birddog

What You Sell -v- What Customers Buy

Our heartbeat quickens, our pulse races, our palms and brow sweat a little… that’s the change we experience when we’re buying a new car. According to Ian Armstrong, Manager of Customer Communications at Honda UK, the science of car buying is every bit as important as the art. Ian was the guest speaker at a recent Brand on the Run event and I was interested to speak to him about the day to day marketing activities that happen behind the scenes of the more glamorous Honda TV advertising. I think Honda has been delivering great television advertising for years now. They’ve had consecutive successes with ‘Hate Something, Change Something,’ ‘Cog’ (the parts/domino ad) and ‘Impossible Dream’.

Honda TV ads however, are a long way from the ‘Swiss Tony’ stereotypical style of car selling I recall from walking in to a car dealership many years ago to buy a car. Thankfully most car brand dealerships have evolved somewhat. Although now that it’s mentioned, I was slightly taken aback recently when I went into a BMW dealership only to find that I couldn’t actually look at the cars until I had ‘reported to reception’ and been ‘announced’ to my very own personal Swiss Tony. But that’s another story for another day. For Honda at least, there seems to be the recognition that even if the ad works, it can only take prospective customers as far as the doors of the showroom. There’s still plenty of work to do to ensure a vehicle is sold. Honda doesn’t seem to be leaving anything to chance.

The car brand has been undertaking extensive testing of both sales people and prospective customers within dealerships to monitor the physiological changes they go through during the process of buying a car. The research shows that our immediate ‘gut instinct’ is the primary response mechanism that people use when going through the car buying process. The ‘facts’ (car performance statistics for example) are outweighed by how we ‘feel’ about the purchase.

Honda has discovered that customers are most relaxed when dealing with a sales person who delivers exactly the customer experience they say they’re going to – not one that over promises then under delivers, and not even one that under promises then over delivers. The sales people and customers are most relaxed when they’re telling and being told the ‘truth’.

There’s an excitement attached to buying a new car too. The smell of the leather, the clunk of the door, the rev of the engine. The sales person and the customer both feel exhilaration when a car is being bought.

Unfortunately, not at the same time.

Honda’s research shows that the customer is most excited about their potential purchase about 10 minutes before the sales person. That’s when they’ve made the decision that they’re going to buy the car and want to complete the deal and part with the cash. The sales person, however, doesn’t recognise the physiological changes in the customer (because they’re pretty hard things to see…) and continues selling for another 10 minutes longer than the customer wants. The sales person only gets excited when the contract is on the table and the customer is about to sign it. The danger of course is that during the 10 minute period of unnecessary selling, the customer becomes disappointed, annoyed and leaves without buying the car. The impossible dream just becomes the impossible.

In a B2B context, the analogy needs almost no further development. Whatever business market we’re in, the potential to oversell, undersell, or worst of all, not sell at all, is pretty clear. Brand guardians of every B2B market sector would do well to ensure their brand promise is properly aligned to the customer expectation and that the message is delivered to the customer in the way and in the time it is required. Not too much, not too little, just right. We should all make some changes…

Scot McKee
Managing Director
Birddog Ltd.
+44 (0)20 7323 6666

B2B Corporate Hospitality. Is It Worth It?

Corporate Hospitality. Is it going to flourish as companies try to secure the loyalty of their clients in the face of difficult economic conditions, or is it going to die a horrible and painful death as budgets are cut and redirected to the tried, tested and instantly measurable?

I’ve never really been big on accepting corporate hospitality. I don’t have the slightest idea how cricket works for instance – they’re in, they’re out, they’re not out, they play for days, then draw. Mmmm… no. I have a similar problem with the ‘Corporate Golf Days’. Take a stick, a little white ball and acres of nothingness then spend the day thwacking the little white ball with the stick to put it in a hole (where it clearly doesn’t want to go). And then do it again another seventeen times before you’re allowed a beer. I don’t think so.

So either I’m not personable enough to be invited on corporate hospitality days – harsh, but possibly fair – or I avoid them because they get in the way of, god forbid, getting on with some work. But that’s just me. Or at least, that was me. I’ve changed my mind. Not about cricket or golf which are just plain silly, but I’ve had cause to reconsider hospitality as a marketing ‘tool’ from both sides – as the provider and as the recipient.

Providing the hospitality, I took a whoop of clients to the Caldesi Italian Cookery School in Marylebone .The client reaction when we sent out the invitations was good. “What? It’s not a golf day? What happened to the golf day?” “Look, I thought we’d try something different – d’you want to come or not?” “Oh, ehh, actually, yeah – sounds great…” So then I worried that everyone was being polite and they wouldn’t turn up. Actually, it was a full house – 100% attendance. That’s never happened before. We all had a jolly good time. A bunch of senior executives wearing pinnies and covered is flour is the perfect recipe for a jolly good time. I was pleasantly surprised – not just with the day itself, but with the post-event camaraderie and the feeling that we all knew each other a bit better – and it’s just good to ‘know’ who you’re doing business with. I don’t think you can or need to put a ROI figure on that, it’s invaluable.

On the flip side, I was recently invited to a day of motor racing at the Jonathan Palmer Autodrome near Bedford. I think I can safely say that it was the best ‘work-day’ I have ever had. Ever, ever, ever. My host had invited about 100 guests for the day and we all thrashed the bollocks off Porsches, Jaguars, Renaults, Caterhams and even Land Rovers under race conditions. I suspect the cost of the day would have been moderately in excess of the National Debt, which, let’s face it, is considerable these days. Not that I cared of course. I was just pleased to have been invited and unashamedly delighted that it wasn’t golf or cricket.

But how do you measure the ROI? The simple answer appears to be that all those concerned do their very best not to. “It’s a ‘thank you’ for the value we have already had from the client…”, and, “It’s slow burn for key prospects we’re hoping to develop…” In other words, bullshit. It reminded me of the many conversations I’ve had with clients about their trade show attendances and what, if anything, they achieve out of them. “Not really sure, but we absolutely need to be there…”

I suspect that with both recession and new forms of digital communication appearing daily, budget spending on events like these might be reconsidered in favour of the more tangibly measured lead generators. I think that’s a shame. However hard it may be to measure the short term impact of corporate hospitality, we still need to keep a weather eye on the longer term future of client and prospect relationships. And there’s really nothing quite like the parp and squelch of your buttocks going into the hairpin bend at 150mph to remind you that life is more important than ROI.

Scot McKee
Managing Director
Birddog Ltd.
+44 (0)20 7323 6666

B2B Marketing Entrepreneur?

I’ve always been deeply suspicious of anyone introducing themselves as an ‘Entrepreneur’. It’s one of those wank words I find impossible to say out loud. Women don’t seem to like the word ‘moist’, but for me, it’s ‘entrepreneur’. Eww. I’m less disturbed when the term’s used to describe someone else. It’s strictly the self-use of the word that bugs me. So, “Richard Branson is an entrepreneur”, is wholly acceptable. “Hello, I’m Bob. I’m an entrepreneur”, isn’t. See what I mean? Wanker.

So when I walked into a client meeting I was relatively relaxed as the introductions were made and the Marketing Director said, “…and this is Bob.” It was only when Bob himself then repeated, “I’m Bob – I’m an Entrepreneur”, that I knew we were all doomed.

I’d been asked to the meeting to discuss social media, something I’m increasingly integrating into on and offline marketing strategies so I was slightly perplexed as to why we might need an ‘entrepreneur’ in the room. Was it just in case a brilliantly creative idea sprang out of our conversation and someone needed to throw money at it? Or maybe if we had a good idea, but suddenly and mysteriously ran out of creativity, we might need Bob to step in and… ‘preneur’ over everyone? His role wasn’t clear. And I didn’t like him. Mainly because of his self-proclaimed title.

I let it go for all of about a minute and a half and then said, “So, Bob, what does an entrepreneur do then?”

There was a pause while he composed his best Dragon’s Den stare and he replied, “I seek the alternative.” I waited for the subject in his sentence, but it never came. That was it. Bob sought ‘the alternative’. I admired the brevity, but I wasn’t really any the wiser. “I suppose people ask you what ‘the alternative’ is quite a lot?” I enquired oh so casually. “No” he said.

Everyone shuffled their papers and cleared their throats so I kind of knew I was supposed to shut up. But that’s never stopped me before and I wanted to understand his purpose in life. “Well, are you entrepreneurial in the social media space?” “No”, he said, “I think social media’s a complete waste of money.”

Now that, I thought, was interesting – for someone who ‘seeks the alterative’. Social media is surely THE alternative at the moment. Markets have changed, audiences have moved, tools have improved, knowledge is being shared and the world is responding to new ‘social’ methods of communication for their brands – we’re all doing at least something in the social media marketing space now even if it’s just blowing the dust off our Linkedin accounts and trying to make sense of Twitter. Of course, some brands are doing considerably more in the social space – they’re using social tools to create very active, vibrant communities online, they’re harnessing customer opinion, influencing perceptions, engaging in conversation and debate, they’re even transforming sales methods, processes and revenues.

Those companies are re-capturing audiences that had been lost to the internet and are finding new audiences at the same time. In a commoditised marketplace, those companies are achieving elusive competitive advantage by staying a step ahead of the competition and finding their social voice. And they’re doing it in truly creative ways – using music, video, photographs, conversation. What’s ‘the alternative’ anyway – another brochure? Really? Is that really going to work this time around when it hasn’t worked for the last couple of years at least? The companies that will survive and accelerate through the recession are learning to balance traditional communications strategies with the social mandates of their audiences. If the customers want it – you’d better deliver it. New, inspired, thinking and brand development starts when digital and direct strategies are properly aligned and it’s the steps forward in social media that are truly… ehh… “entrepreneurial”. Oops.

Naturally, I regurgitated those thoughts in a demented stream of consciousness mad professor kind of way and only stopped to draw breath when spots started appearing in front of my eyes and I thought I was going to faint. Waste of money? My arse. In the last 12 months the current British Government has increased the Gross National Debt by more than the combined total of Governments over the last 300 years. Now THAT’s a waste of money. I dunno – somehow I expected an ‘entrepreneur’ to know the difference. Does that make me the real entrepreneur, the alternative… or the wanker?

Scot McKee
Managing Director
Birddog Ltd.
+44 (0)20 7323 6666
Twitter.com/scotmckee

Social Media in B2B Marketing #b2bsm09

The B2B Marketing Magazine seminar on ‘Exploiting Social Media in B2B Marketing’ was quite an eye-opener for me. For a start the Century Club was rammed. Social Media is no longer a fringe subject. It may not be the panacea or indeed pancetta of the B2B world, but nor is it the dirty word(s) of just a few short months ago. I have the impression we’ve successfully managed to flip a very impressive bird at the traditionalists who have been hoping that it would all just go away because they had a pressing lithograph issue to deal with down at the typesetter’s.

So I had a hot ticket, I was dressed up all like my dad with a suit and everything and I waited to be enlightened. And then I wasn’t. Perhaps I already knew more than I was giving myself credit for.

I’m new to the Social Media space. A curmudgeonly old fart, much like myself, is inclined to recoil from the word ‘social’ as Count Dracula might from a tended bowl of Penne Arrabiata and garlic bread. So I’ve avoided it whilst the geeks, propeller-heads and weirdos have filled their boots. But now it’s my turn.

Firstly, there is, so far, little in the way of specialist B2B expertise in the field – decent case studies are still hard to find. The lack of understanding of the B2B sensibilities became apparent at the event when the age-old difference between B2B v B2C was raised as a defining measure of social mediability. In the social media world there is no difference between business and consumer. We are all people. Apparently.

Utter bollocks of course. I’ve spent decades making a passable living from knowing the differences between businesses, consumers, business people acting as consumers and consumer’s behaviours in business. I’m acutely aware that deep down ‘we’re all consumers’ but in the social media space we are absofackinlutely not all the same. I’m still more than a little upset that this regressive step was the entry point to the afternoon’s festivities and the subject stumbled into the post-event discussions on Twitter (#b2bsm09). There was a room packed with well over a hundred people from the B2B marketing fraternity and, whether client or agency, the common denominator was everyone seeking a business model for social media activities. Whether the model was to be experimental or commercial was uncertain, but we were all there as B2B specialists (knowing that we’re different from B2C) to find how to use this relatively new tool. And we were being told we can use these tools in the same way a consumer does. That, in my humble opinion, is less than helpful. The social media model I will be employing will focus on the differences of the business audience and their specific business needs not the commonality. But maybe that’s just me.

We certainly have a new set of weapons in the armoury. Tools. Social media tools. And we haven’t had a new set of clothes on the B2B circuit for as long as I can remember. That’s pretty exciting, right?

We’ve had the web evolution in the last decade which has certainly changed marketing behaviour, but it has, until now, been a comparatively slow evolution, providing little more than online versions of offline thinking. The advent of social media is the evolutionary leap that will hopefully get us all down from the trees. It was mostly agencies patronising this event and I’m not sure if that means the client’s haven’t ‘got it’ yet or if the agencies are trying to keep up – either way, it’s on the agenda. That’s hugely exciting from where I’m sitting. The power has shifted from the corporate propaganda machine to the selective conversations that the customers are prepared to engage with. How’re we going to handle all that then?

I have no idea. Actually, I have several ideas – you can read them on my blog, you can watch the video, you can see the pictures, you can listen to the webcast, you can even shape my thoughts directly on Twitter. The truth, however, is they’re your ideas. Yep, I admit, I’m prepared to listen to what you want. It’s not about me any more, it’s all about you. Damn. Did I just say that? Tell me that’s not exciting? Of course it is. It’s WILD, it’s crazy – and it’s about time. Now pass the Parmigiano, my Arrabiata’s getting cold.

Scot McKee
Managing Director
Birddog Ltd.
+44 (0)20 7323 6666
Twitter.com/scotmckee

B2B Social Media – The Art of Conversation

There seem to be two issues of note this year in the B2B marketing space. I don’t typically declare those issues so early in the season for fear of peaking too early and looking like a twat, but this year I’ll make an exception. There are definitely two conversations – the agenda and the hidden agenda. Here’s how I see them unfolding…

The agenda is the recession, the economy, the C word, the shoot me now and let’s just end it all agenda. It’s a reasonable agenda – Lord knows we’ve heard enough from the Markets, the City and the ‘experts’ to know that we’re all doomed. The doomiest of the doomed are the people, businesses and services with the prefix (or indeed suffix) of ‘marketing’. So we’re all going to die and everyone wants to talk about it – to shoo the evil voodoo away, a bit like saying the word ‘cancer’ out loud.

That’s a very dull and depressing agenda and is it really what we want to spend the next year(s) talking about? People will lose jobs, businesses will close, the world will change. I’m still not getting anything helpful or interesting out of this conversation and on the basis that I’m not actually going to top myself just yet, I’d quite like to move forward. Thanks for asking.

I’ll concede one point on the recession agenda. For the foreseeable future, B2B clients and agencies are going to have to try different things and deliver results. Sound familiar? Uh huhh, thought so.

The far more interesting hidden agenda was just warming up last year when the economic shit hit the fan – it’s the Social Media Agenda. Has anyone noticed how social media has been spreading like a disease, except it’s not a disease. Social diseases are completely different and absolutely not on the agenda. It’s the overnight sensation that’s taken about seven years to appear overnight. Everyone, but everyone’s had a look at Social Media and formed an opinion – waste of time, waste of money, don’t understand it, can’t see the point. Or maybe they’ve become social media ‘experts’ with a view on what will and will not generate revenue and offer value and produce returns. Everyone’s full of shit of course because there are no experts, no one knows what’s going to work and the whole space is a complete land-grab.

I had a punt at twitter the other day and it’s like the WILD WEST out there. But I started some conversations. And they’re carrying on. I revisited Linkedin too – I’ve never really bothered with it before, but I was able to create a permission-based network of almost three hundred people interested in Birddog conversations in a few days. I’ve got absolutely no idea what I’m going to do with my twitter streams or my Linkedin network – yet. But I do know that, so far, almost everyone – client and agency has missed the point of these technologies. The point is the conversation.

The conversation is, for the first time, being shaped and determined by the customer not the provider. That was always the intention of the Social Media model – it’s very ‘Web2’. There’s a good argument that says ‘conversation doesn’t pay the rent’, but inevitably, new things take a while to figure out and I have the impression that the moment’s arrived. Or it’s at least arriving. There’s plenty of tech geekery around the subject and there are a load of no-marks professing to know all the answers, but there’s also a growing conversation. A movement. It has nothing to do with the people who think they know the answer to ‘Social Media Revenue Generation Models’. It’s just about the people – having the conversations and working it out for themselves and with each other. And from those conversations comes the revenue. Just as it always has.

This is the agenda. It’s still hugely unpredictable which makes it easily dismissed, but it’s a beautiful thing because nobody’s screwed with it yet. Those who have tried to manufacture a set result have been left behind by the power of the people who have other expectations and (for the first time?) the ability to shape outcomes.

So as B2B clients and agencies and brand champions and marketers how are we all going to reinvent ourselves? How will we be ‘creative’ in a Web2.0 world? How will we promote our brands when we can’t ‘push’ messages but have to learn how to ‘pull’?

We’re going to watch the weak and the irrelevant wiped out by the recession – that’s a given. Then we could spend the next several years talking about how awful it all was. Or we can try being creative again. Whatever happens, don’t waste a good recession…

Scot McKee
Managing Director
Birddog Ltd.
+44 (0)20 7323 6666
twitter: @scotmckee