Everyone has a social media strategy.  Even if you ignore it completely that’s a deliberate strategy, since no-one can argue it isn’t relevant to every marketer.  As a vehicle for communication it isn’t going to go away.

The clue is in the name of course.  Social.

It implies, rightly, some sort of interaction or two way dialogue between two parties.  In marketing terms this means between a potential buyer or influencer and you, the seller.

And herein lies the problem.  Firstly, you have to have something to talk about, and secondly, you have to actually talk, or at least respond.  And both of these things, particularly the second, take time and energy to do.

I have lost count of the number of times I have heard people say, quite sincerely, that they will take on the responsibility of providing content for their social media strategy.  And nine times out of ten they fail or have to rethink further down the line, because they had little or no comprehension just quite how much commitment is needed to provide just the content, let alone respond or monitor to the social networks you create or join.

Even where companies have pencilled in an employee to take on the role, it is often on top of their normal full time responsibilities or where someone has shown an interest. More often than not, this is a junior who “understands twitter an’ all that”.  They may understand twitter, but do they understand your company and your market well enough to produce quality content or hold a meaningful conversation, and have you given them the remit, support and empowerment to do so?

By its very nature social media is often ad hoc.  Social media “gurus” (we hate them too) are often quoting anecdotes about Starbucks or Pepsi who managed to listen to an individual and address his specific needs.  They then say you can replicate this experience through smart social media techniques and turn yourself into company that ’really listens’.

This, we say, is great. Never the less it still relies on the knowledge and wit of your employees to monitor the chatter (which let’s face it can be overwhelming) , recognise opportunities and take decisive action, be it responding to or sharing relevant articles or addressing the needs of a specific customer /potential client directly.

Apart from needing people who understand your company strategy fairly well, what the gurus don’t tell you is quite the amount of time and resources needed to fund this type of activity.  Often the examples quoted are large corporates who have the marketing budgets to properly address it or they are online sites whose sole aim is to drive traffic to their site to create revenue (mashable and Linkedin being two good examples of good content filterers).

SME’s or medium sized businesses whose main aim is to sell more services or widgets are far less likely to have the budget or the willingness to justify the required investment for what is an unquantified  return.

The fact is that if you are going to use social media seriously as a means of interacting with your potential customer base, you have to commit the time, knowledge and resources to do it properly.

Otherwise you may as well not do it in the first place.

How many websites have you visited where they started enthusiastically with a flourish of news feeds, articles and commentary, and now haven’t updated it for over six months?  What impression does that give about the people behind it?

Here at the Marketing box we made a conscious decision early on to keep our social media strategy simple and manageable.  We use it mainly to share thoughts on relevant topics aimed at helping fellow brand marketers and those responsible for marketing budgets.  Where time permits, we will comment on other articles or provide links back to our site.  Our aim is to drive people to read our articles and hopefully browse our site, and to ultimately use or recommend our services.  We put our limited time and energy into the articles themselves, and keep our social media feeds (twitter, facebook) clean to act as a catalogue to our articles for new subscribers.  In terms of sharing non-original content, we leave that to others of which there are many.

Controversially, we made the deliberate choice of turning off the ability to comment from the very start, to limit the commitment to feedback and ongoing discussion that we realistically know we cant keep up to.  Like many businesses, our main focus has to be servicing the clients we do have.  Much as we’d like to, servicing a fully integrated and engaged social media strategy is a full time occupation in itself.

Some might argue that we are not being very social ourselves, and you could say they are right.

But it works for us.

You have to decide, realistically, what works for you.

If we were at a hypothetical party, we’d like to think that we wouldn’t say as much as many others, but when we did it was interesting and people listened (ooooh get us!).  We’d hope they would remember us positively. The party is after all extremely crowded, and is already full of people shouting rather loudly with little to say, or repeating what someone beside them just said.

The party is also full of people who began by saying a lot, and who have now fallen deathly silent…

Posted by: Rob Paton, Director, The Marketing Box

Benetton make and sell  t-shirts and jumpers.

They don’t develop vaccines for the underdeveloped countries.  They don’t create solutions for feeding the world’s starving.

They are, in fact, no different to a company that makes egg boxes or biscuits for a crust, yet somehow they have managed to craft for themselves this brand mantle of world spokespeople on progress and change.

Last week saw the Italian chain make headlines once again with their latest rounds of billboard and press ads designed to provoke, titled ‘unhate’.  This time we are treated to manipulated images of world spokespeople appearing to kiss on the lips.  Interestingly, only a brief series of ads in the early noughties has ever featured any of the brands products.

After a very predictable backlash, a particular  ad containing the Pope and Ahmed Mohammed has been withdrawn, once again bouncing it onto the front pages, and gaining the brand worldwide exposure worth millions.

This all started back in the early eighties  when the little known (outside of Italy) brand employed well known photographer Oliviero Toscani as creative director and added the strapline “United Colours of Benetton” to their campaigns.

With a definite “less is more” approach, the ads are defined by a single image making a subtle, often ambiguous, statement on society and our sometimes less than tolerant attitudes.  Infamous examples such as an unclean newborn baby, AIDs victim David Kirby, and inmates on death row have caused such apoplectic outrage in some quarters that they have seen themselves being sued, banned and even blacklisted by some stockists.

However, they also saw the brand leap from a relatively unknown to a worldwide recognised player.  Only after the Sears chain in America refused to stock their clothes did Oliviero eventually leave  the company after 18 controversial years.

Yet still they have persevered.

One cant help wondering what kind of strategy meetings take place at Benetton as they discuss ideas. “So, what do you think Antonio – is the dead baby a bit much?”.

For make no mistake, these ads are designed to create such a stir.  Yes, occasionally they cause fractious relationships with distributors, but the execs at Benetton will have been lapping up the controversy with glee and the fact they withdrew the “Pope” meant far more people saw it on the front pages than by conventional paid for advertising.

Does that mean that any publicity is good publicity?

Not necessarily – just ask BP – but by deliberately choosing very polarising topics, although they alienate a large section of the consumer market, they also delight another large, and hopefully profitable section. “Youth” is their target market, and what youth doesn’t embrace change and a bit of provocative confrontation?

Cleverly, they also never go so far as to take a definitive stance.  Instead they throw out topics and ask you , the viewer, to question yourself about how you feel.  Of course, by disassociation they are able to then present themselves as the facilitator of change.  If anyone has a problem with it – it’s you who has the problem – not them.

“What does this have to do with sweaters?” is what many people ask. And so we are back to brands and our emotional relationships with them.  If you can convince a consumer you share values on an emotional level then they identify your organisation as one they want to do business with, and purchasing your services is a way of them showing that affinity.  In a strange sort of way, the product attributes become less important – just look at celebrity endorsed perfumes and aftershaves.

Marmite took a brave decision some years ago, deciding to parody the idea that some people find the product’s very strong taste so repulsive it actually makes them retch (in a poll 38% of people said they ’hate’ it)  – and in admitting so gained huge armies of fans who on the other side of the coin – love it.  Let’s face it, with a product like that, you have a hard job convincing  someone to change their mind.  What you might do of course, is get some Marmite’virgins’ to try it to see what all the (carefully managed) fuss is about, and furthermore get your loyal ‘lovers’ to get emotionally involved enough in your campaign that they show their allegiance at the checkout.

So is it a strategy worth considering?

The problem is that with any polarising strategy you are always going to take a risk.  You have to be sure your target market agrees with your stance.  And in the fashion industry that can be a fickle as as a five year old at mealtimes.

Remember only a few years ago the fashionistas were all shunning fur?  Nowadays you wouldn’t catch any aspiring catwalk model without a dead rodent around their necks (or a ciggie in their mouths for that matter).  Only this year Marks & Spencer had to battle their hardcore ‘silver’ consumers at their AGM who vociferously complained that the brand had become far ‘too young’ and the cleavage far too low, resulting in a rethink of the brand strategy.

So there you go.  With risk can come reward, but just make sure you can handle the flak if you start offering  free fox-hunting trips with your countryside muesli bars.

Posted by: Rob Paton, Director, The Marketing Box

Chase Moulande are the foremost recruitment solutions company in the specialist HR & payroll market.

They came to The Marketing Box after the emergence of a number of competitors in the space had begun to erode their market share and aggressively attack their customer base with heavily discounted rates.

The M box identified that Chase  were not articulating the true value proposition of their services in their marketing communications, and instead had been relying on their clients recommendations and word of mouth.  This left them vulnerable to competitors able to undercut them for exclusive contracts but offering a poorer quality service based on online searching rather than genuine candidate relationships. Market research also revealed that the companies brand had a traditional and slightly old fashioned ‘legal’ feel to it, which competitors used (unfairly) against them to accuse them of being slow and unnecessarily expensive.

Through a brand review process, The Marketing  Box challenged the organisation to justify their fee’s and fully explored the added value that they provide to clients.

The revised brand then concentrated on reinforcing the key values of quality service with a strong client focus to deliver above and beyond the results the clients expected, in an efficient time frame.  The design execution made use of modern colours, imagery and fonts to re-enforce the quality aspect of the brand whilst portraying a fast-paced agency feel and to dissassoiate from any traditional or ‘stuffy’ perceptions.

The results of the brand review were then converted into internal training materials that staff can use to reinforce the value proposition and differentiate the quality of their services compared to lesser competitors.

The Marketing Box have been invaluable in re-focusing our business on our core values that enable us to differentiate Chase from our competitors.  By taking this approach we are able to inject our key strengths into everything we do, not only through our marcomms but in all apsects of our service.

Chris Fitzgerald – Managing Director, Chase Moulande

A few months ago I bought a kitchen cabinet from an online retailer.  Nothing unusual about that you might say.  However, over the next few weeks I began to notice this same retailer appearing on a large amount of websites that I was visiting, running banner ads.

There appeared to be no connection between the sites or, indeed, any relevance to people whom you might imagine would buy a solid oak sideboard (I know what you’re thinking – behave yourself), and so I presumed they were just spending a bucketload of cash on advertising all over the place.

I then received an email communication from Chris Cardell, a particularly ‘persistent’ salesman who is very successful at persuading people to listen to him to become more profitable.  He was raving about re-marketing, a relatively new concept being sold as a service by Google across their Google Display Network.  It peaked my interest and after a bit of investigation I realised this is exactly what the furniture company had employed as a tactic.  The fact I had simply visited their site (I actually ordered over the phone in the end) meant that they could employ a cookie which would display their ads on any GDN site that had signed up to the program that I then went on to visit.

Clever, you might think – but is it?

From a branding perspective I’m not so sure this new weapon in the armoury is all it appears.

When I realised what had been happening I didn’t feel positive toward the furniture company at all.  If anything, I actually felt slightly violated.  Although I’m fully aware of the tech behind it, it felt a little like I was being creepily stalked.  Something somewhere was watching me and what I was up to, and then following me.

Of course, it is plugged as a marketers dream.  The chance to follow your prospective buyers around and bombard them with your messaging until they buy.  This is positioned as a service that will improve consumers lives. It will help them make informed choices more easily and access the goods that are most relevant to them.

Really?

Surely what you should be concentrating on is why they left your site in the first place. Perhaps they were building up brand knowledge.  Perhaps they were forming perceptions in their minds of what you have to offer over your competition.  Perhaps they have favourited your site and are planning to return.  Chasing after them like a demented shopkeeper shouting “come back – I’ll throw in some towels!!” to me doesn’t seem like the best response in these circumstances.

Years ago high street retailers realised that people (especially the British) don’t like being pressured. The visionaries moved away from the direct commission “suits you sir” salesman approach and instead had ‘assistants’ who were on hand in the background to help you should you so wish.  Shopping on your own terms was how it was phrased, and it became a leisure activity where customers would be allowed to browse freely, or simply enjoy a coffee and a chat with friends. The retailers of course, hoped that these warm and favourable brand perceptions of the environment they have created for you, will mean that when you actually do get round to buying that pair of jeans it will be from them.

Foxtons, the estate agent, are a classic example of this.  Their new ‘stores’ are designed to make you feel like buying a house is actually a fun activity.  Funky chairs, open necked shirts and orange juice machines bamboozle any prospective buyer into feeling relaxed.  I’m sure the Romans used to be nice to the Christians before sending them into the arena too.  “On you go mate – have fun.  That one on the left is really friendly if you stroke his back.  Here, have an orange juice before you go.”

My point is that the internet is the ultimate non-pressured environment in many peoples eyes.  They can sit at home in their pants if they like and no-one is going to push or persuade them into buying something they aren’t completely sure about.  It’s shopping on their terms, where they trust the retailers to allow them to do their own investigations. It’s why subtle social media ‘listening’ strategies are all the rage.

That trust, in my humble opinion, is eroded if you begin to use people’s personal information for your own targeting in very unsubtle ways.  It can turn from ‘presenting favourable choices based on their online activity’ to downright cyberstalking.

The advocates of re-marketing would of course argue the opposite.  They would say that at some point you have to close.  Letting people off too lightly might means that your prospective online customers thank you very much for the free and informative information and go buy from your competitor who happened to be in their face when they decided to commit to buy.  Adding value is all well and good but it’s those who close who ultimately win.

The answer is it is a balance of course.  People do appreciate technology where it guides them to informed choices.  But as the backlash against Facebook shows, be careful what you do with our information.  We are uncomfortable as a nation with people trying to be too smart with what marketers think THEY know about what WE want.

Ironically, Chris Cardell is now following me around the internets like a rejected lover, using remarketing to bang on my virtual door and sit in my virtual garden clutching a bunch of soggy roses.  But again he will tell you that for some it is a very effective marketing tool and frankly, if I’m not going to buy from him I probably never would have and so what does it matter my brand perception of him? For every one of me there maybe ten who do buy through this technique.

Mind you, he is so persistent; perhaps I will have another look at that seminar package he’s running…

Posted by: Rob Paton, Director, The Marketing Box

Apologies for the absence of a post for a few weeks, but yours truly took delivery of a new addition to the world which means I am now writing this at 3 o’clock in the morning with one eye on a monitor as my better half catches a few well deserved zeds.

The relevance of this is that it has brought sharply to my attention the entire industry built around new parents.  Naturally, until a few months ago I didn’t know prams actually came in options other than blue or pink, and if you’d asked me what a caesarean was I would have told you it was a salad option.

Now, of course, it is a different story.

And frankly, in my limited experience, I feel rather uncomfortable about what I describe as a ‘climate of fear’ that has been instilled in me by fellow marketers.

It is somewhat reminiscent of the experience I had when I was planning my wedding with my wife some years ago.  That familiar condescending tone that comes over a salesman’s face when you mention you are shopping for such a celebration.  Suddenly their faces light up and they turn to you (the groom and therefore the presumed whinger when it comes to spending money – correct of course) and guide you away from the normal priced offerings and straight over to the ‘premium’ range.  “Of course” they exclaim within earshot of your fiancé , “you’ll want it to be the most special day of your lives”, as your wallet rapidly starts to heat up and then instantaneously combusts.

Guilt – that is what they prey on of course.  They very cleverly plant the seed in your brain of how you will look if you DON’T buy the best.  They DON’T extol the virtues of the premium range which may well be worth the extra spend (and which is what marketing principles teach you to do).  They simply make it impossible for you to feel anything other than cheap if you don’t splash the extra cash.

The ‘emotional’ sell is of course 90% of what branding is all about.  Making connections with consumers and brands is what The Marketing Box spends most of its time trying to do, and brand perceptions are an intriguing mix of emotional and sometimes irrational opinions that we marketers aspire to at least keep under some control or influence.  But mostly these brand values are positive, aimed at creating a preference for a brand that will improve our consumers lot in life if we make a purchase, not what will happen if we don’t.

This ‘negative’ marketing is not new of course.  Insurance for example is an industry built on what might happen, and what you very much hope doesn’t happen, and yet can end up persuading you to part with hundreds of extra pounds ‘just in case’.  I actually felt quite pleased when my car went on fire a few years back.  At least I got some of my money back.

Back to the recent arrival. “Nothing but the best for baby” is a term I am becoming familiar with,  but as I mentioned what I have noticed is that more and more I am being marketed ‘at’ using language that puts the fear of god into me, rather than pushing all the joyful things we could experience.

Take the choice of car for example. It’s all about building a protective bubble around your precious darling that frankly sticks two fingers up to anyone else not following along.  Don’t worry if you crash your brand new Dulwich Tractor into another car, because your family will be fully protected by the 2 inch armour plating and impact bars.  Obviously the poor sods in the average priced family car will be scraped off the pavement and put into doggy bags, but hey it serves them right for being cheap eh?

My point is- are we all contributing to creating a society based on fear that may not actually have any basis in reality?  As if there isn’t enough stress already for a new parent. Temperature monitors, steriliser kits, cot bumpers, hypo-allergenic do-dahs etc etc and now we even have Reckitt Benckiser (Dettol) promoting an automatic soap dispenser so you don’t have to touch the nozzle (pardon but aren’t you about to wash your hands anyway?).  It all contributes to the overwhelming feeling that if you don’t buy into all these ‘innovations’, you are somehow a bad parent.

20 years ago this stuff never existed.  As far as I’m aware we didn’t have rampant diseases and children’s arms falling off left right and centre because someone didn’t use an aloe vera scented wet wipe.

But as marketers we know that by preying on the fear of a new mum, and the guilt of a new dad, it is absolutely open season on raking in the cash.

Perhaps it’s just because I have joined the newly enlightened ranks of fatherhood.  Maybe all this stuff is progress and we’re simply supplying a genuine need.  It’s not like I can claim any moral high ground over ever using slightly underhand techniques to push product anyway – I’m in marketing after all – and buyers still have a choice.  But if we deliberately create a climate in which people are made to feel somehow less responsible or even fearful if they don’t shell out on the goods, aren’t we being more than a little dishonest?

Anyway, time to get off this high horse and back to my duties.  I have to soak the fair-trade eco-nappies in Malaysian orchid water before I can prepare the yogurt and saffron foot balm for junior.  Happy days…

Posted by: Rob Paton, Director, The Marketing Box

I mean really taking over.

Like nothing else exists.

All day I get bombarded via email / linkedin / twitter  and it seems that practically every topic HAS to have the word “social” stuck in there.  Endless webinars and posts on it – How to do it effectively.  How to increase traffic.  How to engage in more conversations. How to make social media iron your shirts.

I go for a coffee and I feel like I have to tweet it rather than drink it.

And of course, when we at The Marketing Box engage with clients, it’s at the top of everyone’s agenda.

Social media is confusing and baffling and constantly moving, and that’s just for the people who are actively using it and trying to keep ahead of it (beware the self appointed ‘social media guru’).  90% of clients I meet are downright bloody scared of it.  There is an overwhelming feeling out there amongst client side executives that they should be doing more with it – or else they’re going to be left behind and somehow disappear in a puff of smoke.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  ’The internets’ is a wonderful thing for marketers. It allows access to vast audiences – engaged audiences – at a relatively low cost of investment.  It can also allow fantastic interaction with your customers and provide feedback loops that can drive your future development strategies.  It can allow you to listen, really listen to your target market.

But here’s the crux.  First, you have to deliver.

Social media has NOT provided some magic potion whereby it will fix all your problems if only you can master it, despite what the blogs might imply.

The basic principles of marketing have NOT changed with it.  If anything they have become even more important as customers gain access to more and more competing information.

You deliver what your customers need (nae demand). They then buy it.  They happy.  You happy.  Everybody wins.

Don’t forget that this new medium was not created for us marketers.  If anything social networks frown upon blatant commercialism. Social media is simply a new communications tool.  A very effective one yes – but nothing more.  Used effectively it will put your message in front of a potentially receptive and profitable audience, and if they like what they see they will actively help you by becoming external ambassadors for your brand. But those same ambassadors can just as easily burn you.

You’ve seen the X-factor right? All those excited hopefuls who turn up and queue for hours and hours on end just for that one chance to impress those judges that could change their lives and hand them their dreams. All looking the part (the same part mind) and full of promises to “blow them judges away!”

And what happens to the vast majority when they’re handed that one big chance?

That’s right – they totally bomb – usually by being exposed as sounding no better than your nan gargling her denture flush. Everybody laughs at them.  Simon Cowell makes another ten squillion quid.

Quite simply, when they get their chance, they fail to deliver.

And that is my point.  Some marketers, under pressure from clients or bosses in their headlong rush to embrace social media, are quite simply forgetting what needs to be concentrated on – the brand itself.

Yes, social media is great, but it will only put so much lipstick on a pig.

Do you actually have something credible and attractive to your target audience? Are you articulating the value of your offering correctly?  Do you understand why your potential customers will buy from you and not your competitors?  And are you willing to adapt and change your offering depending on what they tell you?

In essence, do you actually have something worth delivering?  Because until you can say yes, all you will be delivering is an empty plate.

So my advice is to take a good look first at your offering, and make sure you are delivering a product or service that is competitive and has a strong differentiated value proposition, and only then build social media into part of your overall communications strategy.

Social media gives you a stage.  So when you get onto that stage, you better be able to sing.

Posted by: Rob Paton, Director, The Marketing Box

This week has seen a customer rebellion against Sir Stuart Roses’ continued revamping of the Marks & Spencer retail brand, with a rather vocal section of minor shareholders at their AGM blaming the recent poor sales figures on styles that are too ‘young’ and unsuitable for the more ‘mature’ shopper, resulting in over 20% refusing to back his future plans.

Management hit back, saying the poor sales are a reflection of global markets with all retailers taking a hit, and have nothing to do with the brand being aimed ‘too young’ – indeed they intend to continue introducing more ‘cutting edge’ clothing ranges later this year. Are they in danger of ignoring the old marketing rule no.1 – the customer is always right?

Now, I personally wouldn’t be able to tell you the difference between a pencil or an a-line (I had to google for those words) but here at The Marketing Box we do know a thing or two about brands.

The retail industry is of course notoriously cutthroat and unpredictable, and whilst loyalty is strong, fashion waits for no (wo)man.  M&S has strong values in terms of quality, customer service and brand trust, but at the end of the day you live and die by your sales.

They were the brand of choice in the era of Diana, but after years of steady decline and an attempted takeover, four years ago Sir Stuart Rose took the bull by the horns and went full pelt for a revamp of image, which had arguably become somewhat ‘fuddy duddy’.

Twiggy was a masterstroke in brand marketing terms – showing her mixing it with the young’uns had a widespread appeal. It gave the older customers a confidence to wear styles they previously wouldn’t have, and it introduced a new breed of customers to the M&S name. Recently however it’s the concentration purely on the younger models like Lily Cole and her ‘plunging necklines’ that has produced rumblings of complaint from the grey brigade.

Of course, the clothes too have to follow through on the brand promise if you’re going to make it work.  Despite the fact that it seems icons like Kate Moss et al could persuade younger folk to stick a plant pot on their heads, the older clientele perhaps need a little more consideration. With new lines based around bondage and leopard print designs it seems the brand is stretching what the mature crowd are prepared to be seen wearing at the local Sally Army fete.  ‘Far too much cleavage on show’ seems to be a firm warning that the brand repositioning is happening too fast for a significant part of the customer base.

But how significant? Coining a retail phrase and being utterly brutal, the majority of these protesting shareholders are …ahem…a bit past their own sell by dates.  Yes, they form a major part of the core M&S market but the management know that they won’t be around as long as the new generation.  Right now, in the thick of a recession, there’s high demand for ‘throw away’ clothes the likes of Primark provide, but when the economy recovers this group are likely to move up a grade or two – potentially into M&S territory. If they were to kowtow to this complaining group now what would that say to this potentially lucrative younger generation of future customers?  We’re back to the ‘fuddy duddy’ image that was nearly the death of them before.

Perhaps the answer lies in the long established M&S core values such as quality, service and value for money, rather than trying to be seen as trend leaders.  You cannot appeal to everyone’s particular tastes, but quality never goes out of fashion as they say, and it’s difficult to argue against the wide-ranging appeal of those highly prised and hard fought for USPs.

When you’re not a niche marketer, you’re always going to have a problem at corporate brand level of appealing to all of your target groups needs – that is after all how niche players are able to pick away at your customer base.

The trick is to keep ahead of what the largest majority want, and listen to them most intently, without alienating your ‘fringe’ customers at the same time. If those fringe customers become too alien, then you’re into sub-brand or different brand territory.

So don’t expect to see an exciting new range of twin set and beads anytime soon at your local M&S, but do be confident that if your leopard print teeny bikini falls apart on the beach, you will get a full refund no questions asked.

Posted by: Rob Paton, Director, The Marketing Box

Perhaps British Gas’s frankly bare faced cheek at trying to market their outrageous price hikes as ‘to fund necessary investment in our future energy supplies’ (nice timing by the way)?

Or maybe the continuing skepticism surrounding the  Olympic Ticket marketing strategy which everyone now realises was a way of disguising the fact that the vast majority are simply overpriced (£75 to see a hockey 11th place decider anyone?  Anyone???)?

No, of course not.

What else but last weeks dramatic wipe out of The News of The World in one of the swiftest brand culls in history.

Talk about summary justice.  It was like the bond villain dispatching one of his most trusted evil aides who had nevertheless “failed me for the last time”.

Rather than trawl over the same points that everyone is making, I thought I would relate this example to a practical subject – that of just how one should deal with a brand that is not selling you as it should.

In extremely damaging cases, treating it like a leper as the rest of your brands stand aside and point at it is one way, a la James/Rupert Murdoch.

Clearly this damage limitation tactic is an attempt to throw all the blame onto NOTW and disassociate News International and its other brands from it – in a way trying to garner some sort of moral high ground by sharing the collective disgust. Which is a little bit like Dracula complaining about the treatment of veal.

Really though, in cases where your brand is not actively destroying your companies reputation of course, you should follow it through its natural decline stage and take full advantage of the equity it has built up.  Whilst it still creates revenue over and above the time & resources spent on it, it will continue to promote positive brand values in your customers minds and re-enforce their loyalty ties to your company (assuming you continue to support it properly of course).

Conversely, if your brand is still in it’s early stages but is not promoting it’s key USPs effectively, then it may be worth considering a change.

It’s a common pitfall of new organisations to rush headlong into a venture without really thinking about the brand from the start.  I meet many young companies who have gone quite far down a route, maybe even years, before properly engaging with a marketing professional. Often when you ask them why they are called what they are called you get the most bizarre answers (I once met a company named after its founder’s pet – I kid you not).

Yet when you suggest that a different name could be used to better sell the companies/products value, they become very defensive and sometimes even emotional.  True, they will have built up equity in their current client base – which is exactly why you should get the brand values established from the start – but it really makes no sense to not choose a brand name that absolutely fits with your messaging and will give you the best chance to attract and retain new customers. Continuing with a name that isn’t articulating the proper value as well as it could be may well be losing you opportunities.

Ideally therefore, so long as you have established a brand name early that best fits your offering you should stick with it. Style and presentation, even straplines, may alter – but unless the fundamental benefits of the product or service dramatically change then it should be left alone to run its course until lack of market demand gives it a natural death.

Therefore, you have to say that the action by Murdoch to completely kill off the NOTW  is quite bold from a business sense. Yes, the revelations are inexcusable, but there is after all a great deal of positive brand equity, let alone skillsets, that has been lost due to the actions of  (what we are led to believe is) a few rogue reporters and editors.

Unfortunately for the Murdooch’s, as the rest of this week has shown, even cutting the head off a chicken will sometimes not stop it from running around causing mayhem for while.  The continuing fall out each day looks more and more likely to engulf the whole of News Corporation and all of its media brands.

Cynics of course are already surmising a new brand will emerge from the ashes of The News of The World, and in a few months it will be business as usual.

Given the unpredictable peculiarities of The Great British Public™ however, I think we’ll just have to wait and see if they can get away with that one.

Posted by: Rob Paton, Director, The Marketing Box

In this case the woman in question wasn’t even working in the beauty department (where the staff seem to be permanently caked in weapons grade foundation and lipstick) – she was part of the HMV concession. The store, nevertheless, has a detailed policy on how all customer-facing employees should present themselves.

The key target market for Harrods, one can only presume, is particularly wealthy types who ‘expect’ certain standards in those they buy their DVD’s from.

I don’t wish to get into the rights and wrongs or indeed the legalities when it comes to hiring people who are going to be customer-facing, but as long as you have a ‘reasonable business case’ you can ask staff to comply to certain dress codes and standards that reflect your image.

Furthermore, although I guess plenty of vegetarians work for Burger King and I don’t suppose there are many funeral parlours who can recommend a coffin from first hand experience, in general it would seem to make sense that your employees can to some extent evangelise your brand.  ‘Harrods’ and ‘make up’ are certainly close bedfellows in my own limited perceptions.

What is an important lesson to learn here is that in our experience many companies, especially in business to business markets, often completely overlook the key role that many staff play in carrying your brand.  It isn’t just the retail or leisure industires that have to consider how their staff appear and interact with customers.

In fact, there are very few jobs these days that don’t involve some form of interaction with a client or customer in some way.  With thatin mind, an employee or even sub-contractor is a potential brand ambassador – from the receptionist to the guy that delivers components or anything else on your behalf.

Time and again we come across business to business marketing managers who spend fortunes on preparing a brand launch for the external market (plus the sales teams of course), and yet when it comes to many other internal staff they have presumed they will somehow gather what is going on and join in.  Often they just get a simple email on the day of launch from which they are expected to understand the brand strategy and fall in line.

Internal brand ambassadors (those that are directly or indirectly employed by you as opposed to those who speak positively of your brand from experience) are, in fact, absolutely essential in ensuring a brand’s values and messages are strengthened and proven at all points of contact throughout the sales process.

All those many marketing pounds that you have spent carefully and painstakingly crafting messages and promotional materials to entice, reassure and convince potential customers to even approach your brand can be completely undermined by the troops on the ground that haven’t really bought in because they weren’t ever really included in the process.

Often it is as simple as keeping them and the management fully informed of brand developments and plans, and where possible given chances to feedback or contribute.  After all, anything that is going to make the company more successful is a positive thing for even the most disgruntled of employees. And if they make that connection then they are far more likely to ensure that they do their best, however small, to help the customer along the path to purchase. Ultimately you want them working for you, not against you.

In the case of the Harrods employee, she clearly has never really bought into or understood what the dress policy is in place for, ultimately directly affecting the store’s profits and therefore also her own salary, despite the fact she signed a contract agreeing to the rules in the first place.

I stress again, as part of any brand implementation plan it is vital that internal staff and suppliers are treated with as much importance as the ‘external’ end users or influencers, and in fact a comprehensive internal brand launch should form a major part of the roll out schedule.

So in a way I certainly sympathise with Harrods.  They are trying to create a ‘brand experience’ for their target market which includes ensuring that their staff  ‘fit in’ to their customers perceptions, no matter how old fashioned or draconian it may sound.

Reading between the lines I suspect that it is to do with how she was told rather than why, and she has put her own self interest in front of the company she works for.  I don’t think anyone is implying that she looks better with make-up than without, but rather that she is expected to ‘take one for the team’ as it were.  Do you think that the poor guy on the high street wearing the sandwich board sign and ridiculous chicken outfit really wants to be seen in that?

Sometimes you just have to remember that old marketing adage; “the (paying my wages) customer is always right”.

Posted by: Rob Paton, Director, The Marketing Box

For the rest of you, this week has seen a plethora of knee jerk scaremongering amongst the media and some others, many of whom I suspect have a self-centred agenda, in announcing almost with glee that Facebook is losing members ‘hand over fist’ following the second month in a row where it has seen its active membership falling in the US and Canada, and that this spells the ‘end’ for the social media giants.

Only last week I attended a talk at which several hundred senior HR directors were told by a speaker from an online recruitment agency that the ‘big three’ (Facebook, twitter & Linkedin) were a complete waste of time and were ‘so last year’, much to the bemusement of the crowd most of whom had only just about got to grips with how to post a status.

The suggestion is that people are leaving the big three in favour of more localised or niche applications that cater for their specific tastes.

Let’s get a little perspective on what’s actually going on here.

Facebook has just under 700 million ‘active’ members (essentially people who log on at least once a month).  That’s equivalent to the third largest country in the world and twice the population of the US.  In the last recorded month that the stats refer to, 12 million more people signed on than signed off worldwide. The countries where members are actually falling slightly are where already more than 50% of the population have signed up.

What’s happening in these situations is that Facebook is entering its maturity stage in the product lifecycle.  It’s actually running out of people in these countries who are likely to sign up, and logic says cannot keep expanding forever. The people that are ‘moving on’ are therefore one of two groups…

They either are so fashion conscious that they don’t like being part of the masses and so will always be on the look out for something new and different (commonly known as ‘early adopters’- you know the type), or they never really “got into” Facebook in the first place and just don’t see its benefit, and so are dropping off the ‘active’ list as they fail to use it, like enthusiastic new year gym joiners in any given February.

The former is never easy to market to unless you’re involved in a leading (or is that bleeding?) cutting edge product – and here’s where I suspect many of the naysayers have an interest. It’s also where the youth market resides who are notoriously fickle and would rather be seen dead than use anything their dad’s might.

And the latter, those that don’t really get it, are catered for already by other more traditional methods of marketing.  Let’s not forget Facebook wasn’t created for us marketeers (if anything they don’t really like us!). It isn’t going to be able to catch everyone.

The folks running Facebook aren’t daft either.  They already know that only around half of their users log in everyday. They are therefore now embarking on an “engagement strategy”, which will concentrate on getting users to log on more frequently as they link up with other tools and apps to provide more services (music/ location apps/ retail etc).

Once this takes hold (and I think it will) then this latter group of ‘lapsed users’ may well return to their accounts and use them more, much like those friends who resisted mobiles for so long are now mostly sporting at least a basic model (“I never use it, I just have it in case someone needs to get in touch” – uhuh).

Facebook for all it’s foibles is a damn easy way to keep in touch with people and share information, and even your gran can get the basics with a few lessons.  Twitter too, once mastered, can act as a very good tool for keeping abreast of topics or people that interest you. And then there’s Linkedin, which just about covers the business networking side of things (ironically already being threatened itself by Facebook’s private groups functionality).

Most people can see these tools used together as a pretty smart way to keep tabs on the zillion things that are going on in all our lives.  Who really wants to get to grips with even more if it means more log in’s and more passwords? Do me a favour. That’s why most of the new social apps such as Foursquare integrate with Facebook rather than challenging it.

The people touting the death of Facebook also forget how slow the mass market is to catch up.  Sure, web based customer driven development sites like Dells Ideastorm and Mystarbucksidea are definitely flagships for leading edge customer engagement marketing, but are they really going to ditch their social media strategies in favour of it?

Mass ‘Social media’ is therefore very much here to stay.  And In the meantime the least  that a marketeer should do is go with where the ‘crowds’ are – and 700 million and counting is a fairly big crowd to potentially share your messages.

The big three, for the time being, hold the cartel on the social media network, and unseating them is going to take a heck of a shift.

I think if Facebook had a voice it would comment in the terms of the late great Mark Twain, after his demise was prematurely announced in the New York Journal: “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated”.

Posted by: Rob Paton, Director, The Marketing Box