Upheavals

A new role for Paul the octopus?

With Paul the Octopus’ role as Soccer World Cup predictor drawing to a close, and some talk of his former hosts wanting to turn him into calamari, I wonder if New Zealand’s Rugby World Cup Minister might consider employing the eight-legged wonder for the now vacant role of New Zealand’s Rugby World Cup Ambassador.

Sure it’s a change of code for the sea creature, but it does seem like a good idea on a couple of fronts. Firstly, Paul might be less likely to put his feet in it (even though he’s got more of them). And, secondly, we could test out whether New Zealand is going to win before we finish building the stadiums and trying to get the Party Central fiasco back on-track.

POSTED: Saturday, 10 July 2010

 

The death of iconic advertising?

Last night, watching a programme on ad man David Ogilvy, I paused to wonder what today’s equivalent of the ‘man in the Hathaway shirt’ or the Rolls Royce electric clock ad might be, and realised, all too quickly and sadly, that the days of iconic advertising seem to be largely over.

Ads that are a pleasure to witness and that seduce with their cleverness and human insights are now a rarity, it seems - replaced by the nerve-jangling pleas of yet another retailer asking me to please take advantage of yet another sale.

It’s interesting to compare what businesses do today with Ogilvy’s wish to balance artistry (the big idea) and commercial urgency (the sale) – because I seldom see that balance struck well these days. There’s either plenty of technique and no impulsion to act (rare), or relentless shouting and no taste (commonplace).

I also loved Ogilvy’s point about writing long copy ads for Shell: that it wasn’t just about what the reader had to read, it was also about capturing what the company itself had to say. Print ads with lots of copy helped convey the depth of Shell’s thinking, he said, and the lengths they went to in their research. In other words, the impression of the words was perhaps as important as the words themselves.

So what is a company that just shouts at me for 30 seconds again and again and again in the course of an evening saying about itself? Often, the impression is that it’s angry. Or desperate. Or earnest. Or aggressive. And none of those things, when you stop to think about it, are actually very appealing.

It reminded me of Hugh MacLeod’s quote which he attributes to Andy Sernovitz: “Advertising is the cost of being boring”. In other words, MacLeod explains, in this age of social media, advertising is what you have to pay for others to hear when you have nothing to say that people would actually volunteer to listen to.

Wow …

POSTED: Thursday, 8 July 2010

 

Peak trust

Doing some research for a speech next week, I had a very interesting conversation with a colleague about whether certain sectors of the economy – particularly the financial sector – have hit “peak trust”.

My concept, an adaption of the energy term peak oil, refers to the fact that, perhaps, some sectors have reached and passed their highest levels of trust – and that they can now expect trust to be harder to find and to cost much more to generate than it has historically.

I was particularly interested in a comment made in this year’s Edelman Trust Barometer that while trust in business is up, the majority of people expected businesses and financial companies to revert to what they described as “business as usual” after the recession. Most also expected banks and financial institutions to come under more direct Government influence.

That suggests more people now believe trust actually needs to be advocated for via regulation in order for it to happen (which might suggest that consumers really believe that morality is closely linked to legality in a commercial setting).

I find that really sad.

POSTED: Wednesday, 7 July 2010

 

Inevitable for most

New addition to my notebook of favourite quotes - this statement by Bill Taylor: If your customers can live without you, eventually they will.

POSTED: Monday, 21 June 2010

 

Cultivated scarcity

It’s always an interesting phenomenon when sectors choose to move en masse – because what they effectively do is change the market rules unilaterally. There’s all the appearances of competition, in the sense that there are players in the market who claim to be competing against one another, and different identities to distinguish the variations on a theme, but when everyone in a sector plays to the same rules, the differences for consumers – differences upon which the very spirit of competition depends – are as good as non existent.

One moves, they all move – equilibrium.

And while the participants themselves may call this market responsiveness (the market essentially being defined as themselves and their competitors), the message being taken by consumers is that these companies collectively recognise that the need for their products is greater than the resentment that their total behaviour generates.

For years, the dogma has been to rely on organic growth to lift revenues. Grow the market as a sector, reap greater rewards as an industry, take your market share of that growth. Almost a dividend mentality. But in industries like the airline sector, there’s now a new strategy in play – organic shrinkage. Shedding capacity across a whole sector is the new response to the demand-supply paradigm. After all, when there are no spare seats, every seat must become more valuable.

More and more is being replaced by less and less. It’s smart on one hand, and cynical on another. But it’s a mentality that requires some very different thought-processes, both as a competitor and as a consumer.

It makes being a small differentiated player much more difficult – because the behaviours for whole industries are cued by the companies that represent the overwhelming majority. It transforms the “limited edition” from a concept associated with value and rarity to one aligned with everyday, cultivated scarcity. And it has the potential to decimate customer service – because if people are grateful to get a seat, then that’s all the loyalty companies need to continue doing business. If a smile’s not worth anything more, why bother?

POSTED: Saturday, 19 June 2010