Category: awareness

Is Positioning still relevant today? Part two

Published on by brandconsultantasia8 Comments

Recently I wrote a blog post questioning the relevance of positioning today. You can read the full post here. A fellow blogger called Pepita responded with some well thought out and pertinent comments. Below are her comments, taken from the comments section and re posted here together with my responses embedded within the questions.

Pepita: You state chat a model that was developed for the US mass market in the seventies is not applicable to other countries or through time. Why does a market have to be similar in order for a model to work? All markets have the same elements (competitors, customers, manufacturers etc.) don’t they. If you extend your statement to other theories it is the same as saying that economic theories cannot be applied in Malaysia because they were thought up by Americans or English in another era. This reasoning in my opinion is flawed.

Marcus: I think that one of the reasons so many products fail to become brands (According to Ernst & Young this figure is 90%) is because companies assume that a model that works in one market will work in another. The mass economy was powered by mass market products that were standard and mass media was used to sell those products in multiple markets. As a simple example, for years British car manufacturers had a monopoly on the Malaysian market even though their cars were build in the UK and shipped here with UK specifications. So, a customer in the tropics was expected to buy a car with a heater. Limited choice meant customers had to accept this and British cars had over 90% market share. Then someone imported an American car with aircon. To this day, British auto manufacturers (of which there aren’t many) have been unable to make up that lost market share.

Pepita: Bad claims or outrageous claims developed by agencies for the clients doesn’t mean that the concept of positioning is no good. It means that agencies did poor work.

Marcus: Ries and Trout developed the concept of positioning because audiences were receiving multiple and confusing messages from more and more companies. Positioning’s goal is to create a ‘position’ in the consumers (any consumers) mind that is a reflection of the strengths and weaknesses of the offering. If you are first in that category even better. If you are not first, the goal was to create another new category. Positioning, according to Ries and Trout is about being ‘first in the mind than first in the marketplace’. Companies had to shape information communicated to consumers. Mass media was the obvious vehicle with its massive reach. For this they used and still do use agencies. The outrageous claims were a result of the pressure to create those new categories or influence perceptions. If companies didn’t like the work created by agencies they are able to reject it.

Pepita: I am not sure what you mean by your statement that positioning is only suitable for mass markets. As long as there is competition and there are customers you can use the concept. Even if there is no competition you can still position your company or your brand.

Marcus: You are right, as long as there are customers and there is competition, you can attempt to position your brand. Even if there is no competition you can still try to position your brand.

Pepita: Mission and vision, values, BHAG’s; there are tons of stuff in business that are immeasurable. Or they are measurable but aren’t measured. Does that mean that the concept doesn’t hold? I don’t think so.

Marcus: Generally speaking, in today’s customer driven marketplace where customers not companies define brands and with the tools available to marketers to collect data and use that data, positioning, with one or two exceptions is no longer relevant. Brands are built through retention (you have a 15% chance of selling to a new customer and a 50% chance of selling to an existing customer) not acquisition yet positioning tends to focus on acquiring new customers not retaining them.

Pepita: Wikipedia is no official standard. It could be my opinion or yours; whoever comes last. So dimissing positioning because you do not like the definition in Wikipedia is a sophism. Skipping that and going back to Ries & Trout, the wrote a book on bottom-up marketing and always had the consumer/customer/prospects in mind.

Marcus: I’m not trying to deceive anyone. I googled the ‘definition of positioning’ and got 12 million responses. The beauty of the Internet and tools such as Wikipedia is that we seek references and definitions from others through these platforms. Opinions shared across social media and other peer to peer networks play an increasingly important role in building profitable brands. Positioning simply cannot address these voices, opinions, concerns and so on.

Pepita: You state positioning is one way communication. The company is telling the customer how the products are positioned. I think that you are confusing claims with positioning again. I hope companies would be smarter than to communicate their positioning to their target audience. Who cares?

Marcus: I agree, nobody cares or pays any attention yet positioning, according to Ries and Trout is about, “what you do to the mind of the prospect.” Once it is created, the position has to be communicated via communications and claims are made in those communications that reflect the required position.

Pepita: To me positioning is both competition and consumer/customer driven. That is the way I work and I know that others do too. And Ries & Trout say the following: “To find a tactic that will work, you have to leave your ivory tower and go down to the front where the marketing battle is being fought. Where is the front? In the minds of your customers and prospects”.

Marcus: A couple of responses to this, firstly, using the actions of competitors to determine your brand strategy is a complete waste of time and resources as you will forever be playing catchup. Secondly, my mind is so full of clutter that you will have trouble finding any space to position your product! Much of that clutter is made up of negative connotations related to claims made by brands when trying to position their products in my mind. This is probably a universal state which is why we have the sad statistic from Ernst and Young above.

Pepita: Of course the world has changed significantly over the last 40 years but that doesn’t mean that theories and models aren’t true or usable anymore?

Marcus: Actually, although this is a sweeping generalisation, I don’t think you should be using models developed in one market 40 years ago to build a brand in another market. It would be nice if it could be done but the reality is the agencies want firms to because it makes it easier for them and also marketing professionals. But more importantly, consumers have changed, the way they source and gather information, their influencers and so on. Furthermore their requirements for economic, experiential and emotional value are very different and vary considerably from country to country.

Pepita: You state that positioning uses mass market channels. To me positioning is a strategic concept and not equal to marketing communication. So what you really seem to be saying here is that mass market channels aren’t of this day and age. I agree with you there, but it has nothing to do with the concept of positioning.

Marcus: As I mentioned above, positions have to be communicated. Most agencies recommend mass media to do this because of its reach. But this is an agency issue.

Pepita: Advertising can cost a lot of money. You are equaling positioning and advertising. Positioning is a strategic concept and Advertising is a possible form of execution of the strategic positioning for a company or a product.

Marcus: Again, positions have to be communicated. Don’t forget, this is a blog post not a book! I’ve only got so many words to play with. The most common method to communicate positions is via mass media advertising.

Pepita: Of course tennis rackets have changed throughout the years because of the possibilities technology offer, but since 1873 tennis has been played with a racket. The concept of the tool is still the same. People still play tennis with a racket. If I apply this analogy it would mean that the theory of positioning can be innovated and developed throughout the years, and still be a tool to be used.

Marcus: I don’t see how positioning has been innovated and developed throughout the years.

Pepita: You state some undeniable facts. Markets and consumers have changed. Communication channels are of another era. But your arguments for positioning being outdated and unusable are – in my opinion – flawed and have not convinced me. I also miss an alternative. It would be great positioning for your agency: The brand agency with the alternative to positioning!

Marcus: Nice idea for a tagline, thank you! So much has been written and so much time spent learning about the power of Positioning and the 4 Ps by a whole generation of marketers. But the world is a very different place, the way consumers live their lives and their knowledge and the tools available mean that we have to think past using increased budgets to build brands.

There is no silver bullet to building strong, profitable brands. Every brand is different as are its customers. Some brands are B2B, some B2C. But there is a process to building a strong profitable brand. It requires a focus on research, organisational excellence, planning, personalisation, retention and doing business on customer terms. It’s not particularly sexy and won’t see many brands staring down from billboards, much to the delight of brand owners and ad agencies, but it will go a long way to building strong, profitable brands.

Because without profitability, a brand is irrelevant.

Build a brand with the basics

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Right near my office at Phileo Damansara in Petaling Jaya, a luxury German auto manufacturer has two billboards advertising its top of the range luxury autos. One is a saloon and the other is an SUV. I like this particular SUV so much that if I was still putting posters up on my bedroom wall, the SUV would be front and centre.

This company also has a number of billboards at other locations around the city of Kuala Lumpur and in the suburbs featuring a smaller version of the SUV (for which there is a 1 year waiting list) and other versions of the saloon. It also spends a lot of money on print ads and recently advertised their top end coupe in a Malaysian daily and a Malaysian business weekly.

Cars in Malaysia are expensive as import duties can go as high as 300% for luxury vehicles. The full page full colour ad with standard automotive blurb also stated the price of over RM1,000,000 (US$333,000). At that price, there are probably no more than a handful of people in the country who can afford the car. Even if there are a 100 or even a 1,000 people in the country who can afford the car, full page ads in national newspapers are probably not the most cost effective channels to communicate with those people.

Now I’ve actually approached this particular organisation in the past to ask if we can come in a make a capabilities presentation. We didn’t get past the marketing manager who basically said that as sales were very good there was no point meeting us.

Judging by recent reports, the company is certainly doing well after the launch of new models in 2008. In fact, the company claims to have been Malaysia’s fastest growing luxury car brand in that year with sales up an impressive 102%. Moreover, sales continued to climb in the first 6 months of 2010 with sales up 66% over the same period in 2009. Impressive figures and the company now claims to have about 5% of the luxury market in Malaysia.

Anyway, seeing this billboard on a daily basis with the telephone number prominently displayed, was beginning to get on my nerves. So I decided to call the number. After all, if you advertise your products on a billboard and display your telephone number, one can only assume that you want prospects like me to call you.

And if a prospect calls that number you better have the processes and systems in place to ensure that the person receiving the call passes it on to the right department. And you better have the right processes and systems in place to ensure that the next person in the process does what they are supposed to do. In this particular case, call the prospect back. Especially when we’re talking about a luxury product.

So anyway, I called the number and asked for information about the top of the range SUV. The receptionist was very pleasant and explained that she would get someone from the sales department to call me back. I gave her my mobile number and waited for the call. That was last Thursday, today is Sunday and I still haven’t heard anything. Bear in mind this vehicle costs over RM500,000 (US$166,000).

Generally the point of billboards is to create awareness. A telephone number is there in the hope that the keen, desperate consumer who wants the product so much that he will take the time to record the number and follow through with a call. Of course most of us just ignore billboards and the messages on them. Indeed, it’s rare for a prospect to call. But there are always incoming calls that may just result in an easy sale to one person who may become a customer for life so if you don’t have those basic processes and systems in place to take the information and pass it on, what is the point of advertising?

Here are some more tips that will help this company improve its profitability, the most important metric for branding:

1) The era of the global ad buy is over. Different markets require different communications strategies. Whilst it may make sense to create awareness of a luxury product via national papers in relatively wealthy western markets, it is a waste of money in developing markets where the demand for luxury products is limited to only a few.

2) Brand building is about the long term. When you launch new products they will, if you are extremely lucky, fly off the shelves or out of the showroom. But this is the exception, not the rule. And anyway, this doesn’t mean that you can become complacent, sit back, put your feet up and relax. Your competition will soon catch up and your moment in the limelight will soon be over.

3) The whole point of mass market advertising such as billboards and newspaper ads is to create awareness with mass markets. That is why weekend copies of daily newspapers are full of ads for hypermarkets, supermarkets, discount stores, sales and so on. But luxury products require more than a mass market tactic to make a sale. If you must use these old fashioned tools, use them to develop a database of prospects so that you can qualify those prospects and invite them to your showroom if you think they have potential.

4) Many companies will have a system in place to act on incoming enquiries. But who is responsible for ensuring those enquiries are acted on? The system must also ensure incoming enquiries are reported to sales management so that they can follow up with the sales department.

5) Brands are built on offerings of economic, experiential and emotional value. That journey begins with the first contact. It doesn’t matter how much you spend on advertising, if you can’t deliver that value, prospects will go elsewhere.

Now I’m going to call BMW to get more information on the X5.

The Maldives is ‘rebranding’. Why?

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I read here that the Maldives is starting a major rebranding initiative. The republic of the Maldives is an island nation in the Indian Ocean and consists of about 26 atolls with about 1,200 islands spread over approximately 90,000 square kilometers. Of those islands, about 200 are inhabited.

Its area and population of 300,000 make it one of the smallest Asian countries. It is also the lowest country in the world and at 2.3 metres above sea level, it is also the country with the lowest highest point.

Fortunately for the Maldives, it has some of the most stunning beaches on the planet and an ideal climate, all year round sunshine and beautiful calm seas have helped make the republic a popular destination.

You may recall the horrific images of death and destruction caused by the Tsunami in 2004. Despite the harrowing scenes and negative publicity after the Tsunami in 2004, the country has seen a steady increase in arrivals and 2009 saw arrivals surpass the pre Tsunami total of 500,000 visitors in 2003. Indeed, arrivals for 2009 were an all time high of almost 700,000. The main countries of origin for tourists to the Maldives are the UK, Italy, China, France, Germany, and Japan.

And there has been little negative reaction to the recent public relations disaster when an European couple were humiliated by hotel staff who were asked to bless their marriage. Probably because an apology to the couple was almost immediate and other fallout was handled confidently and quickly by authorities.

With limited natural resources, tourism and fishing have become the two key industries although the country does have a thriving cottage industry consisting of activities such as handicrafts and lacquer work.

Currently tourists spend most of their time in private bungalows in self-contained tourist resort islands designed specifically for tourism. Only one resort can be constructed on an island and the maximum built-up area of any resort island is limited to 20% of the land area and the building heights is not allowed to be higher than vegetation levels. Only 68% of a beach length can be utilised for guestrooms, 20% of each resort island beach is reserved for public use and 12% is classed as open space areas.

With such a fragile ecosystem, efficient waste management is vitally important and new resorts must install their own wastewater treatment plants, bottle crushers, incinerators and compactors. Sewerage disposal through soak-pits into the aquifer is no longer allowed. New resorts are also required to install desalination plants and this has substantially reduced the stress on ground water supplies.

The Maldives are seen by many to be the role model for sustainable tourism and it is such planning, strict environmental controls and policies that have ensured the Maldives retain their mystique.

When not in the resorts, most tourists spend time relaxing on private beaches, swimming, snorkeling, diving, fishing and boating. Sightseeing and visits to markets and local artisans in Male the capital are also popular.

So it would appear the Maldives, so to speak, is in a good place. It is managed efficiently, it is a role model for many countries, it has a thriving tourism business that works because of the policies and systems and processes put into place to protect the industry, it handles crises effectively and is probably in the top ten of most people’s ‘must go to destinations’ so you could be forgiven for thinking, “If it ain’t broke, why fix it?”

Thoyyib Mohamed, Minister of State for Tourism in the Maldives aims to “position the Maldives as the must-see destination of our time for all travelers.”

A recent press release goes on to state, “The (rebranding) initiative will focus on enhancing the positioning of the nation’s tourism product, strengthening its image in established key source markets while broadening its appeal to wider audiences and emerging niche markets.”

I’m not privy to just how many visitors the Maldives can take without breaking that fragile infrastructure and I don’t know what the targets are but I am fairly confident that broadening its appeal to wider audiences and niche markets may result in an increase in the number of arrivals. Even another 100,000 visitors, an increase of around 15% will put a tremendous strain on these beautiful islands and in addition to the added pressure on the environment and infrastructure these new arrivals will obviously bring, they may also cause social and cultural problems.

I would hazard a guess that the Maldives are known to most people who travel abroad for leisure. I also think it will be practically impossible to ‘enhance the image’ of what is for many an already perfectly enhanced image. And trying to position the country and creating awareness of the destination amongst those that don’t know the country will be a costly exercise that may do little more than waste valuable resources. Something no country can afford to do.

I recommend the Maldives focus on these 5 key areas

1) Retention. What does it need to do to get people to visit again?
2) Share of wallet. What does it need to do to get more out of visitors?
3) Instead of using outdated mass economy approaches like positioning, leverage the power of social media. There are numerous sites on Facebook about the Maldives but none seem to be managed.
4) If new markets are pursued, chose them carefully, only after extensive brand research. And go after them with a strategic plan that engages relevant communities in those countries and again, not via traditional media.
5) I just realised how good this point is so I have to keep it for a destination we’re working with, sorry!

How to build a brand in Asia today

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Building brands has evolved from the one dimensional, top down era where the company controlled the relationship and essentially managed that relationship using broadcasts across mass media such as TV, Out of Home, print and radio with messages and content created to tell you what the company wanted you to know into the bottom up, customer economy.

In the bottom up customer economy, brands and their success or failure are defined and determined by customers. Those customers will create content and messages and disseminate that content and those messages across multiple platforms and to communities who are interested in their opinions. Now, how you interact with consumers is on their terms.

This is not revolution, simply evolution in the branding space. Brands are to blame for this loss of control because they have consistently misled consumers or over promised and under delivered. Brands can no longer be built using one-size-fits-all messages broadcast across traditional media channels to anyone who will listen. Basically because no one is listening.

Sure, there is still a place for messages, campaigns, and so on but because there are so many sources of information, so much clutter, these messages don’t have the impact or influence they had 20 or 30 years ago. In the digital age you can spend as much as you want on traditional media and reach everyone in the country but if they are not listening they won’t buy your product or service.

If a brand wants to be successful it must learn to communicate with multiple segments, and messages must be targeted and must be dynamic, using content and channels that resonate with those segments. But brands must move away from the traditional demographic approach to researching those segments. After all, how many 15 – 24 communities are there on Facebook? And content must constantly be revised and updated with new content.

And organizations must ensure that they deliver on promises and that promise must deliver economic, experiential and emotional value to each of those multiple segments. In the consumer business, this is most often done, initially anyway, in the store. Because in the customer economy, no matter how much you spend, if your staff don’t know how to build rapport with your prospects then they may buy once but rarely will they become a loyal customer. And without loyal customers, you won’t have a brand.

So if you are looking to build a brand, forget about reach, awareness, positioning and brand equity and trying to be all things to all people and start thinking about delivering value to specific segments and building customer equity.

Building brands requires CEOs to understand branding

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95% of products fail to become brands, despite over US$1.5 trillion spent on marketing of which about US$500 billion is spent on advertising. And most of that is spent on awareness, reach and other mass market mass economy mass media tactics.

Advertising is important and always will be important to brand building but ‘getting your name out there’ or ‘creating awareness’ are too mass economy and we’re now in the customer economy.

In the customer economy, it is about engaging members of communities that have interests related to your product and entering into a communication initially and a collaboration eventually with certain members of those communities. Throw out the old mass economy mass market attitude that includes carpet bombing consumers with messages via full page ads, TVCs, billboards and one-size-fits-all communications.

But who is to blame? Is it the advertising agencies? Or is it the CEOs? I believe that until CEOs get over their own egos and realise that just because they can see their company name on a 40 foot by 10 foot billboard, or on page 3 of the national newspaper etc etc, doesn’t mean that the rest of us can see through the clutter and even if we do, most of us don’t take any notice because we don’t care.

Until CEOs instead seek accountability and ROI from their advertising, they will, in all likelihood be at the front of the long queue to be one of those products that fail to become brands.

And if advertising agencies continue to make hay, who can blame them?

Valuable resources wasted on poorly executed awareness campaign

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This screen grab of ISAF British Force Protection Company, Delta platoon, on a foot patrol around Kabul caught my attention because of the banner across the street advertising non stop flights to Frankfurt on an Airbus A340.

I doubt there is much demand in Kabul for flights to any destinations outside of Afghanistan. And those interested in such opportunities could surely be engaged more directly. Such poorly thought out tactics are often the result of not having a brand strategy.

These tactics may not be expensive but that is never a reason to use a marketing tool. And anyway, this is probably not the only one in the city.

Are we seeing the commoditisation of the iPhone in Asia?

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Here in Malaysia it took time for the mobile service providers to agree terms with Apple to offer the iPhone to subscribers. But finally, Maxis signed up and has invested heavily over past year or so in traditional aquisition focussed marketing.

Recently, another provider, the aggressive and innovative provider, Digi signed an agreement with Apple and has started to promote the iPhone.

Last night, I was watching TV and was astonished to see first a Maxis ad for the iPhone, featuring the numerous applications (there’s one for just about everything) and then, I think separated by another commercial but possibly even back to back, the same commercial for the iPhone, featuring all the applications, this time with a Digi logo!

I have a number of reactions to this. Firstly, don’t advertising agencies know how to do a deal with a TV station anymore? If you can’t get an exclusive deal at least ensure no competitor products advertise on the same program.

Secondly, what are these telcos doing slugging it out in public on TV? Do’t they have any understanding of the iPhone and what it stands for and means?

Thirdly, these telcos are commoditising a valuable brand that deserves better. A more sophisticated approach for a sophisticated product that offers value for many people in many ways targetted at existing subscribers and personalised would be far more effective than a mass economy spray and pray approach!

Creating awareness via TVCs is a complete waste of money for a product such as the iPhone. If anyone out there is unaware of the iPhone, the applications and how they can add value to a person’s life, then that person is not the type of customer Apple, or the telcos want!

Integrating and engaging all activities

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Back in the day, if a TV commercial was good a consumer might, just might ask a friend for his opinion on the product advertised. If the opinion was a favourable one, then the consumer may have sought the product out the next time he was at the mall. Assuming of course that he remembered it on the way to the mall or his memory was jogged by some effective point of sale promotions.

But today, the consumer has millions of friends with him as he watches the TV commercial. And all of those friends are just waiting to pass on their opinion to our consumer. To ask them, all our consumer has to do is key in a word or two into the search cell on his browser on the laptop that is probably on his lap as he watches the TV.

With this in mind, wouldn’t it make sense for advertisers to create TVCs with easy to remember links or search terms that can be keyed in at the same time as the commercial plays? Of course product sites will have to feature the same image of the same product with relevant content and information on local store opening hours and product availability. Messaging and images as well as content in traditional and digital media must be consistent too but this shouldn’t be a problem.

Surely we should move away from the mass market mass economy one message for all approach to this more instant, integrated and engaged approach. What do you think?

A is for Advertising

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This is a good place to start a compendium of branding terms because unfortunately, it is where many companies start their brand building. And that’s a shame, no tragedy because it is an expensive exercise in futility to try and build a brand using advertising alone.

Advertising can be traced back to around the late eighteenth century when the first print ads appeared in the USA. However, they were rarely much more than extensions of the editorial copy and newspapers were reluctant to allow ads that were bigger than a single column. Even magazines preferred to print all the advertisements at the back of the publication.

Mass advertising only really began in the second half of the nineteenth century when firms began to produce greater quantities of more and more products thanks to improved production techniques. Soon after manufacturing, other businesses such as department stores and mail order firms jumped on the bandwagon and by 1880 advertising in the US was estimated to be in the region of US$200 million. This grew to almost US$3 billion by 1920.

In the mass economy of the 1930s to the 1990s that coincided with the growth of mass circulation magazines, advertising companies proliferated. At the same time, companies wanting to stand out from the competition determined, quite rightly that the quickest way to grow was to raise the profile and awareness of the company’s product or service by informing or reaching as many people as possible in the shortest time.

The most common way to do this was via advertising, especially via TV advertising. The business of advertising is based on a model of repetition across mass media. OK, creativity is important, initially anyway, but once you get over the wow factor, the idea is to repeat the same message through as many channels as possible for as long as possible.

Budget played (and still does) a significant part in what sort of advertising an agency may recommend. It is important for you to know that from the advertising company point of view, the size of the available budget will determine two main points, 1) who works on the project (in terms of seniority and talent) and 2) what channels will be utilised. A larger budget generally results in TV advertising becoming part of the recommendations.

Other platforms include print advertisements, billboards, lamp post buntings, banners, taxi, bus and tube trains, coffee shop tables, flyers, leaflets and more. The introduction of the Internet has seen a proliferation of banner ads, tower ads, unicast ads, contextual ads, takeover ads, interstitial ads, floating ads, and other options to an already noisy, crowded and complicated marketplace. It is important to note that none of these initiatives are branding, they are all advertising and advertising is a tactical initiative not a strategic initiative, like branding.

In the mass economy and unfortunately still to this day, once a campaign has launched, probably to much fanfare, the client waits with anticipation to see the promised sales spike. Meanwhile the agency submitted any well executed commercials to one of the numerous creative shows that offer awards for creativity.

As mentioned earlier, repetition is important and with enough frequency, and perhaps a little vague targeting, this repetition was expected to encourage enough consumers to walk into a store or other outlet and choose or request the advertised product.

The model worked, to some degree fifty years ago but in today’s crowded marketplace, using advertising alone to build a brand is leaving too much to chance. It is simply too difficult to stand out from the crowd. Can you remember the last ‘great’ TV commercial or print ad that you saw? And even if you can, have you bought the product?

Quite often, the promised sales spike didn’t happen, unperturbed and with a straight face, the agency would ask the client for more money, arguing that it is the client’s fault as it should have made more money available in the first place for increased frequency. If you have gone this route, I suggest you bin the advertising agency and call a brand consultant.

Should you still use advertising? Absolutely because advertising will help your company project a vision of the relationship you can deliver to the customer. The ads also help you to educate customers about the value that you can offer them. Advertising must also communicate trust. Unfortunately this is forgotten by most advertisers, especially in South East Asia where outrageous claims made in advertising are rarely backed up in reality. In Malaysia for example, after years of being let down by claims made in advertising, only 14% of Malaysians now believe what companies tell them in their advertising.

But instead of seeking to increase awareness of your product or service with as many consumers as possible, ensure your advertising seeks to communicate with those consumers that are most likely to adopt your product or service.

Make your advertising relevant to those consumers you have targeted. Core messages must be related to those consumers interests, needs and/or desires. So rather than a one-size-fits-all approach in your communications, it is essential for messages to be about offering value to those specific customers and making their life better as a result. How to identify those consumers and what is relevant to them will be explored in brand audits and targetting.

The goal is to ensure a consumer incorporates an offering into their personal or business lives.

Adoption will ensure your brand is seen as the best, hey perhaps even the only choice. This won’t happen on its own. It is a process built on operational excellence, superb sales incorporating ‘top of game’ customer service and the ability to match offerings to the consumers individual requirements for value, on an ongoing basis. To build a brand retention is key and retention requires relationships and without relationships, adoption is not achievable.

And this is good news for Asian companies because the fact is Asian companies, and especially those from South East Asia, simply don’t have deep enough pockets to compete with international brands using outdated one-size-fits-all, mass economy tactics.

Ad placement is critical to the success or failure of campaigns

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Here is a screen grab of an article about the terrible earthquake in Chile. Alongside the article is an ad for Celcom, a Malaysia mobile service provider. It is one of those ads that you are encouraged to roll your mouse over to expand the ad and get more information. What I was pleased to note was that unlike many other similar ads, this one reduced when you moved your mouse away from the ad. I find it offensive and intrusive when you roll your mouse over these ads and then cannot get the ad to reduce when you move the mouse away.

Anyway, to me it is another example of the dangers of not controlling your ad placement. This could be considered even worse because it features a man standing on the top of a mountain and by default references nature. I’m not really sure what the relevance of the mountain is and it is not explained in the copy. Perhaps we are supposed to associate using the telco with being on top of the world. Or perhaps it is not relevant and is just an image chosen by the advertising agency. Or perhaps we just make up our own minds in which case, having the ad alongside a horrifying article about the Chile earthquake is not helpful.

We won’t go into the fact that he is standing on the top of a mountain that doesn’t have any snow on it even though mountains lower than his do have snow on them, or the fact that the scale is so out of whack.

But tell me, does an ad like this, alongside a negative story, encourage you to roll your mouse over the ad, read the copy and then seek further information or do you simply ignore the ad?