The Daily Mail has launched a dating website.
The temptation to imagine one of their listings is far too strong for a Friday afternoon.
Disgusted_of_Tunbridge_Wells
Well bred home counties female (sometimes likened to a young Margaret Thatcher) seeks her Hesaltine for afternoon tea and ill-informed sensationalist conversation. Tends not to go outside much, because it's scary out there.
No foreigners.
Anyone non-UK (I know there are some of you!) can probably guess fairly well what the Mail is like. But just in case, here's a random headline generator.
Friday, 27 February 2009
Thursday, 26 February 2009
What they think, or what they do? Where do you start with a segmentation?
I should start today's post by declaring a bias. I think segmentations are among the most useful, but also among the most abused tools available to marketers.
Useful, because you've got far too many and far too wide a variety of customers to market to each of them individually - particularly above the line. A segmentation makes marketing manageable.
Abused, for a variety of reasons, including...
With that out of the way, how should you build your segmentation? Let's look at two approaches - basing it attitudinally (on what the customer thinks) or behaviourally (on what the customer does.)
Sometimes, the decision is made for you. If your product hasn't launched yet, or if you're in a market without behavioural data, then it's probably going to have to be mostly attitudinal.
But if you have a customer behaviour database - if you're a bank, insurance company or other brand with a direct customer relationship, I really don't understand why you'd start with data on attitudes - and many companies do. Much better to profile behaviour, create segments, and then find out why your customers are behaving in a certain way.
By all means find the attitudinal reasons why customers are defecting, but doesn't it make more sense to start with the group of customers who are doing it?
There are five big advantages to a behavioural starting point, if you have the opportunity to take this approach.
Useful, because you've got far too many and far too wide a variety of customers to market to each of them individually - particularly above the line. A segmentation makes marketing manageable.
Abused, for a variety of reasons, including...
- Behaving as if all of the consumers in a segment are the same.
- Failing to understand that an index towards high income men in one segment doesn't mean that everyone in that segment is a high income man.
- Once you've got a segmentation, abandoning any insight beyond the 'pen portrait' one-page summary of each segment. Or worse, beyond the two-word descriptive segment name.
- Forcing every business issue through the segmentation, whether it helps or not.
"My customers are defecting! Quick, find out which segments are defecting fastest!!"
With that out of the way, how should you build your segmentation? Let's look at two approaches - basing it attitudinally (on what the customer thinks) or behaviourally (on what the customer does.)
Sometimes, the decision is made for you. If your product hasn't launched yet, or if you're in a market without behavioural data, then it's probably going to have to be mostly attitudinal.
But if you have a customer behaviour database - if you're a bank, insurance company or other brand with a direct customer relationship, I really don't understand why you'd start with data on attitudes - and many companies do. Much better to profile behaviour, create segments, and then find out why your customers are behaving in a certain way.
By all means find the attitudinal reasons why customers are defecting, but doesn't it make more sense to start with the group of customers who are doing it?
There are five big advantages to a behavioural starting point, if you have the opportunity to take this approach.
- It's repeatable. If you have a customer database, you'll need to refresh the segments at some point. The definition of 'lapsed' is unambiguous. You can find out afterwards why they're lapsed.
- You get as much (if not more) attitudinal difference between your segments by basing them on behaviour as by basing them on attitudes. Seriously, if you get the chance, try it.
- Pick the right behaviours and your segmentation immediately reflects your business goals.
- You only get to survey some of your customers to create attitudinal segments, then you have to model where the rest of your customers go, based on probability. Every customer has a behavioural history, so if you say lapsed you mean it. If you say 'Technophile', then some of them won't be.
- It can be a hell of a lot cheaper, as your surveys can be smaller and you don't have to model the surveys back onto the customer database.
Tuesday, 24 February 2009
Ethical marketing
Inspired by Seth Godin's post 'Is marketing evil?', here's a thought for the day.
It's easy to say something like 'sure, I wouldn't work on cigarettes', but can you truly say that, hand on heart? If your agency was pitching for Marlboro, would you flatly refuse to get involved?
Where do you draw the line? It would be easy to say that advertising doesn't really make a difference anyway, but you don't believe that, otherwise you'd find a different industry to work in. Either that, or you've got a record breaking lack of motivation.
It's an interesting philosophical game to play. Which clients, if they dropped in your lap with job prospects attached, would you refuse?
Are there any brands you'd refuse to work on? Even if it meant losing your job?
It's easy to say something like 'sure, I wouldn't work on cigarettes', but can you truly say that, hand on heart? If your agency was pitching for Marlboro, would you flatly refuse to get involved?
Where do you draw the line? It would be easy to say that advertising doesn't really make a difference anyway, but you don't believe that, otherwise you'd find a different industry to work in. Either that, or you've got a record breaking lack of motivation.
It's an interesting philosophical game to play. Which clients, if they dropped in your lap with job prospects attached, would you refuse?
Monday, 23 February 2009
Apparently, TV isn't dead after all
Saw a good article today on TV effectiveness from Advertising Age, which brings together a few different studies showing that the demise of TV might have been overstated.
Lets have a look at the central claim that TV is as 'Effective as Ever'.
MMA has run a meta-analysis across marketing mix models dating from the early 1990s and concluded that the effectiveness of TV per Rating Point (GRP) is not dropping. They also found that 1/3 of brand-name Google search queries are actually being driven by off-line media spend - so some of that online ROI is actually (partly at least) offline ROI.
Interesting study, but should we be surprised by the result? I don't know about you, but I'm not.
I was asked by a media planner not long ago to show that TV was still right for their 'youth' brand as the client was pushing hard to swap TV budget for online (the question is always asked this way round, rather than 'could my client be right?')
Two things jumped out straight away. One, it wasn't really a youth brand - the client had put far too much emphasis on a segmentation - and two, the best way to reach a young audience quickly is still TV. Young people have embraced new technologies faster than older demographics, but in the UK at least, the single media consumption activity that they do the most is to watch TV. A quick TGI run confirms it, but I won't post the chart up here as its not my company's blog.
The second reason why it's not surprising that TV is holding up, is the key part of the effectiveness statement. Effective at what? Selling product. Measured how? Per GRP.
So if you put the same amount of TV in the top, you get the same sales out the bottom. This could change if the reach of TV had dropped dramatically, so a lot fewer people were watching a lot more TV. It hasn't. Alternatively, you'd get less sales per GRP if TV ads were being watched, but had somehow mysteriously stopped working. These studies say not.
Before you get excited, do TV GRPs for your target audience cost more or less than they did in 1990?
What the MMA study hints at, and where analysts are starting to find new questions, is how you can best use new media to amplify TV, not to replace it.
Footnote:
Another study mentioned in the article states that
Including a long term effect? It would be good to know.
Lets have a look at the central claim that TV is as 'Effective as Ever'.
MMA has run a meta-analysis across marketing mix models dating from the early 1990s and concluded that the effectiveness of TV per Rating Point (GRP) is not dropping. They also found that 1/3 of brand-name Google search queries are actually being driven by off-line media spend - so some of that online ROI is actually (partly at least) offline ROI.
Interesting study, but should we be surprised by the result? I don't know about you, but I'm not.
I was asked by a media planner not long ago to show that TV was still right for their 'youth' brand as the client was pushing hard to swap TV budget for online (the question is always asked this way round, rather than 'could my client be right?')
Two things jumped out straight away. One, it wasn't really a youth brand - the client had put far too much emphasis on a segmentation - and two, the best way to reach a young audience quickly is still TV. Young people have embraced new technologies faster than older demographics, but in the UK at least, the single media consumption activity that they do the most is to watch TV. A quick TGI run confirms it, but I won't post the chart up here as its not my company's blog.
The second reason why it's not surprising that TV is holding up, is the key part of the effectiveness statement. Effective at what? Selling product. Measured how? Per GRP.
So if you put the same amount of TV in the top, you get the same sales out the bottom. This could change if the reach of TV had dropped dramatically, so a lot fewer people were watching a lot more TV. It hasn't. Alternatively, you'd get less sales per GRP if TV ads were being watched, but had somehow mysteriously stopped working. These studies say not.
Before you get excited, do TV GRPs for your target audience cost more or less than they did in 1990?
What the MMA study hints at, and where analysts are starting to find new questions, is how you can best use new media to amplify TV, not to replace it.
Footnote:
Another study mentioned in the article states that
"more than half the advertisers (16 of 29) in the study still lost money by running their TV ads"
Including a long term effect? It would be good to know.
Friday, 20 February 2009
What will it take to stop people reading newspapers?
UK Newspaper sales have been sliding for some time, with the December ABC numbers for virtually all titles not painting a picture of a growing market.
It's a slow decline though and despite predictions of the end of the printed newspaper, circulations are still high. The Sun is back above 3m again and The Telegraph, as the largest quality daily, sells around 850,000 copies.
It's going to take a step change in the market to put a real dent in newspaper sales and I think it could come from Apple. A large-form ipod Touch is predicted to launch this year
(not a picture of a large-form ipod Touch)
What's that got to do with newspapers? Well I think a big part of the reason why daily newspapers are still read on paper, is that there's not a good electronic platform to read them on.
Mobile phone screens are far too small to be useful and opening a netbook on the commute to work is a geeky pastime at best.
If Apple bring their elegant designs and ease of use to a next-gen PDA with a screen big enough to comfortably read an article, then it could start a change that has long been predicted but hasn't happened yet.
Papers on paper will stay with us, because ipods at the breakfast table just doesn't feel right. But an ipod that picks up The Times wirelessly while it's charging and has it ready to go for London commuters. That really could work and could be as easy as downloading The Times application from the Apps Store.
It could also be very lucrative for the newspapers themselves, if they use the technology to engage a young, London-based, ABC1 demographic.
It's a slow decline though and despite predictions of the end of the printed newspaper, circulations are still high. The Sun is back above 3m again and The Telegraph, as the largest quality daily, sells around 850,000 copies.
It's going to take a step change in the market to put a real dent in newspaper sales and I think it could come from Apple. A large-form ipod Touch is predicted to launch this year
(not a picture of a large-form ipod Touch)What's that got to do with newspapers? Well I think a big part of the reason why daily newspapers are still read on paper, is that there's not a good electronic platform to read them on.
Mobile phone screens are far too small to be useful and opening a netbook on the commute to work is a geeky pastime at best.
If Apple bring their elegant designs and ease of use to a next-gen PDA with a screen big enough to comfortably read an article, then it could start a change that has long been predicted but hasn't happened yet.
Papers on paper will stay with us, because ipods at the breakfast table just doesn't feel right. But an ipod that picks up The Times wirelessly while it's charging and has it ready to go for London commuters. That really could work and could be as easy as downloading The Times application from the Apps Store.
It could also be very lucrative for the newspapers themselves, if they use the technology to engage a young, London-based, ABC1 demographic.
Wednesday, 18 February 2009
Here's a little tweet
Twitter suddenly seems to be everywhere in the UK. Stephen Fry is on it and so are lots of other celebrities.
What's going on? Could it be a Tipping Point and that's why Twitter has suddenly taken off here?
I don't think so. News volume in the UK about Twitter jumped at the start of 2008, when Britney Spears (among others) had her account hacked. On this Trends chart, Google have helpfully labelled that point 'E'.
If the picture's a bit small, number of Google searches is the top line and number of news stories is the bottom one.
The next point to the right of my artfully drawn black line is the week that a photo was posted on Twitter of an aeroplane down in the Hudson River.
My theory is that the mainstream UK media has just noticed Twitter on the back of a Heat magazine style Britney Spears story and getting a free front page photo of a sinking aeroplane. There's no such thing as bad publicity, right?
Where it goes from here I'm not sure, but would be willing to bet that Twitter gets taken over in the next year or so and then integrated into a larger product. It's a fun toy, but doesn't have enough of an offering to support itself through ads or - God fobid - charge users for the service. Look for Google trying to give Open Social a kick start.
What's going on? Could it be a Tipping Point and that's why Twitter has suddenly taken off here?
I don't think so. News volume in the UK about Twitter jumped at the start of 2008, when Britney Spears (among others) had her account hacked. On this Trends chart, Google have helpfully labelled that point 'E'.
If the picture's a bit small, number of Google searches is the top line and number of news stories is the bottom one.
The next point to the right of my artfully drawn black line is the week that a photo was posted on Twitter of an aeroplane down in the Hudson River.
My theory is that the mainstream UK media has just noticed Twitter on the back of a Heat magazine style Britney Spears story and getting a free front page photo of a sinking aeroplane. There's no such thing as bad publicity, right?
Where it goes from here I'm not sure, but would be willing to bet that Twitter gets taken over in the next year or so and then integrated into a larger product. It's a fun toy, but doesn't have enough of an offering to support itself through ads or - God fobid - charge users for the service. Look for Google trying to give Open Social a kick start.
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