Tag: brands

Negative brand association, real world examples

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In October of last year, I wrote a piece on my blog about negative brand association. You can read the short post here

David Ansett of Storm in Australia approached the subject from a different angle and you can read his piece here

Essentially, my attitude is that if the concept of positioning a product in a consumers mind is a serious concept then it is only logical to assume that the same process can have a negative impact on the brand. Over the next few months, I will post examples that I encounter and I hope you guys will enter into a conversation with me on the impact, either positive or negative, of this brand association.

So we’ll kick of this project with a grab of a page I encountered today. I saw the question after answering another question and thought to myself that it would be interesting to see what, if any, the responses to the question might be.

As you can imagine I was shocked to see the ad right under the controversial, not to mention provocative question!

Today’s negative brand association story comes from the BBC site. This time it is a video about a drunk driver in China who is caught on film smashing into road dividers and barricades. You can see the full video here

You’ll note that the story is preceeded by a commercial for Lexus!

Here is a still image from the end of the commercial.

Actually this could also be included in brand disasters. Is it appropriate for a luxury brand such as Lexus to be associated with a drunk driver? Or does it not make a difference?

Any comments?

If a consumer cannot afford your brand, he won’t buy it

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Brands are defined by the economic, emotional and experiential value they provide to a consumer. If you can’t match the attributes of your brand to those requirements for value, consumers won’t buy it. Cost is a critical element.

No matter how much you spend on expensive TV commercials that the agency says will reach the most consumers and create awareness of your product the quickest, if a consumer cannot afford your product, he won’t buy it.

It doesn’t matter how much you spend positioning your product in the mind of consumers. If those consumers can’t afford your product, they won’t buy it.

Even if you manage to completely differentiate your product from other products, if a consumer can’t afford your product, he won’t buy it.

How Asian firms and politicians can adopt social media into their strategy

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When TV first started, commercials consisted of a presenter standing in front of a microphone reading from a script. Why? Because that was how it had always been done on radio. It took companies a few years to leverage the power of TV but eventually they did and now TV ad spend is estimated to be in the region of US$500 billion annually.

And in the same way as first the radio and then the television changed the way companies pass on information to consumers in the 20th century, social media is changing the way consumers source information about businesses in the 21st century. But social media will have an even bigger impact than radio and television because social media is not only changing the way we make decisions related to brands, social medial is changing the way we do business.

Consumers receive up to 5,000 messages a day
Back in the day, companies used radio and then TV to build brands by developing a one-size-fits-all message and broadcasting that message to as many consumers as possible as often as required. All communications were one way and the messages contained only the information the company wanted to share and the consumer was expected to accept this information and not dispute it. In a more trusting world, with limited competition and smaller markets, consumers were accommodating. Unfortunately, more and more companies adopted the same strategy. Soon consumers were inundated with up to 5,000 messages a day, many of them making increasingly outrageous claims.

Companies were unable to follow through on the promises made in advertising and trust, the key element of any relationship, was eroded. Repeatedly let down, consumers began to look elsewhere for independent information and the truth. They found it with other consumers. Consumers now source their information on brands from other consumers. Today, consumers have the power to make a brand succeed or fail. As consumers learn the truth about a brand, the reputation of companies and their brands is being determined, shaped, altered and increasingly discarded by consumers.

Dynamic process
And it is an ongoing, dynamic process. At any given time, consumers are searching for information on a product or service that has caught their eye. But they are not sourcing that information from TV commercials, the radio or the company website, they are looking to other consumers for the information they require.

And they are doing it, on the whole via social media. And social media is yet another tool that organizations must embrace because it is replacing marketers and the marketing department and other barriers between the organization and the consumer.

Social media cost of entry is low
Social media is not a fad. Those companies that don’t buy into social media will be left behind. But a lot of companies in Malaysia are going to be intimidated at the prospect of opening their virtual doors and giving the general public the opportunity to interface directly with them. But they are going to be talked about anyway so they might as well be part of the conversation. That way at least, they will have the chance to contribute a corporate take on all issues. And the good news is that the cost of entry is low and there are very few barriers to participation.

So what should Malaysian firms do to leverage social media?

1. The first thing they have to understand is that social media is not about you. It is not PR and it is not advertising. Social media is not for the hard sell, it is for engaging prospects and customers and for entering into two way conversations with them. Do this, and you will get opinions on issues that are important to an audience who is interested in your product. If you listen and use this information wisely, you will be able to match your product attributes to your customer requirements for value.

2. Identify which social media platforms you intend to use and develop a strategy to use them. Transparency, consistency, honesty and longevity are key so don’t just jump in and fire away for a fortnight of frantic activity and then get bored and stop communicating.

3. Do some research and find out how your customers are using social media, what platforms and so on. 350,000,000 million people read blogs. Identify which ones your prospects and customers are reading and how can you get involved by responding to articles.

4. Offer forums on your website that allow customers to express freely their experiences of using your products. You’ll be astonished at how valuable the feedback will be as you listen to what really matters to consumers and incorporate the feedback into your strategy.

5. Over time, develop a formal process to monitor and review what consumers are saying about you and where they are saying it. This monitoring will allow you to enter into dialogues that are very personal and transparent. It will also allow you to address negative issues as they arise and before they develop into crises. Casual monitoring will give you a real time view of what is being said but it is resource consuming and may not be as effective as a more formal program via a third party such as BuzzMetrics.

6. Set up blogs for key customer facing departments. Blogs are a great sounding board and instantly engage prospects and customers. Be honest, develop a personality but don’t try to sell your products. Don’t worry if your opinions differ to those of the audience. Open and transparent responses are what your audience is looking for.

7. Social media requires a fresh approach to content. Too many Malaysian firms are simply paying ‘lip service’ to social media. One government agency simply copied and pasted its website onto its Facebook page and then left it for nine months!

8. Social media is a platform for communication and collaboration, not a soapbox. Some companies simply tell followers about special offers. A number of politicians use Twitter to tell everyone what they are doing yet ignore specific issues raised by voters.

So as you embark on your social media strategy, remember that the digital environment is immense and fluid. Understand that you must change the corporate approach of one that aims to push messages onto consumers, to one that aims to listen to what they have and then responds to those issues. Take these first steps and you’ll soon learn to leverage the powers of social media and throw away the script.

Case study: Use research to form the foundations of a tourism brand strategy

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A powerful country brand developed from a meticulously planned strategy that has at its heart the concept of providing specific value to specific identified segments and meticulously executed and measured can yield massive benefits for investment, domestic industries and culture.

And for most South East Asian countries, tourism will have a prominent role to play in their country brand strategies. And so it should be as most governments recognize the contribution of tourism to stimulating economic growth across all sectors of society.

It also helps that tourism is also considered to be the world’s largest industry with revenue of over US$500 billion. The World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) estimates International tourist arrivals for 2009 to be at 880 million. Although this was a 4% drop over the previous year, Asia and the pacific saw the first signs of recovery with positive growth in the last 2 quarters.

Going forward, the UNWTO expects international arrivals to reach 1.56 billion by 2020. Of these, almost 400 million are expected to head for Asia and the pacific.

But because of the tendency of politicians to seek a quick fix, most Asian tourism brand strategies look no further than creative advertising campaigns that look the same as many other destinations and are soon lost in the muddle of messages currently carpet bombing consumers.

One country in South East Asia has recognized the futility of this approach and commissioned us to develop a brand strategy based on trade and consumer requirements for value. Client confidentiality doesn’t allow me to reveal the country involved however I am able to share the methodology and some of the results and findings.

The project took just almost 2 years from appointment to implementation of the strategy however some urgent recommendations were implemented earlier.

The tourism office is tasked with marketing the country both domestically and internationally. Our focus was internationally. They were facing a number of challenges including:

Challenges
1) The increased effectiveness of competitor marketing strategies. All regional competitors are investing heavily in tourism products and developing segment focused branding campaigns.

2) Growing ineffectiveness of mass marketing, especially generic print & TV advertising. Increasingly fragmented media and an increase in leisure time activities are making it harder to reach consumers via traditional channels.

3) The increase in the influence of the Internet on the destination decision-making process, especially the increased influence of peer-to-peer networks. Figures released by The Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) in November 2004 showed that 19% of holidaymakers booked their holiday online – six times more than in 2000. By 2008, this figure had grown to 67% (Online shopping survey). Only about 13% of those surveyed said they would use a travel agent. The Internet is also growing in importance as a communications medium through P2P networks with 34% of respondents to a Mintel survey choosing their destination on the basis of a face-to-face recommendation

4) Poor repeat visitor rates. Repeat visitors not only represent an increased return on the initial marketing investment but also tend to stay longer and spend more. Additionally, they represent a low-cost source of referrals and other word-of mouth advantages. Currently, the country has a below average number of repeat visitors compared to two main competitors which represents a threat to future growth.

5) Lack of awareness and knowledge of the country worldwide. What has been the impact of the country advertising? Has it been effective in improving the perception of the country? How much is it contributing to tourism in the country?

Our research showed that there were about 600,000 competing communities in Asia and more than 1,000 regional and national economic development agencies, all competing for visitors. This made it easy for even the most compelling messages to get lost amid all the destination claims.

We recommended to the client that in this cluttered environment, effective branding depends on data and knowledge about current and prospective visitors and not simply trendy creative campaigns featuring mass marketing tactics across all major channels.

Moreover, choosing the most effective branding strategy depended on sound market & customer research to determine current attitudes and perceptions toward the country among travel agents, previous visitors to the country and those that had never visited the country.

Measurement
By understanding the sources of those perceptions and attitudes, the client would be better able to evaluate current branding efforts, develop strategies to target high-impact segments with the most potential more effectively, drive internal education and other program development, leverage the emerging medium of Web 2.0, develop benchmarks to measure branding progress and ensure that resources were used cost-effectively.

The research could also be used to pinpoint, prioritise and drive online community-based branding. A core requirement as consumers spend more time in those communities.

Other key requirements included communicating knowledge of current branding and target market imperatives among personnel, as well as ensuring knowledge and data transfer.

After extensive discussions with the research division and others and to provide a 360-degree approach to understanding the brand, FusionBrand developed and conducted a multi-phase, six-month international research project that incorporated multiple research methodologies.

These methodologies included:

• 39 focus groups (FG) in thirteen locations in twelve countries comprised of 3 segments:
o Travel Agents
o Travelers who have visited the country in previous 3 years
o Travelers who have not visited the country but have traveled long haul in last 3 years
• Online surveys
o 12 countries
o Worldwide via client website
• Mystery shops in specific countries plus home country
• Internet CGM (consumer-generated media) monitoring & analysis
o 22 million blogs
o 60,000 usenet forums
o 6,000 discussion forums
o Plus podcasts, web sites etc.
• Internal brand audit in HQ and at tourism offices worldwide
o One-on-one, in-depth interviews with domestic & international staff
• External brand audit
o In depth interviews in specific countries
o 3 segments
o Tourist operators & agencies
o Media representatives
o Local tourism associations
• Communications audit (print)
o Brand analysis of print materials
o Comparative analysis of 11 regional competitor materials
o Framework for evaluation, scoring & future design developed
• Communications audit digital
o Own sites
o Brand evaluation based on Internet & customer relationship best practices
o Social Media initiatives

The countries were located in the following regions:

• Asia
• North America
• Europe
• Middle East
• Australia

The research project completely designed by FusionBrand was not only comprehensive, but innovative as well. For example, the Internet monitoring had yet to be accomplished by any destination, while the digital communications audit looked at what is necessary to advance into the emerging era of Internet 2.0.

Output was comprehensive and extensive and included:

• Recording and analysis of relevant input in complete reports
• County-by-country reports concerning perceptions and experiences with the country, including key influencers on travel destination selection
• Brand workshops for client personnel incorporating research results to ensure a corporate-wide understanding of the country brand strategy
• Analysis of Internet and marketing collateral relevance and effectiveness in segment-based branding
• Review of social media initiatives
• Quantitative benchmarks concerning experiences, perceptions, influencers and preferences of target segments
• Detailed insights concerning five key target segments identified in conjunction with the client

Each report not only included the findings from the research, but also prioritised recommendations for addressing the issues raised by the research.

Over 300 actionable recommendations
More than 300 actionable recommendations were made. These recommendations were incorporated into a comprehensive, segment-based brand plan that was developed over six months. The brand plan had a strong emphasis on the internet and social marketing and included strategic planning for marketing, advertising, both online and traditional, public relations, direct marketing, web and other programmes and outlined goals, messages, target markets, measurements, activities, timelines, responsibilities and budgets.

The benefits include consistent messaging and images among target markets, synergy among multiple programs, and elimination of uncoordinated activities that were wasting resources. Crucially, the brand plan also provides tools to evaluate program results.

In addition, in conjunction with representatives in country, country specific brand plans were developed. The Country Brand Plans are primarily focused on specific marketing activities within those countries. These activities include, but are not limited to, PR, local trade shows, agent recruitment and communications, cultural events, advertising, segment specific publications, promotional events, etc.

Although the brand strategy was for 2009, urgent recommendations such as consolidation and improvements to web sites and the appointment of regional PR companies were implemented immediately.

A key element of branding is consistency and yet, during the communications audit, the lack of consistency was evident. A strong recommendation was made for a corporate identity brand manual to be developed immediately. The manual was conceptualized and completed by FusionBrand in 4 months, during the writing of the 2009 brand plan.

Throughout the research and planning process, workshops were designed and presented to client personnel to keep them abreast of the process and educate them.

The project has been deemed a success with many targets met ahead of or on schedule. Furthermore significant savings have been made in a number of areas such as a reduction in collateral printing and a move to print on demand. Finally the destination has appeared on more than one ‘must visit’ destination for 2010 for the first time in its history.

8 reasons why the iPad will fail

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Apple owns some of the finest brands on the planet. And I’m an Apple loyalist and brand ambassador. I bought the green iMac when it first arrived in Malaysia. Even though there wasn’t any software to run on it and because it wasn’t compatible with anything else it required multiple peripherals. And even though it spent more time being fixed than it did on my desk and despite the fact that the keyboard was awkward and the mouse hopeless, I loved it and I’ve never had anything else since.

I now have macs in my home and at the office. Every morning when I walk into the office I catch my breath as I look at the sleek lines and brilliant screen of my top of the line iMac.

Every member of my family has an iPod and my two older kids have macbooks. I even convinced my luddite wife to switch from PCs to macs and her company now has 10 of them. Baes on my recommendations, at least one friend bought macs for his event management firm.

I’ve seen the stock I once owned soar over 5,000% from the price I sold it at.

And even though I know that Apple is making margins of over 40% on some of the products I own, I buy them because they are cutting edge in terms of design and functionality, are easy to use and have great features. And because the experience I have with my sales agent is brilliant and he’ll come to my house at nine o’clock at night to help me troubleshoot. At every touchpoint, it’s a great brand.

So you’ll never hear me say a bad word about a mac product. But I think the iPad is a mistake. And here are 8 reasons why:

1) It doesn’t have a camera or a webcam. If the iPod can have a camera, why can’t the iPad? A webcam would also have made sense.
2) The touch screen on the iPod is temperamental so if it’s the same with the iPad, users will need an external keyboard. Reading through the information, users will have to buy a separate keyboard that costs US$75 and can’t use any of their existing Apple keyboards.
3) The iPad doesn’t have any USB ports or card slots so I’m not sure how users are supposed to transfer documents from other devices. There is an iPod connector feature that means users will have to buy another adapter.
4) The iPad doesn’t have Adobe flash which means that any web pages that have applications, videos or advertisements on them will have large blank areas. You read that correctly, users can’t watch video on websites. If true, what are the implications for the travel industry?
5) The iPad doesn’t allow more than one programme to run at a time. So users can’t be working on a document in word and have a video downloading on youtube at the same time.
6) The iPad is not HD ready so watching movies will not be the experience it should be.
7) It can’t be used as a phone.
8) Apple will be able to remotely disable applications.

Before the launch of the iPad The Wall Street Journal wrote: ‘The last time there was this much excitement about a tablet, it had some commandments written on it.’ Apple leapt on that and included it in there marketing collateral at the launch.

Personally, whilst it won’t affect Apple’s position as one of the finest brands on the planet, I don’t think the iPad will fly. Only time will tell if I am right. What do you think?

Stop your product joining the 95% club

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According to an Ernst & Young study, the failure rate of new U.S. consumer products is 95%. 95%! Imagine if Boeing or Airbus had a 5% success rate! Yet despite this appalling return, companies spend approximately US$1.5 trillion on marketing, and in particular advertising, annually!

A couple of years ago, (before the explosion of social media, Dominique Hanssens, a director at the Marketing Science Institute in the US and a professor at UCLA’s Anderson Graduate School of Management, reported that the average advertising elasticity for established products is .01. He went on to say that if one of those brands increased its advertising expenditure by 100%, it would see a sales increase of only 1%.

He used as an example Anheuser-Busch. If the firm doubled the US$445 million that it was spending at the time on TV, print, radio, outdoor, and Internet advertising, it would enjoy a 1% increase in net revenues from the then base of US$5.7 billion. Put another way, Anheuser-Busch would spend a total of US$890 million to make US$57 million.

We have to accept that mass economy models that made global brands out of such products as Coke, Budweiser, Marlboro, Sony and others are no longer relevant. And if firms continue to invest in outdated tactics that no longer work, their products will join the 95% club.

If they are to survive, brands today must address current branding imperatives. Current branding imperatives include building and maintaining relationships with customers and partners, internal communication, education, understanding and adaptation of corporate goals throughout the organisations.

Clearly defined organisational processes that are developed with the customer in mind and not shareholders or the organisation. These processes must be developed for both customer facing and non-customer facing departments, not independently but in tandem.

Communications, including advertising are important, but not the traditional one size fits all mass market approach. Communications must understand the requirements of prospects and customers and communicate with them using content that resonates with them via channels that are relevant to them.

Branding imperatives also require effective use of technology and, most important of all, ongoing feedback, measurement and improvement. These establish the foundations for identifying prospects and acquiring and retaining (key to brand success) profitable customers.

If John McEnroe were to play tennis against Roger Federer today, using the racquets he played with back in the day, he might win a few points but he is going to lose the match. It is the same for companies who fail to adapt to the branding imperatives of today.

If consultants recommend you emulate models used by such brands as Coke, Pepsi, Sony and other mass economy brands that were built when tennis racquets were made of wood, show them the door. Likewise, enormous budgets, integrated, synergistic, holistic, innovative, design or creative driven, energetic, positioning campaigns will not establish a brand.

Companies, and governments must understand that there is no quick way to build a brand. It is this obsession and belief that there is a silver bullet and it is called advertising that keeps the 95% club growing.

You cannot build a brand with advertising alone

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86% of Malaysians don’t trust advertising. The Star) . 78% of Malaysians trust the recommendations of other consumers. There are more than 1,500,000 Malaysians on Faceboook. 80% of affluent Malaysians (those with a household income (HHI) above RM5,000) use social networking sites. Nine of the Top 20 websites in Malaysia are social networking sites. These consumers are the new world order. They are online for many hours a day and pay little attention to traditional mass media. Despite this, Malaysian companies continue to poor billions (RM6.45 billion in 2008. Adoi) into mass market advertising in the mistaken belief that what they are doing is building a profitable brand.

Advertising was much more relevant in the past when the mass media was limited to only one or two TV stations, few radio stations, a couple of national newspapers and the occasional billboard. Limited leisure time pursuits meant consumers spent a lot of time interfacing with the mass media. Finally, there was little competition so high product or service standards were unimportant. With frequency and timing, mass media advertising generated enough ‘awareness’ to justify the budget.

With limited competition and consumers who were willing to accept low standards or didn’t know any better, such awareness could result in sales and for some, it was enough to build a brand.

Using advertising to build a brand is ineffective
Unfortunately, using advertising to build a brand will not work anymore. Mass media has disintegrated into niches or communities. Consumers have been carpet bombed by so many messages – up to 3,000 a day and for so long, that they have learned to block most of those messages. The favoured reaction of advertising agencies to declining responses and lack of effectiveness is to increase frequency but this doesn’t help because it just adds to the cacophony.

In a media saturated world, awareness is just background noise that means very little. For most companies, and there are very few exceptions, in an age when information on every product and service is widely available, and consumers have more choice, are better informed, and more powerful, creating awareness is not going to build a brand. For instance we’re all aware of Mazda, Alfa Romeo, Eon Bank, Pan Am, Airbus, Ritz Carlton and many other multi national global brands, yet most of us will go through life without ever buying something from these companies.

Indeed, many companies have realized, sadly after spending millions on advertising, that advertising can raise awareness (and even that outcome is not a given), but still fail to transform an offering into a brand. Settling for awareness, when so much more is possible and required is a total waste of valuable funds.

But this doesn’t mean that advertising is no longer important. Advertising is, and will probably always be, important to branding. But its role has changed. Advertising can no longer be a tactical initiative to ‘reach’ as many consumers as possible to ‘get the name out there’.

Advertising
Advertising must do more than try to create awareness. Advertising must work to ensure consumers adopt offerings into their lives. Adoption enables an offering to be seen as the best option. But this adoption also needs organisational excellence and the ability to match offerings to client requirements for value. Advertising cannot be expected to do this on its own. And it is wrong of advertising agencies to give the impression it can but it is also wrong of business owners to expect advertising agencies to be solely responsible because advertising is not a silver bullet.

It may seem like I am stating the obvious, but advertising must also communicate trust. This is the key element in any relationship. Prospects won’t make that critical initial connection without trust. And for trust to grow into loyalty, the key to brand building, companies must deliver on the promises made in the advertising. If you don’t deliver on the promises made, your target market is reduced by 86% and you are trying to sell to the 14% of Malaysians who trust advertising.

Some of the claims being made by property developers, automotive distributors, airlines and others in their advertising are often bordering on the ridiculous. Consumers, already pressed for time and cynical, are doubtful as soon as they see the advertising. If you foster doubt from the moment of the initial contact, you’ve wasted every dollar spent on that campaign. If you are making claims you must follow through with them across every touchpoint. And don’t expect it to happen overnight. It takes time to build loyalty.

Understand that building a brand requires not just advertising but also a significant investment in building loyalty and organisational excellence and the money you spend on advertising may be money well spent. Failure to do so and you may as well pour it down the drain.

Will poor execution of a great offer become a public relations nightmare for Hilton hotels?

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This is an example of how the old world of ‘special offers’ with hidden strings attached clashes with the new world of social media where transparency, honesty and engagement rule. It also shows, once again that a one-size-fits-all brand strategy conceived by well meaning executives in one country can backfire on the brand in other locations.

Hilton January sale
At the beginning of January 2010, Hilton Worldwide announced “a global multi-brand wide January Sale. Guests who book hotel rooms in January can save 50 percent off weekend getaways throughout the year at participating hotels in Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific.”

“To take advantage of the January Sale, guests can pre-purchase hotel rooms between January 1, 2010 and January 31, 2010 and receive the discounted rate for Friday, Saturday and Sunday night stays throughout 2010.”

Hilton Hotels is making a really big deal of this January sale And so it should, after all 50% off a Hilton room is a significant amount of money. Especially in a recession. But I suspect executives at the head office in Virginia didn’t think it through enough.

After all, whilst January and February may be slow months in the USA and other western countries, it is the busiest time of the year in countries like China, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam as families get ready for the lunar New Year. In other words, peak time and not really the right time to give away hotel rooms at half price!

But anyway, despite my ‘reservations’, and (plot spoiler) they were the only ones I was going to make, when I read the other benefits

– Lazy breakfast until 11am
– Late checkout until 6pm
– Kids stay and eat for free (Terms & conditions apply)

I knew this would be a great offer for me to take advantage of personally. My family had been suggesting a trip to Singapore but I had managed to put them off the idea because of the costs etc. But with rooms at half price, kids eating for free and the late checkout, even I saw this as an excellent opportunity.

3 hour cocktail hour with free flow
Especially as the Hilton, with its great location and attentive and tolerent staff (very important with my family), is our 2nd favourite hotel in Singapore. Did I mention that the cocktail hour on the executive floor lasts for 3 hours of free flow everything?! Well that helps as well.

So, excitedly I called my wife, to see if we had anything on that weekend. Conincidentally, she was going to be in Singapore earlier that week hosting clients at the Singapore air show and could stay on for the weekend. I thought it odd that Hilton would have such an attractive offer at such a peak period but told her I would drive the kids down to Singapore and meet her at the Hilton for the weekend. She was understandably excited. I also sent a text to my teenage daughter who called back immediately and asked excitedly if we could go shopping!

So the family is pumped, now all I have to do is take advantage of the fantastic Hilton offer. For our preferred weekend of 5th – 8th Feb the offer is not available. Hhhmn, OK, never mind, these things happen, especially with the Singapore air show ending on the Thursday.

So I call my wife and teenage daughter again to check availability for weekend of 12th – 15th Feb. Great, they are both free. Unfortunately the special offer isn’t available that weekend either. Now I’m starting to get irritated because this is taking more time than it should but worse, I’m going to get the cold shoulder at home for 2 weeks. I better check availability for other weekends before calling my family. So I check the weekend of 19th – 22nd Feb. Not available. What about the weekend of 29th Jan – 1st Feb? Nope.

As disappointment sets in and I realise the dream of a very affordable weekend at the Singapore Hilton was just that, a dream, I choose some random dates to see if the offer is available at other times. 5th – 8th March, unavailable. 16th – 19th April, unavailable. One last try, 23rd – 26th July, oops, a 404! This is ridiculous, I can’t spend any more time on this.

Social media
At Hilton facebook page, there is more information on the Hilton sale. But further inspection of the dialogue shows that a vast majority of the comments posted by consumers, both existing customers and new prospects, is related to their frustrations and disappointments because they can’t book on the weekends they want! So I’m not the only one!

It is great to see Hilton using social media, not only to announce such initiatives, but also to engage prospects and customers in real time. But the unfortunate Hilton representative responded to 15 or so complaints, all related to lack of availability and then appears to have given up!

Here are 5 things the Hilton should have done to get the most out of this campaign.

1) Understand that we don’t all march to the beat of the US drum. This is not a political statement, but common sense. Chinese New Year is a very busy time of the year for approximately 1.5 billion people in North and South East Asia. Flights and hotels are full.
2) Check local calendars in the countries you offer special offers. The Singapore Air Show sees hotel rack rates as much as double.
3) If you must black out peak dates, do it in a transparent manner, so that prospects and customers are aware at the outset of restrictions and will not be disappointed. Hiding them in T&C doesn’t count.
4) It is no longer enough to announce a great offer and then assume everone will listen, praise the announcer based on the content of the offer only. As Peter Drucker said, “Communication only works from one member of ‘us’ to another.” If the offer doesn’t stack up, consumers will let others know about it and any good can be undone very quickly.
5) Your existing customers are the key to profitability. Make such offers available to them before new customers.

What started as a great offer from a truly global brand soon became a public relations nightmare and the Hilton credibility has suffered as a result.

What do you think?

Malaysians haven’t changed since 2003

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Omnicom Media Group (OMG) announced yesterday that newspaper advertising in Malaysia is as effective as it was six years ago. The report also states that readers ‘take note’ of 57% of newspaper ads and that this figure has not changed, I repeat, has not changed since 2003.

The sample size was 1,023 readers aged between 15 – 34 in four locations. They were tested on their recall of 15 ads in different sizes and in different places in newspapers they had read. The number of ads tested was 2,452 that appeared in 15 ‘main’ newspapers.

The agency developed what they describe as ‘three indicators of effectiveness’

1) Ad Noting or ad recall
2) Ad read or readers attention
3) Brand recall

The reports states that bigger ads perform better with a full page ad yielding 21% higher ad noting than a quarter page. Furthermore 60% of colour ads are noticed compared to 53% of B/W ads.

I got my information from this article and not from the original report which I would love to see.

So I can only go on the above data, plus some other results that don’t deserve to be published.

So what is my beef with this report? Well, in no particular order, the first issue I have is with the methodology. The report doesn’t tell us if the responses were aided or unaided. Critical. My second beef is with the ‘indicators of effectiveness’. There was a time, many years ago when newspaper advertising, with its one-size-fits-all mass marketing approach was effective. But not today. Awareness, or noting, or recall is simply not enough to turn a prospect into a tryer. And even if readers are bucking the global trend and not blanking out these and other messages but are indeed noting these ads, so what!?

Another beef is with the number of ads and the channels. 2,452 ads that appeared in 15 newspapers. That’s a lot of ads in a lot of newspapers. Most of us would find it hard to think of 15 mainstream newspapers in Malaysia. I’d also like to know which ads they were shown. For instance, were 15 year olds shown Louis Vuitton ads? They might recall it but what are the chances of them buying the product?

When we have a first meeting with a prospect, one of the first questions we ask is, “Have you read the paper today and if so, which ads do you recall?” Very, very rarely does someone actually recall an ad. And many of them were reading the paper as we walked into the meeting!

The time spent by Malaysians online went up 24% from 3 hours a day in 2006 to 3 hours and 46 minutes a day in 2008. With broadband penetration forecast to be 50% in 2010, that figure is going to rise significantly. Already, 80% of affluent Malaysians (those with a household income above RM5,000) use social networking sites. The time Malaysians spend interfacing with traditional media will suffer. But perhaps the most telling statistic of all is one that appeared recently in the Star, “78% of people trust the recommendations of other consumers, while only 14% trust advertising.”

So even if consumers are noting or recalling or whatever the latest term is, it doesn’t really matter because 86% of them don’t believe what they read in the advertisements so they’ll never buy the product!

Dodge seeks survival with mass economy approach

Published on by brandconsultantasiaLeave a comment

Chrysler has, like most US auto manufacturers, with the exception perhaps of Ford, seen its market share drop further in 2009. But this time it is down below the psychological 10% barrier at 8.9%, down from 11% in 2008. Sales are down a worrying 40% over the same period. This is not good, especially as the company stated in early 2001 that it intended to have 20% of the US market by 2005.

A restructuring plan in November 2009 introduced a number of initiatives including using models from Europe to mask the fact that Chrysler has made little investment in new products.

In what has become a depressingly familiar process, executives at the restructuring also introduced a number of new positioning strategies for the Jeep, Ram and Dodge brands. According to the executives, new models are to be redesigned or improved in times quicker than ever known to the industry. Ambitious sales figures include global sales targets of 2.8 million vehicles by the year 2014, of which about 60% are projected to be in the US. The firm forecast break even in 2010 and anticipated posting a profit in 2011. Revenues are forecast to be in the region of US$70 billion.

Specific brand initiatives include the biggest marketing budget for the Jeep brand in four years. Showrooms are to be redesigned to reflect off road heritage and Jeep managers will engage more with consumers at events. Meanwhile at Dodge, another new logo has been created to reflect a ‘sporty, youthful, inexpensive’ car. New entry level cars are to be available in different ‘flavors’ or equipped ‘differently’ not ‘expensively’. Are there such words as ‘differently’ or ‘expensively’?

Ralph V. Gilles was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of the Dodge Car Brand in October 2009, with full profit and loss responsibility for the Dodge car product portfolio. Before this he was VP of design. He is responsible for halting the Dodge slide but to do so he is going to need more than a new positioning strategy, new logos and a one-size-fits-all approach to marketing. Unfortunately the signs are not good as he has appointed Wieden & Kennedy, an advertising agency to build the Dodge brand.

Gilles is on record as saying that Dodge cars are, “Cars that make you feel good, that are niche-like in their demeanor, but have mass appeal.” Well I’m sorry, but that sounds to me like a one-size-fits-all typical mass marketing ad agency driven concept that will, in the end, appeal to nobody.

What do you think?