamental right that we now all take for granted.
This was certainly the message given by Giles Pavey from dunnhumby at the CIM Summer Marketing Conference in Chelmsford last month. Giles talked enthusiastically about the good old days when the owner of the corner shop knew all his customers personally and this desire for detailed customer insight is really the driving force behind the success of the Tesco Clubcard.
There’s a lot more to it than vouchers and price promotions though – if you want to know more you will find a copy of Giles’ presentation on the marketing conference 
January 28, 2012
A word from Phil Preston – The printed world needs your support
by CIM GLR
in Advertising, Chairman's comment
Pretty soon there’ll be too many trees
As you probably know by now, before arriving on planet CIM I lived in the world of newspapers. I left 3 years ago at a time when both national and regional titles were suffering a devastating slump in advertising revenues and I don’t think things have changed much since.
Of course it’s not just the state of the economy that is forcing many companies to retrench. The impact of digital on virtually everything is really challenging the norm – just ask Kodak, HMV and Waterstones (with or without an apostrophe) about it.
I guess you could say this is the inevitable result of progress, but at the risk of being called a Luddite, I’m pretty sad about the demise of newspapers. The great thing about reading a newspaper, magazine and indeed a book, is that it forces you to take time out.
It’s difficult to multi-task while reading (being a man I find this difficult most of the time) and anyway we all need a bit of time to ourselves to relax with a coffee and a good read.
So take my advice, put down that tablet, smartphone and laptop and pick up a paper. Switch-off, disconnect and resist the temptation to check your emails or tweet about what you had for breakfast and read a book (a real one, not a Kindle).
The printed word needs your support like never before – without newspapers, magazines or books I think the world would be a sadder place. And we’d be overrun by too many trees.
{ 0 comments }