press

Marketing becomes a world of choices

Selling products to customers used to seem simple —? now it’s a two way street. There are many ways to target a consumer and just as many ways that person might respond, according to the Courier’s panel of advertising and marketing experts. Excerpts follow:

SULLIVAN: One issue that’s on my mind and the mind of our agency is, there’s always been a differentiation between brand advertising and direct response marketing and actual categorizations between above-the-line advertising and below-the-line advertising. And I just want to know why that is. I don’t think brand and response are mutually exclusive. In some ways, I think direct marketing is more above-the-line in certain circumstances than is mass advertising.

WORPLE: One of the issues that I kind of struggle with is the balance between being all things to people and staying focused on what we do well. How to answer client questions about bundled vs. unbundled agency services, deciding who and how you partner with other agencies. How you broaden and expand your own capabilities without losing sight of what you’re good at.

McHALE: An issue today that’s huge and very new for us is the latest FCC ruling on the ability to own multiple TV stations, radio stations and newspapers in a market.

POWELL: We’re responsible here in Cincinnati for marketing corporate communications and a new division to the bank called quality management I would say the issues we struggle with are business line and geographic prioritization of marketing resources, and also prioritizations of marketing resources between new and innovative mediums or different mediums for us.

BOLES: Listening to all of your comments, I think a lot of those are similar issues that we have, too.

But from a selfish standpoint, one of the things that I think we’re worrying about is, we know what to tell the consumer, but who is she, who is the exact consumer who wants to buy the unique version of Olay vs. something on Tide? What motivates her, where do you reach her? Is it direct mail, is it TV or what combination? I mean, 10 years ago it was easy, it was mass marketing and it was TV. And that’s not the case anymore. It’s, how do you fix what the right combination of above-and below-line to get to the right person?

COURIER: Before the Internet and before cable became super cable, or whatever you want to call it now, and before publications like this one even started to hit the market, I would assume it was a lot more clear as to how to reach people or how to attempt to reach people; your resources were very limited. Now you have almost infinite choices of how to try to reach people. Can you be more effective now than you ever could before?

WORPLE: I’ll take a crack at that. I think it’s a mix. They might even offset each other. But you have a greater proliferation of all of these messages coming from all of these different places. So you have a lot more clutter you have to get through and that makes the job harder. But with the right communication and the right insight with the consumer at the right time, you can do it in an effective way.

And all the different tools that you now have at your disposal vs. just the TVâ€â€? there’s a multitude and they’ve all been sliced so many different ways. You can get to just about any consumer at a moment when they’re going to be most receptive to your message. I think that makes it easier.

BOLES: Harder for the marketer, easier for the consumers.

POWELL: We’re fortunate in that we can take a product, take the group of people who are actively using the product, model that consumer and find out exactlyâ€â€?gosh, they absolutely watch this television show, shop in these stores, read these magazines, and (we can) be much more efficient to them. It costs you more to get to that point but once you do that, you say, we have invested X-dollars to reach this consumer and your payback is easily justifiable, and do it again and do it again and do it again.

SULLIVAN: Right. The multitude of media, I think it makes it problematic in a way or it could be challenging. It depends on how you look at it I think it’s a lot more fun. You’re playing with a media Rubik’s Cube (rather) than just saying, let’s run it on NBC. I think I’m earning my paycheck now.

McHALE: I think it really gives an even stronger reason for someone like Empower or other businesses to be in business. We did a piece a while ago on media fragmentation. Fragmentation is our friend because it does allow you to reach someone very specifically that otherwise you weren’t necessarily sure if you were reaching them, you were broadly casting this net.

COURIER: But are you there yet? Do you know who or where your consumer is?

BOLES: You can be effective. The question is, at what price? The struggle we have and I’m sure everyone else has isâ€â€?you said you could reach a lot of consumers with a real broad TV message, but how efficient was that? We want to make sure we try to reach the right consumer with the right media because it could be in-store, it could be direct mail, it could be radio, to make sure you’re using those dollars as efficiently as you can. Because you don’t want to raise prices and we want to make it as efficient as we can. It’s hard.

Pampers (the brand) â€â€? they know a new mom, they know what the baby was, the sex, where it was born. They keep those addresses. They have a pretty good ongoing way of getting those consumers. But if you’re trying to reach somebody in a huge market like hair care or skin care, it’s very difficult to know who’s the right buyer and reach them effectively.

SULLIVAN: The math is more likely to work out if you track it over time. Everybody knows a lifetime value of a customer, like Jenny’s business. Yes, sometimes just a mass approach is a great way to get free checking, you know. You bring people in. But your return on your investment for that little snapshot in time is going to be “X.” It might work, it might not But if you take those people that are now customers and they are part of your database and now you start looking at the data and cross-selling â€â€? you take your checking account customer with a $20,000 balance sitting there and you start selling them mutual funds, the math is going to be terrific. Shorter term, it might be a little more expensive but longer term, it’s growing also.

BOLES: Bottom line is, if you can get somebody who loves Pampers and they’ll keep on using it, that’s the best. You have that kind of bond with the consumer, that’s great.

COURIER: Let’s say we’re in 1999 again. There were, it seemed to me from an outsider’s point of view, a lot of companies doing a lot of dumb things with their advertising dollars. Is there anything (that) was learned as an industry, that you would just never do again because it just turned out to be dumb?

POVVELL: At least from our perspective, it was not a huge part of the budget. I think that one of the things that we’re very specific to do now is not overlap vehicles.

So if we’re doing a tremendous amount in an internal, we’re really pretty careful to make sure that we’re not putting all of our eggs in that same seasonal basket. In the late ’90s we might have done a contest 52 weeks and advertising on top of that and we just sort of took some things for granted. Then when the pressure came on to be more efficient, and in our case we were growing rapidly and all the budgets were increasing, how you prioritize the market, where do you look for deficits and opportunities? I think we’re now more pragmatic in trying some things in some markets and not trying multiple things. And you do know whether they work or not, you find out, but it gets back to that efficiency thing.

WORPLE: I would say that we were lucky in that we had minimal dot-com exposure. Unfortunately, the thing that we had done, is we got fairly complacent about how we approached new business. So we had gotten to the point where we were picking and choosing who we would entertain as potential clients and kind of forgot to be out there doing the groundwork for when things slowed down. All of a sudden it was like, whoa. New business didn’t seem as easy as it appeared earlier, (and we were) kind of figuring out our own message, and how we were going to position ourselves to people as times changed. The thing that I learned was, you can never take new business for granted. You always have to be working at it no matter how ripe things might seem at a given point in time.

COURIER: Has the advertising and marketing industry been able to catch its breath?

SULLIVAN: Change is constant.

BOLES: It’s going to keep on changing.

COURIER: How?

BOLES: I think where companies are merging all the time, price is important, value is important, performance, what you’re getting for it, and price that you’re paying for it, mat’s always going to be the case. And we’re going to see more vehicles, not less. I think above and below the line is going to be a major factor in the future. Do I spend my money in the store, direct mail, radio, billboards, TV, newspaper, all of the above?

COURIER: But those are all known quantities now. Why would they be different? There’s going to be something new?

McHALE: Personal video recorders, that’s going to have some effect You look at what’s happening in newspaper readership, and certainly to the Internet I don’t know where that’s going to go but its certainly going somewhere. And I don’t know where the next leap will be but we are absolutely there. And as you say, ads on cell phones, ads on your PDA. And those are effective. We’ve done some of those. People love them.

COURIER: So how do you make sure that you understand all this; where do you go for the information?

WORPLE: I think we see it on a brand-by-brand or service-by-service basis â€â€? if you do look at the consumer, what their day is like and how they live their life. Those opportunities present themselves to market to them at those points. And many times you discover those aperture moments; somebody’s already created a vehicle to talk to them there.

COURIER: What’s an “aperture moment?”

WORPLE: It’s a moment when the mind is open to receive a certain message. And like I was saying, there are people who have already found a lot of those aperture channels, found a way to communicate to those people at those points. It’s not necessarily that you know all of those different vehicles at any one time, but it’s important that you know when and where the consumer’s going to be receptive to the message. And if that vehicle’s not available, you’ll sometimes find yourself crafting it.

BOLES: I think it’s important to know who you’re talking to. And if you listen to them very carefully, you’ll figure out how to get to them. Because the consumer package has to be easier â€â€? you have to understand, the people who go to Pringles tend to be teen-age boys. We’re going to reach them at a certain place they’re more open to Pringles, in certain environments. And we know that half of decisions in the store are made in the store and then other decisions are made when you use the product. So you have to make sure that you listen to the consumer you’re going after and you make the product delightful to use, whether they’re going to engage with it either at the store, while they’re eating it or using it or talking to their friends. And so you just kind of listen to the consumer. SULLIVAN: And how you keep up with all of that, I would say ifs my obligation â€â€? the agency’s obligation to really work to keep up with that a lot more so than the clients. The clients, of course, are on top of their business.

One of the best experiences I ever had was going from the agency side to the client side. I grew up in an agency family. My dad has an agency, still in business. And I used to think everything was advertising, advertising, advertising. And then I went to Mattel and you’re working on the design of the Barbie and the fabric source and the shipping, the pricing and selling to retailers and it’s got to get through customs —? oh, yeah, we have to advertise it.

Advertising was just 10 percent of what I did, so I think it’s more of the agency’s obligation to drive that and come through with new ideas and fresh thinking. Everything won’t fly but it is our obligation to come up with new ideas.

COURIER: Our typical reader is running a fairly small business and doesn’t have monstrous resources. What would you tell them that they might not know about how to be effective with a small amount of resources?

POWELL: I think one of the important things is not to make the assumption that it’s all about acquiring new customers. They have to understand who their current customer is, what’s essential of that base. You would be much more profitable and grow much faster if you don’t channel your marketing energy to just acquisition. You balance expense and retention. And by giving some attention of your marketing effort to retention of your current customer and expanding your relationship with them, you learn a lot about them.

If you listen to the customer, then you have an idea of what’s going to attract them to you. And if they aren’t attracted to you, they’re on the fence about you, what you can do to modify? And that can help you get your advertising message. We have all been about trying to grow and grow and grow.

Everybody has a growth model. Very few people consider themselves successful if they’re flat to declining. And one mistake that’s easy to make is not looking at your client base, and that’s true with small businesses and big businesses.

SULLIVAN: I couldn’t agree more. The first thing I would advise anybody, if it’s the fashion stare across the street, who is your current customer?

POWELL: And do they like you?

BOLES: Make them love you, make them loyal to you.

SULLIVAN: But also from an acquisition point of view, you want look-alike customers. If all these guys are coming from what neighborhood, from this demographic profile, what those are…

POWELL: And can they give their next-door neighbor to you?

BOLES: At P&G, it’s a global business. Within P&G there are tiny brands and big brands and I think the principles apply no matter what brands you’re talking about. If you don’t know who’s the one who’s likely to buy you and make them want to love you â€â€? I mean, create a bond with you, it doesn’t matter if you’re talking about the store across the street or Chevrolet, it’s the same issue. So I’d spend some of my time and money and effort on trying to figure out who’s likely to buy me and then, once they start buying me, make sure they love me and keep on coming back and build a real bond with them.

POWELL: Every agency I’ve ever worked with, they want to do research and they want to build it and that’s really hard in a real-life business situation, as I’m sure for a small business, to be patient to do mat. It’s that sort of foolish first step that’s critical.

BOLES: I also wouldn’t underestimate word of mouth. It’s absolutely amazing how getting the right people to talk about your brand or your business the right way can be such a big deal. It pays off big dividends. We have research money, obviously. What we try to do, find those people who are going to talk things up, who were the first ones to experience, they like to try new things, you get to them first.

POWELL: Early adapters. I bought a Swiffer because I got tired of my neighbor talking about it “You have to get this.” I’m going to get it because I feel inadequate because I don’t have one.

BOLES: I will tell you I’ve personally sold a couple of hundred cases of Olay Total Effect because I love it so much. I talk about it so much I get everyone to go out and buy it I’m a user of it I adore it and I’m passionate about it I should be credited with at least 100 cases.

COURIER: What are some effective tools that help that?

WORPLE: One of the things that we found with Swiffer in test market is that people were actually buying it as a gift. So coming out of the test market, we created a tell-a-friend program. You purchased the Swiffer and got several coupons with it. You’d fill in your name and address, give it to a friend who’d redeem it and you would get free Swifter refills.

COURIER: What have you decided the Internet’s best at?

BOLES: I was going to say it’s great for fast, quick access. We do all of our concept testing on the Internet. You get a four-hour turnaround, you can make lots of mistakes and learn very fast and keep repeating ourself.

And the other thing we use it for is tailoring a brand. There are different brands that’ll have the Olay club or the Swiffer tell-a-friend group. People can sign up and get information that they really like and they tell their neighbors. They buy cases and that’s good.

SULLIVAN: It’s a great way to talk to people. This is going to sound really stupid. It’s a great way to talk to people who want to be talked to over the Internet It’s a channel of choice. If you log onto Home Made Simple and want to have a dialogue with a product or service, then it’s an absolutely awesome tool. It’s just sort of like having somebody knock on your door every day and talk to you about your product.

WORPLE: If somebody comes to your site â€â€? talk about having aperture moments. They’re open to your message because they’re seeking you out. They’re looking for you to share information at that point.

POWELL- It’s great if you have a strong affiliation. We have major sports affiliations. Anybody else wants anything from the Milwaukee Brewers checking and you’re a Milwaukee Brewers fan, click here and go to our site, you can click on the site. And that’s a fabulous connective tool for a very targeted group.

You could clearly find a niche for adoption. You can find a group that is using the product for something unusual. Swiffer in high-risk baby, mother industries. It’s super-targeted.

McHALE: There are really two things we have had great success with in the Internet advertising and marketing. Jenny’s talking about going out there and getting on sites and if someone clicks on your link, the site that you were on gets a kick for getting somebody to buy a product.

And then the other area that’s been very successful is search engines operations. Sites go through Web addresses on search engines. It’s been terrific and helped to get people to go where you want them to go without them knowing you pay to have it at the top of the list at one, two or three vs. you might just, by chance, fall at number 20.

COURIER; Are there focus groups these days? Are there inner, fee-based marketing lists? How are you filtering the information?

POWELL: Gosh…there is a tremendous number, whether ifs experience, retention technology. Ifs unbelievable, whether it’s your Kroger scan card or database modeling. I mean, if you’re able to obtain data from your customers, it’s tremendous. And that gives you a much richer perception of who that customer is so you can say to this person because they live in this ZIP code is likely to have children. Or you can even capture that in some sort of vehicle for information that they share with you. I mean, I think there are more vehicles than ever to enhance your knowledge of your customer.

And businesses are really smart about giving customers the benefit for exchange of that information. We’d like to open a savings account for your newborn child. We have opened an account, we’ve provided an initial deposit but we now have a child, and at 18, let’s sell them a Visa card, let’s start talking about student loans. I think marketers are smarter.

SULLIVAN: I think a lot of marketers, including some of the mass brand advertisers, are trying to build databases, customer databases. They’re trying to capture information. So if somebody goes to the Swifter Web site, you have that name. You’re going to do what you can to enroll them now that you have the data.

All that information is there around what we do as a direct marketing agency. We look at the data first. Actions speak louder than words. Let’s see what they’re doing and see what their behavior is. It’s more important… at least it’s a starting point. It’s more important than what they say in a focus group.

BOLES: I think that’s very important. And to follow it up with some qualitative information, which is not usually focus.