Category: brands

British Airways promotion

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One of the greatest branding success stories has to be British Airways, the blue riband aviation brand.

Recently the airline hired agency BBH to create a new campaign to explain the history of the company. The final work can be seen below

As part of their work, the agency chose a row of 747s at a terminal. Unfortunately not all the aircraft were BA 747s!

Never mind, the agency got the digital guys to put BA livery on the planes.

Unfortunately, they forgot to delete the serial code of the nearest aircraft which was actually a Virgin aircraft! Not clever, especially as Virgin is BA’s sworn enemy!

Fortunately, during an internal showing to staff, a hawk eyed engineer spotted the offending information and alerted the marketing department!

Ironically, the director, Frederic Planchon is renown for his attention to detail!

You can see the edited shot about 56 seconds into what is in my opinion, a beautifully crafted video.

5 Essential Rules for Social Media and your small business brand

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The original version of this article first appeared in the August 26th 2011 print edition of The Malaysian Reserve.

It is not a question of if you will stick your corporate toes in the social media waters, but when. Whether you like it or not, social media is taking the world of business by storm.

In a recent survey by Nielsen, a research company 73% of connected consumers in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam agreed they had been influenced by advertisements on social media.

Firms that continue to believe that social media is a fad or fun or not for business are only doing one thing, giving their competitors an advantage.

Research from Hubspot and MSN shows that companies with a social media brand strategy are seeing a significant increase in awareness, traffic to websites, search engine rankings, and social-media-generated qualified leads, perhaps the most important element of all. Moreover, statistics increasingly show that more and more people like to do business with businesses that have a strong social media presence.

But social media is much more than setting up a Twitter account or starting a Facebook page. Social media activities must be elements of your brand strategy in the same way as advertising, direct mail, email, PR are. The problem with these traditional activities is that they are reactive, you put it out there and wait for something to happen. If nothing happens you spend more money on another idea. If that doesn’t work you try something else.

A social media strategy, if done properly is proactive and can actually offer you all the things your traditional campaign can’t offer you – accountability, retention, a measureable return on investment, effectiveness tracking and more. Data from a 2010 report by Nielsen, a research company showed that social media had better results than traditional marketing activities.

So how should a small business enter the world of social media? The following five rules are relevant to any firm that seeks to develop a contemporary platform to raise awareness and be heard over the noise, acquire customers, increase sales and better serve customers which will in turn ensure customers are retained and not released to the competition.

1. Social media is not a technology issue it is relational and requires cultural changes within organizations.

The social media space is not the place for people with a traditional marketing mindset. Social media is exactly that, SOCIAL and requires you to use social skills to build rapport with consumers so that they may eventually become prospects, customers and possible evangelists. Trying to use a traditional marketing approach in social media and using a hard sell and trying to push a product or service in social media will damage your reputation.

2. Identify who in your organization will be responsible for your social media strategy.
You will need to have a social media strategy and it will have to be integrated with your brand strategy. If you don’t already have someone, you must be looking to hire a social media manager who reports directly to the CEO and not to a marketing or sales director. And because social media is incredibly dynamic and changes are happening 24/7, you are going to have to be prepared to give this person a lot of autonomy to interact with consumers and make decisions, some of which will be financial, that directly impact the relationship with prospects and customers.

In the old days of mass advertising across mass media you had control of the messages related to your brand. Social media is fluid, consumer driven and places the control of your brand in the hands of consumers. Accept that you have to relinquish control.

3. Social media is not a technical initiative, it is a relational initiative
Relationships don’t stop for an hour at lunchtime, at 5pm or over the weekend and nor does social media. Success in social media takes time as firms seek to build the credibility needed for consumers to trust them. Make sure posts are made daily and questions or requests attended to immediately even if raised over the weekend.

Although your social media strategy is not a technical initiative, social media personel need to have at least an understanding of related technology such as Google Analytics, Content Management Systems (like WordPress), and third party social media software like Tweetdeck and HootSuite – so as to assign metrics by which to assess and respond quickly.

4. Define your core audience and messages for those audiences.
Traditional marketing attempts to be all things to all people. This model won’t work on social media. If you intend to educate, identify who you want to educate and do so but don’t try to sell to them. If you have targeted them effectively, they will take the initiative and seek out more information about your organization and how you can provide value to them.

5. Social media is not a volume business
Someone once said that volume is vanity, value is sanity. What this means is that firms should look to increase profitability not sales. Used properly, social media can help you reduce your cost of acquisition and increase profitability. Don’t set out trying to have lots of followers who never buy your product or service. A single follower or friend who is engaged and interacts with you is worth more than a thousand followers or friends who only drop by once a year.

Social media is participatory and is an efficient tool for your organization to learn, exchange and build professional networks so take time to build individual relationships. Once you have a follower or friend or contact, you have their permission to interact with them in a consultative manner. It is not about broadcasting messages but holding conversations.

When a consumer gives an organization permission to speak to them, it is because they like what the organization is saying and want to hear more of it. An organization must engage, gain trust and then solve the problem. But be warned, this means that the organization’s messaging must be relevant just about 100% of the time.

This may take time and you may find it difficult to open up, especially if you and your marketing department, educated on a diet of broadcasting corporate driven messages to as many people as possible, are not used to sharing information, especially with prospects.

However, get it right and you will find that you build relationships and followers quickly, and inexpensively and this will lead to increased sales and more loyal customers who will not only spend more with you, they will share their experiences with your brand with their friends.

For brands, now more than ever, content is king but who generates that content?

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I think it was Bill Gates who coined the phrase “Content is King” back in the mid 1990s. He was right then and he is right today, possibly even more so today.

In today’s economic climate, traditional media owners, desperate for content but unable to afford to produce it themselves, are increasingly looking to independent production companies to generate that content.

But ever more cynical consumers are skeptical of content distributed via traditional media channels, especially in Malaysia where the mainstream media is acknowledged as being controlled by the government. Even content on respected platforms such as the BBC, CNN and CNBC has come under scrutiny recently after questions were asked about content produced by UK company FBC media

At the same time, or perhaps as a result of this, consumers are now changing the way they interact with brands, both during the evaluation stage, purchase stage and, critically after the purchase.

In the past, despite the major investment required to attract a new customer, the brand owner would be happy to sell them something and let them go. If they didn’t come back, it didn’t really matter as there were an increasing number of consumers to replace the initial customer and competition was limited. Moreover consumers expected little from the brands they bought.

Now after a purchase, consumers want to be involved with brands and mindful of the lack of genuine information available, want to influence others. Thanks to social media, they can do this and will share information, thoughts and opinions about their acquisition, long after the actual purchase.

Those consumers also believe they have a right to a role in the development of the brand going forward. This means that increasingly we are seeing consumers create content that defines brands and not the brand owner.

So content is still king, but it is now created by consumers. The key is to influence that content in the same way as traditional media once did.

Do you agree?

Malaysian brands not spending enough online

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Yahoo’s latest Net Index study reveals something most of us with kids know already – Malaysians are spending record amounts of time on social networks. The report states that the time spent by Malaysians on social networks increased 29% in 2010.

As well as social media, file sharing, online searches, email and chatting all saw an increased activity. The number of purchases online also grew so you would expect Malaysian CEOs to be spending more money online right?

Well yes, and no. Advertising spend in 2010 grew to RM7.7 billion (US$2.6 billion) a YOY growth of 16%, but of that only RM52 million was spent online. Up a respectable 29% over the previous year but still not enough.

The rest was spent on traditional media with newspapers capturing 51% or RM3.9 billion of total ad spend. This is an increase of 14% despite the fact that readership of all newspapers is declining.

With consumer confidence falling it is going to be hard to sustain such gains and traditionally, when the economy falters, advertisers will seek accountability.

My hunch is that we’ll see a huge jump in online advertising with traditional media – newspapers, TV, radio, Out of Home and magazines all taking the biggest hit.

Data from the Nielsen company

Media

2009 spend (RM ‘000)

Percentage Share

2010 spend (RM ‘000)

Percentage Share

Percentage change
Newspapers 3,407,826

51.5

 3,890,824

50.8

14.2
TV 2,446,536

37.0

 2,892,472

37.7

18.2
Radio 361,818

5.5

 408,871

5.3

13.0
Magazines 139,545

2.1

 151,735

2.0

8.7
Outdoor 112,250

1.7

 119,745

1.6

6.7
In-store 86,300

1.3

 123,620

1.6

43.2
Internet 40,446

0.6

 52,149

0.7

28.9
Cinema 22,496

0.3

 23,811

0.3

5.8
Total 6,617,217

100

 7,663,227

100

15.8

Repositioning won’t solve Nokia’s problems

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In 2002, Nokia was Britain’s number two super brand; by 2010 it was 89th. But Nokia doesn’t have a branding problem.

Although I no longer use a Nokia, I still have some brand loyalty and track the performance of the Finnish mobile phone behemoth and although it’s global share of mobile sales dropped below 30% for the first time since 1999, it still sold 450 million handsets in 2010, outselling Apple 10 to one.

10 years ago, in 2000, Nokia sold 128 million handsets out of a total of 405 million, giving it just under 32% of the market and with margins of 20%, Nokia was well placed in the sector as Motorola and Ericsson struggled.

By the end of 2003, Nokia had increased its share of the global handset market to 34.6%. By the end of the first quarter, 2004, that share had slipped to 28.4%. This 20% drop in market share was despite a year-over-year increase of mobile shipments of 29.3%. Nokia found itself in this potentially dangerous position because it was slow to introduce clamshell style phones and colour displays.

Fast forward to 2007 and Nokia was once again humiliating competitors in the handset stakes, and in particular Motorola. In the first quarter of 2007, Nokia shipped 92 million units, a 20.6% growth compared with Motorola’s 47.5 million units shipped during the same period. 2007 also saw handset sales break through the one billion units level with a total of 1.17 units sold, a 16% increase over the 990 million phones sold in 2006.

Nokia’s global market share climbed to 38% whilst Motorola’s slumped to a dismal 13%. Analysts thought at the time that Nokia’s share of the global market could climb to an all-time high of 40% by the end of 2007.

On 2nd August of that year, Nokia announced an astonishing 57% increase in second quarter operating profits to US$3.2 billion. And when the definitive metric for measuring brands is profitability, Nokia sizzled again with operating margins for the combined mobile device business of 20.9%. The company also had US$9.5 billion in cash and no debt.

But 2007 saw the launch of the iPhone and suddenly the mobile phone became a smartphone. By the third quarter of 2007 the iPhone had 20% of the smartphone market, way behind RIM with the Blackberry at 39% but more than the smartphone sales of Motorola, Nokia and Palm combined.

By 2010 Nokia’s market share had slid from a 36.4 percent share in 2009 to 28.9%. Nokia still sells more mobile phones than any other company but consumers no longer want mobile phones, they want smartphones.

And at the heart of the smartphone is the operating system. By January 2011, Google’s Android, and its Chinese versions Tapas and OMS had become the top smartphone platform in the world with an 888% year-over-year growth.

Nokia’s Symbian system is a very close second with Research in Motion a distant third and Apple’s iOS way back in fourth. Microsoft’s mobile operating system barely warrants a mention with 4% of the market.

Under pressure in a market it once dominated and essentially still does, Nokia has panicked. Realising the key to smartphone sales is the OS, it has mucked about with Symbian, a perfectly good OS with no more flaws than the iOS.

But because of the now huge size of the organisation, issues bought up during the testing of touch screens and browsers were often ignored.

Desperate, Nokia launched the N-Gage with too few poor quality games and terrible network connectivity for multiplayers, the phone was blown away by the PSP and DS.

Next came another disaster, the Ovi. Nokia’s answer to the iTunes Store was an unmitigated disaster. In 2007, Nokia restarted its touchscreen development after deciding in 2006 that touchscreens were essentially a gimmick.

This delay meant that the N95 and N97, both good smartphones in their own right and with email, music players, the Internet and GPS as well as a slide out Querty keyboard were supposed to compete with the cool iPhone.

Next up, the beautiful N8, launched in 3Q2010. Engineering porn in my opinion with a 12 megapixel camera used by professionals. But the N8 was outsold 6 to one in Europe and did even worse in the gadget hungry, fast growing Asian markets.

Then it tried a completely new Linux based OS called MeeGo but it’s corporate heart wasn’t in it and MeeGo only got a year.

Now, in what could be seen as a last throw of the dice, Nokia has teamed up with Microsoft and is launching the partnership with a US$112m global brand repositioning campaign, which will see the launch of its first phone running on the Windows 7 operating system in October 2011.

This is a big mistake. Microsoft’s Phone 7 was launched for Q4/2010 on about twelve handsets from a number of manufacturers. During the quarter it achieved a meagre 1.5 million sales, earning it about a 2% market share and worse than Windows Mobile which had 4%.

During the same period, the latest version of Symbian (the all new user-friendly touch screen version that powers the N8) was launched on 3 Nokia smartphones and sold 5 million units. All Symbian products sold a respectable 32 million units.

Although I don’t know the objectives of the six month reposition campaign, one assumes it is an attempt by Nokia to try and regain lost market share from rivals Android, Apple and Blackberry.

But this won’t happen because some ad agency or agencies have created a position that they intend to push out, no doubt primarily across traditional mass media because that’s where most of the eyes are supposed to be and it pays the highest commissions.

And I’m sure the same message will be communicated in all countries, irrespective of local cultures, smartphone habits and so on.

And of course there will also be a nod to digital and social media. And with US$100 million to play with there will no doubt be an attempt at a clever Old Spice type viral campaign.

But the problem is, Nokia’s issues cannot be solved with a communications campaign that will no doubt generate lots of interest but will not change the fact that the Windows OS is an unpopular OS.

Nokia doesn’t have a brand problem, it has an organisational problem that cannot be solved by a repositioning campaign.

Nokia products don’t come close to delivering the experience Android, RIM and Apple smartphone products offer. And that won’t change with seven. Especially as Nokia has had very little influence over the first Windows 7 devices.

And if you can’t offer a compelling experience, you won’t solve the problems Nokia has.

Nokia would be better off taking that US$100 million and giving it to the Symbian crew to improve what is almost a very good OS capable of competing with Android and iOS.

The top 1,000 brands in Asia – so what!

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Following the completion of a research project carried out in conjunction with TNS, the Asia Pacific edition of the globally respected marketing magazine, Campaign Asia has named Sony as the top brand in Asia.

According to the study the top 4 positions all went to power house North Asian brands – Sony retained its position at number one followed by Samsung, Panasonic and LG with Canon at five. In fact the top 5 were unchanged from 2010.

At six is Apple, HP at seven, Google at eight and Nestle at nine with Nike at ten.

Facebook was the top social networking site at number 17 whilst Twitter leapt from 123 to sixtieth.

HTC, whose stock has tripled in the last year and is now Asia’s second largest maker of smart phones leapt from 532 to 100.

Interestingly no Chinese brands made the top 100 and only one Indian brand (Amul) managed to do so.

Amul, the largest food products business in India and the maker of ‘the big daddy’ of butters and the number one ice cream in India, was the best performing non-Japan or Korea brand, coming in at number 89.

At 123, Louis Vuitton was the highest luxury brand and surprisingly luxury brands fared poorly. Despite listing on the Hong Kong stock exchange recently, luxury brand Prada came in at a disappointing 348th, only two places above CIMB and down from 252.

Although Maggi (22nd) place and Tesco (96th) will be familiar to Malaysians, the top Malaysian brand is Marigold at 131, down from 129. Other Malaysian brands include Malaysia Airlines at 163, Maybank at 172 and F&N at 238. Old Town coffee also deserves a mention at 245, coming in almost 40 places above Maxis at 284. Celcom, Maxis main competitor was further down at 395.

Sticking with Malaysian brands, Boh tea was down at 417, Firefly, a budget airline was at 462, up from 518.

The highest new entry was Hankook tyres of Korea at 246. The highest new entry Malaysian brand was Life, a sauces/condiment maker at 718 followed by Kimball, another sauce/condiment maker at 825. Surprisingly Proton, the Malaysian national car was also a new entry at 916.

The survey was carried out in ten Asian markets: Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand. Ages of the respondents were from 15 to 64 and approximately 300 respondents from each country were surveyed.

Participants were asked only two questions:

“When you think of the following (product or service) category, which is the best brand that comes to your mind? By best, we mean the one that you trust the most or the one that has the best reputation in the (product or service) category.”

“Apart from the best brand you entered, which brand do you consider to be the second best brand in the (product or service) category?”

14 major product and service categories were covered in the survey:
Alcohol and tobacco
Financial services
Automotive
Retail
Restaurants
Food
Beverages
Consumer electronics
Computer hardware
Computer software
Logistics
Media
Telecommunications
Travel and leisure
Household
Personal care.

In addition to these major categories, a further 72 sub-categories were included!

The final rankings were determined based on the total number of mentions each brand received across all categories and countries.

Then the data was weighted on two levels: the first to reflect the population composition within the markets covered, and the second to reflect the competitiveness of the categories included in the study.

Now I don’t know about you guys but if there is one thing I have learnt over the years it is that markets such as Malaysia and Japan or Thailand and India have very little in common, especially when it comes to food, alcohol (60% of the Malaysian market is Muslim and therefore alcohol is forbidden) and other culture specific products.

Furthermore, I don’t know how they included all the categories and sub categories but I can only assume the answers were aided. Nevertheless, imagine a questionnaire that lists 14 potential answers and then a further 72 options to those answers! How accurate are the responses going to be?

I also think that the sample size and the demographic – only 300 participants per country and a massive demographic of 15 – 64 is simply too big to provide results that are actionable or relevant.

And we don’t know the gender of the participants yet gender will be crucial in many of the listed categories and in how we communicate with prospects, with what content and across what platforms.

And looking at the brands, someone in India is not going to name Proton as the best (another thought, define best?) automotive brand because the Malaysian national automotive brand has yet to go on sale in India.

Frankly, I don’t really understand what is the point of this survey and what it means? How is it relevant to a consumer or company in Malaysia when it lists brands not available in the country? How can a company leverage its position? What must a company do to move up the list, perhaps to the top? How relevant is the ranking?

If the survey must be done, it would be better if it were country specific and related to each category alone. Rather than asking two (aided) questions, it would make sense to develop questions based on the product needs in that country. Questions will also need to be developed based on the category.

And instead of looking at traditional approaches that rely on demographics, in the social economy, it would be better to work with social media communities. Results could then be correlated and geographic comparisons made although they still won’t offer actionable data to the brands.

What do you think?

Direct Mail, Email and your brand

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Direct Mail and Email marketing are critical components of any branding strategy for either a business to business or business to consumer brand. And it is a growing business. But the quality of Direct Mail and Email marketing in Malaysia and the mining and management of the databases used is horrendous.

If you own a company and you want to destroy any equity there may be in your brand, prepare a badly written product sheet on your desktop and when you are finished, don’t bother to spell check the document.

Print 50,000 copies and shove them in all the letterboxes of as many office or apartment complexes in the Klang Valley as you can. While you are sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring (assuming you included it on the flyer – and believe me, some don’t), your ‘DM campaign’ is being thrown in the rubbish bin by the lift, used as a place mat for lunch or simply thrown on the floor by the mail boxes. Hardly an inspiring ‘moment of truth’ first time experience for your brand and potential customer.

Another way to damage your brand is to send the wrong material to the wrong people. I have three kids, two under the age of 13. Yet this year they have both received two offers from credit card companies. These offers state that applicants must be at least 18 years of age.

A lot of firms are moving away from DM to save money on the printing of their flyers or brochures and looking at Email marketing. Although figures are unavailable for Malaysia, the Direct Marketing Association in the UK informs us that 90% of companies are now using email marketing.

There is no doubt that a well thought out and planned email campaign can be effective and profitable. But too many firms don’t do this and instead are simply adding to the seven trillion spam messages expected to be delivered to inboxes around the world in 2011.

I signed up with a local event organiser for information on forthcoming branding and marketing seminars that they organise in the region. Within a week my inbox was inundated with emails related to human resources, accounting, insurance, motivation and other topics I have nothing to do with and no interest in. These emails are trashed with the same irritation as the ones for Viagra, lottery wins and Nigerian banks.

Despite my repeated requests to be unsubscribed from their list, I continue to receive multiple emails. I cannot simply mark the email as ‘junk’ because they are using a Gmail account and this will send all mail from Gmail addresses to my trash. The name of the company is ingrained in my subconscious, but for all the wrong reasons and it is now a matter of principle that we will not sign up for any event organized by this firm.

I have received about 10 emails in the past month from an insurance company that recently spent RM13 million (US$4 million) on a rebranding exercise. The emails are not personalized, the attachment is of a flyer that is dull and states in two places that the offer is exclusively for Mastercard holders yet I don’t have a Mastercard.

I really lose faith in financial institutions and other companies when they make such mistakes. Think of the money wasted on the cost of the name, flyers, administration and so on.

The rewards for good campaigns are significant. The Direct Marketing Association reports that more than RM550 billion was spent on direct marketing advertising (including email marketing) in 2008 and sales generated from that were an astonishing RM6,450 billion! There is no question then that DM can be effective because it allows consumers to read about the products and services before deciding to explore further, or even buy.

But it has to be done properly. It is not enough simply to create a campaign and send it out. It is also important that the content resonates with the target market. And you still need to ‘sell’ the product. Just because you have got into the prospect’s inbox, doesn’t mean the prospect will buy.

The key for all direct marketing or email marketing is get the customer information right in the first place and keep it updated accurately thereafter. If you are collecting a lot of leads but don’t have the resources to input and clean the data, then outsource. There are many firms offering such services and it will be money well spent.

There is an edict within Direct Marketing industry that says, “Right offer, right person, right time.”

So it’s time for Malaysian firms, from SME up to main board, to end all this untargetted, uninspiring, untrackable, unproofed direct mail and start building brands with quality marketing collateral.

Repetition no longer solution to brand building

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One of the problems with a mass marketing approach to communications is that they assume that prospects can be made to believe, through advertising repetition of the same message, what offerings can mean to them. It’s a variation of positioning and in the mass economy, when firms could control how offerings were portrayed, it may have worked.

But consumers have been misled, lied to, abused, manipulated, let down and so on. As a result, they no longer believe what most companies say, no matter how many times they say it.

Today, other customers define brands and their opinions and experiences will determine if consumers try a brand. Once they do, it is up to the company to know and understand those consumers and communicate with them with content that resonates with them to keep them.

Failure to do so will determine the success of the brand and not repeating the same message to anyone and everyone.

Why you should start building your Brand today

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This article first appeared in the Friday 29th April 2011 edition of The Malaysian Reserve/International Herald Tribune

Does this statement sound familiar? “I know I need to start thinking about building my brand but I don’t know where to start so it can wait.”

I’ve heard this statement a lot recently and if it is a general feeling throughout the business community, then we’ve got a problem.

We’ve got a problem because as Malaysia becomes an increasingly wealthy country it will increasingly become a target for global brands that have seen their penetration in more traditional markets reach saturation point.

Moreover, free trade agreements and stagnant manufacturing or services based economies are also encouraging global brands to take notice of countries like Malaysia.

In the last twelve months, major global brands from the agriculture, automotive, aviation, biotechnology, education, fashion, food, hospitality, logistics, property, transportation and other sectors that in the past have barely considered Malaysia, are now establishing offices here.

Even Unilever owned brand Marmite, a quintessentially British savoury spread most often used on toast, now has sales in excess of RM20 million in Malaysia, mainly because it makes a bowl of congee a little more interesting!

And as these global brands take note of Malaysia they will invest substantial funds to establish their brands here and once those brands are established, it will be difficult for Malaysian products and services to compete with them. Unable to compete, over time, these Malaysian brands will fail.

So Malaysian firms really must begin the process of building brands now, rather than later. The good news is that beginning the process of building a brand or revamping an existing company has many benefits. Some of the most significant include the ability to charge more for products and services as well as a reduction in costs. Furthermore, changes in technology and communications mean that Malaysian firms might not have to invest significant funds into mass communications.

A word of warning though. Any branding initiative should begin with a careful analysis of the organization, its processes and systems, especially those that are customer facing and whether or not it has a customer centric culture, what it stands for and whether these elements are relevant today. Be ready for bad news but see it as feedback and an opportunity to improve not as criticism.

And once the brand is ready, communications should focus not on broadcasting how wonderful the brand is across traditional mass media channels, but on engaging prospects with content that resonates with them and delivering economic, emotional and experiential value to consumers and across all touch points.

Here are six more reasons why you shouldn’t wait to start to build a brand.

Reason No 1: Branding unifies your organization & motivates staff
Your people will want to be part of a respected and recognized brand because personnel who can identify with and support a brand’s culture, values and behaviour are better motivated, more loyal and engaged, both internally and externally.

As a result, your people will have pride and an interest in the company they work for and what they do for that company. Morale will improve, productivity will rise and resignations will be reduced. Moreover, a culture that strives to deliver value to customers and on customer terms will prevail. This in turn will lead to increased sales.

Reason No 2: Branding integrates & enhances brand touch points
This is really important. Organisations with weak or non-existent brands more often than not, make promises they cannot keep, focus on acquiring customers but pay little attention to existing customers and underestimate the importance of the customer experience. By developing a brand and building processes and systems into the brand delivery system, every single touch point between your organization and the consumer will be geared towards delivering a positive experience. Positive brand experiences will go a long way towards building customer loyalty, key to profitability.

Reason No 3: Branding reduces costs
What better incentive can there be for building a brand? Branding requires a brand strategy and a strategy will anticipate multiple scenarios and prepare the organization for outcomes, reducing the likelihood of expensive cost over runs or unexpected expenses.

Furthermore, a well recognized and well respected brand attracts talent, reducing the need for time consuming recruitment campaigns and expensive head hunters. A brand also reduces marketing costs. Less established products or services can spend up to 10% of revenue on marketing, brands often spend as little as 0.8% up to 2% on marketing.

Reason No 4: Branding justifies a price premium
Yet another major incentive for anyone still not convinced they should be building a brand. Branding allows you to charge more for your product or service because people will pay more for a name they can trust and have confidence in.

Reason No 5: Branding shortens the sales cycle
A strong, well respected and recognized brand creates trust and an emotional attachment to the product which also helps to make purchasing decisions easier. Over time, this influences the speed at which a prospect or customer makes that purchasing decision. This in turn allows a company to build customer loyalty and create brand ambassadors to sell the brand on their behalf, shortening the process further.

Reason No 6: Branding blocks competition
By focusing on building a brand rather than carrying out a series of transactions, you will ‘ring fence’ your brand and stop the competition from poaching your customers. As interactions with your brand increase, customers will automatically think of you when thinking of your category, thereby ignoring competitors.

In an increasingly competitive and noisy environment where better established global brands with deeper pockets are starting to flex their muscle, it is imperative that Malaysian firms, large and small start to build their brands now, before global brands get a foot hold in the country and it is too late.

Effective email campaigns must be part of your brand strategy

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You’ve probably never heard of unsolicited bulk Email (UBE) or for that matter, unsolicited commercial email (UCE) but you have of course heard of junk mail or spam, the more common moniker.

The earliest known spam was a message sent in 1978 and the earliest known commercial spam message was sent in March 1994. This latter event coincided with the opening up of the Internet and the amount of spam has grown exponentially since then and the forecast is that seven trillion spam messages will be sent in 2011, making up about 85% of all emails sent worldwide.

This constant carpet bombing of consumer inboxes with irrelevant messages has had a detrimental effect on email marketing and now, with the advent of social media, our belief and trust in email is wavering. Nevertheless, email is still an effective tool in the communications of any brand strategy. It can be used as a marketing, sales, retention and CRM tool and response rates to personalized emails have been reported to be as high as 62% although 2-4% is the average. Still impressive.

But it is critical for marketers to ensure that their emails are relevant to the target market, well written and succinct enough to gain the attention of the reader in the roughly three seconds they have before the reader hits the delete/spam button.

It is also critically important to ensure before the campaign begins, that you know what the purpose of the campaign is and, most important of all, that your database is clean and up to date.

I am constantly stunned at the amount of shockingly written, poorly thought out and irrelevant emails that land in my inbox. I’m equally stunned at the amount of times I receive the same email from the same organization.

For instance this email, from an organization that recently spent RM15 million (US$5 million) on a ‘rebranding’ exercise, is exclusively for Mastercard owners yet I don’t have a mastercard!

Furthermore, the email is addressed to ‘undisclosed recipients’ and contains no cover message or other form of personalization. Finally, to the detriment of the brand, it has been sent to me an incredible six times in less than a month!

Takaful Malaysia which refurbished its 13 platinum branches and outdoor signs and billboards during the rebranding exercise should have also looked at its communications processes and systems, including qualification, lead and list management and other elements. As its stated aim is to ‘make the company more appealing to the younger age group, it should also review its creatives! But I digress!

What should Takaful Malaysia and other companies, who are thinking of carrying out email campaigns do to ensure those email campaigns create leads and prospects rather than brand antagonists?

Here are 10 recommendations that will help them and others get the most out of email:

1. Target your message
It’s critical that the subject line grabs the attention of the reader and encourages them to open the email. The best way to do this is to personalize the subject line. The Takaful Malaysia subject was the name of the product. Few people buy products. A better option would have been “Can I help you protect your family?”

2. Segment your target markets
Keep list sizes to a manageable amount. Don’t send gazillions of messages and then be unable to respond to them in an acceptable time frame (24 hours). Segmenting your targets will stop this happening.

3. Target messages
Keeping list sizes to a manageable level will allow you to develop multiple messages for multiple segments, critical to successful tracking. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.

4. Use a Salutation
The whole point of the exercise is to get a response, not to make a sale. If you met someone at a convention, you wouldn’t start pitching to them the moment you are introduced and it is the same with an email campaign. Be contemporary, slightly informal and inviting. Start prospecting emails with a greeting and, depending on the product or service, the contact’s first or last name, such as “Dear Mr Smith” or “Hi Fatima.”

If you don’t have the first and last name, don’t send the email until you have the correct information. The majority of emails without a name will go straight to the trash folder.

5. Keep Your Email Short
Lay the content out so that it is easy to read and keep the first email short to ensure it is skimmed. You want the prospect to read the entire email but they won’t stick around for long so make it a fast, easy read.

Keep the email to three paragraphs of no more than three or four sentences. You can also close with a one-line sentence.

6. Track each segment within each campaign
One of the great advantages of email campaigns over traditional advertising campaigns is the ability to calculate an exact CROI (campaign return on investment).

But don’t limit your calculations to response and conversion rates. Depending on the goals of the campaign, track demographics, territories, consumer data, page visits, click-throughs, time spent on pages, and other elements. Use this information to influence future email campaigns with more efficient and effective content.

7. Have a hook
Business owners and C level executives are busier than ever. They don’t have time to waste so have an instant hook. We are in difficult economic times and businesses are looking to save money, especially small businesses so an obvious hook would be related to saving money for a business. Ensure content resonates with target markets.

8. Content is still king
Mention specific issues relevant to target segments. There is so much information available that it is easy to identify issues affecting segments. It may take a little more preparation but it will be worth it in the long term.

9. Don’t go overboard on design
I’ve received emails with video clips, multiple graphics, embedded links, audio and so on. These are all distracting and time consuming when opened on a mobile device at an airport. Keep it simple.

10. Email marketing should form part of a brand strategy
Many firms conduct email campaigns on a whim, without any real thought or planning. This is a bit like driving a Ferrari in first gear, the car does everything you want it to but is it getting the best out of the car?

Incorporate your email campaigns into your brand strategy. Identify your quiet periods and implement an email campaign to boost sales in that period.

Email is still the most effective way to reach a lot of new prospects quickly and inexpensively. Email campaigns also have impressive response rates.

But email campaigns, carried out in an amateur way, can have a negative effect on your brand. However, if you follow these email best practices, prospects will take notice and respond, increasing your sales and building your brand.