Marketing Ability Blog

The news this morning that Marks and Spencer is to cut spending on the promotion of its ‘Plan A’ environmental programme poses the question “How to maintain the green marketing agenda in an economic downturn?”

There are numerous other stories doing the rounds that consumers are cutting expenditure and therefore taking price into account as a much more important decision-making factor than whether the products they are buying have a “green” identity. Certainly Justin King, Chief Executive of Sainsbury’s, seems to emphasise this point when it comes to the issue of food-miles judging by this recent news-item from the Daily Telegraph.

But one of the potential positive outcomes is highlighted in this quote from John Grant (author of The Green Marketing Manifesto) in this well-researched article from the Economic Times in India:

“There are very few instances where saving money and saving energy are not compatible, and, in that sense, reducing the impact on the environment is the only silver lining in the recessionary clouds.”

So maybe it’s just that the economic downturn could help focus our thoughts on what’s really important to customers and the need to take innovative steps to satisfying them in a “green” way?

Your own thoughts on this issue would be welcome - how are the two issues of economic downturn and the need to be green affecting your marketing strategy?

Testing the effectiveness of marketing activity has always been a challenge. It’s becoming more important in the current economic climate. So it’s always good to hear about new ways to do it.

Interspire are about to launch the latest version of their Email Marketer tool (http://www.interspire.com/emailmarketer/). This tool, which appears to be priced in a way that even small web and marketing agencies can afford, will now include the ability to split test different email campaigns. (By the way, I have no affiliation or relationship with Interspire.)

You can, for example, run the same email to three lots of 1,000 recipients, with just the subject line different for each group. You can then see which version gets the best response and use that subject line for a much bigger distribution.

This technique is nothing new of course. Direct mail specialists have done testing like this for a long time. But now, with email campagning in the reach of those with a fairly small budget, and especially with tools like this being launched, it has perhaps never been easier to check the effectiveness of our marketing materials.

Marketers now have the opportunity to insist that split testing is a core feature of any email campaign. Why send an email to 20,000 people without first doing some tests? Even a response rate improvement of a few percent could have a big impact on sales.

I have always been unsure about the importance of brand names in the marketing mix. Surely if a product is great then just about any name will do. There are examples of meaningless brand names everywhere. Kodak, Starbucks and Amazon . .  . they mean nothing but the companies are huge.

I haven’t changed my mind altogether, but one brand name has really got me thinking: ‘The Amazing Live Sea Monkeys.’

What are Sea Monkeys? They are a kind of brine shrimp that you buy in egg form, sprinkle into a small tank of water and feed once a week. (Take a quick look at http://www.sea-monkey.com/whatarethey.html to see them in action).

Sea Monkeys are great fun and a simple way to introduce kids (even big ones like me) to the joys and responsibilities of pet ownership. They are also an international sensation, with millions sold. But I bet if they called them ‘brine shrimp’ sales wouldn’t be as big.

The brand name is an inherent part of the product. You find yourself asking ‘how are the Sea Monkeys doing today?’. You even get quite attached to the little things. I guess it’s easier to get attached to monkeys than shrimp.

So this old cynic is perhaps mellowing a bit when it comes to brand names. I think I’ll spend a bit more effort the next time I am involved in choosing a brand name. Who knows, I may come up with something as successful as Sea Monkeys.

Earlier this week I was asked to talk at a meeting of the Peterborough Communicators Group - the brief being to stimulate discussion on the use of web resources to:

• communicate with customers and
• to allow staff teams to communicate together

We explored a number of areas such as blogs, wikis, social networking and more - and a number of sites proved particularly interesting to the audience, so I thought I’d share them here!

Blogging

To start a blog without the need for your IT department’s support, you can use one of the online services which provide the complete service - from designing your blog, the blogging interface itself and the hosting of your blog. Two of the best known of these services are:

• www.typepad.com: offers a free 14-day trial; after that, from $4.95 per month (that’s less than £3 at current exchange rates!)
• www.blogger.com: now owned by Google; offers free blogs!

In each case, you can map an existing domain name to your blog so that it appears to be part of your own website.

For blogging software that you download onto your own servers, the choices are wide, but two possibilities are:

• www.wordpress.org: open-source software (meaning that it’s free); this is what we use for the blog you’re reading now!
• www.movabletype.com: owned by the same people as Typepad; a free version is available plus paid-for versions with more facilities

Wikis

There are numerous online wikis that you can control through the use of passwords so that, for example, only certain members of staff can contribute (and more seem to be launching every week! her are two of the established ones:

• www.pbwiki.com: prices depend on the number of users - up to 3 users, it’s free.
• www.wikispaces.com: has a free version with limited facilities and it carries third-party advertising; ad-free versions with more functionality start at $5 per month

Alternatively, just as with blogging software, there are versions you can download onto your own servers; notable among the options here are:

• www.mediawiki.org: open-source software - this is the software behind Wikipedia
• www.twiki.org: also open-source and probably more useful in a business setting as it is what’s described as a “structured wiki”

If you really want to explore the wiki software options, try this site which compares over 100 different packages:

• www.wikimatrix.org

Social networking

I guess everyone is familiar now with www.facebook.com, but not everyone is familiar with the communication possibilities it offers, such as the ability to have a “page” (virtually a mini web site) within Facebook which users can be invited to become a “fan” of. Companies using this at present range from Ferrari (with 301,499 fans at the last count) to Ferrero Rocher (with 354,100 fans) and the i-phone (286,325 fans) to the Economist magazine (41,898 fans). Facebook now also offers the opportunity to show ads (similar to Google ads) to very specific geographic and demographic groups.

When it comes to business networking, the site that is probably most established is www.linkedin.com which in addition to the basic networking function is launching new content such as “Answers” - where members can pose business-related questions for other members to answer. this could develop into an interesting opportunity for experts in their field to display their expertise to a wider audience.

Of course it may be that you’d really like to create a social networking site that only people that you want to invite could join such as a site for staff members or for certain customer groups. One online service that offers just that is www.collectivex.com where you can build what it calls a “groupsite”.

Collaboration sites

Where communication between staff members (particularly at a distance) is important in order to share knowledge for example the following sites offer various levels of online collaboration:

• www.weboffice.com
• www.tommie.co.uk
• www.same-page.com
• www.basecamphq.com

Online market research

Again, many possibilities for designing questionnaires and getting responses online; two of the most established sites are:

• www.zoomerang.com
• www.surveymonkey.com

Both offer free options with limited capability so that you can test them out; the paid versions (from $20 per month upwards) offer sophisticated customisation, design, reporting and analytics.

The customer bites back…

Finally, of course, the expanded possibilities for organisations to communicate online with customers also give customers the opportunity to communicate openly about their experiences with an organisation. This recently launched UK site is giving consumers the chance to complain in a highly structured way:

• www.howtocomplain.com

It estimates that there are 100 million complaints in the UK in any one year and is offering to channel at least some of these through to the organisations involved.

Footnote

Ihe sites mentioned are by no means a comprensive list; nor is their inclusion here an endorsement of them! If you have you used any of these sites or programmes (or others), share your experience by posting your comments - hope to hear from you!

We’re excited about a new venture that starts this September when we extend our delivery of the CIM Professional Diploma course to Norwich.

Until now, this qualification was only available in Norwich by the examination route. From this September, we are offering the course for assessment by work-based assignments - the preferred option for most candidates if our experience in Peterborough is anything to go by.

The course will feature a combination of face-to-face tutorials and online resources and the assignment route enables candidates to apply the knowledge they acquire to the organisations they work for, therby greatly increasing their understding of the subject.

More details of the course are on our website here. If you want to talk to us about this course, call our Norwich number on 01603 905 658

We’re in the final stages of putting together our delivery programme for 2008/09 CIM courses that we teach in Peterborough - and that process has been complicated by the changes that are taking place in the syllabus for the various levels of qualification. It would also appear that there is some confusion among potential applicants for these courses about what the changes involve and what their practical impact will be.

I thought it might be useful therefore to give a brief outline here!

Professional Certificate in Marketing

From September 2008, this qualification has a new syllabus and new methods of assessment.

The syllabus comprises four modules and the assessment methods are laid down for each module as follows:

•  Marketing Essentials
  •  3-hour written examination
•  Assessing the Marketing Environment
•  case-study project in preparation for…
•  …3-hour written examination
•  Marketing Information & Research
•  research-based project
•  Stakeholder Marketing
•  work-based project

This syllabus reflects a new attainment level for this qualification - the equivalent of first-year degree level.

Professional Diploma in Marketing

The syllabus for this qualification will change in September 2009 when assessment methods will also change to a similar (prescribed) model to the new Certificate model described above. Starting the Diploma in September 2008 therefore, is the last opportunity that candidates will have to choose their assessment route (either by examination or by work-based assignment).

In addition, from 2009 the entry-level qualifications for the Diploma are likely to be higher than now and the qualification itself will be at the level of a final year Honours Degree equivalent.

Professional Postgraduate Diploma

Again, the syllabus and assessment methods for this qualification are under review and will also change in September 2009 - we still await further details from the CIM. In the meantime, this qualification is assessed by written examination, although we do have accreditation to offer one of the modules (Managing Marketing Performance) by a work-based assignment route.

I hope that clarifies the position for those interested - contact us if you’ve any further queries.

Last year we ran the first of our Marketing-bites events: an afternoon of short presentations covering a range of marketing-related subjects.

Now we are getting ready to hold another of these in Peterborough and we are deciding which subjects to cover. Suggestions so far include:

• Marketing and the law - a review of the essential rules, codes and legislation marketers need to keep abreast of.
• Marketing and the environment - a tour of the ‘green marketing’ agenda and the practical implications.
• How can marketing truly support sales? - a look at how marketers can really help sales people achieve greater things for our organisations.

Do any of these subjects sound good to you? Are there any others you would like us to cover? Add a comment or drop us a line to let us know what you think.

Just announced today, the results of the 2008 survey of marketers’ opinions of which companies display the best green credentials show Marks & Spencer leading the field!

However. the most notable result of the poll (carried out by YouGov on behalf of Marketing Week magazine) is the lack of consistency among marketers as to which brands they consider really demonstrate true green credentials rather then “greenwashing”. For example, Tesco ranks in first place as the brand that has made the fewest inroads on green issues; but it also ranks fourth among brands which have made most impact!

Read the full details here:

News: M&S tops MW/YouGov green issues marketers’ poll - Marketing Week

If you’ve watched any TV in the last few weeks, you cannot have failed to see the Persil “Small & Mighty” ad, but just in case, here’s another chance to view it on YouTube.

It’s a great ad, and gets its message across very effectively, but… the question is: is this greenwashing, or a genuine move on the part of Unilever to display their “green” credentials? I’m sure that you’ll have you own opinion on that, but now there’s a website that offers the opportunity for anyone to make their opinion known on this, or indeed any other ad, they feel is “greenwashing”. The site is the Greenwashing Index - here’s an extract from their site:

Welcome to the Greenwashing Index — home of the world’s first online interactive forum that allows consumers to evaluate real advertisements making environmental claims. “Going green” has become mainstream for businesses large and small — and that’s a good thing. What’s not so great is when businesses make environmental marketing claims that can be misleading. The intent of this Web site is to:

1. Help consumers become more savvy about evaluating environmental marketing claims of advertisers;
2. Hold businesses accountable to their environmental marketing claims; and
3. Stimulate the market and demand for sustainable business practices that truly reduce the impact on the environment.

Another example of how the web is enabling customers to put the pressure on us, as marketers, to get our stories straight!

Here at Marketing Ability we are getting more and involved in the role that marketing can play in companies’ efforts to improve their environmental credentials, and to successfully communicate about what they are doing. Over the next few weeks we will do some further research and consultation as we develop new training programmes.

I’ve been reading a lot about environmental issues lately, naturally with a focus on marketing aspects. One thing that is becoming clear is the tremendous bottom-up pressure that consumers are putting on organisations to improve environmental performance. If any company still thinks that customers don’t care about this ‘green stuff’ look at the stats. Like the fact that UK turnover in ethical food in 1999 was just over £1billion: in 2005 it was over £5billion and rising. Or that well over 90% of people in the UK recycle in one way or another.

Green is already mainstream. Sure, in some sectors it’s more of an issue among consumers than in others, but it’s not something that any serious company can ignore.

Marketing and the environment is a complex subject. That’s why the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s Peterborough Group is running a seminar on the subject next week. (Details are here.) It’s also why that seminar alone will probably just scratch the surface of the green marketing agenda. But despite the complexities (that we will no doubt look at in future blog posts), this green stuff is here to stay.

The pressing need to take action to save this beautiful, fragile planet should be enough to make us all change the way our companies do things. But if that wasn’t enough, the need to respond to customer demands for new behaviours from us should make every organisation agree and work towards meaningful environmental targets.