Author: Victoria Howarth

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News

NOTE TO SELF: BE MORE INTERESTING

It shouldn’t be news that it’s important to be interesting. Surely we all know that? But it’s something many brands are still struggling with. In the past, the big dogs held everyone’s attention – the big news outlets, the big brands, the big financial institutions, the big record labels. Whatever they produced, we consumed.

Then content production exploded. It’s not just that more brands started creating, but everybody did. YouTuber pedestrians launching music careers, NFT bros influencing the financial market from their bedrooms, TikTok creators impacting political tides.

It’s busy out there. Established brands know this, but a lot of them are slow to really do anything about it.

Before, brands often traded on legacy. “We’re XXX”, a company might say. “We’ve got clout. We’ve got a right to a voice in this market. We’re the big dogs.”  

But if there’s a theme of this decade, it’s a rejection of that idea. More than ever before, people pride themselves on being independent. With so many competing sources of information, people are going their own way, choosing who they subscribe to – metaphorically and literally.

Trust in brands is decreasing. According to Salesforce, even by 2020 only 50% of Millennials said they trust companies. That figure dropped to 42% for Gen Z. Just 61% of Millennials said that companies generally come off as authentic, dropping to 53% of Gen Z’ers. 

Be interesting

This brings me back to my first point. It’s not enough to just keep publishing. It’s not enough to keep stamping your feet and saying, “why doesn’t anyone want to read my whitepaper about how great all my products are?”

People don’t care. They’re watching videos of bulldogs skateboarding.

If you want people to care, if you want them to take time out of their busy day to engage with your content, you have to be more interesting. Catch my eye, tell me a story and don’t bang on about yourself in the first two seconds. And try to talk to me like a person, not like Alexa reading a spec sheet.

This isn’t exactly a new idea. A lot of marketers will have a shrine to Red Bull. What does Red Bull do? It’s an F1 team. It sponsors athletes to do mad stunts that millions of people watch on YouTube. Oh, and it does drinks. It’s often cited as the first brand to start putting engagement before product.

About 15 years on, it’s not the only one doing it. It’s everywhere in B2C and being interesting is even taking over the B2B space.

Historically people have often drawn lines between what will work for B2C and what will work for B2B, but we’re all people. And whether I’m scrolling through LinkedIn or Instagram, I’m still the same person.

Mailchimp recently partnered with VICE Video to make a documentary about small businesses coping with the global pandemic. SAP and Adobe made online hubs collating news, research and insights that might be useful to the people they sell to – no mention of their own products.  

The bottom line is that people don’t really want your advice. They want to make up their own mind. 87% of B2B buyers now want to self-serve part or all of their buying journey[1]. 57% make their purchasing decision without ever talking with a vendor representative.

What brands need to focus on is generating interest in the first place.  With any content you create, ask yourself – would I read this in my spare time?

From owned to earned

For a lot of marketing people out there, this is obvious. The issue is a wider culture internally. While marketers are at the forefront of industry change and can see what’s working, internal stakeholders and product people often can’t see the wood for the trees. As the sole purpose of their work is to champion the product they put their time into developing, it simply doesn’t make sense to stop putting it first.

So it’s tough to be a marketer. And it’s tough to be the person telling your colleagues that what they have to say isn’t interesting enough, or that they need to stop talking about the speeds and feeds they’ve been perfecting.

And here we start to see how PR and marketing have started to converge. For PR people, this conversation is as old as time.

“No, the journalist will not publish a 200-word description of your product’s features.”

“Why not?”

“Because people don’t find it interesting.”

So why is it in our marketing content? Sometimes marketers come under such pressure to sell that they’re forced to skip the wooing process at all. It’s the equivalent of coming up to a stranger at a party and monologuing your CV and interests, then repeatedly requesting their phone number. 

Yes, marketing typically still happens in owned channels, but there’s a lot to learn from PR in terms of what it takes to earn attention. In short: cut the hard sell and focus less on churning out content and more about whether anyone would want to read it.

[1] https://www.trustradius.com/vendor-blog/b2b-buying-disconnect-2021

Categories
News

Does every business need a social purpose?

People with banners protest as part of a climate change march

What has soap got to do with self-confidence? Or fizzy drinks got to do with the black rights movement? Almost every big brand today has begun campaigning to become associated with something beyond what they ‘do’. Whether it’s Skittles associating itself with Pride, or Starbucks with the refugee crisis, every big brand worth their salt now seems to have a social purpose. But why?

Woking up

Good marketing should always reflect the target audience, but traditionally businesses have tended to focus on how their product fulfils their customers’ needs or desires. Our product is thirst-quenching, or it will help you do something faster, or it’ll save you money.

Until now, that approach has been aligned with the values of our society. You want something? You have it! Cheaper, faster and shinier than ever before! As L’Oreal’s slogan goes, you’re worth it.

But something has been happening lately. Perhaps it was the sight of Australia literally on fire, or the cumulative outrage of another death by police brutality, or the global pandemic giving us a very real glimpse of death. Or all of them altogether. But it’s as if we collectively all had a long look at ourselves.

Climate destruction, racism, sexism and homophobia have been happening for a very long time, but in just the last couple of years, it’s like we all experienced a kind of moral awakening and decided that we really need to do something about it.

And something is happening with businesses too. Instead of competing on price, or features, or the quality of customer experience, brands are increasingly adopting another paradigm. Instead of saying to customers: we’ve got what you want, they’re saying, we’re aligned with your values. We are, ‘a bit of you’.

Have businesses simply undergone the same moral awakening? Are we seeing a new era of responsible businesses? Or is this simply a clumsy attempt to hitch onto the next ‘big thing’? Even worse, is it a way for big corporates who often exacerbate these issues, to exploit opportunities to make even more money.

What’s difficult about this question is that it’s often your customers who make a conclusion on your behalf, which is why it’s so important to get it right.

Nailing it vs getting nailed

In 2010, Dove launched its Be Real body confidence campaign. Today, it’s still lauded as one of the most successful marketing campaigns ever. There are a few things it did really well. Firstly, it was first. Dove was one of the leading brands to try this kind of social purpose campaign. But not everybody can win that race.

The second thing they did really well – in combination – is tuning in to something that their target audience felt very strongly about: that they were constantly being berated by society about how they look and sold products to make them meet draconian modern ideals.

The third and fourth thing were the most important though. Dove had a completely relevant stake in the market, because they sold ‘beauty’ and body products, so they could easily be seen as part of the problem. But also, their message ostensibly went in the face of the commercial agenda: We’re not going to neg you to get you to buy stuff, Dove said. And everywhere, women said, aww that’s nice, how refreshing.

Fast forward to 2017 and Pepsi launching their advert about Black Lives Matter, judged as one of the most unsuccessful social purpose campaigns ever. It didn’t just flop, it went down in flames, breathed by millions of infuriated consumers.

That advert looked like the work of the most ham-fisted, insincere marketing initiative. Surely – it seemed like Pepsi were saying – 1 Major Gen Z Insta Influencer (insert any) + This Popular Social Cause (insert any) + Our Product Placement = Instant Success?

Is it worth it?

Marketing Week recently posted an article from Byron Sharp, a marketing professor, suggesting that social purpose is a kind of by-product of a confidence crisis in marketers. That we feel like we have to elevate our work above selling product, to give ourselves a sense of pride in our work. His conclusion seems to be: We should just stick to what we do best – sell stuff and take pride in doing that well; stop wading into all this social purpose stuff.

But social purpose can be successful, it’s just probably not for everybody. Nor should it be, because not every brand can truly say that a social purpose comes naturally to their brand. And that’s really the bottom line: as Kantar says in its recent media trends report, “the raison d’être of brands like Patagonia, Veja and The Beauty Counter is intrinsic, whereas campaigns from other companies might be perceived as opportunistic or insincere.”

The challenge that many brands face, is that they become so big that they feel obliged to have a brand position on major global trends. In support of the Black Lives Matter, for example, Netflix tweeted: “to be silent is to be complicit”, summing up both the societal sentiment and the position that many of the world’s biggest companies are in.

However, most companies are not considered so big or so influential on our daily lives and culture, that their stance on all societal trends are relevant and necessary. For most brands, only certain domains will be of relevance.

While there is no winning formula, here are some considerations for every brand to consider:

  • Check yourself – Good intentions from a marketing team alone are not enough to ensure success; a social cause must be embodied by your whole organisation and seem natural to an outside audience. Before you consider a social purpose campaign, ask the question – what are our credentials for having a voice on this topic?
  • Be consistent – Much like a puppy isn’t just for Christmas, a social purpose isn’t just for Pride week. Nothing screams insincere like ringing up a campaigner once a year to see if you can grasp a share in their cultural capital; or whacking on the LGBT flag on your logo and nothing else. If you support a cause, go all in and make it your concern 365 days a year.
  • Be prepared for stick – Consumers don’t like brands wading into the things they care about, particularly when they don’t think you deserve to be there. Be prepared to be criticised and take a genuine interest in whether that criticism is merited. Be prepared to eat humble pie if you were wrong. 
Categories
Case studies News

Business travel: do we still need it?

Last week, one of our colleagues went to Lisbon, for a client event at WebSummit. Everyone was giddy. Abroad? On a plane?! It’s like you’re in Mad Men! We’ve spent so long inside our own houses that going abroad still seems wild, even more so if it’s for work.

After a year of broadcasted events and Teams calls, many organisations have found the transition surprisingly successful, despite being cut off from real-life interaction. With such good evidence, will business leaders be able to justify that business travel is needed to meet targets?

Meanwhile, it’s more than ROI we need to think about; more fundamental questions are at stake. Following COP26, the UK treasury has said that firms will now have to demonstrate their plans to achieve net zero when it comes to carbon emissions[1]. Given that plane travel is listed as the number one emissions offender, international travel has started to look like an elephant in the room.

So, do we really need to travel for business anymore?

Boom and bust

The key driver behind business travel is usually to allow in-person interaction. Face-to-face hobnobbing – whether it’s sales meetings, pitches, events or networking – have always been viewed as a crucial part of successful business; a not-so-secret component to how relationships have been forged, and deals struck.

The media world in particular has held a reputation for putting face-to-face relationship-building at the heart of the business model. As Absolutely Fabulous captured so well, this was typically done via long lunches curtesy of the company credit card.

Journalists and PRs alike lament the decline an era when businesses regularly flew cohorts of journalists (and accompanying PR execs) out on business-class, all-expenses-paid jaunts, all in the name of top tier coverage.

This is the hangover from a long period of boom where there seemed to be far less scrutiny than there is today over outgoings, expenses and ROI. Bill Bryson recalled working at The Times in the 1980s: “Overmanning and slack output were prodigious…To say that Fleet Street in the 1980s was out of control barely hints at the scale of the matters. The National Graphic Association, the printer’s union, decided how many people were needed on each paper (hundreds and hundreds)…Managements didn’t even know how many they employed. I have before me a headline from December 1985 saying: ‘Auditors find 300 extra printing staff at Telegraph’. That is to say, the Telegraph was paying salaries to 300 people who actually didn’t work there.”

This era of free-and-easy spending has long been in decline for a number of reasons. Firstly, there’s a lot less money sloshing around in the economy following the financial crash. Even before the pandemic, businesses and agencies needed to provide a robust business case for any expenditure like business travel and client entertainment.

Technology also played a part in the decline; it had begun to provide more creative ways to communicate with business contacts. Why travel to Birmingham for a customer meeting when you can video call? Why run an event in Spain when the whole thing can be broadcast online?

From an agency perspective, it’s become a lot harder to get journalists out of the office. Publishers are short staffed and struggling to get by; an afternoon out of the office needs to be worth it.

The new normal

2020 really expedited this trend. Global business travel expenses contracted by 52% in the face of lockdowns and ongoing restrictions. Yet, despite no face-to-face meetings or events taking place, the world continued to turn – we simply went online. So, in the aftermath of Covid-19, it’ll be harder than ever to justify expense to finance departments.

Meanwhile, many of us have got used to working from home, spending less time in the city and becoming less available – or indeed willing – to travel to meet others. People don’t want to do their old commute anymore, let alone haul themselves to another city for a coffee with a customer in the name of relationship maintenance. In fact, in a recent piece of research by McKinsey, only 15% of B2Bs expect in-person sales meetings to be the norm going forward.

But that doesn’t mean that it’s over. McKinsey finds that firms think that sales reps have more confidence in a hybrid approach which doesn’t always default to one way or the other: “83 percent of B2B leaders believe that omnichannel selling is a more successful way to prospect and secure new business than traditional, “face-to-face only” sales approaches.”

Considering sustainability

Beyond just budget cutting and cultural change, sustainability is another powerful argument against business travel. Sustainability has become front and centre of discussions about corporate responsibility over the last couple of years. It’s not really good enough to say you ‘recycle (where possible)’ anymore.

It’s not just that the government is going to be scrutinising businesses, but it’s customers too. The last few years have seen a huge surge in interest, concern and activism around the impact we’re having on the planet. People simply don’t like buying from, or working with anyone who looks like ‘the bad guys’ anymore, so a lot of big brands are under pressure to demonstrate that they don’t fall in that camp.

IRL connecting

So, if there are 101 reasons to quit business travel, why is this even a discussion? Why are agencies still encouraging PRs to take journalists and clients out? Why do over 90% of businesses still expect in-person sales meetings and customer events to return – at some level – by Q1 2022?

The truth is, not everything can be replicated through even the best video calls. IRL bonding has a hugely important role to play in business. As every agency worker can tell you, you can make more headway in bonding with your client from two hours in the pub, than you can make in two years of emails.

People simply don’t behave the same way when they’re presenting themselves on camera as they do when they’re really spending time with someone. For a start, people are less guarded, more likely to say something ‘off-script’ which can tell you a lot more about them.

But also, we shouldn’t try and get away from the fact that we’re not really logical creatures. A lot of our decisions (even big financial ones) are not really based on the facts, but a deeper ‘gut sense’ that comes from how we feel. And face-to-face interactions are important to creating those lasting attachments.

So, what does this mean for responsible businesses? Like all sensible strategies, it involves balance. The era of throwing the credit card at customer and client entertainment might be dead. That’s probably a good thing for companies’ financial outlook, as well as for reducing unnecessary carbon emissions. But that doesn’t mean we should wave goodbye to face-to-face. We’re not all robots yet and strategic relationship building is so important, but maybe those crucial bonding conversations can happen in a pub a tube ride away instead of on a golf course in California.