birddog

B2B Blogging – Direct or Indirect Marketing?

I had ‘a fair and frank exchange of views’ with a woman of a certain age about the relative merits of business blogging the other day. We didn’t get the business – which may give you some indication of how the conversation went…

For some inexplicable reason (in my opinion) she remained fixated throughout our conversation on lines. She wanted to talk about, ‘above the line activity’, then, ‘below the line activities’ and then without respite or reprise, we had to go ‘through the line’ as well. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for lines – I recall with disturbing alacrity the ‘School Line’ metered out as punishment in my formative years for, frankly, the most trivial of misdemeanours: ‘Nothing is more disturbing to a well regulated mind than to see a boy who ought to know better disporting himself at improper moments’. It had to be written out, without error, in fountain pen, a minimum of 25 times before breakfast. Never by me though. Obviously.

I also recall above and below the line discussions at college and in the halcyon days of my questionable career progression. But at least a decade ago we started applying our devious, wicked and somewhat warped marketing minds to the application of the internet as a marketing tool. Or was that just me? At that point, the ‘lines’ were obliterated and as B2B marketing professionals we were forever screwed.

This woman, however, was perhaps screwed less than others, because in planning her 09 marketing activity, the ‘lines’ remained uppermost in her Oops I’ve Missed The Point List of Priorities and she wanted to know what Birddog would propose to launch her campaign in Q1 above and below and indeed through the line.

“Set up a business blog”, I replied. “But what else?” she asked. “That’s it?” “Yep, that’s it – you’re a very large corporate in the technology space, you have no distinct message, no clear position on anything, no competitive differentiation and no voice. And you’re not using any technology in your marketing. Which isn’t good. For a technology company… We have any number of services to fix your brand strategically, but not to launch in Q1. If you want to launch something – tell one or more of your directors that, from tomorrow, they need to justify themselves to the world. Every day.” I responded, oh so casually.

“But that’s indirect… Nothing happens with blogs, they’re just like press releases. I need to generate responses, I need leads.” I’d actually lost interest long before this point, but felt obliged to keep going because the sandwiches were good and an early departure would have been foolhardy. So we reviewed the respective merits of direct and indirect communications. “Just because it’s a blog on a website does certainly NOT make it indirect”, I said. I actually spat the words ‘not indirect’ out, along with the chicken satay, which was a little uncool.

In theory, a blog has no direct audience, no database, no address or telephone number – has no immediately measurable asset – and could be considered indirect. You pump the information out there with no real understanding (or even belief) that anyone’s reading or reacting to it. But that’s the kind of thinking that the World Wide Web laughs, raucously, in the face of. The reality, for all but the staunchest marketing luddites, is that a business blog is about as close to the main artery of an audience as a business can get. It follows the primary Web2 protocol of allowing the audience to choose to engage with it or not, and when they do, the business achieves a voice, a following, a position of leadership. The blog becomes the source of opinion.

Business reply-cards and subscription forms have been replaced by RSS feeds, linkbacks and reblogs. That’s not a bad thing – that’s a very good thing. It means if you want to launch a broadly shit brand in a very short space of time and find its place in the world (or not) you can do it. And of course it’s measurable – in real time, if you insist. Marketing simply doesn’t get more direct than that.

“The directors will never do it…” she said, “…I need e-mailers.”

What can I tell you? For the first time in quite a while I thought that maybe we were all screwed. But the satay was good.

Scot McKee
Managing Director
Birddog Ltd.

Communicating the Right Message

Businesses have the opportunity to communicate a message or multiple messages with their audiences every day. It’s important to communicate the ‘right’ messages, obviously. But it’s equally important to ensure that the message, however ‘right’, doesn’t just become wallpaper, repeated parrot-fashion because no one’s asked the questions, ‘why are we saying this, why do we keep saying this and what do our customers think when we keep saying this?’

I squeeze myself onto my daily commuter train into London Waterloo. I share the carriage, indeed, the whole train with a few hundred commuting passengers. As we all enjoy the delights of each other’s aged garlic breath, personal hygiene issues and the overly loud mobile phone users, we are exposed to South West Train’s business message. We are the very embodiment of the ‘captive audience’. The opportunity of communicating a well crafted, brand building, thought provoking, perception shifting message is a gift. It’s an opportunity that few other businesses will ever have. So what do we get? Here it is:

‘Passengers are reminded that travelling in the First Class section of the train requires them to be in possession of a valid First Class ticket. Passengers found travelling in First Class without a valid First Class Ticket will be liable to prosecution and a fine.’

Here’s the thing. We know that. We can tell by the number ‘1’ stickers on all the windows. We can tell by the blue upholstery and special sliding door to the compartment. We can tell by the smug-self-satisfied look of the few First Class passengers who have (or more likely whose company has) more money than sense. We all know that a valid First Class ticket is required to travel in First Class. We know this not because of the message read from the script by the guard at the start of every single journey, but because we all know the difference between First Class and Cattle Class. We just do. And yet, of all the messages South West Trains could choose to communicate, this is the one they’ve chosen. The fuck stupid one.

They could choose to read out a message about the railway’s safety record. Or the comparative safety of rail travel to road travel. They could congratulate us on how we are reducing our carbon footprint. They could give us a weather report, or news headlines, or the football results. They could point out the investment that is being made in the railway infrastructure that we hear is required every time the ticket prices are due to rise but never hear about thereafter. They could express an opinion on the relative merits of the contestants in Strictly Ballroom Dancing. In fact, they could pretty much announce any damn thing they pleased and it would offer more value, meaning and relevance to the commuter’s train journey than the validity of a First Class ticket.

So, presented with the ideal opportunity to shape perceptions of the brand, to make customers feel good about their choice of travel and thereby engender a sense of belonging and empathy towards the brand that will in turn instil brand loyalty and repeat purchase, South West Trains instead waits until the train is full to overflowing before repeatedly, without any thought or consideration, pisses everyone on board right off. Nice touch.

The point, of course, is that we are all potentially doing the same thing with our brands, with our customers and with our prospective customers – trotting out a message because someone somewhere once said that we should write it down and repeat it. It hasn’t been thought about. It hasn’t been reviewed or considered or applied to the real world. It’s probably being used out of context and it sure as hell hasn’t been written with the customer in mind. Oh dear me.

This isn’t difficult or taxing. My suggestion isn’t even (necessarily) that the message needs to be changed. But a message needs to have some common sense applied to it before its release and application in the big bad world. It just needs one person to stand up and ask, “Why are we saying this?” That person just better have a valid fackin’ ticket that’s all I’m saying.

Scot McKee
Managing Director
Birddog Ltd.

The Santa Brand

It’s perhaps worth remembering at this seasonal time of festive joy and goodwill to all men that Santa Claus was invented by Coca Cola. Well, OK, maybe not ‘invented’, but the perception we have of the jolly, rotund fellow in a red suit with white flowing beard – the Santa ‘brand’ – is effectively Coke’s.

From 1931 to 1964 the artist Haddon Sundblom shaped the image of Santa that we know and love by illustrating him in various festive scenes, clasping a bottle of Coke for his troubles. The red suit, the belt and buckle, the shiny black boots, the rosy cheeks, the white beard – it’s all the result of Coke advertising and its widespread circulation within the magazines of the day. Bummer huh? Well, maybe.

Prior to Coca Cola’s adoption and re-creation of the jolly, fat gift-giver, there were numerous, fragmented views of Santa Clause around the world. Some depicted him as a wild Norseman a bit like the ‘Thor God of Thunder’ Marvel comic character. Other characterisations would have us believe that he was more of a wood-cutter/native/pagan-type. If you look really hard, you’ll find Santa as an elf dressed in green robes (not red) with Mr Spock pointy ears and everything.

Whilst there are still many variations on the Santa theme today – for example, we still can’t seem to even agree on his name (Santa… Santa Claus… Saint Nicolas… Father Christmas…) – the jolly red cherub is predominantly the unified perception. That unification was achieved with a brand. The Coke brand. It’s taken almost 80 years, but hey, who’s counting?

This is not a criticism of Coke or commercialism by the way – the very opposite in fact. It’s really quite an achievement. Taking an already established brand – Santa – and reinventing him to become the widely accepted norm around the world is no small feat and is worthy of congratulations.

When you consider the outcome as a ‘brand strategy’ – it is almost exclusively positive. The Santa brand is an icon throughout the western world. It is recognised by all audience segments across all socio-economic demographics, rich and poor, old and young, black and white. It is instantly associated with giving (not taking). It creates an emotive response and engenders warmth, happiness, and goodwill to all men. By association, it triggers fond memories of the past and offers hope for the future through your kids. There is no competition. The Easter Bunny doesn’t come close.

Now hold your own business brand up to the mirror and compare and contrast it to the Santa brand. If it doesn’t appear quite as sparkly and festive by comparison, you wouldn’t be alone. So how good are you feeling about your brand strategy now? Mmmm. Well, it’s understandable that perhaps you don’t have such a high achieving brand considering the length of time that Coca Cola has had to develop the Santa brand – an awful lot can be achieved in 80 years after all and it’s perhaps unfair to draw the comparison. Ehh, or is it?

Here’s the thing. Take your existing brand strategy, take the path your brand has followed for the last few years, take the path it’s on now and project that path forward a few years. What the hell, live a little and project it forward 80 years. Now ask yourself the question, ‘Will the brand strategy for our business achieve even a fraction of the success and positive brand attributes associated to the Santa brand?’ If the answer is, ‘Oh…’, or, ‘Oops…’, or, ‘Mmmm…’, or, ‘Fek…’ you need to change the plan, change the brand strategy. You could always try hanging up your stocking and making a wish on Christmas Eve. Alternatively, you know where to find me. Christmas wishes to you all…

Scot McKee
Managing Director
Birddog Ltd.

Purchasing Department – Friend or Foe?

I was called ‘inflexible’ the other day. Now, I’ve been called a godly number of things in my time, but ‘inflexible’? Really? I thought I was a pretty relaxed kind of a guy (in a two steps from a coronary kind of a way…) I strive for ‘cool’. I may or may not achieve the goal consistently, but strivingness is next to godliness… ‘Inflexible’? Really? If I’ve learned anything in the world that we like to call B2B marketing, it is to be bendier than the bendiest bendy thing when it comes to client requests. Not in the biblical sense. Obviously. ‘Inflexible’? Moi?

I was visibly upset. At the time of the effrontery, I was accused of not responding quickly enough to the client request to kick-start the inaugural project. That ‘first project’ is always an important one. Its success or failure is likely to shape the ongoing client relationship, so to hear that I’d been inflexible at this early stage was a concern. Getting that initial project started was my responsibility. I was ‘inflexible’. And devastated.

So I delved a bit deeper. How had I been inflexible? “Well…” the client began, “…you refused to start the project before we had issued you with a Purchase Order.” Right. But where was I inflexible?, I pressed. That, it transpired, was the full extent of my inflexibility.

“All of our other agencies just get on with it”, the client continued, “We don’t have time for Purchase Orders – if we had to wait for Purchasing for every requirement, we’d never get anything done.”

Gosh I was angry. But I didn’t let it show. Well, apart from using the ‘With the greatest respect’ line which everyone knows really means, ‘You twat.’

“With the greatest respect,” I said, calling into play everything I had gleaned from my government subsidised distance learning NVQ in Anger Management, “I submitted a Proposal that I would have been happy to action with a handshake until you insisted that I would have to ‘go through Purchasing’. This I duly did – the consequences of which were protracted negotiations and the terms of which required me specifically, in writing, NOT to undertake any work without a signed Purchase Order. Those were your terms. Not mine. It then took you three weeks to sign the Purchase Order causing a project delay of, unsurprisingly, three weeks. So I did exactly and precisely what you asked me to do… and that makes me ‘inflexible’?”

“Yeah, but you know what I mean”, he replied. Erm, nope, I’m afraid I skipped the Telepathy class at Hogwarts. “We just needed to get on with it,” he said. “Well, you should have thought of that before invoking the Purchasing Protocol,” I replied. “These other agencies that ‘just get on with it’,” I continued, “do they ever actually get paid?” “Now that you mention it, that’s a bit of a problem actually – it’s those people in Purchasing – they’re a nightmare”, he said. “Or maybe they just need everyone to quote a Purchase Order Number?” I offered, helpfully. “Just like I did. Just as you asked me to. Just as I should.” “Mmmmm…”

At that point, I felt the flexibility returning to my inexplicably tense shoulders and I particularly noticed the dexterity of my index finger as I poked the client firmly in the eye.

But even as he sat there, wiping the tears from his streaming eye, I had the impression that he still didn’t get it. I’m no big fan of the Purchasing or Procurement Department, but I also recognise that, particularly in larger companies, they facilitate the business of business. Long before the initial engagement and long after the excitement of the creative presentation or the final client approval, the Purchasing Team in all its many guises keeps the wheels turning. And that means if they exist and they need a Purchase Order Number – I’m happy to build that into the project requirement and I’m happy to wait three weeks for a number to be provided because however important my direct client contact is, he’s not cutting the cheques.

We all want to ‘just get on with it’, and keeping the client happy is clearly a priority, but, ‘with the greatest respect’, so is the mortgage.

Scot McKee
Managing Director
Birddog Ltd.

‘Get inside their heads’ – Direct Marketing best practice for SMEs

B2B Marketing Magazine has published an October Supplement focusing on Direct Marketing for the Small to Medium size Enterprise (SME). I was asked to contribute to the feature and thought you may like the comments. This is as the article appeared in the magazine, so they’ve edited out all my swearing. Again. Bastards. I’ve omitted the comments from the other losers, naturally.

Harnessing The Power of Post

SMEs often feel less able to afford expert help for DM campaigns. B2B Marketing has collected the advice of a number of industry experts on best practice DM for these organisations.

‘Get inside their heads’ – by Scot McKee, MD, Birddog

“The single most effective way to improve the response from direct marketing to the SME sector is to get inside the heads of the particular audience from which you’re trying to elicit a response. Few companies succeed – not because it’s difficult, but because they haven’t tried.

“The term ‘SME’ is part of the problem – it’s a catchall that covers a multitude of sins. Up to 250 employees, £50m turnover – those are the standard classifications. But there’s a world of difference between what’s going on inside the decision making heads of a 5-person company and those of a 250-employee team. Truly small companies expect instant response.  They have with no ‘budget’, but have the ability to spend on anything they believe to be important right now. Larger companies have reporting lines, management structures, procurement processes, planning cycles – with significant budgets for those able to engage with the process and stay the distance.

“So the data has to work hard here – a generic SME list isn’t sufficient. Segmentation is vital in identifying smaller more targeted groups that are likely to deliver a better response level. Spend time breaking the list down and looking closely at how you can squeeze value out of the individual sectors.  Don’t be afraid to exclude the ones less likely to deliver that improvement – you’re never going to be able to sell to everyone effectively. The place to start is your existing customer base. You’re far more likely to sell to new prospects that closely resemble existing customers. Have the ambition to grow the market by all means, but focus the message on those most likely to spend.

“To do that you don’t have to look much further than the last few customer contacts. The way your existing customers engage with your brand should influence the DM communication with prospects. The tone of those conversations, the queries being raised in the emails, the willingness of the customer to take your calls – all of the ‘real-world’ experiences should affect the concept, content and message for your DM campaign(s).

“Knowing your audience isn’t difficult, but it’s usually forgotten. All too often the communication focuses on the product functionality: ‘Our widget does this that and the other’. So what? So do any number of other widgets from other competitors. ‘We understand that you have a specific problem, so we’ve come up with a widget to make your life easier’, is a far more compelling proposition. It not only allows considerably more creative and conceptual expression, but understanding and help are things that people want. Widgets they can take or leave.

“Start thinking of your audience as people and not as an audience or a segment or a job title or an SME. Use the classifications, yes. Then leave them behind and look at how those people get through the day. What makes them smile, what makes them happy, what makes life easier, what makes life difficult.  Then shape your communications around the things your customers need to hear rather than simply what you want to tell them. Most companies never look beyond the initial classifications. Most direct marketing never reaches the audience.”