I recently heard Richard Reed, one of the founders of Innocent Drinks remark that “ninety percent of their marketing strategy is in the bottle”. It does remind me that excellent products and services will often sell without the aid of any advertising or other paid for promotion at all. Google, Microsoft, Body Shop, Innocent and Yahoo! to name but a few built their brands without reliance on traditional advertising. Google went one step further and targeted its initial product diffusion across the academic sector knowing that it would be promoted by academics to students and so into the wider educated community. All all cases, these brands relied on a superior product experience to drive word of mouth promotion.
Some might say, well, they’re the lucky products, but for the rest of us, we have to fight to maintain our position in the market. They’d argue it’s not that their products are bad, it’s just that they have to complete with many similar products in the same market space.
But this is where we get into what Web 2.0 really means for marketers. In the web enabled world everyone can review a product on either online retailer sites or on third party sites that encourage user review content. These sites are the territory where brands reputation will be built and lost. In the world of Web 2.0 and beyond, the product takes centre stage. Promotion will no longer be provided by third party marketing communications alone, but through the distribution of user advocacy based on user experience.
The logical extension of this, and certainly my hope, is that renewed focus on product development will in turn drive the emergence of new and more effective products and services which benefit all whilst, in a Darwinian sense, weaker products and services are gradually marginalised out of consumer markets.
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Trevor Beattie brings PR into BMB
Trevor Beattie’s BMB agency has announced the launch of an in-house PR function and in the process one of the founders, Andrew McGuinness broadened his definition of what BMB does from advertising to ‘publicity’. As moves by one of the UK’s strongest creative agencies, these developments are worthy of reflection. I see two points of interest:
First, BMB’s move into PR could indicate the arrival a new agency philosophy. The Internet has created a new mechanism for consumers to better inform their purchasing decisions. Opinion on any product or service is now just a click away. There’s been a democratisation of product information. Communities of consumers can exchange notes on any brand. Non-users can easily access these online opinions to inform their own decision making. The formation of brand attitudes is no longer closed and personal, it’s open and communal. As a result, almost anything that costs more than about £20 is now habitually researched on the Internet before being bought. It follows that any agency in the business of helping companies sell products or services needs to understand and respond to this information rich buying model. By putting PR at the heart of their ‘publicity’ offering, BMB are recognising that brand information can be as important as brand imagery.
Second, ‘publicity’ is a great definition of marketing communications. After the 90’s shopping sprees to buy direct marketing, research and experiential agencies new terms for our industry were emerging left, right and centre. The buzz words became ‘360 degree integration’, ‘total communications’ and ‘media neutrality’. Saatchi and Saatchi’s Charlotte Street entrance signage tracked these changes nicely; the agency used to be called “Saatchi and Saatchi Advertising” proudly announcing that it was in the business of making ads and nothing else. Then I noticed the sign over 80 Charlotte Street was reading “Saatchi and Saatchi Communications” as the agency aimed to get into a wider basket of additional marketing services. Now, perhaps on the basis that less is more, the sign reads simply “Saatchi and Saatchi”, with the agency preferring to define itself by nothing more than its name.
At the end of the day we are trying to make something more famous and better thought of than it was yesterday. But we don’t seem to like simple definitions. For me, the word ‘publicity’ is unashamedly simple and so very strong. It’s also the term used by two of the greatest brand managers the world has ever seen; Brian Epstein and Andrew Loog Oldham.