Experiential marketing. Are you and consumers engaged? Or do you barely know each other?

Do consumers care about your brand? I don’t mean like the warm, fuzzy feelings parents have towards their kids. I mean, do consumers even care that your brand exists at all?

A recent global survey says, shockingly for the vast majority of brands, that consumers wouldn’t be bothered if 92% of the world’s brands disappeared. 92%! It’s a stunning – and terrifying - figure.

So how do you ensure that your brand sits pretty in that tiny, green and fertile 8% space of the public mind?

One answer is brand experience. Now that incorporates a lot of things. Obviously, the basics of marketing: impression (“I like what that brand has to offer me”) and interaction (“that brand actually gave me what it said it would”) but those are just starting points.

In today’s hyper-connected world, brand experience has grown to incorporate many other areas, in particular, the resurgence of experiential marketing.

It’s simply not enough to just advertise, sell and deliver anymore. Consumers want more. And spoilt for choice in a free market, they have every right to demand extra.

So teach them, entertain them, inspire their creativity and, above all, make them feel special. Long ago that was what The Avon Lady and Tupperware parties sought to do, place the product in consumers’ hands and encourage them to have fun with it. That was the start of experiential marketing but, now it’s back, and thanks to modern communication tools, it’s massive.

Take South Africa’s Carling Black Label’s “Be the Coach” campaign. It encouraged people not to just drink a zamelek, it tapped into their passion for football and gave them the chance to actually ‘be the coach’. SAB was on to a sure winner with that campaign as it was tweeted, retweeted, posted, uploaded, downloaded and SMSed everywhere.

The secret to that campaign’s success wasn’t about the product intrinsics (let’s face it, the boring bits: the barley, hops and water). It tapped into the public zeitgeist – and engaged it completely. You can bet SAB – and Black Label - is sitting in the 8% safe zone.

Take Axe’s “Be an astronaut” campaign. Every woman knows there’s no sexier man than an astronaut - so Axe tapped into that by offering its male consumers the chance to be an astronaut in real life and, with that, become every woman’s dream man. Now that’s hot.

So it’s no longer good enough to just deliver your product or service as well as you can. You have to engage people with it. You have to have a two way conversation. You have to make people sit up, blink twice and think to themselves, “Did I really see that?”

I’ll leave you with a last, amazing example: how one Belgian TV channel delivered its message in what has to be one of the most dramatic examples of experiential marketing ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=316AzLYfAzw

Hilton Alexander Rose
Your Brand Agency | Director 

Skype: hilton293

linkedin.com/in/hiltonrose

www.yourbrandagency.co.za

https://twitter.com/YourBrandAgency

www.facebook.com/yourbrandagency

Still life with product. The role of a brand agency.

Hurst, Warhol, Van Gogh, Michelangelo, the caveman… Fine artists have inspired us since the beginning, expressing their thoughts in visuals, both beautiful and tortured.

No doubt, there’ll be more.

But not from a communications agency.

As responsible agencies know, having the inspiration and talent to create objects or pictures of beauty, shouldn’t mean we do it for our own edification. We are commercial artists, first and foremost - and with that comes responsibilities.

An agency creates art, design and literature to sell its clients’ products, their brands and their services. Though, by our high standards, agencies should make these ads or pamphlets as pretty as masterpieces – we are obligated to make them practical too. The client’s story is the story. And the call to action, the customer’s next steps, is the response to that story.

The agency, and its identity, should be invisible in the final product, except to ensure the work looks and feels inspirational, professional and functional, properties drawn directly from the clients’ DNA.

To do this, an agency has to know its client, and, understand how to motivate its client’s customers. Industry-accepted rules have developed over years, since long before Lux invented soap operas or David Ogilvy sold vacuum cleaners door to door.

These marketing giants have left us this prodigious heritage to help us. A wealth of knowledge and experience which we use to execute our primary task: sell product.

But, as in fine art, this story is not static. Once an agency knows the rules, truly understands them, it is their duty to endeavour to break them. Not for their own sake. For their clients. To deliver their client’s message to their customers in a fresh, original and cut-through way.

But only if it works. Only if it’s functional.

Otherwise we should swap our pay-cheques for the irony of starving artists painting succulent fruit.

Hilton Alexander Rose
Your Brand Agency | Director 

Skype: hilton293

linkedin.com/in/hiltonrose

www.yourbrandagency.co.za

https://twitter.com/YourBrandAgency

www.facebook.com/yourbrandagency

 

Align your vision with your reputation. And be like Chuck Norris!

Everyone loves Chuck! His vision and his reputation were so aligned that you couldn’t smash a karate chop between them. He was toughness, in martial arts tournaments and on the silver screen. And everyone looked and went, “Wow!”

So when even Sylvester Stallone asked the martial artist, “How many push-ups can you do?”, and Chuck replied, “All of them”, you believe it.

Chuck may not be a business, but in a world where practically everything today, including him, is a brand, he has lessons to teach us.

Separate marketing, advertising, PR and communication? That’s so 20^th century

Chuck may have been big in the ‘80’s but he was ahead of his time. In the 21^st century, a clear brand vision is still as crucial but the disciplines of explaining that vision to your market have merged, thanks to the digital revolution and customer empowerment.

There’s only one discipline now: reputation

Take cell phones. Most people would agree that the iPhone 5 has a reputation for style whilst the Galaxy S4 has its rep around innovation.

And most people would agree that those are the same qualities as the brand visions of the companies behind those products. Apple’s vision is style and simplicity. Samsung is innovation. The S4 may now outsell the iPhone 5 in most markets but what made both products successful is that they both delivered on their promise.

But that’s not true of every company. Some companies have a different vision to how their customers’ perceive them. Some companies don’t even have a vision. But every business has a reputation, good or bad.

For a brand to be successful, the company’s vision and its identity needs to be aligned with how customers regard it.

What worked for Chuck can work for your business

Start promising. Start delivering. Keep promising. Keep delivering. Above all, stay consistent. Sure, move with the times, change with the market, but keep up that same, trusted reputation.

Get your staff to actively buy into both your vision and your reputation. They are your ambassadors to the world. You can’t do anything about them.  They (and your products) sell your reputation to the world.

And be realistic. You can’t achieve a great reputation in a day. But you can start it in a day. And it’ll get better most days after that.

Remember: a strong reputation works wonders for any brand.

Just ask Chuck.


 
Hilton Alexander Rose
Your Brand Agency | Director 
Skype: hilton293

linkedin.com/in/hiltonrose

www.yourbrandagency.co.za

https://twitter.com/YourBrandAgency

www.facebook.com/yourbrandagency

Measuring social media. Plus the story of John Wanamaker

Not many people have heard of John Wanamaker – and if you have, it’s unlikely his name was uttered in the same breath as social media. You see, Wanamaker came from a different era. He was an American businessman who died decades before the first room-sized computers were dreamt up and almost a century before you could buy your groceries online.

However, he’s most well-known for his quote. "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted,” he grumbled. “The trouble is I don't know which half." Now he was talking about print advertising, of which he was a pioneer, but as it turns out, nothing’s changed. Even in the land of social media.

Half of companies have no ROI figure for the money they spend on social media

You’re on the sites. But how exactly do you measure the efficacy of your presence? Here we offer up three viable options. None of them are perfect but they will get you a lot closer to how much buck you’re getting for your social media bang!

Metric Tools

Using a Facebook tool, or even better a combination of tools such as Conversion Measurement and OptimizedCPM, allows you to record the behaviour of those who click on your ads. You are then able to see click-through rate, purchase rate, and by targeting the right people, cutting your cost of new customer acquisition by up to 39%.

Interactions

“Likes” used to be the only way you could tell whether your audience could hear you at all. Nowadays, however, we can extrapolate this data further. Every photo, post, video or comment takes seven seconds for the average user to digest and appreciate while his or her close friends take five seconds to digest that ‘like.’”

By analysing how many likes were received, multiplying by how many friends of those likes witnessed the action gives you and your business a clearer idea of how far your message has reached.

Analysing Traffic

It’s not optimal to analyse your website in terms of how often people find your page through Facebook or Twitter, because it’s not always easy to tell what actions drove that traffic or how much that traffic cost. By analysing your website analytics against pay per click (PPC) campaigns however, things become much clearer.

Compare the average cost of PPC per person to how many visitors you get from free social media placements – and, abracadabra, you can put a rand and cent tag on each and every ‘Like’!

But let’s leave the final word on the subject to John Wanamaker

John Wanamaker really did make it in the American dream – and my guess is he went with his gut, challenging convention and never relying solely on any particular tool. Let’s sum it up in his words.
“One of you is right. The question is which one.”



Hilton Alexander Rose
Your Brand Agency | Director 

Skype: hilton293

linkedin.com/in/hiltonrose

 www.yourbrandagency.co.za

https://twitter.com/YourBrandAgency

www.facebook.com/yourbrandagency

Marketing trends. Coming soon to a medium near you.

What marketing blockbusters are on the horizon for small businesses? Here’s my little guide to what’s hot – and what’s not!

Social media 12

So your brand has been faithfully creating presences on every hot social media site, from Facebook to Pinterest. But guess what? There will always be a sequel. There will always be tomorrow’s hotter, sexier platform, with more special effects and better make-up. So realise that, just like any video store or cinema, not every movie on offer is good. What I do with our brands at #YBA is choose specific platforms that make the most sense for the brand’s that we manage and their audiences. By doing so, we see greater returns and less wasted effort.

Indiana Jones and the Hunt for Simplicity

Say goodbye to marketing, Gangnam style. Audiences everywhere, and their digitised lives, are exhausted with overloaded senses. Enough, they cry. So give them simplicity - whether it’s a simple idea in an ad, a product that makes their lives simpler or even making their customer journey less complicated. They’ll thank you for it.

Jurassic Campaigns

Sometimes through-the-line campaigns are great. But increasingly, they’re out of date. The very idea that one idea can work seamlessly across every medium from online to mobile to cinema to radio to in-store to TV to direct marketing is a delusion. Ideas need to be tailored to maximise the strengths of any given medium. Radio is theatre of the mind. Online is interactive. Keep your message consistent but don’t just transfer imagery. Harness the power of your medium.

The Colour of Money

Would you be surprised to learn that 73% of executives do not believe that marketing significantly ties to creating revenue? It’s true. But they’re wrong. Mostly because a lot of marketing, like brand building, can’t be measured. But as measurable returns of investment lead generation increase on the internet and below the line, we should see this incorrect perception corrected.

Cell Wars

Nowadays, more people are buying smart phones than PC’s. So marketers need to keep up. I’ve seen some great GPS–based mobile campaigns, I’ve also seen some stunningly simple mobile sites but there’s still room for better mobile strategies to make your brand more competitive. This is the year mobile comes of age – and grows up to take over the world!

 
Hilton Alexander Rose
Your Brand Agency | Director 

Skype: hilton293

linkedin.com/in/hiltonrose

 

www.yourbrandagency.co.za

https://twitter.com/YourBrandAgency

www.facebook.com/yourbrandagency

 

 

Show-rooming. Don’t compete on price. Add value instead.

So you’re a retailer and I’m a customer that’s just walked into your shop.

You assume I’m a real customer. I browse like customers do. I talk to your sales staff. I fiddle with the merchandise: be it top end TV’s, pairs of shoes or tennis racquets. I ask about price. Then I leave without buying anything.

And you think “Well, perhaps, he wasn’t a real shopper. Perhaps he was a window shopper.” But what you didn’t know, what you’ll never know, was that I was a real shopper. But I was also a show-roomer. I was dead serious about buying that 55-inch LCD TV. I was just never going to buy it from you. All I wanted from your store’s TV was to see the picture quality for myself. Make sure I liked the finishes. Play with the dials. Smudge the screen. And then leave.

Why should I buy it from you? When I can just hop onto a price comparison website, like pricecheck.co.za, and enter the brand and the model and 20 online retailers will pop up that will sell me that same TV, complete with the same manufacturer’s warranty, and deliver it to my house for thousands of rands less than any major bricks and mortar retailer.

They’re lucky those online retailers. They don’t have to pay for that vast floor space in that pricey part of town. And they don’t have to hire any of your sales assistants. All they need is a website and a warehouse in the cheapest industrial zone.

Though show-rooming isn’t as common in this country as it is overseas, you can bet your rand it soon will be.

So you’d do well to have a strategy in place that combats it. You can’t compete on price. There’s not enough margin. You have to add value instead. Make your shopping experience the very best it can be. Ensure your store is as attractive as it can be. Train your staff to be friendly and uber-knowledgeable. Go the extra mile after the sale. Give customers more. Because it’s proven that people will pay more for more.

Otherwise, they’ll pull out their smart phone right in your shop, right there in front of you, after wasting your time and punch their credit card details into another shop.

Now that won’t be very nice at all.

Hilton Alexander Rose

Your Brand Agency | Director
 

linkedin.com/in/hiltonrose

www.yourbrandagency.co.za

https://twitter.com/YourBrandAgency

www.facebook.com/yourbrandagency

Skype: hilton293

  












 

   
 

Social media. What’s a brand got to do to get noticed around here?

2012 was a sexy year for social media. A billion Facebookers. 200 million tweets a day. 100 million Pinterests monthly and 4 billion hours watched on YouTube each month!

Here in South Africa, things are also heating up, with big corporates following their customers (and their work-shy employees) into that gadfly, online world, where everyone knows your name.

But now, when you and your brand walk in the door, do you want the piano to stop playing and everyone to look at you like you don’t belong?

No?

Well, take on board some key success findings of a recent highly respected report.

1. Think like your customers. Adopt their social mind-set. This is the case even in traditional media, but in social media, it’s a no-brainer. What social currency would they share? Coupons, clubs, naughty humor?

2. Be yourself – and laugh at yourself. Best practice campaigns have a clear brand idea. But don’t expect customers to parrot it back at you. Allow them their own opinion. It only makes your music louder!

3. Plan as big as social media. Remember those millions and billions of hits and users? Give the same scale to your budgets, campaign duration and media integration. And don’t just release it into the wild and forget about it. Evaluate it constantly.

4. Use the tricks. Break taboos, make virals, tell stories, call for participation – but most of all, BE CREATIVE! That means take the time to understand what’s worked and why – and then be bold enough to break the rules.

Some of the social media campaigns I liked in 2012:

* American Express came up with Small Business Sunday, an idea that stayed small till Barack Obama tweeted about it. Then it got big. Presidential big!

* Groupon. A flagging brand injected life back into itself by making one man live off Groupon coupons for a year. Nice for him? Probably not. But nice for everyone watching!

* And Dollar Shave Club, who made this hysterical viral video for $4,500 and outperformed a cut-throat industry. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZUG9qYTJMsI

So be social! Think like your customers. Think like their friends. And above all, be inspired!

 

Hilton Alexander Rose

Your Brand Agency | Director

linkedin.com/in/hiltonrose

Skype: hilton293

www.yourbrandagency.co.za

www.facebook.com/yourbrandagency

 

Success is a personal strategy. What type of brand are you?

Do you think that it’s only blue-chip companies that need to project a brand to succeed? Like Apple owning form and function? Fedex embracing speed and reliability? Or Coca Cola cornering the market on happiness?

Nope. Achieving success starts on a much more personal level: each and every one of us. Are you the person who always completes projects on time and budget? The director who answers his phone day or night? Or the mom who’s a genius at running school events?

It doesn’t matter what you do for a living, be it branding or onion farming. What is important is that you define an image of yourself that is honest and strive to make it compatible with other people’s perceptions of you.

Why does this matter? Because the benefits of nurturing your unique brand are countless. It’ll get you that new job. It’ll give you that promotion. It’ll increase your salary. People value people more if they perceive them as experts – and when people value you more, they will want you around more.

Here’s some ways to make it happen:

What makes you different? What makes you stand out? What do you want to be known for? Sit down and think about it. Focus on your strengths here and NOT your weaknesses. Be honest with the answers. Being real always comes out tops.

Live a life which inspires you. True success doesn’t come from hitting the snooze button fifteen times. Get up and go. Identify your passion – and motivate the hell out of it. It makes work more like play – and you’ll be better at it and more enjoyable to be around.

Shout your identity from the rooftops. It’s all very well crafting an impeccable personal brand but unless you project it, nobody will ever know. Dress in your own style, lose those extra pounds, project confidence, embrace social media, network! Discover that energy that people will notice when you walk into the room.

And, finally, remember that though these thoughts seem tailored to one’s own person, following them will increase the chances of your business’s success.

Because companies are all about people. And people are what matters.


Cheers, until next month - keep on branding!


Hilton Alexander Rose

Your Brand Agency | Director

linkedin.com/in/hiltonrose

Skype: hilton293

www.yourbrandagency.co.za

www.facebook.com/yourbrandagency