R.I.P. Why great ideas die.

Too single-minded. Too funny. Too controversial. Too different. Too expensive. Too hard.

 

There’s no end to reasons why good ideas end in the conceptual scrapyard in the sky. The clients may be creative, they may be keen, they may even have approved the idea – but, by the time that the audience gets to see it, more often than not, it is so watered down that it is unrecognisable from the brand agency’s original idea which everyone was so enamoured with.

 

Why?

 

The truth is that great advertising doesn’t only require a great team of brand developers. It also needs a great client. Amazing ideas which can make a product or service succeed are all well and good but unless the client remains

committed to its execution, every step of

the way, the end result can be worse than

having no idea at all.

 

One of the challenges to keeping a new idea alive is that, by its nature, that idea is different. And different isn’t always comfortable. It represents the unknown. But that’s why a good agency will have designed that idea to land smack in the middle of its desired target market. As Bill Cosby said, "I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody."  So yes, the idea may be risky or controversial but if it resonates with your core market, the job is done.

 

Another (in)famous idea killer is budget. Agencies understand times are tight but clients should also realise that cutting marketing costs is precisely the wrong thing to do in such times. If an idea is on-brand and an objective is quantified, realistic budgets cannot be reduced, without the idea running out of steam before it makes it to the consumer. Pffffft!

 

Then there’s implementation by committee. Imagine a concept is made out of play dough. Short of having a Steve Jobs-like visionary gingerly shepherding the idea to market, if the concept is handled by too many people, it will end up formless, shapeless and meaning not much to anybody instead of a lot to a few.

 

At Your Brand Agency, it’s our passion to see great ideas come to life, not for own sakes, but for the sakes of our clients, their brand, products and services. To realise a concept’s full potential, to make a difference in market, ideas must be owned. Again, not by the agency. By the client. By creative individuals in the client’s marketing departments. We need these people to nurture their idea, to coax from it glorious life, and resist the urge to twist into something amorphous.

 

Be bold, clients. Be resolute. Stand by your budgets. Stand by ideas. Protect the ones you love. Own them. They are yours, after all.

 

Because if you won’t fight for them, who will?

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

Goodwill hunting. Building the value of your brand.

Goodwill hunting. Building the value of your brand.

A company is more than just the sum of its physical assets. For instance, if you’re thinking of selling your business, you’d add up your properties, vehicles, computers, furniture and, yes, even that collector’s artwork in reception. That would give you a fair idea of physical value but wouldn’t you expect more from a prospective buyer?

What about your customer list? Supplier relationships? Intellectual capital? And, the subject of my blog, the value of your brand?

Measuring the worth of a brand is more difficult than, let’s say, the worth of your intellectual capital (which is no Grade 1 math either). So how do you do it? How much is your brand worth?

Over the years, research houses have carried out studies trying to answer just that. How much would people pay for your brand over the physical base line? This is tricky because it is not what we do in the real world. Most people, when asked to place a monetary value on brands, are in denial about paying a premium just for the name.

Me pay more just for a label? Not a chance! That is patent nonsense though. Everyone pays more (and expects to pay more) for the D&G handbag, not just because it may be made of superior material but because it’s labelled D&G.  And, thus, so are you labelled – a discerning person at that.

In one study, focus groups were asked to place a price tag on a car. The researchers used pictures of an identical car but super-imposed different badges on its grille. Not surprisingly, Volkswagen was valued higher than Ford and Mercedes trumped both. They extrapolated that brand was worth 10% of the retail value of the car.

In the real world, this is to a large extent why, in the latest Forbes Survey, Apple’s brand value is double its closest competitor, Microsoft. Interestingly, Apple’s advertising spend in 2013 was half that of Microsoft. That doesn’t mean advertising less raises the value of your brand. It means paying attention to end-to-end branding, from internal factors like R&D and pricing to external factors like customer service and marketing, all play a huge role in the value of a brand. The key to raising the value of your brand, and ultimately its market value, is just that: holistic branding.

If customers like every part of your brand, potential business purchases will pay more for it. If not, you may have to rely on the value of that painting in reception.

Let’s hope it’s a Van Gogh!

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

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