Trust is the most important thing you sell

Trust, corporate image, brand, reputational risk, managing public relations. For banks and insurers trust is all you have to sell. Why consumer confidence and client relationship really matters. Why trust and business reputation takes 25 years to build yet can be lost with negative media in a day. Marketing, advertising messages. Negative media coverage. Conference keynote speaker and Futurist Dr Patrick Dixon.

Power of Tribes - Clash of Cultures - Consumer Groups

Clash of cultures, religious tribes, brands create tribes, every corporation is many tribes. Tribal inequality of wealth risks global instability, protest movements and new terrorist groups. Tribes give music, language, poetry, literature, teams, friends, neighbourhood, family, teams, communities and nations. Most businesses are tribes of tribes. Niche markets and tribalism. Tribal leadership -- leading thousands of people, motivation, inspired workers, higher productivity, people movements. Clients and customer segmentation. Political tribes, campaigns and protest groups, activists. Conference keynote speaker and Futurist Dr Patrick Dixon

Global brands, mergers and demergers future

Globalisation, mega-mergers and acquisitions. Pressure to show how business units build synergy and shareholder value, or pressure by shareholders and analysts to break up global corporations. Future of large organisations. De-mergers, sell-offs, going private, superbrands. avoiding institutional shareholders. Mega brands and local culture. Conference keynote speaker and Futurist Dr Patrick Dixon.

Why business has to make life better - values matter

Values really matter. People want to make a difference and feel proud of who they work for. Aditya Birla example of corporate responsibility and community involvement. Increasing motivation, winning war for talent, staff and customer retention and stronger brand and corporate image. Work of AIDS charity ACET as expression of corporate responsibility. Conference keynote speaker and Futurist Dr Patrick Dixon.

Market research - how to get great results

Trust, corporate image, brand, reputational risk, managing public relations. For banks and insurers trust is all you have to sell. Why consumer confidence and client relationship really matters. Why trust and business reputation takes 25 years to build yet can be lost with negative media in a day. Marketing, advertising messages. Negative media coverage. Conference keynote speaker and Futurist Dr Patrick Dixon.

Why consumers won't wait - impatience online

People do crazy things when in a hurry - the future is about emotion, not about technology. Futurist Dr Patrick Dixon lecture on future of telecom, mobile phones, marketing, management and motivation (more)

Future of marketing in a YouTube world

Interview of co-founder of YouTube Chad Hurley by Dr Patrick Dixon at Google Zeitgeist CEO Summit. Lessons on future of marketing for every brand owner, advertiser and corporate image builder.

Future of Marketing - Dr Patrick Dixon at Google Zeitgeist

In a YouTube, Wikipedia and e-Bay world - how media, marketing, and brand management is changing. Impact on every large business. Dr Patrick Dixon chairing panel for CEO event Google Zeitgeist.

Confusing insurance industry marketing messages

The insurance industry is in a mess when it comes to image, branding and marketing.

There are two conflicting messages: the first is that we are here to make shareholders wealthy – which fits with the popular image that insurance companies charge high premiums and pay out as little as possible. The second is closer to reality, which is that we exist as a community service which is run in a way that also rewards those who invest.

• Marketing: We are here to protect your family, to pay out generously and quickly if something happens to you, giving you peace of mind at a fair price. We believe in the value of what we do for you.

• Investor Relations: Our mission is to make shareholders as much wealth as we can without breaking the law and landing up in prison. We raise life insurance premiums as high as we can get away with, and pay out as little as possible.

The answer is simple: focus on the good that you do, ensure the business is run efficiently and risks are assessed accurately, eliminate fraud and pay out promptly – and the rest should take care of itself.

The alternative is to continue as we are, with a public image that is both damaging and inaccurate.

Strange death of modern advertising - feature by Maurice Saatchi in Financial Times

This week Maurice Saatchi made a fascinating confession:  “I feel as thought I am standing at the graveside of a well-loved friend called advertising”.   He describes the death of TV advertising as audiences diverted into an ever wider range of infotainment, and the fact that multi-tasking teenagers recall very little of the adverts they supposedly are exposed to on TV even if you can find them….  The result of multi-tasking with SMS, e-mail and everthing else at the same time as watching the football.

 

Saatchi reckons it all comes down to one word branding.  Owning a single idea like “search” = Google.   The trouble is that there are few words worth having and fierce competition for them.

 

And even if an agency has a great idea for a word, the industry itself is being re-shaped at tremendous speed by new media.

 

Most senior advertising executives have yet to get their heads around Google adsense for example, which is capable of creating customised ad content for a new page I create within 60 seconds of it being online.  Adsense goes further by pushing up or down different ads depending on how the users of that particular page on my website react.

 

Poor ads are removed – however much people pay for showing their content on the page – while lower paying but useful ads replace them.

 

The advertising space is thus being democratised, with huge implications for every brand-creator.

Targetting older people - make sure print size is large

Most marketing campaigns are poor when it comes to targeting older consumers.  Just take print size as an example.  I gave a lecture recently to a company that produces electric razors.  Good news:  I use one of their products and have done so for the last 4 years.  Bad news:  I only realised the day before giving the lecture.  Reason:  the logo on the razor is so small that I need my reading glasses to see it and since when did I wear reading glasses in the bathroom when shaving?

 

I am only 49 but the company has lost 4 years of brand positioning in our home.  The problem is even more obvious amongst consumers who are 10, 20 or 30 years older than I am.

 

Just take a look at the print size on the outside of toothpaste, or in packaging of medicines, or on restaurant menus (read by candelight).

 

Print size is just one of a huge number of ways that marketing executives discriminate against older consumers without realising it.

 

And remember that over 65 year olds own 75% of the wealth of the US and UK – and incidentally, 65% of them are women.

More than 200 million blogs - threat to brand management

More than 200 million people now keep a web diary of their own and their collective opinions are now a force to be reckoned with when it comes to brand protection and development of an advertising campaign.

Their collective voice is generating over 100 million pages every day of comment on a wide range of issues, many of which involve products and services people use.

For a long time now community sites like tripadvisor have been influencing consumer behaviour, yet many large corporations have hidden their heads in the sand, not really knowing how to respond.

While tripadvisor is not a blog, it is an example of what happens when hundreds of thousands of consumers start to share experiences online and the results can be devastating.

Just type in the name of a large hotel into Google and see who comes up highest - the official hotel site or the traveladvisor page with comments from people who have recently stayted there? And then the question is who do online readers trust the most? Answer: the majority of people trust community comment more than official advertising.

When community comments are loud and negative, corporations are probably wasting their time with expensive sites and online advertising campaigns.

The age of spin and hype is over. The third millennium is about revelation, reality and shared experience.

That's why so many companies are now quietly asking their own staff to go onto blogs and bulleting boards as well as other community sites to post nice positive comments, pretending to be customers.

It is just the start of a new era in advertising, branding and product promotion.

The lesson is this: get the product right every time and the online community will help sell it for you at zero cost. Get it wrong and you'll rapidly be out of the game. While that has to some extent always been true, in future brand elevation and destruction will happen faster than many marketing teams can even plan a campaign.