ChangeOrder

The Three Fundamentals of Creative Strategy, Pt. 5

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

Great creative strategy always starts with a clear articulation of a business problem, and a rational strategy for solving it. This is the outer layer of the onion that peels away to expose a marketing strategy. Let's talk about how you apply your marketing strategy and your audience insights to generate tactics that sing.

Based on how you answered your top three questions in Part 4 of this series, you have the answers that you need to select your tactics. So, let's flip those questions around and use them as the proper guide to discuss the thinking that should help shape your tactical marketing approach.

Tell your audience what they want to hear, based on how they feel.

You've determined some key understandings about your audience base. Now distill that material into one key insight that will make them pay attention. Ideally, you have to be able to say this in one sentence (or less) to succeed in selling your client and your shareholders.

In the realm of financial services, think about MasterCard: "Priceless." Or Citi: "Live Richly." Or way back when Washington Mutual knew what they were doing: "More Human Interest." Each of those key insights was an embodiment of how they understood their audience needs. They are all ways of making a dull, droll, somewhat cutthroat industry foster a human connection with their audience. (Reading that previous sentence over again, I'm sounding pretty jaded.)

I'm not saying you always need to come up with some catchy phrase for your client. You just need to know what human insight drives your tactics. Some clients can hand the appropriate insight to you on a platter, and save you plenty of work. If you have a less sophisticated client, or you're being hired to generate this insight, you will need to include this key insight in the brief, or you're taking a big risk.

Talk to your audience where they'll pay the most attention.

Once you have the insight nailed, you go back to your research about where your audience lives and breathes.

If they're business travelers, you could hit them in the taxi, in the airport, on business television, on those little coffee cup sleeves.

If they're consumers, you may recommend redesigning their packaging based on behavioral research and focus groups.

If your audience likes to spend a ton of time online, you could develop a seeding strategy for bloggers, fostering two-way communication between your corporation and your customer base.

Of course, all of these thoughts will dovetail with previous efforts your client has made, and the statistics about how they have performed.

In the good old days, we used to talk about "above the line" communications (a.k.a. television, print, and other high-profile awareness-generating mediums) and "below the line communications" (direct mail, in-store sales, training, anything focused on fostering sales). Nowadays, there is no line. Since we're talking about fostering great customer experiences that lead to long-term relationships with brands, every single customer interaction could lead to a positive or negative impression of a company and its products and services. If a client comes to you saying they want to sell 100,000 more bags of chips a month, you can't just say to run some ads and call it a day. Your approach needs to be multilayered and more sophisticated, taking into account both traditional one-way media communications (such as advertising, collateral, branding) and two-way media communications (such as compelling interactive, social networking, blogging, thought leadership, in-person dialogue).

So while it's easy to tell a company that they need to get in front of 1 million eyeballs to generate 10,000 sales, it's not the appropriate answer anymore. I can't imagine walking into a client's office and advocating that kind of solution without being roundly laughed at. As consumers, we expect dialogue with brands. We know we're in control of the game and have a real voice in the marketplace. Online, your voice can carry just as much weight as 100,000 impressions of a banner advertisement, or more.

Assume the audience won't hear it the first time. Or the second. Or...

Another attribute of your audience research should be focused on how you can craft your communication strategy to surround the right people at the right point in the sales process with the right message. It's no longer "one size fits all" communications that can accomplish every single goal with one swing of the hammer. Be smart about how each touch fosters progress through your sales process, while at the same time, being aware that your customers may only get message 2, 4, and 7 out of your grand media scheme -- meaning that each creative communication should always hit home the key insight and provide some of the support necessary to foster the right kind of experience and prompt some level of future interaction.

Test, test, test. And then test some more.

Return on investment should dictate every move you make in the marketplace. Don't ever put a tactic on the table, such as a long run of television spots, or a grandiose series of online ads, without factoring iteration and improvement into the process. Due to up-to-the-second metrics on interactive properties, clients expect adjustment on the fly. And be prepared to kill a buy midstream or shift media or money to other channels if they don't perform at the right cost per acquisition. Unless your goals include some measure of thought leadership or more favored brand presence, don't think about pouring more cash into "love bombs" or other forms of sheer goodwill without the research to back up the long-term ramifications of your actions.

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In the final part of this series, I'll share some broad guidelines to help your marketing insights take the appropriate form in compelling marketing communications.

Common Mistakes in Marketing Luxury Brands

Don't associate your products with other brands unless they perfectly mirror a lifestyle.

High-end brands are being extended across categories -- and faltering.

Brands that offer services and brands that contribute to lifestyles (such as Starbucks) can't cross over into luxury goods, and vice-versa, without thinning their brand. Can you imagine a Starbucks BMW? A Godiva Porsche? No way. There's no parity between them. But I believe in the Eddie Bauer edition of the Ford Explorer... barely.

Everyone has their own internal weights and measures when it comes to rationalizing a purchase, but I think it's fair to say this: A jacket is a jacket and is not a car. Don't overreach your category, your brand space, and what your customers will believe. It's better to cross-promote your products to another brand's audience than to badge your products incorrectly or mash your products up to try to be unique.

Don't price based on cost of goods. Price on aspirations.

People are more likely to rocket due to perceived value, not real value.

The luxury category has fragmented by budget. Audiences are asked to pay closer and closer attention to nuanced categories, with the idea that they'll always aspire to a product out of their budget.

This is known as "rocketing" in a product category, see the fantastic book Trading Up for an in-depth treatise about New Luxury or "masstige" marketing and how it differs from the old mindset about luxury goods and how the market is evolving luxury into new forms.

Don't tell a completely new story about your brand when you've already staked your ground.

If you didn't start close to the luxury space, you'll never create cachet around your product without expending a vast quantity of capital to change perception. Start a new brand if you really want to get in the game.

Don't make more! Limited quantity equals controlled demand.

Easy to understand in theory, but very hard to pull off when people start beating down your door waving fat wads of cash. Companies often cave and produce more when they should just have a plan in place as to how they can extend that demand into a new (similar) offering.

And last, but certainly not least:

Don't horse it up.

"Less is more," more or less. With clean design and smart production tactics it's relatively easy to convey an aura of luxury and exclusivity.

This is the expected first route for a designer to take with a luxury product, so don't think you have to beat a path through the weeds to engage your audience and emerge with something too novel from a branding perspective. Does it really convey the right feeling if the design is incredibly busy? Unless you're conveying some level of sophistication, your audience will have trouble understanding why they should pay 2 to 10 times the price of the competition.

Channel Marketing + Sales = Branding

I love it when marketing managers talk about how it's their job to help funnel leads to salespeople, and that they can't control anything after that magical transference of responsibility.

I also enjoy it when salespeople talk about how they spend too much time sifting through weak leads from those same marketing managers to close a sale.

Or when I enter a store after being enticed by a compelling marketing promotion and hot price on some product I can't wait to purchase (phone, climbing gear, and chocolate all come to mind), only to be ignored by the salespeople.

The truth is, we're all in this together: designers, marketing managers, and salespeople. And we have to work together to create compelling communications that support our brands, drive through sales, and ensure that our customers keep coming back.

You'd think the big dogs in the consumer marketing space would have wised up to this new truism of the Information Age: you can't assume that people will like your brand if they get stoked by great marketing and let down by poor service in any channel. There was a great post on Ideas on Ideas about this recently, related to blogs and their influence on purchasing decisions, but I think there's a broader point to be made than just bad service = big word of mouth = bad branding. Often bad service can cascade into a larger problem because of poor continuity between sales channels.

I remember being stunned as I walked through Best Buy last month, to be greeted by every single salesperson I passed. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven after so many years of terrible service there. We had dropped in to purchase a microwave for my wife's office, and they were able to direct us to options right off the bat, without having to sit there and decode the boxes to figure out which one would be the wisest purchase. We'd researched the purchase on the Internet, made sure to call ahead and ensure the products were in stock, and then were helped by a real person right on the spot to make a no-pressure purchase.

What made the experience so great?

Every single point, from Internet to phone to in-store, was high-touch. Swift. Too the point. Propelling us to the purchase, no matter where we chose to make it, and with us feeling like we were in control of the situation. In every channel.

This is the holy grail of retail. The ability to cultivate a positive experience that extends across every touch point in the sales process, from consideration to purchase to happy customer to long-term customer/company relationship.

And why is it so rare?

Because there's a weak link somewhere in the chain from product creation to marketing to sales. And most often, this is related to your channel marketing strategy not lining up.

Companies that grok this spend a lot of time refining their business process on a regular basis -- because they know it's the only way to ensure the customer experience is optimal. It doesn't always boil down to a bad marketing promotion or a bad in-store experience. Often the things that can hobble a corporation's branding efforts in the long term are all about how they do business.

Marketers like to segment out Internet, phone, in-store, email, etc. in their marketing plans and focus on increasing the effectiveness of each channel. They think about the synergy of how each channel works together to ensure a continuity of experience until a customer engages in a purchasing decision. Where necessary, they'll work around issues with legacy sales systems, weak infrastructure, wonky in-store policies, and other hurdles in the background to ensure that customers keep getting funneled into a sales decision. And this is where their brand truly suffers.

Usually one channel is less mature than another. Some companies are slam-bang great at Internet, but they are terrible in the store. Others have some of the best phone service around, but the online experience is weak. Some companies like to focus their marketing dollars on the channels that perform best, such as online, often to the detriment of hiring the killer staff that will make their in-store sales rise more swiftly.

But I digress. Let's focus on the places where channel marketing can break down, from the customer's perspective.

Customers don't expect much. But they do have real expectations when it comes to how they'll approach you -- and what kind of behavior they'll tolerate. Let me share some of these expectations with you:

• If you're going to sell something online and in a store, sell it over the phone too. Even if your business model doesn't support it. Customers expect high-touch -- unless you're Fry's Electronics -- and the sale will probably cost you less than the in-store one.
• Be ready to accommodate multiple forms of payment. In any combination.We take cash, Visa, MasterCard, and American Express. Oh, and gift cards too. But you can't use a gift card online and a credit card to cover the rest of the purchase. So you'll have to go to the store, because we can't take your purchase over the phone. Our computer system can't handle that. And the store isn't close to you. Sorry about the inconvenience.
• If you don't have it in the store / online / on the phone, secure one for your customer promptly. If you have it on the floor as a sample and it isn't in stock, don't just say: "Sorry, sir, we don't have it." Go find it at another store or have me buy it online with you and then send it to me. Or, alternatively, you could go back to talking with the other salespeople behind the counter while the 4 other customers wander around the store and, like me, eventually leave without making a purchase.
• If you say you'll call me or email me when the product comes in, actually contact me. Don't wait until I call back in a week or two, ask when said product will be in the store, and be told, "We got a big shipment in just a few days ago." This means you don't have a method for CRM within your store that carries into another channel. I wouldn't complain if you sent me an automated email that was triggered when my product was stocked.
• Don't send me to a third party to purchase it, if you can. If you make a great product, why would force me to search around for it at the mall? Sell it to me directly and make more money, via phone or Web.
• Don't think that since you carry that hot product everyone wants, you can treat me poorly in any channel. Yes, I would love that new smart phone that everyone seems to be coveting. No, I will not put up with waiting in line forever, being on hold on the phone, and/or returning over and over again to the Web site to see if it's back in stock. Take my money and send it to me when you get some in. Make it easy for me.

I think most of what I've listed here is fairly obvious and clear to most marketers. But the proof is in the performance: you need to invest in each channel appropriately, and continue analyzing the effectiveness of the customer experience in each channel, to ensure that customers aren't falling out because of inconsistent experience or overcoming your own internal struggles to improve.

In the end, what customers experience in the sales process for a consumer product will likely hold more weight than the quality of your advertising, your marketing, and sometimes even your product quality, if it's on parity with the competition.

Do you really want to risk dragging the equity of your brand down in the long-term? If you aren't retaining your current customers and helping to foster brand loyalty in the long term, then how much money are you really throwing away?

The Dot of Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy is something you can't escape when you sell a product or service. You're telling other people to focus their attention on a single element of a complicated product or service, all the while attempting to differentiate your client from their peers. When you look at your marketing message in this way, I think it becomes evident why it's so hard for companies to market charitable initiatives, present themselves as socially responsible, or demonstrate true concern about environmental change. You're asking people to look you in the eye and perhaps smile while you're talking, but they can't help but focus on the spot of blood on your cheek.

The challenge of marketing any product or service that includes a social responsibility message requires you to confront what I like to call "the dot of hypocrisy." Your message won't be effective unless you focus on one idea in each communication. If that one idea is a naked social responsibility message, however, you're in big trouble.

If you lead with a marketing claim that is solely based in a social responsibility message, your audience will pick it apart. This is something that I'll be exploring more in-depth in some other posts, but the short argument is this:

Product claims may seem logical to marketers, but they are emotional in nature to an audience and tied up in a mess of factors that include your brand perception and your product position, value, and quality. You can try to control your brand and your product, but you can't control how people perceive the value of your charitable giving or social responsibility. People nowadays say that they think it's critical for companies to be good global citizens, but that single claim isn't enough to get them to act. Social responsibility has to align with people's purchasing factors to make a dent in the dot of hypocrisy.

Sometimes minimizing the dot of hypocrisy is this simple:

Can you think of any examples of companies that have diminished the dot of hypocrisy in an elegant way?