Leader of the Pack

Staying ahead of the game is always the name of the game in the world of brands. If you want to succeed you need to be at the forefront, the leader of the pack, ahead of the curve (anymore clichés anyone?).

From the playground to the boardroom, the latest trend often becomes the greatest. We have seen the 80s brand boldness, where it was about being big and being brilliant - Coke, Nike, Sony- they all personified being the best, being materially successful, being in charge.  Then came the Noughties and with it thriftiness, being savvy - shopping at Top Shop, the rise of Aldi and Lidl. Followed by the ethical generation  - H&M Conscious, People Tree, Ecover - the list is endless.

So where do we go now? How do brands compete and what will be the latest trend to set you apart from the crowd?

Well, in our opinion, it’s going to swing back to People, to customers.

Recent research supports this move with 60% of consumers quoting as having higher expectations of customer experience than they did a year ago (Parature[1]) and by 2017, 50% of consumer product investments will be redirected to customer experience innovations.[2].

We are entering a brand space where differentiation is hard. The days of personally manufacturing goods are pretty much gone, outside of cottage industries. Technology has changed the way we work to such a point that for the majority of product production, robots really can do our job, and better. 

So, what’s left? It’s customer service, it’s human contact.

Our local row of shops is testament to this change. A decade ago when we first moved into the area, there was a butcher, a chemist, a baker, a grocer. We now how three hairdressers and four cafes. Why? Because they are about human interaction, about meeting and greeting.

So brands need to think on their feet, and fast. They need to think about how their brand, their product or service, can personalise and bring their customer to the heart of what they do. So this could mean for fashion retailers personal shoppers as the norm, maybe pick your outfits for the month with your virtual assistant online and go in store to try and buy. Or for butchers it is about creating meal plans for the family for the week and delivering your meat box, or working with the local grocer to provide the veg for your daily meal box. To survive brands need to go one step further, to not only think like their customers, but to think ahead of their customers.

They need to stop believing that outbound message with a name attached will do when it comes to a personalised approach, but think about what really would make a difference to their customers. They need to offer a solution rather than just display their wares and hope it resonates with the target audience.

We feel it’s exciting times for brands. Those who think differently, who are not reined in by the change coming will find themselves redefining how they do things.  It will be these brands that take us into the roaring 20s and beyond.

[1] https://sessioncam.com/the-big-list-of-customer-experience-statistics/

[2] http://blogs.gartner.com/jake-sorofman/gartner-surveys-confirm-customer-experience-new-battlefield/

Top of the Brand Pops

So British Airways comes Top of The Pops of the Superbrands 2016 list again on both the Consumer and the Business list.  Wowser.

How does a brand that is still premium in price fair so well in our  ‘live well for less’ world? Especially when other iconic brands such as Cadbury, BMW and Sony have fallen out of the Top 20 this year? This customer perception accolade also comes at a time when International Airlines Group, the owner of British Airways, reported a 65% jump in annual profits after a bumper year of strong demand and low fuel costs.

It doesn’t come as any surprise to us here at Antelope that customer perception of British Airways - be it a consumer or business customer - reflects its financial success, how the strength of its brand promise has led to its success.

It has also made us more committed to our belief that brand equity and understanding your bit of ‘gold dust’ can really help brands stand out and stand the test of time.  And how important it is to understand your audiences, find their value proposition and communicate this proposition to each audience continues to be.

Over the years I have seen so many senior management teams dismiss the importance of the brand. To side track the essence of what their brand is for discussions about profit margins. Believing brand marketing is too intangible to be justified, and communications is solely something that features on the cost rather than revenue line of the balance sheet.

I am going to say this loud and clear - Finding out what makes you different than your competitors, what your brand promise is and hinging the hub of your content on this difference is the key to brand success, and the key to financial success.  

In fact, far from being intangible there is a process, even a science.  Situational analysis, competitor and market research, identifying your audiences, and your potential audiences, possibly redefining that audience, identifying their emotional responses, their reasons for purchase and linking your brand essence to these emotional triggers - are all part of that process.  It can be intense, it is brand navel gazing, but it isn’t indulgent. 

Let’s go back to British Airways' success. Stephen Cheliotis, the Chairman of the Expert Councils and Chief Executive at The Centre for Brand Analysis (TCBA) comments, “British Airways continues to be deemed a perfect representation of a brand that embodies quality, reliability and distinction; the three facets inherent in a Superbrand.”  What British Airways also continues to do is to understand it’s brand proposition, flex those three facets of quality, reliability and distinction to its audiences -both in a B2C and a B2B context - and stand straight and firm on its brand promise, and watch as it reaps the benefits. What’s not super about that?

Who's That Girl?

Or that boy for that matter? I’m talking audience segmentation and whether in today’s world of personalisation are we still using old perimeters to talk to our customers.

As an agency, the first thing the Antelope team undertakes with any client is a product submersion. Finding out what their “bit of golddust” is, their hub of their content.  For many it’s surprising. Far from being about their product or service, it’s often more about the relationship between their brand and their audiences. So for a retail client, it’s about understanding their customers, for a travel client it’s about the experiences they offer and for another client, it’s the stories behind their wares.

But what is also surprising is how many companies, having identified their USP, their nugget of gold, then thinks one size will fit all when it comes telling people about their brand- when writing their content.  We’re not talking about personalised messaging or remarketing from cookies trails here, but about reaching out with content that is driven with stagnant audience groups that haven’t existed for many a year.

Let’s go back to the retail analogy and imagine the client is a shoe shop.  So it immediately classifies those over 45 as a more “mature” customer, those with children as “yummy mummies” and those who live in the country as being wedded to their wellies.  But what about those septuagenarians who like to go out dancing, and what about the customers who hate a heel? Or those customers who aren’t constrained by one gender or another, how will the shoe shop service them? The blurring of lines between customers has never been so much like a Venn diagram than it is today. 

But this in itself leads to a marketing dilemma. When the world is more demanding and more vocal than ever before, how do companies reach and, here’s the crunch, engage, with customers today? 

At Antelope, we believe it’s going back to our roots - it’s about stopping looking at standardised segmentation based on age, region and gender and look at their emotional tie to your product and service.  Do they want to feel glamorous in your shoes? Then give them some Dita Von Teese stilettos. Want a comfy pair for Slouchy Sunday - then bunch your loafers around this thread.

This is where content that understands your target market and tries to engage and reflect their lifestyle can really help a brand engage with a customer. This is why bloggers have turned into product influencers as their copy is about their lifestyle and what fits into it, rather than a brand review or analysis.

The customer is always right and letting that customer lead your content marketing is the only way you will ever get it right with them.

Photo courtesy of Vlado and www.freedigitalphotos.net

'Tis the Season...

I read a great article last week from Kevin Chesters on The Drum website, entitled 'Tis the season for shit puns and terrible word play', which not only made me laugh out loud but got me thinking about the whole marketing of Christmas shenanigans. 

It is an odd time of the year - the festive season. On one hand, it is the most commercial, mass market occasion known to man.  Everyone worshipping a big bearded fellow, who flies in from the North Pole with a herd of reindeers to land on our roofs and try to shimmy down our chimneys. And then on the other hand, it is about spending time with your loved ones, and keeping the magic alive for the little ones so we can see their faces light up as they tear open their Christmas stocking while avoiding tearing open the bank statements.

For those who work in marketing, how do you make the most heartfelt of holidays special to one and all? And avoid the cacophony of commercialism crashing around your ears in the scrum of customers looking for the best deal for their loved ones?  As Kevin Chesters points out Christmas marketing is all about corniness, as many puns, terrible word play and clichés as possible.  So how do small businesses stand out from the Christmas chatter and make their Christmas campaigns feel a little more special?

At Antelope, we actually don’t think Christmas is that big a deal. Well, let’s rephrase that. Yes it is a kinda big deal in terms of sales with many B2C companies selling more in the lead up to Christmas than the 10 months preceding.  And yes, it’s a big deal in terms of balancing teams out of the office, deadlines still looming and the like. But it isn’t a big deal in terms of changing your communications strategy for 4-8 weeks of the year so you stop talking about why your brand/company is different and why your competitors should choose you over them, in favour of some Christmas puns and festive one-liners. 

It’s time to be smart rather than schmaltzy.  Instead of going down the obvious route of elves and tinsel, stick to your brand messaging with a nod to the festivities.  So if you sell cars, don’t wrap a big bow around one and hope that it suddenly becomes top of someone’s Christmas list, but suggest a Christmas crowdfunding campaign with friends and family to give someone what they really want this year.

Make it personal. Draft your content according to your audience. Be more traditional if reaching out to an older audience, and a bit more today if you are talking to the youth.  Ask if the gift is for the customer or a member of the family/friend so that you don’t harangue them all the year following with offers that might interest the in-laws but are deleted as quickly from their inbox as the advent calendar chocolates are eaten.

Think about the bigger picture. It is the season for giving so this is the time to weave in your CSR/charity programme. John Lewis is a prime example of this with their Man on The Moon advert that supports Age UK while promoting their brand and gaining their share of voice in the Christmas market, without a pun in sight.

And finally, be merry.  Bring your January sales forward and reward your loyal customers with incentives to buy or treat themselves with a discount code or a gift with purchase. Goodwill to all men, and women, is more likely to bring you more customers in the New Year or at least some good PR in the bank, for the year ahead.

Growing your Business

Antelope Director, Hayley Lee talks about how communications, marketing and PR can support business growth strategies, especially for SMEs. 

Breaking Boundaries

So Radio X launches in its own self created furore of being a radio station for men. And promptly denies it with it’s first presenter, on its first programme on its first day, Chris Moyles claiming that was purely “just a marketing thing”.

Whether Radio X really wants a male or female audience listening isn’t really the issue. What is is that some marketing agency/consultancy/guru has decided there is a gap in the market for a male radio station (Radio 5 Live, Talk Radio, Talk Sport anyone?) and has based their content strategy on targeting this gap, and then realised what an out-of-date, cliché strategy that really is.

Doesn’t put marketers in a good light, doesn’t it?  

Funnily enough, at the same time as the furore around Radio X was happening, my friend and journalist, Matt Gaw was writing about female stereotypes in his regular column  and Independent reporter Laura Bates continues her Everyday Sexism Project. 

All of these gender conversations have made me think about how we market to the sexes, and whether there really is a differentiation of engagement to be made based on whether they were born a girl or boy.  Is it really as basic as that?

I think not.  As a mother of three sons, I have always felt slightly bemused at strangers’ comments about whether I wanted to have a girl with the underlying assumption that a girl would be different.  As individuals their traits, personalities, likes and dislikes are as unique as their DNA and balancing these often conflicting tastes is a career within itself. 

In my opinion, customers are just as unique. Where there is no doubt that there are definite parallels and trends that can be drawn by analysts and number crunchers, the best marketing finds the hub of what the individual customer needs and wants and reflects that back to them in their product or service. That’s why account management remains the strongest asset in most company’s growth strategy even within today’s technology driven world. 

Painting everyone with the same brush is the easiest, and most cost effective way of marketing, but like the majority of things that take the easiest route, has the least rewards.  

So when it comes to content, it is about listening before you talk, finding out what the customer wants and then trying to help them find that solution through your products and services.

Gender should not be one of the factors within this process unless of course you specialise in pants or breastfeeding bras.  

As marketers we need to break the boundaries not adhere to stereotypes.

Have We Reached Comms Overkill?

I was chatting to a friend the other day about her summer and how her holiday was and she quite surprised me. Not that she had had a great holiday, but more that she confessed having put her phone in the drawer in her house and leaving it there for two weeks. No telephone calls, no email, no internet. 

As our working practices counter the cacophony of communication with mindfulness, detoxing your in-box and the like, how do those in business of communication now actually, erh, communicate?

I don’t need to pull up the statistics around how many emails we are inundated with on an hourly, daily and weekly basis but if you are interested here’s one estimate…. 108.7 billion emails sent and received per day .

I also don’t need to give examples of how many inappropriate, wasted remarketing adverts people receive on a daily basis having brought something for their mother-in-law online two months previously.

Added to all of this noise Facebook feeds, Twittering, chromed lives of Instagram friends, family and those who aren’t friends or family but look so bloody good, and there really isn’t much more room to find out about you and your brand is there?

We are all exhausted listeners.  Tired of the endless chatter around us.  So how are we ever going to get anyone to listen to what you have to say?

I have a theory. Be quiet and listen for a while. 

Ever wondered why Kate Moss is so popular? How many interviews have you read with her? How often have you heard her speak?  We all know that those things that seem out of our reach are often the most attractive, but with the onslaught of communications at the swipe of a screen, we have got addicted to sending weekly, sometimes daily emails with a sliding scale of responsiveness.

Now this is a strange blog for someone who is all about communications to be writing. Especially being in the business of content marketing and PR.  Our job at Antelope is about making your share of voice bigger and louder than your competitors. However, what is the point of shouting loud if no-one is listening, or cares?

Back to the basics.  

When you first learn the basic social skills, it’s about talking and listening to others and responding with something you think might interest them to keep the conversation going.  How often does your brand do this?  Imagine an adult shouting very loudly at someone, who when they don’t respond, shouts again and again at them. There is no doubt the recipient will tune out and walk away, avoiding you in the future.

Brand communication of course is different. But the principles stay the same. You are still talking to humans (at the moment before the Internet of Things takes their place) and they will still decide whether they want to engage with you, listen to what you have to say and respond (hopefully by buying/spending or signing up to your call to action).  

So let’s make the conversation two way again.  

Make sure you are talking to the right person - yes we know it but sending an email about nappies to a single 70- year old man isn’t going to attract sales is it?

Talk to them in their own voice - tailor and personalise your content. If you have a product or service that will appeal to a variety of audiences, then tailor the messaging to each audience rather than a ‘one-campaign-fits-all’ approach. Talk to the teen on social media, the mum or dad on a parent’s forum, the worker in the business pages.  Find the benefits of your product and service for them in that environment. So if it is a mobile phone, offer the Millennial mega data deals, free festival updates or whatever else they say they want from a mobile phone package. For the grey market, why not offer free mobile or web training in store?  It’s not rocket science but it works.

Ask them what they think - stop second guessing the audience. I don’t profess to being a kid anymore so if I need to write copy aimed at teenagers, I talk to my kids.  If you can’t afford market research, go online and listen in forums, ask your target audience for their thoughts/opinion on social media and via your website.  

And finally listen and act. It’s not just good PR to change the way you evolve based on customer feedback, it creates brand ambassadors that in turn produces loyalty and sales advocates.

Tuning out and turning off is going to be the challenge we all face as marketers as communication overdrive hits overkill.  Make sure you aren’t dumped before you get the chance to court.

Marketing is a strange beast

Marketing is a strange beast.  By it’s very nature, it has to evolve as it chases customers and their habits.

Keeping on top of new techniques, latest platforms and metrics to measure their success can be a role in itself. However, at Antelope we believe it’s not about the shifting of sands, but the long term success that comes with building brand loyalty.  Which is the million dollar question, how do you do this in a world where customers are fickle and competitors offer the golden goose to your customers every day?

Here we give our top 5 tips on keeping your customers loyal to you and your brand.

1.    Be transparent

A dichotomy in its own right. Brand building is about building desirability often through aspiration. However, the future of marketing will not be smoke and mirrors but building transparency so that customers understand your brand, trust your products and service and have no hidden surprises. This could mean posting your customers’ comments - the good, bad and ugly - on social media or your own website and responding to them. Customers who see that brands are listening and responding are often the ones who build credibility. 

2.    Collaboration

This transparency will lead to more collaboration.  Inviting in your clients and suppliers to your business will be part of marketing process. What marketers have been doing for years - through market research - asking customers and suppliers their thoughts but in more of an open, co-creation way will be the way to generate buy-in before the point of purchase. Dove has already included customers in its advertising campaign and savvy marketers are allowing splinter groups to create social media fanbases.  Losing control and letting your customers be your ambassadors will be the way to create kudos.

3    Marketing will not be defined by digital

It already feels old school to have agencies that are pure digital and there is no doubt that the next few years every marketing activity will include some digital aspect.  However, marketing will not be defined by digital but will become marketing with technology.  We believe that the clever ones will be those who work out how to use the technology to target their individual customers and use the platforms in ways that engage the right markets. Sounds obvious but it is amazing how so many use an 'one size fits all' strategy.  Instant messages those on who message,  add to review sites for those goods where third party credibility is key, use social media not just to engage customers but allow them to have a voice and respond to that voice.  Think of your audience first, not your brand or product. Where do they go, what platforms do they use and then talk to them there.

4.    Influencing the Influencers

Gen Z are already consumers and having grown up in a world of 360 degree transparency with the internet giving them access to information about brands previously inaccessible, they don’t  to be marketed to. For them it is about buying into the brands they feel have credibility.  And to be one of those brands, you need to influence the influencers.  This means being in it for the long game, building associations with those people, other brands and affiliates that match your brand vision and working with them to court your customers. It's not just about getting your brand Instagrammed with the latest celeb (although that of course can definitely help), it's about making sure the people who your customers trust also know and talk about your brand.

5.    It won’t be about big brands, it will be about big impact

The power of big brands still remains with us - look at Apple and Google, sorry Alphabet. Yet, marketing will become not just about big brands, but about big impact. Sure those with deep pockets will be about to raise awareness of their brands faster. However, those who are clever in their marketing will make the most long lasting and biggest impact.  Look how certain brands have managed to go viral though clever marketing? Metro Trains Melbourne’s ‘Dumb Ways to Die’ video has had 110m YouTube views since its inception in 2012 worldwide reaching far more than just the teens of Melbourne.  Getting creative and sharing the love will be the way to make your marketing viral and spreading your message to potential customers.

Good marketers really are just great communicators - telling your audience what you and your brand is about in the most effective way.  Ignore the trends and make sure your brand lives up to its expectation will be the best way to build your loyalty.

So Google becomes Alphabet...

So Google is to become Alphabet? Well Google will become part of Alphabet in what is a rebrand of one of the best-known brands ever.

An interesting move.  Most marketers will tell you that brand recognition and loyalty is the Utopia for many brands, spending millions on building a name that is known worldwide.

So why has Google who are ranked as no 2 in the Millward Brown Brand Z worldwide brands rebranded? 

It hasn’t been driven by lack of success. Even though the rebrand led to a sizable stock rise, boosting Google’s value by $20bn, Google’s worth pre the announcement of the birth of Alphabet was a healthy $367.6 billion according to Forbes.

Some thought leaders feel it is founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s desire to dissociate themselves from the cut and thrust of effectively what is really a business about selling advertising space.

And others feel it is a much needed structural strategy to make sense of what has become one of the largest companies, and complex businesses around today.

Whatever the reasoning behind it - and in our humble opinion it is probably an accummulation of all the above and more - it is an interesting move to make on initial analysis but with further thought, one which comes as no great surprise.

Google has diversified rapidly over the last few years - experimenting with the infamous Google Glass and acquiring companies, including many robotic tech enterprises - at a rapid rate.  What seems to have been lost along the way, is actually any sense of the brand - what it means to their customers and what they are saying to their customers about their company and their vision.

If you google ‘Google’, Wikipedia describes it as “an American multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products. These include online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, and software. Most of its profits are derived from AdWords, an online advertising service that places advertising near the list of search results.”  In my opinion, this sums up the Google’s problem; it has no heart, no warmth, no values.

Innovation - whether in terms of new technologies, products and services or new markets - is key for any company, large or small. However, innovation without brand perimeters is like setting off on a roadtrip without the satnav.  Definitely a brand name brings loyalty and a trust that can be taken from one marketplace to another, especially if your brand is as well known as Google. There is no doubt that if any brand can generate the trust of consumers to buy a driveless car, Google can. However, how many of their customers really know what Google stands for anymore and what the brand is all about?

Their target audience is everyone, everywhere.

Brands need a clear and consistent message.  They need customers to understand what they stand for and what they do. They need to be transparent and they need to be trusted.  It would be crazy to say that Google has lost their way, but I do wonder if Google’s move to Alphabet is a chance to go back to the drawing board and map out what they want to be, without the fear of losing what they have built up along the way.  Clever tactics indeed.

Top 5 Tips on Content

Antelope's Hayley Lee gives you her Top 5 Tips for Great Business Content - click here to view her blog.

1.   Make it visual - add infographics, video or visuals.

2.    Tailor your content to your audience - one size doesn't always fit all.

3.   Don’t talk about yourselves - "The biggest insight is that no one wakes up and thinks, ‘I really want to find out what Pedigree is saying today’," says Mars CMO Bruce McColl.  

4.    Make it concise - no-one wants War and Peace.

5.    If they want more, tell them where to find you-  70% of content doesn’t have a call to action.

And Recycle it. Try and place it in your industry journal - or get someone like Antelope to do it for you. Tweet it, share it and ask friends to share.