Make Digital Marketing Work

In discussion with prospects and clients, there seems to be one question that keeps returning no matter how many years go by and that is whether to sell directly online with eCommerce or to support existing sales channels.  Rather than deciding on how your sales channel is to be fed.  I think a better way of approaching this is whether your campaign is transactional (ie I can buy it more easily online) or non transactional (I want them to go and buy it somewhere else because that is easier for them and me).  It fits quite neatly into direct response and brand building.

If I sell music from my store of vintage vinyl, it will help me a lot if I offer this as an online order service and therefore provide direct response media that tells me what albums to wrap up and send where all across the world.  Direct response is perfect for me.  It is also playing to one of the Web’s strengths where time and place do not matter.  It means that me as a tiny little store in the middle of nowhere can compete as if I was an international company with a presence on every street corner.  I can be open 24 hours a day, every day and everybody in the world can access my store front.  This is why tiny niche offers can do so well online.  There may only be a million people in the entre world who need my product but through the web I can access every single one of them just as easily as I can access the three who live in my area.

If I am selling chocolate that can be bought on every street corner, direct response isn’t a lot of use to me because every customer can cross the street and buy my product a lot faster than I can send it by mail or courier.  I’ve also got this huge infrastructure in place that makes it available across the world.  Why would I want to compete with such a well established sales channel?  My task here is to support and strengthen my existing sales channels through all the means at my disposal of which online is one.

In this scenario conducting brand building marketing activity is a lot more beneficial.  I might try promoting why my chocolate is better than everybody else’s or give a special promotion code online so that customers can take it into their store to get added value.  I might ask my customers which of my chocolate they prefer at a given time and ask them for examples.  Do they cook with it, show me.  Is there some way I can make it better, tell me.  All these things combine to help me and my customer know each other better and help my distribution partners sell more of my product.

This is only scratching the surface though because I have assumed that simply advertising the fact that I have a product to sell is enough to get customers to buy it, when  organisations are starting to recognise the importance of an end to end online marketing strategy, which engages and builds trust to maximise the chances of a prospect becoming a customer.

There was a lot of talk this week concerning the Pay Per Click Campaign that iCrossing ran for Ann Summers with apparent strong feeling on both sides.  The BA air strike is an emotive issue but I don’t want to linger on the morals of using it as a marketing technique (others have done that already), I am more interested in the technique itself.

The campaign revolved around the British Airways strike by cabin staff, and was executed so that anyone looking for keywords about the strike was greeted with a Google ad that.  The PPC campaign made statements such as “Your plane may be grounded but you can still take off with our toys”.  According to the picture below showing the google results it performed quite well and was rewarded with a top position.

I would be interested to learn exactly how this performed in a case study.  The power of PPC is that it gives you an ad for what you want at the time you are looking for it.  So is the rationale here, “I am interested in finding out about the British airways strike, Oh look I nearly forgot I need to buy a dildo, some anal beads and a tube of lube?”  Did the ad produce significant click through or was the intention to use a direct response media for brand building purposes and not expect to produce click through? How do you measure that?  Was it measured?

It’s certainly a cheeky and inventive creative idea but is it one that we can simply look at and say it was cheeky and inventive or did it actually work and produce sales for the client?  Anyone care to comment?  My feeling is that unless you take that traffic and do something with it then it is wasted traffic

It used to be said that ‘the big idea’ that permeated agency output was all important and that the channel was secondary.  What was meant was that a good idea would translate to any media (although they usually meant TV) and so it was just a case of adapting it.  I’ve sat in meetings in rooms painted with blue skies (see what they did there?) whilst the great and the good of the creative team argued about the difference between pantone colours 2592 and 2602.  (As an aside if anyone can tell me the intrinsic difference between the two and why it’s worth two hours of two highly paid individual’s life arguing about it then I’ll buy the drinks).

I felt at the time that this was all a bit ridiculous and far too up its own arse and I am even more convinced of it now.

Then along came digital, and everyone proclaimed that it was just another channel.  I’ve been guilty myself of towing this party line to make sure that the delicate sensibilities of the creative department were not offended and they didn’t suddenly erupt in a re-enactment of mount Vesuvius as it destroyed Pompeii.  I know better now than to play that game, and would much rather be the little boy asking why the emperor has no clothes on.

Here is an analogy to explain what I mean.

There was a hierarchy of things, with brand and mass advertising occupying the high seats of power on the client’s right hand.  From there came PR and direct and a multitude of below the line suppliers.  Then there were the dogs of digital who padded around on all fours sniffing the distinguished guests and looking for the scraps, whilst everyone complimented them on their intelligence and fine breeding.  All was well in the universe and everyone knew their place whilst the people were told to admire the fine clothes of the emperor.

Then came the knock on the gates and the people of the kingdom rose up to create havoc in the order of things.

The very definitions that denoted an agency’s place in the hierarchy is vanishing quicker than the new receptionist and account manager at an agency Christmas party.  Consumers don’t care if the media they interact with is called Brand building, advertising, direct response, PR, experiential or anything else.  What they care about is whether it engages with them and facilitates a relationship with two way communication.

Does this emperor truly care about and listen to his people? The megaphone of power marketing is being ignored, and the royal decrees that it issued are now rejected as twaddle.  Moreover, there are mutterings that are spreading throughout the kingdom that the emperor is wearing no clothes.

Now the people are demanding that their needs and experiences are taken into account because they know best what they want to wear.   Consumers have overtaken agencies in knowing what they want to achieve and what they want to get out of the media they consume.

So where does this leave us?  The high table is in confusion and in the general melee the dogs are having a wonderful feast whilst the people cheer.

The actual point is that we will still need creative and creative ideas but instead of thinking of it in a simplex manner the creative will now be conceived with the added ability for customers to interact with it as they want to, and consumers will surprise everyone by how they choose to interact with it.  This is what we term as ‘duplex creative’.  If something is duplex it is two way and it flows.  Simplex is the advertising of the 80s, semi duplex assumed that the advertiser could choose the direction that it was led, but only when you reach full duplex communication is the customer’s needs actually served.  It can go either way and be led by either party.  Communication is the secret to all relationships and is definitely the key to customer relationships, because the focal point is the customer.

This is why I believe that the old ways are gone forever.  Naturally I think that the digital dogs will inherit the places at the top table but I also think that old media itself will morph into new and exciting forms of media.  What I hope I have seen the last of is someone looking at me and saying “but what is the big idea?”, and be under any illusion that what they are saying is intelligent.  The big idea is that we are going to be brave enough to interact on a personal level with customers.

That big enough for you?

Some 24 years ago I sat in a call centre taking credit card donations during a rock concert when an Irish chap suddenly announced “fuck the addresses” on primetime television.  The result was that the phone lines exploded.  This proved to me then that TV was a very significant direct response form of media.  The reality though is that largely advertising on TV doesn’t take advantage of this at all, and instead opts for brand building.  I’m not saying that brand building is bad of course and there are agencies in town who are quite simply superb at it.  What I am saying though is that brand building in general doesn’t seem to be flavour of the month with advertisers when they have a choice of putting their money into one of the most effective direct response mechanisms ever invented, in the form search.

Whether it is paid for or natural, search is the dream direct response media.  To my mind this isn’t an argument about whether tv or online is getting more dollars it is an argument about where smart money is going and it seems to be pretty obvious that it is going to direct response.  Given the economic conditions that isn’t surprising (apparently it always happens that way).  It is interesting that TV is having to rethink itself completely.  The ads that agencies dream up for a brand can just as easily find their way onto IP TV or online video ads but the opportunity to create interactive direct response ads for that medium is one that has yet to be properly taken advantage of.

Banner ad spend has suffered despite the increase in online spend and doesn’t give the same return as search.  This has taught us that because something can be clicked on doesn’t mean it will be clicked on.  Surely there can’t be that many people in the world that would claim that banner ads are anything other than brand building these days?

That’s not so say that brand building doesn’t have its place.  We all know that the media multiplier effect is as true online as it is offline.  So that your direct response media works a lot better when you are also running brand building activity.  Whether this is  TV supporting direct mail or banner ads supporting emails the effect is the same and response rates increase.

With the advent of 4OD i Player and the other various web based catch up channels we have an opportunity to rethink how we approach moving picture advertising and how consumers will want to interact with it.  On demand web based catch up TV sites all feature clickable ads but are they getting clicked on and how do they differ from the broadcast counterparts?

I think the opportunity is calling for direct response and brand building to be spliced together in a new format that will find its home in Online TV.  The biggest drawback to this will be if offline agencies (who have the brand building conceptual creatives needed for this), will persist in their view that the message is everything or if they will this time embrace the idea that building a relationship with the customer is their starting point and goal.