A fascinating insight into the social media and mobile shopping habits of consumers in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Singapore has just been released by SDL in the UK.
The survey size is a little small – 4,000 people in four countries – but the results unearth new data on how social media and mobile are influencing how consumers interact and build relations with brands.
Singapore participant breakdown
Findings include:
33% of respondents from all four countries have acted on promotions seen on social media.
58% of respondents have shared positive experiences online and have sought advice from friends and family when talking about brands on social media.
U.K. respondents are more likely than respondents from the other four countries to complain about service on social.
When respondents express feedback, Facebook is the most popular platform to do this.
Showrooming (visiting a physical location to evaluate products and services even when you know you will buy online at another time) is increasingly prevalent as 77% of participants showroom.
Experiential branding key to branding success
62% of the participants use a mobile device when in stores to compare product prices.
69% of respondents from all four countries expect a brand’s online store, mobile app, and physical store to offer the same pricing, discounts and sales.
Pricing consistency is expected in all countries
What can brands learn from this thought provoking survey?
They need to understand their relationship with consumers and what resonates with those consumers.
Brands that ensure parity in pricing and products across multiple channels will have to place greater emphasis on the customer experience and experiential branding if they want to win and retain business. Those that compete on price alone will soon be out of business.
Department stores and other retail outlets that represent multiple brands will have to work harder to engage consumers and ensure a positive brand experience otherwise they face the prospect of losing customers, possibly forever.
Mobiles are changing the way consumers research and learn about brands.
Brands that take the time to build relationships with core fans or brand evangelists will see their brands promoted to thousands of fans for minimal financial investment.
Those brands with digital brand strategies that go beyond tactical campaigns online are increasing sales through loyalty and advocacy.
Brands that try to control content and manage corporate driven messages and ignore consumers are unlikely to last very long in the consumer economy of today.
Telling the brand story online should be done across Facebook and other popular platforms with the ongoing development of corporate and consumer content.
The Malaysian automotive industry consists of two low-end manufacturers. To help these manufacturers, the government protects them with massive import duties, sales and other taxes that can jack up the price of an imported car with a large engine by as much as 155%.
In addition to these taxes an Approved Permit (AP) is required to import a car. These can cost around RM30,000 (US$10,000) each.
This makes it a tough country in which to sell foreign cars, especially luxury vehicles. To give you an example, a BMW 3 series that costs approximately £30,000 (RM150,000) in the UK, will cost about RM230,000 (£46,000) in Malaysia.
Top selling luxury cars in Malaysia
The BMW 3 series and the Mercedes C class are the most popular of all luxury vehicles in Malaysia. Sales of the BMW 3 series are around 2,000 units per year and the Mercedes C class slightly higher at 2,200 units. Both these models account for about 40% of each manufacturer’s total annual sales in Malaysia.
Mercedes Benz C class interior
So you would expect any dealer that makes a living selling and servicing luxury cars to be on top of their game. Right?
In November and December 2012, a prospect visited a number of luxury auto dealers and had a few test drives. During one test drive, the sales person spent the whole time texting.
On another occasion, at a different showroom he was approached by an executive who began the discussion by arguing about whether a particular vehicle in the showroom was the latest model.
Despite operating in a very competitive space, neither sales executive followed up on the prospect’s visit. However one of them does send ad hoc emails focusing on discounts.
Eventually the prospect asked a friend to refer him to someone at one of the main dealers. He was introduced to a senior Director who referred him to a manager who referred him to an assistant manager. Despite this the prospect purchased a new Mercedes Benz C250 because this dealer offered a larger discount than any of the other dealers.
Even this luxury car dealer who got a referral from a supplier and made a sale with zero marketing investment has done little to build a relationship with the customer, preferring instead to simply sell a car. More on this later.
Selling a luxury product is not like selling a bag of rice
More than any other sector, luxury brands must have people who know how to build relationships with customers. The market for these brands is 0.02% of the Malaysian population. It is not like selling rice, LCD TVs, Computers or Fax machines where volume is the key to success.
Ensuring a luxury purchase requires an investment in time and effort to build a relationship. A one-to-one relationship with a representative that offers individual specific value, exclusivity and personalisation is what customers want.
Levels of service must be exemplary because customers in this space have so much choice and have worked hard for their disposable income.
They want to be seen as special, important and part of a select club and not simply as another anonymous person in an anonymous crowd buying an anonymous product.
In the first month after purchase, our buyer received two or three calls and both times the callers were essentially going through the motions of ticking service and satisfaction boxes.
Since then he has heard nothing. Then last week he received a text message. It is enclosed here, in full.
Poorly written, too familiar and a lazy way to try and upsell a luxury product!
Pathetic I know. And the cars listed in the text are not cheaper. We’re talking about RM350,000 (£75,000) and upwards!
Now manufacturers, dealers and salesmen are going to say that all that matters is price and discounts but that is only because you cannot be bothered to build relationships with prospects and customers.
So what should this dealer of luxury automobiles do differently? Here are 10 things they need to do and do fast:
1) Recruit the right people and train them not with generic training courses that are used for automotive today and property tomorrow, but with bespoke training relevant to your brand, your industry and your customers.
2) Use technology correctly. Text messages are not a sales tool.
3) Put in place processes and systems that must be adhered to. For instance, if a member of staff has never met a customer before, the relationship must start on a formal footing, at least to begin with. Depending on how the relationship evolves, staff may be allowed to become more familiar.
4) Telling isn’t selling. Appeal to prospect emotions by identifying individual requirements for value and matching your product attributes to those preferences. You don’t sell cars, you realize dreams.
5) Service, service, service. Every interaction with a luxury brand must be of the highest level and expectations must be exceeded every time.
6) Make the experience of dealing with the brand special, unique, glorious but never, ever assume the customer will come back.
7) Too many brands spend a fortune on marketing and then practically ignore the customer. You have a 50% chance of selling to an existing customer and only a 15% chance of selling to a new customer. But sending a poorly written text is not going to retain a customer.
8) Don’t discount.
9) Carry out a sales process audit and sales skills analysis (yes, we can do that for you) and improve the skills of your customer facing staff.
10) Don’t waste time measuring satisfaction. It offers no value.
There is talk of liberalisation of the Malaysian automotive market but the reality is there won’t be any significant changes soon. Luxury brands need to know how to build relationships and realise dreams, not sell cars.
Luxury brands are working hard to keep up with a more dynamic environment with more discerning, knowledgeable customers who have different requirements for value. To retain these customers requires a greater understanding of the those requirements and less emphasis on the mass economy tools such as positioning, reach, awareness.
Loyalty is also less of a factor as consumers see their exclusivity watered down as luxury brands go mainstream and sell their product to anyone. Those brands that don’t understand customer requirements for value may lead to brand deflation, according to Michael Bleby in this article for BRW in Australia
Newsweek’s announcement that it will transition to an all digital format in 2013 is hardly a surprise. Such global magazines are increasingly expensive to produce and in a niche world, less relevant.
Newsweek – almost 80 years in print
But the bigger impact will come in the way advertisers communicate with consumers.
According to research carried out by comScore, more tablet users are reading magazines and newspapers on their tablets.
comScore talked to 6,000 tablet users over a 3 month period (I’m not sure of the geographic locations of the participants) and overall, 11.5% of tablet owners read a newspaper on their tablets ‘almost every day’ or ‘at least once a week.’
Tablets are not cheap and this is reflected in the income levels of the participants as half of tablet owners who read a newspaper on their device have household incomes of US$75,000 or more.
Readers of tablets and newspapers online are also more likely to be younger, with adults aged 25-34 accounting for 27% of newspaper readers and 28% of magazine readers on tablets.
Other research from GfK MRI found impressive engagement rates for digital advertising across tablets. They surveyed 30,000 ads across 1,000 magazine issues earlier this year and found 55% noted or read a digital ad on a tablet or e-reader.
And of those, 52% interacted with the ad as a result.
So does Newsweek’s decision and the changing way in which we source our news and current affairs information mean that this mean the end of the newspaper and magazine?
Absolutely not, especially in developing countries where many of the population are still not online or prefer to source their information from traditional sources.
But it does mean that many brands, especially luxury brands aimed at more affluent users, don’t need to waste resources on pointless ads on page 3 of daily newspapers.
New data means Gucci can target ads more effectively
After all, if affluent readers are sourcing their news from tablets, why advertise a luxury product in a traditional newspaper or magazine, especially when the engagement rates are so high?
The Malaysian Automotive Association has forecast total vehicle sales in Malaysia will be 615,000 units in 2012, up 2.5% over 2011. If this figure is reached it will be a record for Asia’s largest passenger car market.
This bullish forecast for 2012 is despite the fact that vehicle sales in Q1/2012 dipped 12.6% to 138,544 units from 158,432 units in Q1/2011.
Various reasons have been put forward to explain the drop in Q1 including the Lunar New Year and new credit policies. I was under the impression the Lunar New Year was an annual event and always in the first quarter so I don’t know how that would be a problem this year.
Personally, I think the main reason for the Q1 drop is that the global economic situation is having an impact on the number of loans approved by local banks wary of a repeat of the Asian financial crisis of 1998.
Whatever the reasons, it is good to see that BMW is doing what it can to sell its new six series with an extensive digital campaign.
I clicked on the link and was pleased to learn that the Bavarian giant will be offering wheels with the new 4 door coupe.
Despite, or because of tough global economic conditions, the retail sector in Malaysia appears in rude health. Development of new malls continues at a phenomenal pace with at least 3,500,000 square foot of additional retail space becoming ready this year in the Klang Valley alone. This will bring the total amount of retail space in the Klang Valley up to about 55 million square feet.
Passing almost unnoticed is the proliferation of international luxury brands in many of those malls. Familiar international names such as Giorgio Armani, Prada, TOD’s, Van Cleef and Arpels to name but a few, have all entered the local market in recent years, encouraged by the success of exclusive names such as Bulgari, Cartier, Hermes, Louis Vuitton, Rolex and other famous names long familiar to Kuala Lumpur shoppers.
Established luxury brands in Malaysia
Unusually for a Malaysian mall, The Pavilion has clustered its luxury boutiques into a high profile area facing Bukit Bintang. Globally, this clustering of stores is nothing new.
For centuries stores have organized themselves into districts based on what they sell – think Saville Row in London (tailors), Faubourg Saint-Honore in Paris (designer boutiques) and Deira in Dubai (jewelry).
Clustering similar stores in the same location is not a new concept
The cluster approach allows the rich and famous to be surreptitiously dropped off in front of a mall, rush in and make a purchase that would make a small African country drool and then rush out into the safety of the limousine without having to rub shoulders with us mere mortals.
With its double story street facing façade the luxury section or ‘couture precinct’ of the Pavilion was an exciting development in the evolution of the retail sector in Malaysia.
A section of the luxury couture precinct at Pavilion Kuala Lumpur
Just across the road, Star Hill Gallery has battled gamely to become a luxury mall with an eclectic mix of exclusive boutiques and lifestyle outlets. Meanwhile, over at Sentral, the Gardens, after a slow start has attracted one or two luxury brands.
The KLCC mall, at the base of the Petronas Twin Towers on the site of the former Selangor turf club had a rough start but has since attracted a number of luxury brands including Jimmy Choo and Chanel but has traditionally preferred them to be scattered throughout the mall.
However this has changed with the new extension that features a new Giorgio Armani store that also has an Armani Cafe as well as new Chanel and Cartier stores.
One thing all these malls have in common is a distinct lack of luxury British Brands. Sure there are some – most recently Anya Hindmarch and Thomas Pink, Burberry and Aquascutum made the move a few years ago but considering the long association with Britain and the importance of the luxury segment, there aren’t too many.
Thomas Pink opened in Kuala Lumpur in 2008 and now has one store at Pavilion
According to the ten best, the ten best British brands are:
1. Rigby & Peller: A family-run lingerie and corsetry firm awarded a Royal Warrant in 1960. It has a sterling reputation for expert bra fittings and beautiful designer swimwear and lingerie and a made-to-measure service.
2. Burberry: Famous for the iconic trenchcoat, this classic British company revels in its distinctly British attitude. Founded in 1856, the company’s core values are luxury, quality and timeless style, expressed in a modern way.
3. Mulberry: Luxury English fashion, “inspired by the cool of the city and the craft of the countryside”, is Mulberry’s speciality.
4. Barbour: Boasting three Royal warrants, Barbour is that rare entity, a family-owned, women run company. Since 1894, when it was established to provide waterproof oilskin jackets to sailors and dockyard workers in South Shields, this quintessentially British brand has created durable country-style clothes with impeccable attention to detail. Its wax jackets are known to last a lifetime.
5. Aspinal of London : This 10 year old company, or should I say upstart is dedicated to producing impeccably high quality and beautifully designed handmade leather products that draw much from traditional craftsmanship.
6. Asprey: Asprey has employed the best craftsmen to design and the best materials to produce exceptional jewellery, leather goods, silverware, homewares and timepieces since 1871.
7. Smythson: Frank Smythson opened his first shop in 1887, selling exquisite stationery and leather goods. In the digital age, the shop’s collection of beautiful diaries, handbags, purses, wallets and stationery continue to be in demand.
8. Aquascutum: Wonderfully understated British elegance at its best. Famous for inventing waterproof cloth and the raincoat, the company makes clothes that combine fine craftsmanship with luxurious tailoring.
9. Dunhill: Alfred Dunhill’s legacy continues to cater for the discerning man who wants to wear elegant clothing and fine fragrances and match it with luxury kit such as pens, lighters and timepieces.
10. Loake: Family-owned since it was established in 1880 and with a Royal warrant from the Queen, this quintessentially English boot maker employs traditional craftsmanship to produce fine, handmade footwear for men.
Of these distinctly British retail brands, only Burberry, Aquascutum and Dunhill are here. Of course there are some pretenders to this list who have set up in KL, notably Thomas Pink and Anya Hindmarch but we’re still a little light on British luxury brands.
Anya Hindmarch is a relative newcomer to the Malaysia luxury scene
Which is surprising really because although the United States remains the world’s largest consumer of luxury products (by a country mile), burgeoning middle classes in developing countries are creating new opportunities for luxury goods providers.
According to the MasterCard Worldwide Insight report, the value of the market for luxury products and services in the Asia Pacific region will be US$258.7 billion in 2016, up from US$83.3 billion in 2007. Not a bad category.
What’s more, there’s already a ready made market because the largest number of tourist arrivals to Malaysia is from ASEAN countries, followed by Japan and China with India and the Middle East not far behind. And the burgeoning middle classes from these countries are notoriously brand conscious.
And this interest almost obsession with brands is likely to continue according to Radha Chadha, author of “The cult of the luxury brand”. She believes that the Asian interest in luxury products is because of the massive changes – social, cultural, economic and political – that have been affected by the traditional attitudes to who you are and where you are in the societal food chain.
She believes that over the past 50 or so years, many of the traditional cultural indicators of social standing in Asia – profession, family, clan, caste have been eroded by the onset of globalization, migration and education.
Free of rigid social hierarchies, mass migration and the development of urban areas, more people are making money and making it faster. The way to differentiate oneself is by purchasing a luxury product that shouted, “I’ve got money, respect me.”
Displaying one’s status through outward appearances of rank and wealth is nothing new but Asians seem to have taken to it like the proverbial duck to water.
And those LV bags, Chanel suits, Jimmy Choo shoes aren’t simple female indulgences, they are part of a new world order that identifies the wearers position in society. Indeed, these luxury brands are a modern set of symbols that Asian consumers are using to redefine their identity and social position.
Jimmy Choo, technically a British brand
The Japanese have been devouring brands for years. 94% of Japanese women in their twenties own a Louis Vuitton bag. Visit the Louis Vuitton shop on Bukit Bintang and the chances are you will see a group of Japanese shoppers being fussed over by staff.
Asia now accounts for a third of Louis Vuitton sales worldwide whilst Cartier depends on the region for half of its worldwide sales.
Louis Vuitton achieved organic revenue growth of 12% in 2012, mainly due to demand from Asia
And what of China? According to the China Brand Strategy Association, 250 million Chinese people can now afford to buy luxury products, up from 175 million 3 years ago.
Already, Chinese consumers are responsible for about US$10 billion of global luxury sales. According to McKinsey, that figure is expected to grow to US$27 billion in 2015, accounting for about 20% of global luxury sales.
And although a lot of those Chinese are travelling to Europe, only 147,000 Chinese visited the UK in 2011, compared with 1,250,000 who visited Malaysia in the same year.
But it is not only the Chinese who are buying luxury products. Indians and consumers from the Middle East, are prepared to splash out on high-end goods and will often save for months to buy an expensive handbag. And Malaysia is on the radar of more visitors from these countries.
So as traditional European and US markets stumble through the economic quagmire, the time is ripe for luxury British brands to establish themselves not in the UK, but in Malaysia and use it as a gateway to developing markets.
At the Geneva Auto show in March 2012, the ultra luxury automotive brand Bentley admitted it was considering adding a luxury SUV to its range of vehicles.
A month later at the Beijing Auto show the CEO announced that the firm expects to sell 3,000 of the SUV annually once production starts in 2015.
You have to admire the speed at which they make decisions at Bentley, especially as they also showcased a blue concept car and introduced a range of models, from a 4.0 liter V8 twin turbo to a 6.0 liter W-12 monster at the Beijing event.
Bentley is on a roll at the moment and has just reported 37% increase in sales in 2011 with China driving demand. Crucially, this upsurge in sales helped the brand become profitable for the first time since 2008.
At the Beijing event the CEO also announced that the target market for the SUV was the developed SUV markets of the US, UK and China. Bearing in mind the first two are reining in spending and will be doing so for about the next 20 years, one would imagine that with the exception of a couple of US based rap artists, China alone will drive demand for this new SUV.
Which is probably why the company took the unprecedented step of asking Chinese users of Facebook and China’s most popular Twitter like platform Sina Weibo what they thought of the SUV concept.
The Bentley Weibo page (Is that a typo at the top right?)
Questions asked were related to the design and the interior and opinions on what sort of engine should be used and whether or not Bentley should actually launch the SUV.
Other general questions are asked about driving and vehicles. Incentives for completing the survey are wallpaper for a mobile device or computer.
The Bentley SUV seeks data
Crowdsourcing is nothing new but bearing in mind that the firm has already announced the launch of the car and the models and the nature of the questions, it is questionable how this particular data will be used to drive the brand forward.
Nevertheless, despite the unusual research methodology, it makes sense for Bentley to go down this path. After all, the luxury SUV segment revived the fortunes of other automotive companies such as Porsche.
Porsche, previously known as a manufacturer of high performance sports cars, made the SUV move in the mid 1990s after years of stagnant sales following the stock market crash of 1987.
Since then, the Porsche Cayenne has become their best selling automobile ever and despite the global economic uncertainty, global sales are expected to rise 40% to over 52,000 vehicles by 2017.
Back in 2003 Porsche sold a meagre 138 cars in the whole of China. By 2011, Porsche was selling 8,629 units of the Cayenne alone, making it the Stuttgart company’s largest market for the SUV.
In 2009, Cayenne sales represented 83% of Porsche sales in China. With each Cayenne costing up to US$300,000, that’s not a bad business to be in.
The Porsche Cayanne responsible for 87% of Porsche sales in China
Purists argue that the core brand – that of the two seater, meaty, macho sports car – is being diluted but with luxury and performance still core attributes, this is a weak argument, especially as Porsche continues to build the SUVs in Germany.
Range Rover is another luxury SUV manufacturer that is seeing record sales in China. Last year the company sold 50,994 vehicles in China, a remarkable 76% increase over the previous year. However Range Rover is also seeing significant growth in Europe where sales are up in Russia, France and Germany and even Spain has seen an 18% increase in sales despite the recession.
The recent success of the Range Rover Evoque has encouraged Porsche to launch a smaller SUV called the Macan in 2013.
The Lamborghini Urus, coming your way soon
So with Range Rover and Porsche already entrenched in the China market and with Lamborghini due to launch a luxury SUV (the Urus) by 2017, it makes sense for Bentley to extend the brand.
Mary Portas may not be a familiar name to many in South East Asia but the British born former actress has carved a niche for herself as a no nonsense retail guru.
Portas was responsible for turning the drab and dreary retail graveyard formerly known as Harvey Nichols into the cool, must go to destination now known as Harvey Nicks.
She went on to star in the TV series ‘Mary Queen of Shops’ and ‘Mary Queen of Frocks’ and most recently, she has been challenged to create a contemporary, hip UK ‘knickers’ brand.
The project is ongoing but she has already opened a closed down factory in an area of Manchester, England where the unemployment rate was 70%, created her first range and negotiated with retailers, or should I say bullied them into stocking the range.
What I like about this is that it may be an example of how it is possible to build a brand in an extraordinarily short period of time. We’ll have to wait to see the results but the brand could be well known and, more importantly, profitable within a year.
What I think is particularly relevant to Malaysian manufacturers obsessed with price but uninterested in the concept of building brands is the following data.
In the UK, cheap underpants retail for about £8 for a pack of three. That equates to £2.66 per pair. Materials, manufacturing, packaging, transportation and VAT accounts for £0.88. The balance of £1.78 goes to the retailer. The margins are minute and if mistakes are made in the manufacturing process or product is rejected, it can be the difference between profit and loss.
Mid range pants cost from £10 – £12 per pair
Materials, manufacturing, packaging, transportation and VAT accounts for £3 per pair. The higher price is because of the better quality materials which allows the higher cost. There is also more profit in this range.
Designer branded pants £35 – £85
Materials, manufacturing, packaging, transportation and VAT accounts for a higher price of between £5 – £15 per pair. The higher price is normally a reflection of the design complexity which means more time on the machines and the fact that more expensive materials such as silk are used. But the ability to charge a significant mark up is what should appeal to any company looking to move away from the commodity business and up the value chain.
Setting up your own brand will require investments in marketing. Something you don’t have to do if you are manufacturing cheap products or on a contract basis. But you won’t be the cheapest forever and once someone else produces cheaper than you, it will be only a matter of time before you are out of business.
Qantas has had a bad run of luck recently and has also made some questionable corporate decisions. Especially in relation to the ongoing wage negotiations with the Transport Workers Union that is threatening further disruption to the Aussie carrier.
The most recent Public Relations disaster is related to an attempt by the newly formed social media unit to implement a social media campaign.
The Twitter campaign asked users to describe what would be their “dream luxury inflight experience” and use the hashtag #QantasLuxury to generate traction.
The airline probably thought it would generate comments related to Spas, champagne and top quality service.
However, Aussies known for their acerbic wit, jumped at the chance to lay into the beleaguered national carrier. One of the first was, luxury is “giving yourself a pay rise whilst grounding your whole airline and taking local jobs offshore”.
Another example “#QantasLuxury is feeding a family of 5 on pittance they pay their ground staff while Alan Joyce is on $94k a week”
Cherry Pizza came up with “#QantasLuxury is sitting in your first-class lounge chair, watching a failed social media campaign get out of control.” How right she was!
The misjudged campaign was an unmitigated disaster and in an effort to end the suffering, two hours after launching the project, Qantas thanked users for their tweets. Unfortunately for Qantas, social media doesn’t work that way and 36 hours later the topic is rumoured to have generated 14,000 tweets, the best of which are featured in a presentation on slideshare and the topic is still trending high on Twitter.
It didn’t help that the prizes offered were a set of Qantas pyjamas and an amenity kit!
Recently I wrote a post about my experiences when I called the number on a billboard selling a luxury automotive brand. You can read the full article here
Basically I talked about how I rang this brand after seeing a billboard outside my office. I got through to the receptionist who asked for my number and said she would get someone from sales to call me back. Nobody called me back, even though the car costs about RM500,000 (US$166,000)! I thought this was an excellent example of why so many brands fail. But I didn’t think much more about it.
Then today I was sitting at a traffic light outside Bangsar Shopping Complex and I saw the same company had another billboard, this time it was advertising their jaw dropping top of the range V10 sports car that costs over RM1,250,000 (US$420,000) in Malaysia. Now this really is an exclusive motor and in the middle of last year there were orders for about 240 of them in the UK and a waiting list of 12 months. If they are only selling 250 odd in the UK I would expect them to sell no more than 50 in Malaysia. So you have to question why they market such an exclusive product on a billboard.
But this is not a rant about using old mass market mass economy models to sell luxury brands, this is about the fact that it is imperative that marketing campaigns are integrated and organisational excellence is at the heart of any tactical campaign.
And I know it isn’t at the heart of this campaign because whilst waiting for the lights to change I decided to call the number on the billboard and see what sort of a response I would get.
I called the number. No answer. Now it was 5.17pm and perhaps the receptionist has gone home. But I doubt the sales team had gone home. I bet they were sitting around wondering how to drive traffic to the showroom so they can make target this month and get a nice juicy bonus for Chinese New Year. Perhaps at least one of them might have been wondering why the expensive outdoor campaign they’ve been running for some time hasn’t generated any results!
I’ve tried to go and see these guys but the marketing manager tells me they are doing well. Here are some basic principles to abide by when you run an advertising campaign so that when you are doing well, you can do better.
1) You advertise on billboards to stimulate, inform, persuade etc. If you want to inform perhaps a 100 people in the country about a luxury product, spending large amounts of money on billboards or for that matter print ads in daily newspapers, is a complete waste of marketing dollars.
2) Consumers who can afford to spend over 1 million Ringgit on a car are unlikely to keep to your office hours. Make it easy for them to spend money with you.
3) Your advertising copy should appeal to a specific audience – in this case, those who can afford over RM1,250,000 on a car – everyone else is just getting in the way. So create copy that will resonates with that target market. This ad just mentioned the engine capacity and that was it! Ever wondered why mini does so well?
4) Develop metrics for measuring channel effectiveness. A simple metric for outdoor ads is a specially assigned number for that campaign.
5) Outdoor advertising is 24 hours. That’s probably one reason why you bought it in the first place! If you can’t have someone on standby 24 hours a day, install an answering machine or after office hours have calls diverted to a sales manager or sales director.
These are elementary and should be included in any strategy document created by a brand consultant.
brandconsultantasia.com 