Wednesday, October 14, 2009

A Fresh Take on Tourism Advertising

by Jen Non

Tourism has been widely recognized as a major contributor to any country’s economy. As such, countries across the globe have invested significantly over the years in “destination marketing,” hoping to attract more visitors.

A few weeks ago, the Philippines launched a new global ad campaign called “Take Me to the Philippines” with a music video featuring Apl.de.ap. from the Black Eyed Peas. The music video is now being aired globally through the MTV network and is supported by an interactive website and on-ground components such as a roaming promotional caravan.


The Philippines' DoT has partnered with MTV for this initiative in a bid to attract the 15-20 age demographic – young, powerful consumers who are able to influence their parents’ consumption behaviour and patterns. This is the first time that MTV has teamed up with a country and it is DoT’s biggest global campaign to date with a particular network.

The video makes use of vibrant imagery while showcasing the country’s landmark destinations such as Boracay and Mayon Volcano as well as its famous icons like the tricycle and jeepney. Apl’s music lends further to the fresh, energetic appeal that the visual images evoke. This is definitely not your average dull tourism video!

Will this campaign be a success? Only time will tell – but already, the feedback on social platforms such as Facebook have been highly encouraging. While I personally think that there is a lot more to be done for the Philippines to attract the same volume of tourist arrivals as its neighbours such as Thailand and Malaysia, this music video is a good step in the right direction.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

What to Think: Advertising in Singapore

Advertising has the power to influence consumer buying behavior, and of course, that is an activity that must be regulated. It takes very little imagination to understand that advertising regulation is fundamental to business and that business would be much more difficult without it. As a general example, were there no rules against false advertising, it would obviously put the consumer at risk of faulty or dangerous products, as well as increase the difficulty of doing business by eliminating part of the basis for trust between consumers and businesses.

Therefore, it is totally unsurprising that Singapore has such regulations; however, true to form, some of the regulations published by the Advertising Standards Authority of Singapore (ASAS) are probably a bit different from analogous rulebooks elsewhere, as the ASAS specifies social values and norms for ads in some detail. That is, not only does it prescribe how advertisers should behave, but also how advertisers should influence consumer's perceptions and social behavior.

Generally, the Singapore Code of Advertising Practice (SCAP) sets the guiding principles for ASAS and "seeks to promote a high standard of ethics in advertising through industry self-regulation." This means ASAS offers fee-based consulting to firms on SCAP code compliance and also provides a way for professionals and members of the general public to file complaints against those who violate the code.

While most of the SCAP is fairly standard and takes the obvious position that "all advertisements should be legal, decent, honest and truthful," it does contain some unusual material which can be said unique to Singapore's cultural and legal environment and interesting to anyone doing business here. I have excerpted a few choice passages below.
1.4 All advertisements shall not subvert the shared values in Singapore’s society including:
(a) Nation before community and society above self;
(b) Family as the basic unit of society;
(c) Community support and respect for the individual;
(d) Consensus, not conflict; and
(e) Racial and religious harmony.
1.5 All advertisements shall not subvert Singapore’s family values of:
(a) Love, care, and concern;
(b) Mutual respect;
(c) Filial responsibility;
(d) Commitment; and
(e) Communication.
9.1 Advertisements should not:
(a) Downplay the importance of patriotism and national unity;
(b) Misinterpret national policies and goals for the benefit of any individual;
(c) Distort the perception of Singaporeans and the quality of life in Singapore;
(d) Distort the perceptions of citizens’ influence in national issues;
(e) Discredit or be derogatory to Singapore as a democratic country or in any other way.
9.2 Advertisements should not promote or condone rude and inconsiderate behaviour. Advertisements should not downplay the importance of having a caring and compassionate attitude for the less fortunate members of the community.
9.3 Advertisements should not adopt or encourage a confrontational approach to resolving societal conflicts or differences. Advertisements should not exploit or fuel conflicts relating to national problems and controversial policies or issues.
9.4 Advertisements should be handled sensitively to minimise misinterpretation of intentions on ethnic issues. Advertisements should not jeopardise interethnic understanding or discriminate against any ethnic group or religion, or downplay the importance of mutual dependence amongst all groups.

10.1 Advertisements should not:
(a) Downplay the importance of the family as a unit and foundation of society;
(b) Undermine the perception of the family as a place of comfort and security;
(c) Discredit mutual love, affection and support amongst family members.
10.2 Advertisements should not encourage inconsiderate and disrespectful conduct amongst family members.
10.3 Advertisements should not denounce or discourage the responsibilities of honouring, supporting and providing for one’s parents and grandparents in their old age.
10.4 Advertisements should not undermine the willingness among family members to stand by one another through ups and downs.
10.5 Advertisements should not erode or downplay the importance of communication amongst family members in building trust and understanding.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Intelligent Marketing with Web 2.0

by Luke Donnelly

In the 21st Century, companies will rely more heavily on the artificial intelligence of the Social Web (Web 2.0) to market products and services to people more effectively. Effective marketing relies on intelligent spending, using those precious marketing dollars to reach the right demographic targets with your message. Why pay to broadcast your advertising message to a wide audience, when you can make useful "recommendations" to only those that are likely to be interested, at a much lower cost? This is why companies are starting to provide goods and services using the tools of Web 2.0.

Even today, in the infancy of the Web 2., take companies like London's Last FM. This online music service "scrobbles", or collects data about what you listen to on iTunes, and displays it to other Last FM listeners, and in real-time on your Skype profile. It also collects data about what you've been listening to on the go, by eavesdropping every time you connect your iPod or iPhone to your computer. The service then slowly, over time, builds an accurate profile of the kind of music you like. Even if your tastes are varied.

Using tagging and intelligent software, Last.fm uses your profile to make recommendations about songs or artists you might like to pay to download and concerts you might like to attend, based on your location and tastes. It identifies other listeners with similar taste to yours, and makes recommendations such as "We know you haven't heard any music yet by X, but 85% of people with tastes similar to yours often listen to the new album by X". You can play a sample song by X and watch a video. One click later, you've bought the album, not from a traditional ad, but from a recommendation -- a helpful, accurate recommendation.

"Recommendation marketing" is useful, but it is crucial that the recommendations are accurate. Look at Amazon. When I buy a birthday present for my sister on Amazon, I factor in that she has very different tastes from me. So it's exhausting when I then receive inaccurate purchasing recommendations a few months later from Amazon: "Hey, we think you might like to buy the new book by (insert name your least favourite Chick Lit author here)".

Doesn't Amazon's recommendation service remember that I didn't choose to send that previous gift item to myself? I chose to send it to someone else! So the later recommendation that Amazon makes to me should be based on MY tastes, not on my judgments about gifts for others. There's room for improvement.

Companies know that the social web is big business. A recent business case competition on tagging for taste and suggestion was held by Netflix, with a one million dollar prize! Using the Netflix online DVD ordering service, customers build up a preference list of movies they would like to see. The problem is that customers are not walking around a rental store. The only real estate they have is the computer screen. So if they don't see titles they might like, they don't rent, or they rent less frequently.

Making accurate recommendations about what a consumer might like is a important when managing a business. Why pay for warehouses full of DVDs that no-one wants to see? How many copies of a new European arthouse movie should the company order for their St Louis warehouse, for example, based on the film-watching tastes of their customers in St Louis?

Netflix has their own recommendation engine, but they suspected it could be improved. After years of trying to improve it themselves, they thought there was still room for improvement. So they exposed much of their customer statistics and ran a huge business case competition over three years, that ended last week. The prize of a million dollars went to a team that designed a recommendation engine that could beat Netflix's existing engine by 10%.

But this is just the beginning. A few short years from now, with (and in some cases without) our permission, smart companies will be using Web 2.0 marketing technologies to know exactly what we listen to, what we choose to wear, what we watch, where we like to eat out. But also, what we have not yet watched. What we have not yet listened to. Where we have not yet eaten, but, based on accurate judgment about our tastes, where we would like to eat.

At that point, the common questionnaire will be dead. Web 2.0 will be almost as intelligent as humans, and a huge percentage of company recommendations will lead to purchases. Enriching your experience, increasing companies' earnings, and every marketing dollar spent will yield returns.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

It’s All in the Packaging

by Jen Non

Browsing through the shelves at Kinokuniya reinforced one important point that marketers tend to forget: the power of packaging.


Yes, the brand name matters. In the same way that most people will gravitate towards the best-selling authors such as Dan Brown, Danielle Steele or Jodi Picoult, consumers in a supermarket will readily look for big-name brands such as Heinz ketchup, Pantene shampoo or Colgate toothpaste. Yet, if you’re in a very cluttered or crowded area such as Kinokuniya (or any hypermarket like Carrefour or Cold Storage), the problem is standing out among the thousands of seemingly identical items.

If the average customer is like me, he/she will quickly scan the shelves and look at items that grab the eye. For example, while browsing aimlessly through the non-fiction sections of Kinokuniya, I tended to look at books whose covers caught and held my attention through colourful or interesting graphics, or succinct titles that hinted of something fascinating (e.g., "The Fall of Advertising & The Rise of PR" by Al Ries and Laura Ries; "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond). All other books fell to the wayside, with nary a thought given to them. With the countless selection offered by Kinokuniya as well as the limited time I had in the store, I could not be bothered to look at each book one by one and read each of their précis on the back cover. Similar to being at the supermarket as well, when you’ve got a harried mother of two looking for mayonnaise while being plagued by the constant cries of her child who WANTS ICE CREAM… NOW!

Sadly, though, packaging (as well as shelving and visual merchandising) has been largely out of the product mix whenever marketers do their brainstorming. Most of the time, we get bland and generic labels that do nothing to excite a customer’s attention and imagination. Even worse, we get packaging labels that aren’t even seen by the customers! To quote one recent article by Scott Young and Jonathan Asher, “Consider rounded containers. They look great in the conference room (or when viewed in a focus group) when they face directly forward, but, in-store these containers are often turned off-center, which can greatly compromise their impact and communication. Bagged products can also be a challenge because they are likely to sag or get ‘scrunched’ on shelf, which can impact quality perceptions and/or make key copy points (claims, variety, etc.) unreadable.”

If you still don’t believe in the power of good packaging, consider the Japanese who have elevated packaging and gift wrapping into an art form. The food contained inside the beautiful packaging may not always be good (and for non-Japanese speakers such as myself, we may even be clueless as to what is actually inside the package), but we must have that item because it’s simply exquisite! Moira Cullen, the Senior Director for Global Design at The Hershey Company, said it best when she spoke about the packaging employed for food, confections and teas sold in Japan’s leading department stores: “On a purely visceral, visual level, I was seduced by these objects. The boxes and pouches and bags were exquisite. Each one was uniquely exceptional. I didn’t always know what was inside, but I didn’t care. I was so amazed I bought an extra suitcase just for samples. I had to bring them home with me.”

Photo source: theDieline.com. Those interested in learning more about brand packaging may go to the Brand Packaging website at www.brandpackaging.com

Friday, September 25, 2009

DDB Brasil's Tsunami: How not to win awards

In a bid to create the edginess necessary to win awards, it seems that the distinguished adverstising firm DDB Brasil overstepped the bounds of ethics and good taste when it released the following ad, entitled "Tsunami," supposedly created for the World Wildlife Fund.


While the ad is illogical and distasteful, evidently its shock value was enough for DDB Brasil to garner a prestigious One Club "Merit Award." However, many complained that the content of the ad was offensive, and what's worse, the ad was not even commissioned by the WWF. It was created by DDB alone for the purpose of claiming awards.

Confronted with public anger to the false ad, DDB Brasil initially lied and disclaimed ownership, but it was later shown to be the agency's work. The fallout from the fiasco has prompted the One Club to revoke DDB Brasil's merit award and issue strict new rules regarding "fake" ads. Moreover, the WWF has also issued a statement condemning the ad and disclaiming any association.

However, the firestorm did not stop there, and the scandal has spawned a sardonic "response" ad, which proclaims: "It was just advertising. Don't make war about it."

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Pepsi gives readers a taste of the future with Harry Potter-style ad

This post is an article that was shared by one of our members, Roland Lim

This article heralds the new media space to watch out for: magazine video ads! Will this new technology catch on?


By Kenneth Li in New York

Published: August 20 2009 03:00 | Last updated: August 20 2009 03:00

When Entertainment Weekly readers open the magazine next month, they will discover people talking to them from a wafer-thin video screen built into a printed page in a marketing experiment that highlights the radical new strategies advertisers are employing to reach consumers.

The full-motion ad is made possible by technology from a US company called Amerchip that works much like a singing greeting card and recalls the moving pictures of the "Daily Prophet" newspaper of the Harry Potter films.

The cost of the promotion from CBS, the US broadcaster, and Pepsi, the soft drink maker, was not disclosed. However, magazine industry executives estimated the ad would come at a high cost at a time when media companies around the globe face a severe decline in advertising revenue.

"It's part of the future - a way to engage consumers in new and surprising ways," said George Schweitzer, president of CBS marketing group. "How do you sample a drink? You give them a taste."

CBS and Pepsi's promotion will feature a six-page print advertisement in the magazine that will play a video promoting the Monday night autumn television programming line-up.

The promotion will appear in copies to subscribers of the magazine in the New York and Los Angeles area. It has not been decided exactly how many of Entertainment Weekly's 1.8m circulation will receive the video ad version.

Although the companies declined to discuss the cost of the promotion, one magazine industry executive familiar with the technology estimated the ad on 100,000 copies would cost in the low seven-figure range.

On that basis, the cost of one full-page ad page for an advertiser in Entertainment Weekly would be many times higher than 9 cents per regular page, based on the magazine's current rate card.

Although it remains unclear if the technology will catch on with other marketers and magazines, the magazine industry has continued to seek new technology to lift the moribund print sector, which has been hit with a severe decline in ad revenue and slipping circulation.

Esquire, a men's magazine published by Hearst, last year created a cover for its 75th anniversary issue built with an E Ink screen, the same technology used in Amazon.com's Kindle reader, that generated significant buzz.


Find the article on the website of Financial Times

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Is Starbucks VIA the wrong path?

 When Starbucks announced last month that they were introducing instant coffee called VIA in their shops, I was totally shocked.  After reading part of CEO Howard Schultz’s memoirs cum history of Starbucks in his internationally acclaimed book “Pour Your Heart into It”, one thing struck me: that this Seattle-based company took coffee very seriously.  And this reflected in their company philosophy that each cup of Starbucks coffee should be of the highest quality of freshly ground beans that are brewed to perfection.  In fact they were so dedicated to their philosophy that the introduction of frappuccinos (fraps) initially sparked a gargantuan debate amongst top management.   Apparently, fraps were considered by coffee connoisseurs as an abomination of the original brewed espresso because they were frozen, too dolled up and flavoured, thus hiding the true taste of the brew. 

In fact, going back a little in time, one of the earlier inspirations of Starbucks were the Italian espresso cafes in Milan where people passed by in the morning on their way to work to grab an espresso from their favourite espresso café owners, stood for a while to chit chat about the weather and the news, and then left.  The transaction took only a few minutes, but already involved a lot of personalized interaction with the barista. The espresso and this sort of interaction inspired the founders of Starbucks and decided to bring to test the idea in Seattle. First it was a Milan type café with no tables.  So connoisseurs queued to get their espressos and that was it.  As it became more popular, people wanted to stay a bit longer to chat and demanded for tables and chairs.  So management put in some tables.  And soon, they were attracting not just the connoisseurs, but also people in general who were curious about this coffee craze. So by educating their customers about coffee, word of mouth spread and more and more people were attracted to come and experience the interaction and the nice ambience.  As more kinds of people caught the craze, eventually requests started coming in for different flavours and variations, so then came the espresso based lattes and the mochas, then the frappuccinos.      

And now instant coffee?  After all the investment poured into educating customers and staff about the best ground beans and the beauty of espresso and whole bean coffee in general, why the sudden move into instant coffee?  Won’t this move dilute Starbucks’ brand equity?

Before answering the question directly, I’d like to think that Starbucks has always put a premium on satisfying their customers by listening to their needs.  One can see from the way they evolved that each change was made in order to address a customer need.  From the addition of tables to the frozen fraps, each change was a dedicated action to satisfy the customers even more.  By evolving and responding to needs, their targeted audience grew wider and wider.  It wasn’t just coffee connoisseurs anymore or just people on the go, but everybody who loves to meet with friends and family or kill time in a nice place with nice music over a cup of coffee! In Manila, some Starbucks shops are even outfitted with meeting rooms to accommodate students and businessmen alike who needed a nice place to study in or conduct a business meeting.  Undoubtedly, Starbucks has evolved into a lifestyle brand with an impetus to listen and adjust to customer needs constantly.

And now, with the deepening financial crisis, and with several Starbucks shops closing, I can only surmise that the call of the public is for cheaper but decent instant coffee.   

When a short frap could easily cost you $5, and a regular brew around $3, it’s becoming harder for consumers to part with their hard-earned dollars.  But with less than a dollar per cup of instant Italian blend VIA, will customers come looking for Starbucks again?  Assuming that most of Starbucks customers are not coffee snobs or connoisseurs anymore, I think it will work.  As many homes are brewing their own coffee at home or turning to instant coffee to save money, it only makes sense for Starbucks to allow its customers to experience the brand once more at a lower price point.  By doing this, they’re not only responding to customer needs, but also tapping into a larger customer base that is just waiting for instant coffee to become better.  With VIA, as long as it is what they claim to be, which is the product of 20 years of research on the Starbucks way of making instant that tastes just like a freshly brewed Starbucks coffee using a super secret technology (want to know more? Please see the youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1YU5kRmDUo), then I believe it will make a lot of consumers happy. 

The Starbucks quality touch that its customers are used to: still there, through an offering of premium VIA flavours and nice packaging. 

The distinct freshly brewed taste using only the best Arabica beans: still there, using their super secret technology. 

Therefore as far as brand equity is concerned, I don’t think Starbucks has much to be worried about as long as it delivers on its promise of having instant that’s not really instant that tastes like brewed, the Starbucks way.  VIA is definitely the right way to go right now.

But now they also have breakfast meals similar to McDonald’s?  But this is another discussion for next time.

 

 

 

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Marketing principles for troubled times

By all accounts the world economy has entered uncharted waters. Governments are trying to spend as fast as they can, coporations are minimising losses and cutting costs, and newly minted and unemployed MBAs are carefully calculating how much they will earn from selling their blood plasma each month. Meanwhile, the world's finest policy minds are attempting to mitigate the crisis through massive spending stimuli, which one assumes will have second-order ramifications that are almost certainly unknown to anyone at this time.

Fortunately for marketing practitioners, two professors from our neighbours at INSEAD have attempted to offer some insight in a recent working paper, "When to push the panic button?"  Therein, professors ‘Paddy’ V. Padmanabhan and Pushan Dutt offer guidance marketing activities during an economic downturn, stressing the need to know your consumer, the market, and avoiding the fallacy of price wars.

From INSEAD Knowledge:
"The bottom line: companies need to figure out how badly they’re going to be hit, both in terms of the sectors they’re operating in, and the local context in terms of the country they’re in. “If you look at the share of the wallet pattern in Hungary, it's going to look very different to the share of wallet pattern in, say, Vietnam or India,” Padmanabhan says


The rest of the paper discussion as well as an interview can be found at:


 http://knowledge.insead.edu/contents/MarketingInDownturn090217.cfm?vid=186



Marketing Ninja



Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Marketing in Banking Sector: by Malcolm Koh


The marketing club is officially abuzz! A warm evening on 3rd of February witnessed the first event organized by the Marketing Club - a talk by Mr Malcolm Koh of RBS on "Marketing in the Banking Sector". In an informative session, Malcolm shared with the participants insights on how marketers strive to deliver a high level of service quality. It was fascinating to learn what goes behind making an organization like RBS such a wonderful experience for clients. He also talked about how service marketers overcome varied challenges like resource scarcity to deliver high quality service by their brand. 
 
About the speaker: 
Malcolm, a NUS MBA alumnus, heads the Client Experience division of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Singapore. He also heads the NUS MBA Alumni Association and has been driving a number of alumni initiatives with NUS Business School such as the Alumni Mentorship Program. An avid marketer, Malcolm has over 10 years of experience in services marketing across various industries such as banking, airlines, hospitality and HR consultancy.