Follow us on Twitter @TheNeg
THE PROBLEM Who remembers British Airways spending £60m in 1997 on the re-brand of their tail fins on its international fleet? Somebody dreamt up that idea and did a brilliant job of persuading some very intelligent people that it was the way forward. And in a creative marketing department, and in a corporate boardroom it probably did look like a fantastic exercise in developing an international, modern and cultured brand. Unfortunately it didn’t work when let loose on a judging public. Two years later, BA spent many more millions undoing the re-brand and putting the national flag back. Another classic example is Captain
Birdseye. In 1998 Birdseye attempted to rebrand their frozen foods and make it more appealing to mums who were most likely to see the adverts and buy the product for their children. Cynically, they dropped the Uncle Albert
lookalike and replaced the old seafarer with a younger, chisel jawed 30-something. The move was universally rejected by customers and in 2002 the ageing but trusted bearded fellow was back on your fish fingers. Again, I’m sure the reasons were well
thought out and I’m sure the boffins at Birdseye/Unilever had thought about how to make their product and brand more appealing. But tragically they got it wrong and it didn’t work. If two behemoth corporations like British
Airways and Birdseye can get it this wrong, what chance have we got?
THE ANSWER The answer is ridiculously simple, yet it’s the bit that most organisations pay lip service to – market research. No matter how good your ideas are, how creative you and your team are and how well you execute your ideas, the only people that can tell you if they’re going to work are your customers. The problem is that we’re too close to our
own companies and brands, products and services and we think we know them better than anyone else. We think we own them – but we don’t, our customers do. We are the custodians. If you try something that they don’t accept and don’t buy into, well, they probably never will. And yet how often do you conduct market research? Ever? Most companies will have carried out some
sort of customer research. Usually centred around customer service and satisfaction. It’s vital. Think about why you’re doing it. It’s because you want to ensure that you’re meeting the needs of your customers with the service you’re providing. So why use your customers to tell you how you’re doing but find the concept of asking them to tell you whether your ideas are going to work is so alien? With the technology and tools that are
available to us today it’s never been easier to research every single concept, product or service that comes out of your creative thinking. Tools like
SurveyMonkey.com
www.thenegotiator.co.uk
TheBusiness
enable you to conduct online surveys on the most modest of marketing budgets. Better still, most have either a free version which lets you try before you commit budget to them. A full subscription is around £25 per month and enables you to conduct both market research and customer satisfaction surveys. SurveyMonkey lets you generate reports and chart responses into whatever format you can dream up to analyse your results. It’s distributed through a simple email with a link to the survey and there are options to brand your surveys. However, you don’t have to get all technical
to conduct research. The good old paper questionnaire, clipboard and interview are just as informative. Any method of asking for customer opinion is valid as long as you keep it impartial and it’s not contrived to give you the answer you’re really looking for – otherwise what’s the point in doing it? Focus groups get a bad press but they are
an invaluable method for getting an opinion from a number of individuals at one time. They’re especially useful for anything visual such as a brand image/logo, advert or a property board design. Impartiality is the key to their success, as it is with all of your market research activity. If the customer understands that you’re asking on behalf of
becomes really important. Blanket research doesn’t work unless your products and services span all demographics. Most don’t. It has secondary benefits too. Market
research can also increase your brand awareness and brand profile and if your target audience are made to feel valuable in shaping your business, your products and services then they are more inclined to engage with you when they need those services. Research isn’t expensive. It’s a small
investment of time but it will go a long way to preventing you from making decisions that you thought were great but just didn’t get the response you sought.
SPEND WISELY There are some good examples of companies conducting research and spending money wisely on marketing activities during difficult economic times. Intel was hardly known before the early 90s. After all, it’s difficult to engage people with the processor inside their computer – at least, it certainly was. Market research helped form the Intel Inside concept and brand that we’re all so familiar with now. Intel spent a considerable amount of money launching the concept of Intel Inside in 1990-91, long before the tech bubble had started and when customers
“Ask your customers for their views. If the idea is good, they’ll tell you so. If it isn’t such a good idea,
they’ll definitely tell you!” Ian Laverty
yourself, it’s all too easy for them to give you the answer that they think you want to hear. If you’re conducting focus groups, surveys or questionnaires to give you customer insight, try to make it independent by having someone conduct this for you. Customer research agencies will provide guidance on the research that you need, and will carry out the research for you, but they aren’t a necessity. Creating your market research is simply a
case of knowing what you want to find out and who you want to find it out from. An associate or an impartial employee can carry out the research and as long as they don’t lead the witness so to speak then you will find the process straight forward.
WHO TO ASK? Who is the target audience for the marketing activity? Asking yourself before conducting the research. A product or marketing communication aimed at new customers should target potential customers in its research. Marketing activity that offers services to existing customers should be researched in your existing customer base. This is where knowing your customer
weren’t spending money on ‘luxury’ items (the PC was then!). Sure, they had an agency conducting customer research for them and an advertising agency producing their creative, but don’t think for a second that it wasn’t tested and re-tested with the target customers before spending that kind of investment on a launch. What’s important here is that you road test
your ideas with customers to see whether they’re as good as you thought they were. It doesn’t matter whether you’re marketing an airline, a fish finger, a chocolate biscuit, a computer processor or an estate agency. The process should be the same. If it’s a good idea, your customers will tell you so. If it’s not, they’ll definitely tell you so! In these difficult times it gives your marketing more chance of being Intel than a misguided tail. In the next article I’ll give some hints,
tips and guidance towards monitoring and evaluating your marketing activity. That way, once you commit to the marketing spend you’ll be able to assess whether it’s really working for you or whether you need to change it. It ensures that your marketing continues to be an investment and doesn’t become a cost. l
TheNegotiator l October 2012 l 39
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52