10 Key Things on Conference/Event Management

Recently, a friend and I were talking about events as they had been putting their 2016 event calendar together.  It read like a non-discerning socialite's calendar: not only are they attending everything, but most of the time they don't even know why.  Consequently, much of their marketing budget (and time) is allocated to event spend but in 12 months, I expect that they'll have a tough time justifying that decision unless they are very lucky with how the market develops.    

Events and conferences can be brilliant, but they can also be a resource drain.  If you're going to do them, you really need to do it properly.  Consequently, here's a handy list of 10 things to bear in mind when organising events for your company.  It's not an exhaustive list, but it's a start.

"Isn't this is coordinated dance class?"
How were they to know they were
supposed to stop the rebels?

1. Know why you are there!  As with any marketing action, you need to know why you are doing it.  Are you there to generate leads?  Make sales? Connect with key opinion leaders? Create brand awareness?  Knowing what you want to achieve right at the start will allow you to judge the event is a good idea and fits in with your overall marketing strategy.  There's no point if it will not help your business.  Knowing your overall goals will also help you to judge the approach and style you need.
     
2. Have measurable key performance indicators.  Once you have defined your goals and know why you are doing your event, you need to have a more tactical way to measure your successes (or not) which tie into your strategy.  
• For example if you are going to an exhibition and your overall goal is lead generation, then have a set number of leads you would like to acquire and agree the figure in advance.  Be ambitious but reasonable, bearing in mind how many hours are available and the number of your staff.  If you are going to a two day conference (around 14 hours in total), you have three staff at any point, and a lead will take 10 minutes to gain, optimistically you are looking at an absolute maximum of  around 100 leads.  If the exhibition has 250 relevant visitors, a stretch goal might be 50 leads - that's a 50% success rate and 20% of the visitors.  Will that work with your goals?  Is the number too high/low?
   
3. Be brand consistent.  This runs throughout the process, but events are a form of communication in and of themselves.  Everything you do should have your brand in mind; from what you do at the event to the size of stand you need.  It's easy sometimes to just think of branding when actually putting up graphics, but you need to think about what you're doing as early as possible, even if it's just in broad terms.  You need this vision to be able to plan what happens in and around your event.
   
4. Have a budget plan.  How much do you have to spend on events overall?  Have an idea of what you are willing to spend on this specific event within that budget (looking back at your KPIs!) and stick to it.  Events are easy to overspend on, so having a budget allocated early can make all the difference.  You might have to scale back some of your grand ideas, and even not attend some events completely, but you'll prioritise and the total outcomes are likely to be more positive than if you spend without thinking.
   
5. Book and cover your paperwork/organisation in plenty of time.  As well as eating money, events can be resource heavy and need to be organised in advance.  Exhibitions often open

   

   How not to approach event planning

   their booking system a year in advance, so the earlier you can book, the better.  Plus, once it's booked in the diary, it will give more of a level of realism to its existence and lead to point 6...
   
6. Have a checklist of tasks.  Boring, but essential.  Once it's in the diary and you have you aims and rough outline, you need to get into the nitty gritty.   Events have so many facets that it's easy for something to slide, and when something goes wrong at an event it's instantly noticable.  This is everything from booking electrical sockets to wifi, to ordering stands and organising rotas and hotels and tick them off as they are completed.  Remember sales staff often get booked up months in advance so ensuring the event is in the diaries will stop additional problems.  
   
   
7. Lay out your stand in advance. If you have a physical presence somewhere such as a stand at an exhibition, lay it out in advance.  Put masking tape on the floor in the right dimensions, and set up you stand/promotional stall to check it all.  Does the foot flow work or does the layout deter leads from coming and talking to you?  Do all the lights and electrics work?  Are the graphics clean and in good condition?  Do the cables reach and how many extension leads will you need?  Does your plinth cover up your logo?  It will take a day, but it's definitely worth the time.  Plus, you can take photos for the conference guide if necessary.
   
8. Write a conference guide.  It's easy to get wrapped up in your own plans when living them day in and day out.  Various staff members will be attending who have not been involved in your meticulous planning, and will have no idea what it is going on.  Write a conference guide to send out to them a couple of weeks beforehand with details that will be useful, such as:

• The aims of the event and what it is planned to achieve with how it will be measured
• Images of the stand with descriptions of the sections and what they are for.
• A timetable of events both generally and related to your area
• How social media will be used
• A copy of the staff rota and who is in charge of the stand/emergency contacts on any day
• The addresses of the event and the hotels 
• Depending on the event, you could consider including etiquette guidelines
  
  There's a lot more that can be added, but it will depend on time and the event.

9.  Brief your staff beforehand.  Even with a conference guide, you need to go over some of the key points in person to make sure everyone is on the same page, either the night before or early on the day.  It will make all the difference.

10.  Have someone responsible for the event there.  Even with the best planning, things can and will go wrong on the day.  You (or a known representative) need to be there from set up to pack down to make sure everything goes according to plan and help with any crises that arise from sudden illness of staff to broken items or non-arriving stands.  Make sure everyone attending knows who that person is and how to contact them, and be prepared for a busy few days with comfortable shoes.

Good luck!  

The Pharmaceutical Market: "But aren't they all Evil?"

Working in marketing in the medical field, I have occasionally been drawn into discussions about the 'Evil' pharmaceutical companies, usually accompanied by finger-wagging and frowning.  I generally deal more with devices and non-prescription supplements, but it's still something I feel quite strongly about.

"Which ones do you believe are evil?" I will ask.
"All of them!" will inevitably be the answer.  "I mean, they've had a cure for cancer for ages and the pharma companies won't sell it because they'll loose money from all the people who aren't ill anymore! And none of them will make a cure malaria for Africa!"

This isn't an uncommon reaction.  The pharmaceutical industry is demonised more than most by the general public, with possibly the exception of the financial sector.

I'll give you a made up example.  Imagine if Yves Saint Laurent bought out a new £20,000 dress in a haut couture show which is beautiful and suits most people.  This cannot be afforded by many, but everyone accepts that it's the design and the work behind it that costs.  It will be lauded, worn by celebrities and shown in fashion magazines. Teenage girls will put pictures of it on Instagram with 'My Dream Dress' and fashion bloggers will gush in a positive way. Several months later, generic fashion chains create versions of it, and sold at a cheaper price to suit mass market.  Everyone wears it, and it is hailed as a triumph.

Now think of the same made up example in the pharmaceutical industry. Novartis bring out a new drug against Dementia which is amazing and will save many lives. It cannot be afforded by many which is criticised, but it will be noted in the press as a great step forwards, those that have private health care will say how amazing it is, and reports will go into clinical journals. There will be a public backlash against how unfair the pricing is and there will be petitions on government sites demanding the new drug is made available for specific people by their family members. Protest websites sites will be launched about Novartis destroying lives just for their own profit levels by sitting on the drug.  Several years later (could be up to 10 depending on the patent and the difficulties of manufacture), other drug companies come out generic versions at a cheaper price to suit the mass market.  Everyone uses it, and it is incorporated into medical regimes, and everyone talks about how great the drug is, now it's affordable as Novartis isn't hoarding the research.

Sounds familiar?

The reason is simple: with drugs, it's one of the industries where the actions of a few can have life and death ramifications on many.  Not getting a dress isn't going to kill you.  Not getting access to new drugs might, and that makes everyone invested and emotional. In no other industry is maximising shareholder value a dirty word to the public.

The core issue is rooted in our current free market/capitalist system.

Costs and times are variable, but it shows
a good basic example summary

• Governments do not fund intensive medical research; it's generally individuals doing things like doctorates or funded by charities for specific illnesses.  There are no specialist labs funded by the public into Dementia Research, for example.  This means that research has to happen in the privately funded (either business of charity) sphere.
• Drug development is hugely expensive. Even the cheapest drug will cost millions to licence. According to the TCSDD (Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development) last year, the average cost for developing a human prescription drug that gets mass market approval is around $2.6 billion.  That's £1.7 billion in UK money.  And I'm not even touching on the drugs that start development and then don't make it in the clinical trials.  
• It's massively time consuming.  Drugs can take 20 years+ to develop and trial, which is a huge amount to time to be investing your £1.7 billion with no return.
• In order to try and enforce a level of competition companies can only patent a drug for a limited amount of time (unlike something like Coca-cola: the recipe is still secret after over 100 years) and so have to recoup their huge R&D costs within the first 10 years, and ideally have some extra to be able to: 
• Hand over to the shareholders to show the company is viable and should still be supported.
• Invest in the next set of research for the next drug to help people and create a profit.

What this means is that for new research to happen, pharmaceutical companies have to be able to cover their costs in the first ten years before the generics come and take market share.  It's not a case of exploitation but simple economics. Should the companies be forced to drop the prices of their products in those first golden years, or provide a lot free, then they will simply stop developing new drugs. So the child on the latest petition might be helped, but untold numbers might not get the benefit of later research on the next project.  It's a sad case of the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the one.

The other option is to extend the period where the patent is protected so the costs can be clawed back at a slower rate (the 25 year mortgage vs 15) but that has the trade off that the price point moves to be affordable to a greater range of people, but still not mass market, and again, somewhere, someone who needs the drug won't get it.

For the reasons of recouping costs, it's also the reason that complaints against holding a cure for cancer are ridiculous: no amount of potential return on radio therapy drugs which are into generics would recoup billions in research. There may have been promising research that failed at clinical trials, but to get that far the relevant companies would have lost millions.

Money is a strong decider in many business decisions.  It's not always the ultimate decision maker because it depends on what the raison d'etre is for the business (and some have much more altruistic mission statements), but in pharmaceuticals due to the sheer scale of the money involved, investment dictates research.  Whilst it would be amazing and laudable for companies to afford to research drugs for the sake of it, there just isn't enough money to justify such high levels of spend.  If your target market can't afford to recoup those costs (such as a disease that hits poorer countries) then sadly it just won't happen.  In all honesty, we're much likely to find a cure for Diabetes than we are for Ebola, because of the populations - and their related incomes - that are affected.

I am aware that the above paragraph is likely to cause discord, and that is exactly what I mean when I talk about expectations being different for medical companies.  We don't demand that Kurt Geiger ships shoes out to countries where footwear is limited, nor do we demand that airlines give free flights in third world countries for poorer citizens who cannot afford to see their relatives elsewhere.  I'm not saying the dependence on market forces is wrong or right, simply that pharmaceuticals are businesses, not public concerns and resources.  In an ideal world, research to cure illness would be open access, and available to everyone immediately.  But that's not how capitalism works, and once you start to discuss ideas of getting governments to fund research through extra tax, it becomes a political and not a business issue.  

However, I would like to finish on what has turned into a slightly depressing post on a positive note.  One of the reasons I like working in marketing in the medical field is that I honestly believe the products enhance the lives of the people or animals for whom they are intended. Medical devices, therapies, drugs, supplies: all of them help people (and animals) live longer, healthier lives and sometimes, save their lives completely.  Money funds investment, yes, but every investment that works is an improvement overall, and ultimately, everyone wins.  It's painful that the route to research involves choices based on market forces and return and that some people will suffer, but in the end, patents run out and then everyone gets cheap access to drugs that will save lives, from penicillin to ibuprofen and aspirin.  And that - enabling some very clever bods to create new therapies to save lives and keep doing it - is what it's all about.

Oasis and the New Honesty Marketing Campaign

I've been amused lately by the new Oasis campaign. If you haven't seen any of the latest campaign, the main tagline is "It's Summer.  You're thirsty. We've got sales targets".

Honesty Marketing at it's finest

Well, do they say honesty is the best policy, but is it likely to work?

The history of Oasis is a little muddled.  It was originally launched in 1966 by Volvic under the name 'Pulse', but poor sales led to its rebrand as 'Oasis' in 1990.  Its history then gets a little complicated, but in essence it was acquired by the then Cadburys-Schweppes who launched it into the UK in 1995. It was then acquired by Coca Cola Enterprises in 2005 along with a number of other European drinks brands.

Oasis has been positioning itself as a "healthier soft drink" solidly for 20 something adults who are happy to pay premium prices for a relatively standard purchase - in this case, squash from concentrate. By suggesting itself as an alternative to water rather than something like Coke, it links the brand to healthy options and positions itself firmly in the health category.

They also have access to a lot of the Coca Cola distribution network; if somewhere sells Coke, they are likely to sell Oasis and include it in their deals.

There were product problems that needed fixing when CCE acquired it: Oasis used to have a heavy sugar content which meant it failed originally as a healthy option.  This was eventually sorted by reconfiguring the recipes, but there were several false starts on the way with low calorie versions such as 'Fusion', 'Lights' and 'Extra Lights' which, despite over £3m launch spend in marketing, were withdrawn quickly afterwards due to bad sales.

So far, so good.

However, Oasis does have a problem in that it's never quite seemed to manage to fix its brand image

The ill-fated and pulled Cactus Kid campaign

in a clear and coherent fashion, despite obvious heavy investment from CCE. Numerous advertising campaigns have been and gone with varying levels of success and memorability.  Do you remember the "Chug it?" adverts, the first after CCE took over?  They pretty much sank without a trace, so it's not that likely.  Or the 'Cactus Kid' campaign the year after, which had a wide multi-media approach including adverts, videos, websites and a whole fake mythos, which was abruptly pulled after complaints to the ASA that it encouraged children to drink Oasis instead of water?  There have been more, but all fairly without impact.

Still, CCE isn't going to abandon Oasis to its fate.  The global soft drinks business is falling as people look for healthier options; soda consumption globally is now equivalent to what it was in 1986 having been falling steadily since 2005.  In additional, Coca Cola has been targeted specifically by health groups such as the CSPI in Amercia (the Center for Science in the Public Health) partly due to its high profile and market share.  To counterbalance, CCE has been adding non-soda companies to its portfolio in the last 7 years to try and diversify their risk, including investing in 5 smaller companies and buying 3 more.  It owns companies like Glaceau (who make SmartWater), Fuze tea, Zico coconut water and Honest Organic tea.  Even the flagship brand itself is feeling the pressure by releasing new formulations such as Coke Life which replaces sugar with sevia, although this still hasn't been launched in the US to date.

Oasis, as a brand in the right place at the right time is a potential goldmine, if they can just get the right messaging.

The latest campaign has been created by 'The Corner' agency, and have gone into what is called 'insane honesty marketing' and 'humanised marketing' (thanks to Cuco Creative for the terms and some of the info in the next couple of paragraphs). It's a big change from some of the glitz and style that they've delivered previously.

This shift is designed to appeal to millennials; i.e. people who reached adulthood around 2000, so will now be in their 30s and who value transparency and honesty in the communications from big brands rather than slick presentations. So Oasis are changing their emphasis slightly from 20s to 30s: not something they would do lightly and without a lot of consumer research. The Pioneers of this sort of thing were companies like Innocent with their smoothies and vegetable pots. It's also notable in companies that actively engage in social media, especially those that have a distinct personality and human voice.

The ultimate payoff of this strategy is trust: if a brand is willing (or at least seen as being willing) to be open about their weaknesses, then when they talk about their strengths, the listener is far more likely to believe them.  It's a known phenomenon known as the Halo Effect.

The likelihood is that this campaign will be more successful than their previous ones, and this time they are looking at a segment with more disposable income and more health-consciousness.  They are also more likely to have children, and so be under more social pressure to provide healthy options for lunches and outings. My guess is that the next push is likely to focus on health benefits, which will be more believed than previous claims after this initial bout of honesty.  So my feeling is that yes, it will work, as long as they can maintain whatever claims they make and continue with the human messaging.

I'll be interested to see how it goes!


     

On Awards and the Importance of Localisation

Last month, the UK Team won an Internal Marketing Award (First Runner-Up) for a campaign that I ran at the end of last year.

Presenting the elevator pitch of the relevant UK
Campaign at the Awards Dinner.  There was a black and white
theme: I don't usually dress in monochrome!

It was an interesting process.  Each of our corporate offices were allowed to enter up to two marketing projects which we felt were particularly noteworthy from the last calendar year.  Submissions had to include information on strategic relevance, target markets, implementation, ROI (both qualitative and quantitative) and anything else particularly relevant.  Each marketing team in each country reviewed the circulated submissions and ranked them based on a number of specified criteria, a little like the Eurovision Song Contest.

The idea is for the global business to exhibit some of the best ideas with the aim of consideration for implementation elsewhere, as well as to give a level of recognition for the efforts involved over the past year.

The very different approaches showcased the unique properties of each country's markets.  I suspect this was also reflected in the scoring as well as different countries will have scored partly based on personal experience, and that in many cases the same project could have wildly differing marks.

Looking at the different projects and assessing whether or not we could use them in our own markets highlighted one of the key considerations in any global company: the importance of localisation.  Many of the projects were extremely good, yet would not be applicable in the current form to other territories.

Often, large global companies will create campaigns to be used in their subsidiaries.  This is important as it ensures brand continuity, clear consistent messaging and cuts down on the work needed on a local level.  However, no campaign should ever just be adopted without a level of analysis and evaluation for appropriateness against the target audience.  Culture, habits, phrases, communication and channels will all need to be checked.  In top down campaigns, localisation is often perceived as a threat to the brand; a dilution which causes damage.  However, without the flexibility to localise, most campaigns are dead in the water.  Brands need to be able to be recognisable whilst still meeting the different needs of the segments they are trying to reach.    

Badly localised adverts are common, especially on television.  Beyond bad dubbing and using obviously non-local locations, there can be inherent cultural issues.  Proctor & Gamble, who are generally fairly savvy, got it very wrong when they used an American advert in Japan which showed a husband walking in on his wife bathing and touching her.  Whilst in the US this was seen as sweet and a depiction of married intimacy, in Japan it was viewed as an invasion of privacy and was felt to be in very poor taste, depicting a bad marriage due to the lack of respect being demonstrated.

Communication channels too can be overlooked: a basic issue for any global social media campaign is that both Facebook and Twitter are currently banned in China, and have been since 2009.  Many countries have bans on blanket emails, and opt-in/opt-out countries will have very different approaches to e-Blasts and electronic CRM communications.

Translation/phrasing blunders can happen, and even within the same language localisation can be needed: for example US/UK spelling varies, and extraneous 'u's can be the difference between someone engaging or disengaging on a piece of text.

If you know your segmentation and your targets (your ST of the STP mantra), your campaign has to fit them in all aspects.  And using the indigenous marketing personnel is one of the best ways to do so.

And on that note, I'm off to go and put the Award Certificate somewhere!

Why You Should Bother With PR

For various reasons lately, I have been in discussions about the use of Public Relations within a company.

PR is an interesting area. It's dogged by a relatively poor reputation outside of its own industry: if marketing is "The Poster-Making Department", then PR is the "IT Girls and Champagne Thursday Slackers". Even if PR is seen as effective, then the broad stereotype is one of a 'charm and smarm' offensive via networking with the 'old boys' out of reach of mere mortals.

One of the biggest issues I've found is that PR Agencies are a little like Italian restaurants: it's it's rare to get a bad one, very easy to get a mediocre one, but quite tough to get an outstanding one, and unfortunately, until you've had a good experience, you don't know what you're missing. Which means that many companies have employed PR agencies due to not having the expertise in house and have been disillusioned by uninteresting results, tainting their view on the whole exercise.

According to Wikipedia, Public Relations is all about managing the flow of information between a company or an individual to the public. This is a pretty broad and consequently not that useful.  Personally, I think that The Chartered Institute of Public Relations' definition is more punchy. Paraphrased, PR is all about reputation: the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you. The goal is earning understanding and support, and influencing opinion and [buying] behaviour.

But surely that's just marketing?

Well, yes, communication does come under the remit of marketing, and PR is part of the marketing tool kit. And every marketing campaign should have a communications plan.  But beyond that, PR has a very different scope and skill set to a more traditional marketing campaign.

Marketing is by it's nature is targeted to specific, limited segments. Audiences are categorised by multiple parameters, with the intent of creating messages that will appeal.  One of the first rules of marketing is that you can't be all things to all people.  Every day, marketeers have to make calls on 'Opportunity Cost' of their limited budgets - a term economists use for the next best thing you sacrifice.  In the same way that if you buy a new phone the opportunity cost might be a television upgrade, every marketing campaign you run to one audience is another one you can't create for someone else.  This is where ROI (Return on Investment) calculations often come into their own.  Brutally put, will my company get more money if I do option 1 or option 2?

Communication/PR works in the other direction.  It is much wider and aims to talk to as many of your business stakeholders as possible; often ones which have less of an immediate ROI but still have a say or influence.  It's using as many channels as possible to get the widest range of messages out there.  Whilst marketing funnels messages down the key people, PR is there to widen the net and aid your potential growth in the longer term.

PR has other advantages too: due to getting the right information to the right contacts, mentions of products, people or services are often seen as more credible coming from a third party.  It builds trust, and allows stakeholders to feel more engaged with you and the various audiences.  It speaks very much to a brand's image if the language and messages are consistent that fixes it without needing advertising.  It's also usually cheaper: whilst there is a people/time resource cost, press releases, phone calls, contacts and social media management are often free or low cost.

So if it's so great, why isn't everyone doing it?

Well, the main downside of PR is hard to measure.  Ultimately it is there to help communicate messages, and unless you do mass market surveys, you can't always tell if your attempts have been successful.  Looking at increases in sales over a PR campaign duration will always be hit by confounding factors, and even the actual measurables on something like social media (clicks, likes, shares, views and so on) only goes so far, and falls short of a convincing argument in a boardroom.  It can be difficult to get someone good to do the PR, and assigning it to the marketing assistant or the cheapest local agency without thought as 'it's just press releases' is a sure-fire way for it to fail.  All of this means that it can be hard to justify a spend on an agency or on an in-house PR person when you cannot see an immediate result or have gotten bad results in the past.

Plus, sometimes you do just need the money elsewhere.  PR is always one of the first cuts in any budget rationalisation.

In the end, it all comes down to personal judgement on questions like:

• Where are your audience and do they already buy from you?  
• Do you need to start developing different segments in the market and seeding ideas before going into a marketing push? 
• How clear are your messages in the market place? 
• What is your brand awareness? 
• Are there key audiences you simply don't have the time to engage with? 
• Can I measure at least some Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for success?
• Can you defend the choice to use PR to the senior management?
• And most important: what is the opportunity cost of PR for the company?

It's not an easy choice, despite my pro-PR stance here, because it will always be hard to defend even with analysis and ROI calculations, and can leave you personally exposed.  At the same time, sometimes you just have to put your money where your mouth is.  Wish me luck!

On Coffee, Spills and Service: Customer Focus the Starbucks Way

A couple of weeks ago I was in Dallas, and had a minor coffee-based incident.  Someone bumped into me in Starbucks, and the almost-full drink I had in my hand did a spectacular impression of a waterfall down my (luckily water-resistant) coat, over my bag, and finished by cascading onto the floor. 

Before I’d even had a chance to react, the Starbucks staff swung into action.  One Barista immediately escorted the clumsy bumper away.  Another came straight to me with cloths (and genuine concern) to check me for damage, get me to wipe off my iPhone which had been in my other hand, and help me clean myself up.  Whilst I was doing that she moved my bag to a table near a fan (“for your coat”) and then mopped the coffee on the floor.  A third Barista nipped out and put a ‘wet floor’ sign near us, and then made a replacement coffee to my exact prior order.  By the time I’d wiped the coffee of my coat, my phone was dry and working, I had a comfy chair waiting for me near a fan with my bag and a replacement drink, and no-one slipped in the pool of coffee.  It was seamless, accomplished without discussion and skilfully done.  Within a few minutes they had a grateful if slightly soggy customer, and everyone else feeling secure in the vicinity that “a good job had been done”, thus validating their choice of café.

And the whole thing was a beautiful example of a working brand and corporate culture.   

Starbucks is an interesting company.  They are a chain selling what is a fairly basic product which has created a high value offering through customer service over and above the actual product itself.  Howard Behar, the former president of Starbucks: “We’re not in the coffee business, serving people.  We’re in the people business serving coffee.”

Starbucks is aware that their coffee isn't the best on the market (although it is very protective of it), but that’s not their unique selling point.  Everything about Starbucks is about the experience; from the ambience, to the furniture, to their additional services like the free wifi (one of the first businesses to offer this to their customers).  It’s supposed to make people want to go there and spend time, and the coffee is in many ways incidental.  Despite the mixed reactions in the UK, it’s why they ask your name for your coffee: to personalise your experience and acknowledge you as an individual rather than just the 12^th customer ordering “a small skinny latte”.  It’s the extended 7 Ps to the nth degree.

One of the areas where Starbucks puts a huge amount of investment is in their staff.  There is a basic understanding that many people who work at café chains are likely to be school leavers, and so will not necessarily have the skills to deal with angry customers day in, day out with the required ‘Starbucks attitude”.     

Most customer-facing organisations will give training on how to deal with irate customers usually with an interaction model such as ‘Laugh’ (Listen and Empathise/Acknowledge/Understand/Give Solutions/Hit home with Follow-ups).   They also try to employ people-focused staff who genuinely care about the customer experience.  Overall. this means customers will get sympathy and an attempt to solve the problem with tact and care.

Starbucks does the above, but goes beyond this.  A key foundation in their training is scenario planning: not something that many customer-focused organisations will do and certainly not at a basic level.  Scenario planning is the idea of creating the story of a series of possible or plausible events for businesses at a strategic level, allowing possible responses to be crafted with an understanding of potential options.  Starbucks has rolled this out to an operational, staff level.

Practice and scenario planning make it much easier to react in a crisis without feeling under pressure, personally under threat or lost.  It also makes the whole reaction faster and more effective because the thinking has already been done for you, and when you are dealing with employees with less experience, that can be critical.  Getting a customer to wipe off their phone before their coat isn't something that would be immediately obvious to do, but a broken phone will have more of a long term effect on their perception: clothes can be washed but phones can’t.  By examining what could go wrong in advance, many of the standard pitfalls can be avoided.

In my case, there probably was already a scenario plan with the key elements of: “potential injury” (burns) “potential property loss” (phone), “upset customer” (soggy with no coffee), “potential disturbance” (had I decided to be terribly non-British and cause a scene for being bumped), and “potential safety hazard” (slippery floor).  The issues were dealt with in order of priority, with each Barista taking a key role.  It was noticeable that the floor was dealt with last, once the safety aspect was covered.  By covering potential scenarios in advance, there was no confusion as to what needed doing and in what order, and the low key delivery ensured the least disturbance for anyone else there.  

However, there can be drawbacks to this approach.  The most obvious is the inevitable resource drain.  Compiling a lot of potential situations takes time and personnel.  Since the world is an infinite place, the task can expand to take as much time as allotted and still need more.  Scenario planning can easily become a full time job in any organisation, and drawing a line where diminishing returns on staff time become clear can be tough.  With regards to the Starbucks example as this goes down to a grass roots level, training all of your staff – repeatedly – at all levels is taking them away from their core roles and means you will need more staff to cover that time. 

There’s another more insidious drawback as well: by training them to react by rote, there is a removal of some of the basic processes of problem solving.  You know that saying, give a man a fish and feed him for a day, but teach him to fish and feed him for his life?  What happens if your beautifully drilled staff comes across a situation not covered in the scenario training?  It’s a toss-up: is it worth having near perfect service 95% of the time, with a potential 5% possibility for complete confusion, or to have mostly good service with problem solving ability 99.9% of the time?

It's a strategic choice, and no matter how you slice (or pour) it, it's a choice on how you want your business and employees to function.  So far, Starbucks has worked amazingly: it's worth billions and is one of the most recognised brands in the world.  At the same time, I am less convinced of how it would work in something like a consultancy, research or any kind of more in-depth creative role.  If you need to foster people's own free thinking skills, programming them for reactions does seem limiting.

And me?  Well, my day went on as planned, and if I had a vague eau de cafe, everyone I met was polite enough not to mention it.

Blanchard's Situational Leadership Model

A couple of days ago, I ran my team through a whistle-stop tour of Blanchard's Situational Leadership Model.  If you've never seen it, it's a really good way of looking at task/goal oriented behaviour especially when managing people.

It's very different to traditional management and leadership theory.  The key premise is that people move through different stages with any task, no matter who or how skilled you are: it's just the speed you move through the stages that varies.

The stages are: 

1. The Enthusiastic Beginner/D1 (Low competence, high commitment).  This is where they are very motivated and require a huge amount of support, but don't really know what they are doing.
2. The Disillusioned Learner/D2 (Low competence, low commitment).  This is where the person has started to realise what they don't know, but isn't there yet, and the initial enthusiasm has worn off.  They can get frustrated more easily, and often feel there's little to show for their efforts. 
3. The Cautious Contributor/D3 (High competence, low commitment/confidence).  Here, the person can do the job but don't have confidence in themselves yet.
4. The Self-Reliant Achiever/D4 (High competence, high commitment).  The person knows what they are doing and is self-managing.

A good way to understand the model is to think of a project away from the office such as painting your bedroom.  You start full of enthusiasm, convinced it will be the most wondrous bedroom in the world when you are finished.  You toy with the idea of transfers, murals and multiple tones having poured zealously over interior decorating websites and magazines, and have a plan written down.  However, a few hours in, with paint dripping in your hair, splodges on the floor and one wall looking like a remnant of a sixties acid trip, you've lost all motivation. You are close to throwing the brush and phone your best friend in tears; they encourage you, telling you it'll be OK and giving you tips that you write down, such as using a roller and thinning the paint.  You use their help and grimly keep going.  Gradually the walls get covered more easily, and you even start correcting your early mistakes with a third coat.  Your friend pops round to check you haven't committed Hari Kiri with a paint scraper to find a very credible bedroom.   Impressed, they tell you so, which spurs you to finish of the edges and snagging jobs.  And once you've finished, you realise that it's actually all fine, that you can do it, and you're off to paint the kitchen.   

What makes this model different to a lot of leadership theory is that it asserts that each development stage has an associated leadership style that compliments the situation.  The idea is that you adapt your leadership style according to where the person is in order to help them effectively; hence the idea of situational leadership rather than always having one style of management.  This is where the axis of support and directive behaviour comes in.  You modify the amount of direction and support, depending on where they are in that curve.  The advised styles are:

1. Enthusiastic Beginner/D1 = S1 Style.  You need to provide specific instruction, direction and attention, like a task or check list in easy steps.  They will be the ones that have lots questions regarding the task from the large to the small, but are generally full of interest and engagement.
2. Disillusioned Learner/D2 = S2 Style.  The person still need direction and to a lesser extent help structuring a work/task plan, but they need lots of praise and recognition for the things they do manage to ensure that their contributions are recognised and help with positive reinforcement.
3. Cautious Contributor/D3 = S3 Style.  The person still needs support in the form of recognition or praise, and you need to be available for brainstorming and discussion of problems, but there's a step back from the directive style to let them find their own way.
4. Self-Reliant Achiever/D4 = S4 Style.  This is essentially delegation; the person knows what they are doing and how to do it.  

What I really like about this model is that it recognises human behaviour without judging, and offers a good management solution.  No-one is expected to be immediately competent on this model, and motivation is understood to ebb and flow without censure.  

It's worth noting that the model is not the easiest thing to implement, because it involves constantly being aware of where people are with regards to specific projects, and they can easily be a D4 in one task, and  D1 in another related topic simultaneously.  As a manager, you need to be able to pick up the cues when discussing various projects, and accepting the need to be agile as you move around topics. But if you can track where people are on the curve, then it enables you to support them in the most appropriate way.    

The other thing about the model is that it offers a neutral and safe language to approach issues that could be potentially painful going forwards.  This is why I shared it with my team: it's a lot easier to go to a manager and say “please stop delegating at me!  I'm currently a D2 with this project!”, or “I don’t need a task list but I’d quite like to chat things through before I go ahead: I'm feeling a bit D3?” that to have to admit to feeling lost or lacking in any enthusiasm.  We're going to try and use it as a mutual language, and see how it works.  

Wish me luck! 

Cellulite, Palm Oil and Orang-utans? Why Social Media and Over-Regulation Doesn’t Mix

Nutella, the famous Italian chocolate spread and chocolate sweets manufacturer is currently in a lot of PR hot water in France at the moment.  It’s an amazing example of how not only to completely cock-up your social media campaign, but to actually damage your brand as well. 

The concept of their "Say it with Nutella" campaign was pretty simple.  Nutella decided that for PR purposes, they would make a small web-based application where you could type in your name, and it would display a picture of a Nutella pot with your name on instead of the brand name.  You could then post it all over the web to your heart’s content, secure in the knowledge that everyone would know how much you love the chocolate and hazelnut goodness.  This had already been done in Italy with great success.  

A gif containing a set of some banned
words thanks to Rue 89.  Apologies
to the easily offended souls out there!

Of course, when you release something into the wild, you have to accept that a small minority of people are going to try and subvert it.  Just think of the Nike ID campaign where you could get your name embroidered onto your trainers: an MIT Student caused Nike huge amounts of negative publicity by asking for 'sweatshop' instead of a name, and went public with the back and forth emails when Nike refused.  And as a rule, the internet is far worse for this.  Nutella seem to have been aware of the danger, and took steps to protect themselves.  Thus people who tried type in something not entirely wholesome got a 'this word is not allowed' message.  Except, more and more people kept experiencing this, way above what would normally be expected, and some really weird words seemed to be banned.

At which point, someone technologically savvy went into the code to investigate what was restricted.  With a little bit of ingenuity, they managed to pull the full list of blocked words.  From my perspective, there were four groups:

1. Obscenities: this is actually relatively morally defensible as a majority of Nutella’s key audience are probably under 18 or buying on behalf of children who have access to social media.
2. Trademarks, such as 'Coca Cola' or 'Microsoft': again, reasonable on legal grounds because theoretically Nutella could be seen in breach of copyright should the images be spread on social media.
3. Words which could be theoretically be used to contravene the French laws on hate speech, especially the 1990 Gayssot Act, which includes a five year fine for holocaust denial, and criminal penalties for defamation based on race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or any handicap .  For Nutella this meant banning words such as 'Hitler', 'Muslim', 'Judaism' and 'Lesbian' (but not 'gay' strangely).  Whilst the fact you can't put 'Jew' onto a image of Nutella jar has been picked up by the British media and decried as evidence of discrimination, it is almost a direct lift from the legislation and is defensible, if ill-judged. 
4. And finally, what can only be dubbed as the “Oh God we hope no-one brings these up” topics, and include things like ‘obesity’, ‘fat’, ‘palm oil’, and ‘orang-utan’.  And this is the major cock-up because you cannot justify censorship based on paranoia of your own working practices.  Nutella have listed and blocked every topic where they feel vulnerable, and these exact topics have been distributed all over social media.  It’s like the classic joke when someone tells you not to think about elephants and suddenly all you can think about are grey pachyderms, except this herd is going to stomp all over your brand equity.  

So now on social media, there are a lot of questions.  Why is Nutella so worried about palm oil?  What are they doing over in Borneo/Indonesia?  Are they deliberately destroying rainforest areas for their plantations?  Is it more likely to cause obesity than other chocolate spreads?  To make the situation worse for the company, the current French internet game of the month seems to be to try and get around the restrictions.  Maybe you can’t do Orang-utan, but what about Oran-gutan?  Or Oranutan?  And once people manage a work around, they post it proudly on social media, reinforcing the message and linking Nutella obesity and rainforest destruction as well as more swear words than you can count.  

The problem for Nutella is that the internet is a realm of looser of societal rules.  Whilst no-one would consider breaking into an office to rifle through a computer to look at concept artwork for a campaign, anything on the internet is seen as fair game.  You can’t put restrictions on anything beyond the bare minimum because whatever you do will be publicly scrutinised so has to be defensible, and there are a lot of people out there better at programming than your average corporate web department.    

This fiasco illustrates some very basic rules of online marketing:

• If you are going to use something, you need to have a basic understanding the technology and its limitations.  I'm pretty sure that had Nutella realised that it was even possible to get the full list, they wouldn't have done it. 
• Expect anything interactive you put onto the web to be potentially subverted by a small minority and don’t panic when it happens.
• Keep a level of perspective.  So what if a couple of people write ‘Obesity’ on an image and post it on Facebook?  It would be gone from most people’s feeds in an hour and be forgotten.    
• There is a skill in dealing with ‘hecklers’ with a modicum of grace: if you can do so, generally these things are over quickly and don’t affect your core audience.  In other words, keep your cool.  One or two images with a comment on palm oil aren't going to put off your standard consumer.  Sadly, people have a level of unconscious blindness over things they don’t want to see when it involves giving up something they want: see things like Climate Change vs car use, or the demand for meat over conditions in battery farms.    
• And the cardinal rule: if you can’t defend something, don’t put it on the internet.

In the almost-words of the infamous 1980s TV advert; “Ah, Mr Ambassador, you are really spoiling the jungle with your Orang-utan murdering, obesity-causing treat!”.

Augmented Reality: Viable Channel or Virtual Pipe Dream?

Last week I went to a breakfast presentation by one of our suppliers.  It’s a nice thing to do occasionally, especially as it starts at 8.30am so you get into work at a reasonable time.  They showcase some of their new handy services and their customers get free croissants, coffee and networking opportunities.  This one was on Augmented Reality.

Augmented reality (in marketing terms) is where you use technology to give a real life interaction/touch.  It usually involves an App and a Smartphone or equivalent where you scan something in real life with the camera on the phone, which then gives you additional options/interactions in the digital arena.  QR codes were a form of basic AR, as was Blippar. These generally took you to an additional website or video with more information.  Blippar was slightly more advanced in that it offered 3D images overlaid onto camera images, but was confusing as no-one ever really knew what they could scan.

AR has moved on since then, and now is a lot more interactive.  It’s also starting to get embedded

The IKEA App promotional images

into standard media so you don’t need things like special codes.  One of the best examples is the current IKEA catalogue.  Firstly, you download a free App of the app store, and get a paper catalogue as well.  If you then hold your smartphone over an image of the product in the paper catalogue, it will create a 3D rendering of that product on your phone screen, whilst allowing the camera on the phone to show whatever you are looking at even when you move away from the catalogue, and say, look at the room.  The product is then superimposed on the background.  The idea is that you can see exactly what the sofa you’ve picked will look like in the corner and if it matches your curtains.  

Red nose day is very much in on the action as well, assuming you have the Taggar App: if you scan the 2015 badges, you will unlock Harry Hill showcasing additional content including jokes, real time photo additions and games (you can see a video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EdiH0i2-po).  

But you can do more than that, oh yes!  You can augment your business cards so that a little miniature avatar of yourself appears standing on the card doing a pre-filmed presentation (you do it on greenscreen) when your card is scanned.  You can run sneak previews of products when KOLs get certain ‘toys’ in the post or at KOL events (scan this engine, and see a 3D rendering of the new car due to be launched in 4 months).  You can embed games into postal mail, so that when a client opens a brochure, they can run their phone over the images and voilà, a game appears!  The possibilities are, as they say, endless.

Lots of the audience really bought into this, and were asking for more information, got really excited, and started uttering the classic buying signal that most sales people dribble over: "I have a project this would be perfect for!"  And yet, I couldn't join in.  It felt like I was alone on an island of cynicism, the Grinch in the room, because no matter how I thought about it, as a useful communication tool for my industry, it's just not going to work.  

What you are looking at isn't a shiny toy.  Instead you're changing people's habits: essentially, you're looking at a possible game change changer.  Due to that you have to consider:

1. The Adoption Curve 
2. The propensity of your target audience towards a new thing in this arena
3. What are your targets' current habits?
4. Does this fit with the image/brand you want to portray?

1. The Adoption Curve

The Adoption Curve

What is the Adoption Curve?  This is another of those Marketing 101's, and was mentioned in fair detail in the video in the last post.  What it demonstrates is that people do not take on new innovations or products at the same rate: important and because each group needs different messages and support within your campaigns.  

You'll notice that very few people buy into new things when they are first available.  Not everyone queues outside the Apple Store for that new iPhone; and how many people have an Apple TV?  Newness will appeal to less than 15% of your audience.  The rest want variants of reassurance, recommendations and solid proof of having seen the product in use.

And AR is definitely in the Early Adopter, if not Innovator phase.  You see that mass of people cowering behind the sofa from the scary new thing?  That's the rest of your target market who will never see your beautifully crafted AR content because by the time they are comfortable with it, it'll be out of date.

2.  The propensity of your target audience towards a new thing in this arena

It's also worth bearing in mind that people have different Adoption Curves for different areas.  If you're working for Apple, well, your key opinion leaders are going to be technological communication innovators anyway.  But you might find your surgeon who is willing to use the very latest surgical developments and tools can't programme the annoyingly spangley TV the kids demanded, or the environmentally conscious driver who insists on buying the newest hybrid car isn't fussed about the newest forms of social media.

Just because you sell new products in one area doesn't mean that your customers will be willing to adopt new methods of communication, and if you work in a more traditional, conservative industry you're going to hit that barrier twice as hard.  This is why you need to consider who your audience is, and what their preference is for communication.  Obviously, people are individuals, but certain personalities tend to be disproportionately drawn to certain industries: your average regulatory manager isn't going to be a wildly creative adrenaline junkie.  There's no point in making amazing materials if no-one ever sees them.  

3.  What are your targets' current habits?
So what does your target audience do? What are their communication habits?  And how similar is it to what you want them to do with Augmented reality?

How habits are formed: the reinforcing habit loop.

Habits are an evolutionary short-cut to cut down on the need to think and analyse every situation.   It takes around 60 days to form a new habit, and is a little like self-conditioning based around three stages: the cue, the behaviour and the reward.    One formed, habits get imprinted on your neural pathways and are incredibly hard to change.

Within marketing and PR, the most successful communication tools are those that complement what you already do because it's a habit.  So if your audience checks FaceBook every couple of hours, then working on social media is a good way to go.  If your audience always checks their physical post, then you're likely to use a postal mail campaign.  Does you audience watch a medical dramas?  Then put a TV advert into the middle of House (if you have the money).  It seems obvious, but you'd be surprised how many people forget this.

In order to use AR, you need to do a number of things outside of your normal habits:

• Get the App: this is a barrier in itself as it involves going to the relevant App store, finding the right App, downloading it and working out how it works
• Scan things using that App that you wouldn't normally scan like a business card and brochures etc.

You can already see the problem, can't you?  You're asking your customers to do complex processes which are totally outside the scope of their normal practice just to push a marketing message: to make a new habit.  Yet seeing marketing materials probably isn't enough of a 'reward' to be habit forming unless they get a real kick out of seeing something new and exciting (then the reward is linked to self esteem at being at being a pathsetter).  The only people that might are your "innovator" group in the adoption curve above, which is only about 2.5% of your audience.  This is why QR codes and Blippar failed: they didn't get people into the habit of using those apps by default, so when the audience did, it was a conscious effort, and easily ignored.  

I will add a coda that due to the nature of the adoption curve, the one exception is in the teenage market, because the very fact that most of the adults around the technology will not be interested or able to access it (due to having to get a new app) makes it instantly appealing.  But apart from that?  Not ideal for a mass market.

4.  Does this fit with the image/brand you want to portray?

Everything, ultimately, comes down to your brand and brand image in your communications, and this goes for channel/location as well as what's actually in it.  Want to be see as a family friendly drinks company?  Well, you're probably not going to give away samples in a strip club.  Want to be seen as eco-friendly?  You're probably going to use recycled paper if you do have to do a mailshot.

So if you want to be seen as technologically advanced or cutting edge, then yes, you could develop some AR materials as long as they came with huge rewards (such as prizes only winnable through the AR medium), as long as you did a lot of marketing on the side to get people to know it's there and how to access it.  But you're marketing the concept of AR and using it to boost your image rather than having it as an enhanced communication tool.  If it's for a more conservative industry?  I'd be wary. 

Overall, I like AR as a concept.  I think it's pretty cool as a toy and a way to stand out if you work and are pitching to a technologically innovative audience, or one who particularly like to feel like part of an elite sub-culture, but right now at this point in 2015 it's not ready for mass use as a standard communication tool.    

And, much as I like them, no amount of free coffee and croissants is going to convince me otherwise!    

The Golden Circle

Netflix is a wonderful thing.  As well as providing hours of distraction and enabling a deadly snack food habit that's going to have me looking like Jabba the Hut in 20 years, it’s got a good line in documentaries and lectures, and recently added a chunk of the TED back catalogue.  For those people who are unaware of TED, it’s a global set of conferences run by a non-profit organisation which are in some way inspirational, extraordinary or significant either because of the speaker or the topic. 

One of the talks I've watched recently is Simon Sinek’s “How great leaders inspire action”.  Sinek is very charismatic and watchable, but once you boil it down, his key premise is simple.  He believes that you have to have a core proposition, whether as a person, business or brand that you understand and believe in, and all messaging that works flows from that core belief.  Without that understanding, your messaging will fail.  He encapsulates this in the idea of the ‘Golden Circle’.

The Golden Circle

• Why: Why are you here?  What makes you get out of bed in the morning?  What drives you?  Or, what is the core of your brand/product/company?
•  How: How are you going to do what you do?  What enables you to be that person or deliver that service?
•  What: What is it that you are?  What do you provide?  What product/service do you offer?

His supposition is that most people go about this backwards, talking about the easiest first, which is the 'what'.  Most people know what the do in an operational sense.  "We provide [X] product",  They sometimes get the how, but generally miss a lot or all of the ‘why’.  This fails because he believes we make decisions with our limbic brains which controls our decision making but not language and rational thought which sits in the neocortex.   

The idea is not completely new.  It’s in the core theory of branding when you need both a vision and a mission statement for your brand to understand what you are and why you are there.  It’s also in marketing 101 looking at ‘Features, Attributes and Benefits’ or F/A/Bs, where you look at each tangible feature of a product/service or company, and list out what that can mean and what the more intangible benefits are for the recipient, whether it’s saving time, money, increasing prestige, aiding self-validation etc.  For example, if talking about a new medical device to a procurement department: "Our new device has a simple menu system that is 20% faster to set up,/ which will allow your staff to see more patients in a day / so reduce waiting lists and save you money in staff time" And in certain companies, they do encourage your external messaging to be B/A/Fs where possible, rather than F/A/Bs.  i.e. “Save money by reducing your waiting lists/by using staff time more efficiently and enabling them to have more appointments per day/ made possible because our devices have a simple menu system that is 20% faster to set up”.  

But it’s the simplicity of his model that works.  If you can articulate the golden circle in one or two sentences for your core products/brands, you’re probably a lot further along the curve than many of your competitors.  Even well known and loved brands probably lack a chunk of ‘why’ inside the businesses they serve.  Then you need to check the consistency of that message; you might be able to layout the proposition but can your colleagues in Customer Services?  Operations?  Because if they can’t, something’s not been carried forwards.  And that's not even looking at your customers and how they perceive what they receive (hint: it's often not what you think).     

The talk also struck a chord when thinking much more in the context of leadership: until watching that talk, I’d never really considered the repercussions of leaders/managers personal F/A/Bs on the team around them.  You can do a really good job managing a team and it's performance even if you don't believe in the company; but you're managing rather than leading or inspiring and that is different.  And you'll have lesser outputs from your team.  It’s having some core beliefs that shape your actions and that will cause  other people to follow, in internal and external roles, such as: “I believe we can be main influencers in the global company/through excellence in strategy, planning, implementation and innovation/ whilst providing marketing and commercial services”.   

It’s a simple but effective method of ensuring that teams remain focused and dedicated even if changes are going around them, be it changes in structure, personnel or direction.  If you have an influencer in your company, then they have to believe in what they and their team are doing, or everyone loses focus.  I feel that this is part of a manager's role and responsibility: to define the core 'why' of their team or department and be that role model.  

It's not about being falsely positive, it's about being genuine and finding something within what you are doing that you believe in.  It doesn't even have to reflect the currently reality because aspirational visions can pull a team towards that goal.  Believe that your team are at the core of commercial strategy, and your requests to them, the questions you ask, the projects you all work on will be in line with that goal, and cause your team to become those strategic leaders, even if they weren't before.   

At worst, it’s worth bearing in mind that if you understand the importance of belief, and recognise your lack of belief, you can change it.  The slightly clichéd affirmations in front of a mirror have a basis in clinical trials: Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) studies on forced compliance demonstrated that if you act in a way contrary to your beliefs, you will change your beliefs to match, and numerous other studies have replicated that.  Act like you believe in what you are doing long enough, and you’ll start to believe it yourself, although I would question why you're working in for a company you really don't believe in! 

So the core is, know why you’re doing what you’re doing (with conviction!), understand how you are going to do it, and then do it, and people will follow.    

Guess I'll be off to do a bit of Why/What/How then!

Kittens to your Desk (or Not)

Recently, someone on my FaceBook got extremely excited over this post.

Please note: the kittens are not
delivered in boxes.  I hope.

For those of you who can't be bothered to click on the link, a rather disreputable taxi company called in Australia is doing a 'dial a kitten service' via Uber.  According to the article: "Uber customers in Brisbane, Gold Coast, Geelong, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney can now order the kitten delivery service, which costs approximately £20 and a cab will bring an actual fluffy piece of tiny joy to your desk, for you to play with, smother in kisses and enjoy for 15 minutes." There were also assurances that "Uber has teamed up with animal shelters... who will benefit from the money raised and will also be on hand during the cuddle time, to keep an eye on the fluff-balls and to answer any questions you might have about adoption."

My friend thought this was brilliant and wanted all taxi companies to get in on the action to enable him to have a kitten delivery at need.  My immediate knee jerk reaction was horror and not just at the cutesy prose: this is pretty much a cat's idea of hell.  I was seriously unimpressed with the charities for agreeing.  I mean, how could they agree?

"Hey Director Bob, you know that really dodgy taxi company that was in the papers last month?"
"Yep, Marketing Maverick."
"They'd like to try and improve their reputation."
"Yeah?"
"Yep, by delivering out already off-kilter and possibly traumatised kittens to people they've never met before, completely out the blue, in an unfamiliar place, with no control, for 15 minutes of enforced petting the kitten can't escape from.  And they want to use ours!  What do you think?"
"YOUWHATNOW?!?!?"

However, when I starting thinking in a little more depth, I saw something completely different: a not very successful PR stunt, and a very successful piece of hijack marketing, and not from a source you'd expect.

There are two things going on here:

1. The Unconvincing PR Campaign - This is a PR campaign by the taxi company trying to change their reputation by delivering kittens to workers.  The likelihood is that this isn't going to work.  A company with a notoriety for sexual harassment and unfair surcharges isn't likely to manage to change that by delivering kittens. There are multiple reasons, but one of the main ones is that issues with taxis generally involve late nights, darkness and alcohol.  This is a very different demographic to the kitten-ordering office workers.  This campaign isn't solving or tackling the core issues of safety and trust with their customers, which at this point has been materially damaged.  We're not talking about a shirt where the thread keeps coming off, we're talking about situations that involve compromised physical safety, potential assault (depending on the severity of the sexual harrassment) and intimidation.  A customer is just not going to risk using that company (especially when there are so many easy identical substitutes without the danger) unless they do something dramatic about it.  The company might get some kitten orders, but those same office workers who are happy for the taxis to transport animals are not going to use it themselves because there's no real mental link between kittens and safety, even if they manage to establish the former.  At best, I'll give them points for innovation if not for efficacy, but I'm not convinced.

2. The Hijack - This is the cunning hijack by the local animal charities which is likely to be very successful.   The involvement of animal behaviour charities seems to be geared towards the adoption of the kittens and are using the taxi company's initiative (and money) to do it. For example, it's mentioned in the article that charity workers would be there to talk about adoption to any interested parties.  My suspicion is that there are too many kittens in the shelters at the moment and consequently are at risk of destruction.  The choice has been made that kittens are more adaptable than cats to difficult situations, and it's a lesser evil to put them through a stressful experience which will end up in their getting rehomed, than to leave them to the mercies of the system.  After all, it's hard to turn down kittens, so they probably don't go out to offices more than a few times before getting adopted.

Not only that, but it's excellent targeting.  Anyone using this service will be:

• Affluent enough to afford a cat as they can throw £20 away on a whim (it works out as £80 per/hour!) 
• A cat lover - enough to want to use the service
• Likely to not have a cat at home (in that they are willing to pay for time with a cat)
• In gainful employment so generally stable with fixed accommodation 

Basically, ideal potential owners.   It's less to do with 'kitten delivery' as the article phrases it, and everything to do with manipulating your targets with a stealth 'try before you buy' strategy, full with a dedicated sales person (the charity worker), a level of helpful guilt as the kittens are all homeless and ownerless, and use of the very basic biological urge that we are drawn to young mammals because it mimics cues in human babies (large eyes, large heads, short limbs etc.) right in your lap.  I would love to see the adoption statistics in 6 months of these charities because I reckon there will be a massive spike in rehomed kittens.

I like this: I like the fact that charities have managed to use what appears to be a slightly unsavoury company to further their aims and aid in the rescue of abandoned animals, and done it in a clever enough way that it's been picked up on social media half way across the world.

Bravo!

Just don't, y'know, expect kitten delivery to be a viable business model.  

Sky/Game of Thrones: How to do an Social Media Enhanced Exhibit in Three Easy Steps

Last week, I went to the Game of Thrones exhibition in London at the O2.  

Put on by Sky for fans of the show, it contained props and costumes from the series, as well as interactive exhibits, such as a VR experience to climb the Wall.  Ostensibly, it was a reward for subscribers to Sky and to create a positive ‘buzz’ around the new series.  As someone who went, it was great: we got to geek out over banners from the show, heft a giant great sword , play with some interactive exhibits and have an interesting evening. 

I overheard people in the crowd asking why Sky had done it.  Now the O2 isn’t cheap to hire, advertising the exhibition would not have been low cost, there were a large number of staff involved, and Sky didn’t even charge for the tickets. 

So why did they do it?   

Well, much as I’m sure Sky would like to be seen as philanthropic and value driven, it was less to do with creating a reward for loyal customers, and everything to do with some very clever social and viral marketing. 

The key things they did were:

1. Create high level of prestige for visits
2. Encourage loyalty and participation in visitors
3. Massively encourage viral/social media sharing of the exhibition.

So how did they do this?

1.  High Prestige for Visits

First off, they offered limited numbers of tickets.  Restriction in supply often leads to a higher perceived value on your basic supply and demand.  This came with a specific and publicised date for booking in the same way as high demand/high cost events such as concerts, creating a mental association of high cost.  And the process of having to struggle to get a ticket automatically makes it more valuable – the endorphins of competition definitely play a role!   

Timed visits also meant that the exhibition was never empty, and there were always queues outside as you waited for a time slot, again re-emphasising the value of the visit and seeming wanted.  You never had quiet patches.

Venue-wise, the exhibition was staged in the O2, a high reputation venue which hosts expensive shows, again priming that perception.  It didn’t need to be there as the exhibition was actually fairly small comparatively and in a side suite of rooms rather than in one of the halls, but the expectation was impressive.

2.  Encourage loyalty and participation in visitors

When you arrived at the venue, you needed to queue.  Our slot was at 8pm, but we didn’t go in for a while.  Whilst queuing, a staff member came up and got you to register on a website on their iPad.  This gave you a unique code to use in the exhibition, and a login to a unique page just for you that had audio guides and information on some of the exhibits.   

Now it's worth noting that not only did you have to register your details, but you had to choose a faction from the story during the process, automatically creating an involvement in the exhibition.  The feeling of being special was enhanced further by having an 'in character' message from the head of your faction on your personalised page, thanking you for your loyalty.  

Each time you accessed your page during the exhibition, your name was shown with a welcome message, as well as your faction allegiance. 

3.       Massively encourage viral/social media sharing of the exhibition.

The set-up of the exhibition very much encouraged sharing.  To start with, visitors were all carrying their smartphones already to look at the information on the exhibits as per the registration mentioned above.  So they were looking at something they find interesting, with a smartphone in their hand, with the camera pointed in the right direction.  Pretty cunning!

There were deliberate set up photo opportunities as well – for example there was a statue of one of the antagonists with a sign/call to action “have a selfie with a White Walker”: less people would have done it without instruction, but I bet it was one of the most shared sets of photos on social media once the idea was planted.  

Additionally, Sky must have done a lot of market research to work out what the key ‘triggers’ were for their customers that would make them want to post about their experience, and then designed interactive experiences that could be shared in different formats. 

There were three main ones that stuck out:

• Video: Get flamed by dragon fire – this was a 4 second video against green screen where you could be ‘flamed’ by a dragon with directions and taken by the staff there on professional cameras. 
• Images: Get made into a ‘white walker’ – they took a couple of professional photos of you in front of a green screen, and then transformed them into one of the series antagonists using basic photoshop.
• Own photo share: Photo on the key prop (‘The Iron Throne’) – there was a replica of the Iron Throne by the exit with good lighting available for own photos, and you had to queue past it to get out.  This was guaranteed to work as a lot of the print advertising was various actors from the series sitting on the throne with a caption on who would own it: pretty much anyone who went would have wanted a photo on it.

Options 1 and 2 were not simple: they needed trained staff to run the cameras and sets, and they had a number of audio-visual professionals behind the scenes doing the editing work in near real time, as the output appeared within 5 minutes.  However, these were some of the most popular exhibits with a minimum of a 10 minute wait on all of them.

This meant you saw the videos/images whilst you were still in the exhibition surrounded by the excitement and positive vibes created by the high prestige feelings.  Not only that, but they were uploaded onto your personal page from the registration with ‘share’ options.  This means the organisers could (and will) monitor social media, so can track exactly how many shares were put forward and on what format.   Remember there was a chunk of queuing at a number of places (which must have been calculated as they had time slots), so a lot of people had their phones in hand from earlier, and therefore shared the videos and photos whilst waiting out of partial boredom. 

Did it work?

My photo on the Iron Throne.

Had to be done, and yes,

it was shared on Facebook

So we have an exhibition which created feelings of being special within the audience, gave feelings of belonging to an select group, and offered high value social media content (which they could track), whilst making people wait around with their phones in hand. 

I'd say an unequivocal yes.  Despite the costs involved in the exhibition, their return on investment in terms of social advertising must have been enormous.  

Someone should definitely buy their marketing department a box of doughnuts!