Tag: Promotion

The Power of Packaging

This time last year I bought a new guitar.

When I bought my my first instrument buying a guitar by distance means was a big no-no. You bought an instrument from a music shop. You walked in to what often appeared to be a imposing environment: and yes, someone was always thumping out Smoke on the Water in the background! (n.b. many music retailers now ban anyone who starts the infamous riff).

By actually going to a music retailer, you handled the instrument, you played a few notes and you could be assured that the instrument was properly set up.

In those days, mail order guitars, and mail order was the only distance selling route, were seen as poor quality, badly constructed and lacking a set up process which made them difficult to play.

The growth of internet shopping means that the most successful music retailers have a big internet presence. In the UK probably the biggest exponent of this is Andertons, who have grown from a single music shop in Guilford to being the most prominent instrument retailer in the UK on the web.

Manufacturers have recognised that a large proportion of their sales will be through distance selling, so manufacturing standards have risen and instruments arrive properly set up (and even in tune!).

However, I think many retailers and manufacturers in the musical instrument sector are missing a trick when it comes to the marketing of their products. Guitars arrive in plain brown cardboard boxes. They are not leveraging the communications power of their packaging.

What is the role of a products packaging?

Well obviously, packaging holds the goods, it stops them being spilt. It protects goods and stops them from being broken. It can be a barrier to stop goods from spoiling. It can allow for efficient transportation of goods. It can act to prevent theft and is why many small goods such as camera memory cards come in oversize packaging.

But packaging also has a communications role. It can convey information e.g. assembly instructions, safety information and certification marks.

But communication goes beyond simply advising purchasers that goods are safe and how they are to be used. Packaging can be an opportunity to upsell and to advertise acessories.

After all, most guitar manufacturers also make and sell strings, plectrums, amplifiers, effects pedals, T-shirts, lesson packages, tuners, straps, baseball hats, etc, etc, etc…

Packaging has a promotional role. It attracts consumer interest on the supermarket shelf. Why else would packs of breakfast cereal be covered in cartoon characters like Tony the Tiger?

Packaging conveys brand messages and allows consumers to make brand choices. Packaging is an important source of marketing messages particularly with fast-moving consumer goods.

Packaging is particularly important where consumers are making low involvement purchase decisions. It can provide promotional cues. this can be the colour of the packaging e.g. Cadbury purple. It can be an identifiable brand character e.g. Mickey Mouse. It can be logos, fonts, tag lines and colours. Packaging has the power to attract consumers and to hold their attention.

Take as an example a can of Coca Cola. The brand name is in a particular font. The can is a particular colour of red. The can is marked with an identifiable swoosh design. Coca Cola even trademark their distinctive bottle shape. All are distinct brand identifiers and provide strong points of differentiation from those of competitors.

There are cultural aspects of the communication role of packaging. Colour often implies a particular class of product. Dark coloured packaging is often viewed as expensive or classy. Red packaging acts as an appetite stimulant. White packaging implies purity and cleanliness. Blue packaging implies freshness. Green packaging implies environmental concerns.

But colours also have cultural implications. In China, red is the colour of luck and happiness. In Germany, products for infants are often in brightly coloured packaging whilst in the UK it is far more common to see infant products in pastel shades.

Pictures can have cultural implications. In Europe we put a picture of a baby on infant formula and baby foods. In Africa, the practice is to put an image of the contents of the pack on the label. So sales of infant formula did not go well in Africa when a baby is shown on the label.

The shape of packaging can give communications cues. Look at the perfume and fragrances market where perfume bottles come in fancy shapes e.g. high heeled shoes, a fist, a woman’s torso in a corset etc, etc. The packaging of these products becomes an attractive ornament on a dressing table or the bathroom shelf. The packaging of the fragrance becomes a product in its own right.

Attractive packaging get re-used. Fancy biscuit tins have been used for marketing since the days of the Victorians. Who hasn’t got an old jam jar or Lyon’s golden syrup tin repurposed to hold coins, nails, paper clips, pens or other bric-a-brac. Every time you go to put something in the tin you get a reminder of the brand message.

The size of packaging can operate on the basis of Gestalt Theory, i.e. the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. So you can buy ‘sharing’ bags of sweets and crisps. The message being that our product helps with social coherence. Value packs offer diversity and can influence product desirability. Big containers also take up more shelf space leaving less room for competitors products

Packaging directly affects a products market position. So if you buy a ‘value’ guitar it will be packed in folded cardboard whereas a premium guitar will have a travel case and come with ‘case candy’ owner’s certificates, a cleaning cloth, booklets about the guitar and brand, and even memory cards with photos of your guitar being made.

Cheap goods are sold in cheap packaging whereas expensive goods have glossy and robust packaging. toys and Easter eggs often have packaging that can be used as part of the toy or which includes activities like puzzles and games.

Increasingly, re-useable packaging is increasingly offered by manufacturers of household goods.

Packaging sometimes has to harmonise with the in-store appearance e.g. supermarket own brand labels or Apple electronics.

So your packaging is not just a container for your goods. It offers instructions. It contains regulatory information and compliance marks and it is a promotional tool.

If your packaging is passive, you need extensive and widespread promotional activity.

If your packaging is active it provides its own advertising and promotion. Active packaging works in a synergistic approach to marketing communication.

Marketing is not just promotion

I recently saw a group of recruitment advertisements for marketing consultants. On reading the content of these job notices, my heart sank.  It seems a lot of businesses, especially small businesses are using bad, incorrect and out of date definitions as to the role of marketing in their organisation.

You see some advertisements which are just silly. These tend to fall into three groups:

  1.  Businesses putting all their marketing ‘eggs’ in one basket. Many of these businesses think social media is a magic bullet to all their marketing problems.  They see social media as a cheap marketing option. It isn’t and by focusing solely on social media these firms may be missing traditional marketing channels which give better value for money and better returns on investment.
  2. Businesses who underestimate the marketing task.  I saw one advertisement recently for a business asking for someone to ‘sort’ their marketing on a contract of eight hours a week.  I believe that firm would be better off by spending money on a consultant rather than employing an individual on such a restricted contract. That consultant could design a marketing plan and existing members of staff could work to that plan.  This matches current marketing theory that every employee of an organisation has a role to play in marketing that organisation
  3. Businesses who want a miracle worker but who don’t want to pay for that miracle worker.  I see plenty of advertisements for marketing staff that want a jack of all trades. They want one person who is an analyst, a researcher, a planner, a strategist, a web designer, a photographer, a graphic designer, a copy writer and a videographer.  They then say the salary for such a person is the equivalent of a shop floor labourer.  I’m not joking.  One such example I saw recently was for a graduate, with three years experience, to carry out the above wide range of activities, for a salary of £18,000 per annum. Casting my eye over the job description, I estimated that the value of the task required would reasonably demand a salary of £35,000 per annum. Worse, it is rare to find an individual who has an analytical brain; who is good at collating and analysing facts and figures; but who is also creative. The human brain doesn’t work that way, some people are good at creative arts but then tend to be awful at figures. Other people are excellent at analysing data but can’t draw for toffee.

However, I think the biggest mistake made by many organisations is to view marketing as solely a promotional activity. Marketing is seen as a substitute term for advertising or sales promotion. Marketing is not advertising.  Marketing is not PR.  Marketing is not door to door visits by sales reps. Yes, all those activities are related to marketing but they are subordinate to marketing.

Marketing is the development of customer-focused business strategies.  It is the conversion of corporate mission and goals into practical strategies and tactics.  Your marketing plan will determine how you approach promotion as part of the wider marketing mix.

Remember, your strategic marketing plan will lead to corporate policies, plans and investments which affect all parts of your business. Each area of the 7 P extended mix will itself have it’s own mix of tactics and methodology.

  • Product: You will have a product mix.  Different product/service options designed to meet the needs and desires of different target audience segments.  Marketing strategists will work closely with product developers and your production managers to provide best fit product options for target segments.  In each of these segments you might have a product range. Marketers will be closely involved in new product development and management of products through their life span.
  • Price: You will have a mix of prices designed to meet the wallets of different target segments. Marketers will help manage prices to maximise returns and to help extend product life span.
  • Place: Marketers will help decide how your goods are brought to market, how they are distributed and where they are sold.  This might mean physical stores, home delivery, electronic supply. Increasingly the use of 3D printers is raised. Do you want to sell through retailers or third-party agents. Do you want to sell directly? If you are operating internationally, do you need a partner firm already within your selected market?
  • People: Who are the right people for your organisation. How should they look at behave? Do you want to mirror your customer base?  For example, if you are selling high street fashion to the 18 to 25 demographic, do you want 60 year old sales staff?  And it could be that you want different people within your organisation for different customer groups.  Take as an example a landscaping firm which does both domestic and commercial work. Domestic customers may be happy to see a workman in a boiler suit or a fleece jacket but a big building firm would most likely want to see a representative in smart business attire.
  • Process:  Process needs to match customer expectations.  If you are making ‘bespoke’ garden furniture, it is likely that your process will reflect artisan craftmanship. If you are mass producing widgets for the automotive sector, your customers would likely expect a clean automated factory with short lead times, kaizen, and just in time supply.
  • Physical evidence: The documentation and other physical evidence used by your business should also match your target customers expectations. Different customer groups will have different expectations. So an insurance firm selling car insurance might get away with documents covered in puppet meerkats but that same insurance firm selling building insurance won’t use those documents to sell commercial building insurance (in fact that firm will likely use a completely different brand entity to do so).
  • Promotion: You will have a promotional mix. A wide range of promotional tactics and channels to maximise your exposure to your target audience. This mix should not only meet the expectations of your customers, it should maximise your share of voice.  It should be a mix of push tactics, like traditional advertising which ‘push’ your products into the minds of your target audience and ‘pull’ tactics which get consumers to demand your products from retailers and suppliers. Promotion should also help build brand equity and customer retention. Social media content tends to be ‘pull’ promotion. It builds desire and moves customers from prospects to regular customers. It is however a poor channel for push marketing and getting your products fresh into the minds of consumers. Social media’s main benefit is the building of a customer community. It has so far proven to be a poor sales channel.

There are several models of how promotional messages work in the minds of consumers.

The traditional model was that consumers minds carry out a structured process when deciding to buy. Promotional activities must therefore match that structured process. This process is described by the mnemonic AIDA:

  1. Awareness: First your customers must become aware of your offer.
  2. Interest: Then they become interested in your offer
  3. Desire: That interest should develop into a need to obtain your offer.
  4. Action: The consumer then should be prompted to take action to obtain your offer.

Promotional activities should therefore work to develop and match these procedural stages.

The hierarchy of effect model of promotion is similar:

  1. Consumers become aware of your offer
  2. They demand and build knowledge of your offer
  3. They develop a liking for your offer
  4. They develop a preference for your offer
  5. They develop a conviction to obtain your offer
  6.  They purchase your offer

More recently, the information processing model of promotion has been developed;

  1. First target consumers are presented with your offer
  2. You get their attention
  3. You develop comprehension of your offer in the minds of target consumers
  4. They retain that knowledge and comprehension
  5. That knowledge and comprehension affects the target consumers behaviour and they purchase your offer.

As you can see each of these models requires promotional activities to carry out a range of tasks.  There is another mnemonic (marketers love a mnemonic; and a matrix), DRIP:

  • Differentiation: Marketing is about leveraging difference. Your promotional activities should create an identity which distinguishes your offer from that of your competitors.
  • Remind/Refresh: Your promotional activities should reinforce the knowledge of your offer in the minds of consumers. It should remind previous purchasers that your offer still exists.
  • Inform: Your offer should inform your target audience of the content of your offer.
  • Persuade: Your promotion should persuade target customers to purchase your offer.

Each of these tasks will take prominence depending on the place in which the target customers mind sits in the purchasing process. For new prospects, informing them of your presence in the market will take prominence. For existing customers, your promotion needs to remind and refresh. For switching customers, you want to differentiate so they move to your offer from that of competitors. For undecided customers, your promotion needs to prioritise persuasion.

So promotion is not as simple as sticking a post on Facebook, or a video on YouTube. It needs careful though and a mix of promotional routes which maximise exposure to the market. Most of all promotion is part of a far wider marketing process.

So stop getting marketing wrong. think beyond the stereotype and apply marketing theory to all aspects of your business.

The Communications Element of the Marketing Mix

Before you decide to spend money on advertising; or any other kind of external communications; or indeed, how much to spend; you need to know if your choice of communications are the best way to meet your marketing objectives.  It is often the case that advertising budgets can become a solution looking for a problem.

You also need to ask, are communications the priority?  Do other aspects of your marketing mix needing fixed first?

There is no point in spending thousands advertising a new feature of your product if consumers are complaining about how terrible your after sales service is.

Sort those issues which are a priority, then think about your communications mix.

Your communications strategy must reflect your organisational goals and the critical success factors you set.

When choosing your mix of communications tools (PR, TV advertising, print, social media, etc) you need the appropriate mix of push and pull media.  Push media is pushing your product into the minds of consumers e.g. traditional advertising. Pull media is getting consumers to demand your products from retailers and other suppliers (this could be media like social media and PR).

A strategy that is all push and no pull; or vice versa; is unlikely to succeed in modern markets.

And you cannot rely on past methodology.  The world of communications is constantly mutating.  In the 1950s most communications were broadcast monologues.  Today, the aim of communications is often to create two and three way communication.  Communications is about conversations; between companies and their customers; between existing customers; and between customers and prospective customers.

The level of advertising and communications spend do not automatically lead to results and simply trying to match the share of voice of a market leader may be a process in wasting scarce resources.

Definitely do not choose communications channels out of habit.

The best way to decide on your communications mix is:

  1. Match communications tools based on their strengths and ability to match the purpose of the communications.  For example social media is a step towards creating electronic word of mouth and a brand community (although other communications tools will be needed to meet those objectives). Social media is not a proven sales channel.  Remember the mnemonic DRIP (Differentiate, Reinforce, Inform, Persuade).  Depernding on the purpose of your message different communications tools will be appropriate.  For example, advertising may be the priority if you are aiming to differentiate your offer from that of your competitors; print media and PR may be the best way to inform your customers of product attributes; Social media may be a good way of reminding existing customers of your products; Sales Representatives may be the best way to persuade your target customers to buy.
  2. Match your communications profile to the expectations of your target audience.  So if you aim to sell fashion to the under thirties, social media and digital communications may be the priority in your mix.  If you are selling stairlifts to pensioners, direct mail and television advertising may be the priority.  it is not by accident that daytime TV is filled with adverts for over-50’s pension plans and disability aids.  Tesco will show families with children in their communications; BMW will show male professionals and executives.  Look for archetypes, not stereotypes.
  3. Integrated communications campaigns work better.  Promotion and other communications should be part of a wider customer journey.  It is a mistake to put all your communications in one channel.  I see small business after small business heavily investing in social media as their sole communications channel thinking they have found a silver bullet to solve their communications ills; they haven’t, they simply could be wasting their finite communications budget.  It is best to integrate communications channel that work well together and which compliment each other.  Choose channels that are synergistic and may create a greater whole than individual channels.

You need to map that customer journey from their first awareness of your brand through to them being repeat purchasers and then habitual purchasers.

Commercial communications are increasingly two way interactions.  You should reflect this in your communications strategy. Do not shout a monologue into the void. Focus on conversation, duologue and dialogue.  Increasingly getting target customers to talk to each other is a top-level aim of commercial communications.

We live in an over-communicated society.  Consumers are bombarded with commercial messages every day.  It isn’t a case of being the one who shouts loudest, be the one who shouts differently.  Stand apart from the communications churn.

To do all this you need a communications and advertising plan which:

  • Sets a budget
  • Determines your target audience
  • Determines the content of communications
  • Decides your media mix
  • Decides on advertising frequency
  • Defines how communications will be classed as successful

Your advertising objectives should be to:

  • Convey information
  • Alter perceptions and attitudes
  • Create desires
  • Establish connections
  • Direct actions
  • Provide reassurance
  • Remind
  • Give reasons for purchase
  • Demonstrate product/service features
  • Generate enquires and footfall

Those objectives should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time Bound)

And remember the Six I’s of Digital Communication:

  1.  Integrate across media channels. It is not by accident that Amazon, Uber, Just Eat, Trivago and other internet-based retailers and service providers all use traditional advertising channels.
  2. Create Independence of location: think remote marketing and remote delivery.
  3. Think Industry restructuring: Digital is often about disrupting existing market models.
  4. Think Individualisation: We live in a world where new technology and just in time supply chains mean mass customisation and micro-targeting of communications
  5.  Think Interactivity: Conversation not monologue

Increasingly, communications are as much about creating a brand community as pushing products onto consumers. The communications models of even twenty years ago are no longer appropriate.  Look to the future of communication, not the past.

 

Do you have an Integrated Communications Strategy?

A couple of weeks ago, I watched a BBC4 documentary on the history of the electric guitar and effects pedals in rock music.  Included in the programme was a short interview with Uli Jon Roth, the former lead guitarist with the German heavy rock band, Scorpions.

Two of Roth’s comments in the interview stood out.  The first was that he felt restricted with the five note pentatonic scale often used in rock music.  He wanted to use the seven note chromatic scale more often seen in classical music. He wanted to spread licks over two or more octaves rather than one.

Secondly Roth commented that he saw musical notes as colours. he experiences aural synaesthesia.

Roth is known as the ‘King of Shred’.  The man who created a monster that would dominate rock music in the 1980s; shredding.  Roth, like Baron Frankenstein despaired of his creation.  He feels that guitar solos became an exercise in technical proficiency and fitting as many notes in a stave as possible.  Rock music began to forget melody and metre.

So what has an interview with a Euro-rock guitarist got to do with Marketing Strategy?

Let’s take the second point.  Roth’s synaesthesia is a clear indication that people process information in different ways and they react differently to communication triggers.  Some people prefer and will react to visual stimuli, others to aural stimuli.  Some people prioritise touch, others prefer smell.  So if you are limiting your communications triggers to one of the ‘five’ senses, your message may not be getting through to those consumers who prioritise the other senses.  Much of the internet is a visual medium; like this blog; therefore when designing marketing communications, consider the other senses, use sound, smell and touch to get your message into media.

Well, Roth has a point about limiting your options.  Why limit your marketing and communications activities to a few expected promotional channels when there is a wider palette of channels available?

I see lots of tweets on social media praising the use of digital promotional channels as a panacea; a magic pill to all your promotional needs; it is nothing of the sort.

I regularly get criticised that I don’t understand how digital marketing works.  Well I do.  I just believe that digital is one channel amongst many and by restricting yourself to that channel you are ignoring communications options which may provide better return on investment to your business.

Clearly it would be unwise to totally ignore digital marketing channels and social media in your promotional mix.  However, these channels must be used with a strategic purpose which matches the expectations of your target market.  Clearly, if you are selling high street fashion to teenagers, you will need to have digital as a prominent part of your promotional mix.  However, what if you are selling mobility scooters to pensioners? Wouldn’t more traditional promotional channels make more sense?

Digital channels are not a cheap option.  To get equivalent returns to that of traditional media, you may have to spend more on digital.  Before choosing communication channels you need to carefully examine costs and press providers to the level of return on the potential investment.

For SMEs operating locally, it may well be the case that traditional communications channels are a more effective way to get your message across.

Marketing academics are still not convinced of social media as a sales promotion channel.  However, they do see it as useful for customer retention and developing ‘electronic word of mouth’.  It is also good for developing advocacy.

When it comes to digital, you also have to remember Zipf’s law; P(x)≈1/x.  You can optimise your position on search engines to your heart’s content but if you’re not within the top four links on a page your chances of picking up significant numbers of clicks are dramatically reduced.  Firms like Amazon can put huge resources into securing the top links on a search engine page, irrespective of the alterations ISPs make to search engine algorithms to compete head on against those resources may a highly inefficient use of promotional budgets.

So when developing a promotional mix do not put all your eggs into one basket. Don’t do what is ‘expected’ in your chosen segment; do something different to your competitors.

Marketing as a science is a fairly young discipline.  Academic rigour only began to be applied to it in the 1950s.  It is a developing field where theory and models are continually evolving.

For many years the presumption was that different promotional channels had to be dealt with by separate professional consultants.  You went to a direct marketing agency for printed matter, you went to an advertising agency for TV and radio advertising (in fact there were/are specific agencies for radio advertising).  If you wanted press attention, you used a PR agency and exhibitions were often the remit of your sales department.

In the 1980s, academics began to promote integrated marketing communications.  This was the delivery of a single consistent group of messages across media channels.  Prior to IMC, different communications media were used to deliver different parts of the promotional mnemonic DRIP.  Advertising was used differentiate your products from those of competitors; sales promotion was used to persuade customers to purchase.  PR was used to remind customers of your existence and print media was used to inform customers of your products attributes.

Under IMC, a single message was used to deliver all the aspects of DRIP.

IMC was seen as having significant drivers:

  • it increased the efficiency of promotional activities
  • it increased the accountability of marketing managers
  • it promoted the need for ‘cross-border’ marketing and changing communications structures
  • It coordinated brand development and the creation of competitive advantage
  • it allowed for more efficient use of management time
  • It provided direction and a sense of purpose for employees
  • It anticipated greater levels of audience communication literacy
  • It foresaw media and audience fragmentation
  • It allowed for stakeholders increasing needs for diversity of information
  • it reduced message clutter and allowed for media cost inflation
  • It accounted for competitor activity and low levels of brand diversification
  • It allowed for the creation of relationship marketing as opposed to transactional marketing
  • It allowed for network development, collaborative marketing and the creation of alliances
  • It allowed for technological advances and new communication channels e.g. social media.
  • It aimed to increase message effectiveness through consistency and the enforcement of core messages
  • It allowed for the development of more effective consumer triggers and recall of both messages and the brand identity
  • It aimed to develop consistent and less confusing brand images
  • It developed a need to build brand reputations and to provide clear identity cues.

IMC sounds wonderful doesn’t it.  Most importantly it was seen as a way to create a customer-centred promotional strategy.

IMC was seen as having the following advantages:

  • Efficient use of promotional budgets
  • A synergy to communications
  • Competitive advantage through clear positioning
  • Coordinated brand development
  • Employee participation and motivation
  • It allows for the review of communications activities
  • fewer agencies were needed to support a brand.

However, there were some downsides to the creation of integrated marketing communications strategies:

  1. It was a strategy that promoted centralisation of activities and the development of bureaucracy.
  2. It promoted the uniformity of a single message (difficult if your aim to target two or more distinct market segments)
  3. It leads to ‘Mediocrity’ as all communications activities are in the hands of a single agency.

So like Uli Jon Roth’s approach to the rock solo, IMC became a bit of a monster.  Some marketing academics felt that it lost the ‘melody and metre’ of promotional activities.

Today, most marketing academics promote a nuanced form of IMC.  Yes messages should be used to promote all aspects of DRIP and promotion is a role for all the stakeholders in an organisation, not just the advertising department.

Today it is advocated that promotional strategies is the creation of a promotional mix using tools which best fit the expectations of your target customers.

 

Shaping the Promotional Mix

As I have said before in this blog, I continually see businesses advertising for marketing staff and when you examine the job description, the new staff member is solely focused on digital marketing, particularly social media management.

Such recruitment advertising worries me.  It’s not that digital marketing isn’t important.  it’s that these businesses seem to be putting all their marketing eggs in one basket.  They also seem to be treating digital as a form of marketing promotion instead of its proper definition as a communication channel.

Digital is only one part a businesses promotional armoury.  It isn’t a magic pill which will solve all your marketing issues.  Digital marketing isn’t cheaper than traditional marketing channels and in some ways it is a riskier enterprise.

Your use of digital marketing needs to be strategic and it must fit with your target audience.  Foe example, if you are selling teenage fashion, it is likely that social media and digital platforms will be prominent in your marketing activity.  However, if you are selling stairlifts and disability aids to pensioners, traditional promotional techniques such as television advertising, direct mail and newspaper advertising would dominate your promotional mix.

Remember, Digital is a promotional channel not a promotional technique.

When you are developing a marketing strategy, it is important to create the proper balance of channels and tools.  Your use of these must meet the expectations of your target audience.

Consider that businesses operating in the same market may have distinctly different promotional mixes.  Max Factor use television advertising, magazine advertising and the internet to promote their cosmetics however Avon rely on direct marketing and sales representatives to promote their products.

Today, most businesses try to create an integrated marketing communications strategy which promotes you products but which also creates a unified brand image.

To define a promotional mix you must first examine the nature of different promotional tools.

  1. Advertising:  Advertising can reach a mass audience which is geographically dispersed.  It can be a form of promotion which has a low-cost per consumer exposure.  It can allow a message to be repeated several times to intended recipients.  Digital media can be used to advertise e.g. Facebook or YouTube.  Consumers view advertising as a legitimate form of promotion and it can be used to create a brand image over the longer-term.  However, advertising lacks the personal touch and is a one way form of communication.  Some forms of advertising can be expensive and a large budget may be required if it is to be effective.
  2. Personal Selling:  Personal Selling is good for building buyer preferences, convictions and actions.  It involves personal interaction between two or more people.  It can be used to build personal relationships by sales representatives solving customers problems.  However, personal selling is the most expensive form of promotion: up to three times the cost of advertising.
  3. Sales Promotion:  This is techniques such as offering coupons, discounts or premiums for purchases or repeat purchases.  Sales promotion uses a wide range of such tools and is good at attracting the attention of target consumers.  It provides strong incentives to purchase and it can dramatize product offerings to boost sagging sales.  Sales promotion invites a rapid response from consumers.  The message isn’t ‘buy my product’, it’s ‘buy it now!’.  However, the effects of sales promotions are short-lived and over the medium to long-term sales promotion will have less impact than advertising or sales promotion.  Sales promotion does not create long-term relationships with customers.
  4. Public Relations:  Public relations is a very believable form of promotion.  PR is the presentation of commercial messages in the form of news stories, features and sponsored content.  PR can reach people who are adverse to advertising and who avoid sales representatives.  It can add drama to a campaign.  traditionally PR has been underused by marketers but as the environment becomes more crowded with commercial messages, its use is increasing. PR is most effective when it is used in conjunction with other promotional mix elements.  Heinz have successfully used PR to promote their Salad Cream.  In fact they have had three bites at the Salad Cream PR cherry.  A few years ago, they issued press releases saying that they were ending production due to falling sales.  The response was a huge increase in sales of Salad cream.  A few months ago, they announced that they were changing the name to Sandwich Cream, again they got headlines.  Last week they announced that they had changed their mind and were retaining the name.  Yet more column inches about the product.  However, over use of PR creates cynicism in the minds of consumers.
  5. Direct Marketing:  This is the use of brochures, catalogues flyers and online advertising.  it is a less public form of promotion but you can target your message to particular groups.  Direct marketing can be interactive, a dialogue as opposed to a monologue.  It allows tailored messages to be delivered quickly.

Once you have decided on the tools within your promotional mix, you must define your strategy.

There are two forms of promotional strategy: Push strategy, where a firm pushed its goods through the sales channels by promoting them to channel members such as suppliers and retailers; and Pull strategy; where business promote their goods to end consumers, who in turn pressure retailers to stock the firm’s products.

Some business to business industrial companies only use a push strategy but for most businesses the promotional mix is a carefully balanced combination of push and pull strategies.  B2B firm’s tend to use more push strategies, B2C firms tend to use more pull strategies.

To create a successful promotional mix, you need to have a smooth integration between mix elements.  The promotional mix needs to be guided by an company-wide communications strategy.  Mix elements need to combine to create a unified brand message your messages must be consistent and conform to your brand image.  Your messages must appear where they can be seen by your target customers.  All parts of your business and all your internal stakeholders must be involved in the promotional effort.  Your promotion must engage all your sales channel stakeholders e.g. wholesalers and retailers, not just end consumers.

A confused communications strategy can dilute the impact of your promotional messages and lead to a confused market position. A confused strategy will not maximise you marketing efforts.

 

What is Marketing?

Over recent weeks, I have seen a number of recruitment advertisements from small and medium-sized firms advertising roles described as marketing assistants or marketing executives. When you read the job specifications for these posts, you tend to find that the jobs contain work tasks more usually associated with graphic designers, web designers or sales representatives.
I know that distinguished marketing academics and professionals are regularly frustrated at their profession being incorrectly defined in this way.
So what is marketing?
The Oxford Dictionary of Marketing describes the function as follows:
Marketing is a formal business discipline originating in the USA at the turn of the 20th century. The profession, it is argued has gone through five stages:

  1.  The Age of Production:  This stage began shortly after marketing being formally defined and ended in the 1930s.  At this stage, marketing activity was constrained by the limitations of production.  The focus in companies was to produce as much as possible; as efficiently as possible.  Marketers focus was in ensuring the widest possible distribution of the products produced.
  2. The Age of the Product:  Marketing’s focus was not on cost leadership or distribution but on ensuring that the product itself would attract customers.  The focus was on product attributes, quality, performance and design.  Many of these concepts remain in modern marketing.
  3. The Age of Sales:  Here the focus was on pushing whatever the company had to sell.  This was the era of aggressive promotion as evidenced in the television series Mad Men.  Corporate thinking was that if you pushed any product hard enough it would sell.  Such sales tactics, the hard sell, could be risky as it could put consumers off and possibly drive them into the hands of competitors.  This developmental stage lasted until the late 1950’s.
  4. The Age of the Customer:  Some marketing academics believe we are currently coming to the end of the age of the customer which began in the 1960s.  This era places the customer at the centre of all marketing activity.  rather than making a product and then trying to find customers to buy it, products are specifically designed to meet the needs of distinct customer groups.  Critical to this era is customer segmentation and market research.
  5. The Interactive Age: This is the age of networking, massive choice, content sharing and content acquisition.  The aim is to let your customers become your marketers.  Many marketing academics we are at the start of this age with the rise of social media.  However, it must be stressed that interaction should not be only through electronic means.  It is still important that businesses interact with their target customers by more traditional methods.

Marketing is no longer the simple facilitation of commercial exchanges and transactions between producers and consumers.  Every contact a business has with its customers is a marketing dialogue, from initial sales calls to after sales service and the investigation of consumer complaints.

Marketing’s initial focus was on the producer not the customer.  It was getting the right products to the right consumer at the right price.  It was assumed that the producer controlled the market.  This assumption is no longer valid.

Take the example of the market for milk.  it is not the producer, the farmer, who controls the market for milk; it is the retailer in the form of the large supermarket chains.

Many of the advertisements for marketing jobs that I see still seem to treat marketing professionals as if they are working in the age of production or the age of sales.  Many see marketing as a subset of sales or as a subset of promotion.  In truth, sales and promotion are subsets of marketing.

Some firms, such as Hewlett-Packard see marketing not as the responsibility of a silo department but as a responsibility of everyone within the organisation, from the CEO down.

Marketing’s role is to develop a market-centric or customer-centric attitude throughout an organisation.  It is therefore imperative that marketing is closely linked to your overall business strategy and that it is central to the functionality of the senior management team.

Finally, lets look at the definition of marketing strategy.  The Oxford Dictionary of Marketing gives the following definition.

Marketing strategy is a series of planned choices about which part of the market to focus upon and how to compete within that target market.  These choices are based upon a thorough analysis of the ways and means of addressing target markets and customers.  Market segmentation and positioning are key to the development of a marketing strategy and it should put a customer focus on the overall strategic goals of an organisation.

Segmentation and positioning demand the development of a distinctive marketing mix.  Products and services must be designed with distinct customer groups rather than treating the market has homogeneous. Positioning ensures that your products are given a unique place in the minds of consumers which is distinctive from that of your competitors.

Marketing strategy is about making the most of your company’s strengths whilst exploiting the weaknesses of your competitors.

 

The psychology of marketing communications

Over the years, psychologists and researchers have carried out numerous studies into how advertising works.  All recognised that for a marketing message to work, it must be meaningful to its recipients.  Messages must be targeted at the right audience; be capable of gaining their attention; be understandable; be relevant; and be acceptable.

With this in mind, researchers set out to develop an agreed model of the advertising process.  Unfortunately, no single model has been agreed and there are a number of  theories which compete to have prominence.

Petty and Cacioppo (1983) developed the elaboration likelihood model which has helped to explain how cognitive processing, persuasion and attitude change occur when different levels of audience involvement are present.  Elaboration refers to the extent that the recipient has to develop and refine the information they receive for decision-making to occur.  If the message recipient is highly motivated or has a high level of ability to process the information, elaboration is said to be high.  If the recipient’s ability to process information is poor or their motivation is weak, elaboration is said to be low.

Thus the ELM model identifies two cognitive processes in the minds of recipients; a central route where the recipient is active and involved and a peripheral route where the recipient is passive and unengaged.

With the central route, a message will persuade using the quality of the argument proposed.  For example, when you buy a house or a car, you will be highly involved. In such a situation consumers would be expected to read brochures and reviews prior to purchase.  They may want an opportunity to try out the product e.g. a test drive of a car.

Under the peripheral route, the recipient should not be expected to process complicated information or to engage in significant cognitive processing.  Communications using the peripheral route should use cues to attract the attention of recipients.

Peripheral cues could involve the use of a celebrity to advertise products.  For example, Walker’s use of Gary Lineker to sell their crisps or Nespresso using George Clooney to advertise their coffee machines.  The aim is that when consumers see Lineker, they think crisps; they see Clooney, they think coffee.

In high involvement transactions the presence of a celebrity is at best of minor significance to the consumer’s decision to purchase.

So the first decision of an advertiser is to choose a form of promotion which matches the level of cognitive processing expected of consumers.

An advertisement which seemed to break the rules of the ELM model was Jaguar’s use of Tom Huddleston, Sir Ben Kingsley and Mark Strong to advertise their cars.  Purchasing a car is a highly involved process, clearly using these celebrities would have little impact in the consumer’s decision to purchase a Jag.

Competing with the ELM model are eclectic models of advertising.  Four eclectic models have been developed each of which has a digital and an analogue component.  These four models represent the four key ways in which advertising works.

  1.  The Persuasive Framework – Analogue – this framework assumes that advertising works rationally and that a ‘brand works harder for you’.  This framework assumes that consumers purchase items using a rational sequential decision-making process such as AIDA (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action).  Consumers are persuaded to purchase through the development of unique selling propositions (USPs).  The persuasive framework is used heavily in the promotion of blockbuster movies.  Studios raise awareness of coming releases by using press interviews, film festivals and conventions.  They create interest by releasing videos of stars on location filming and through releasing teaser trailers.  They create desire through the release of longer trailers, star-studded premieres and star interviews.  Finally they issue a call to action through television advertising which encourages consumers to book cinema seats in the weeks before a film is released.  The onset of digital media has added a further element to the persuasive framework; that of encouraging consumers to search for further information e.g. the use of scanning codes in advertisements, e.g. Shazam, so that if the consumer scans the advertisement with their mobile phone, they are directed to the products website.
  2. The Involvement Framework – Analogue – Involvement-based advertisements work by drawing the audience into the product by eliciting emotional forms of engagement. A consumer’s passage to the brand occurs because ‘it means more to them’.  This could involve the use of shared values, aspirational values or by personalisation the brand e.g. the use of celebrities.  The digital element of the involvement framework encourages people to play.  This is about content creation and giving the impression that consumers are helping to control the brand.  So Brompton Bikes allow consumers to effectively design their own folding bicycle by offering 1200 different product options which can be combined to individualise their cycles.  The involvement digital framework also includes opportunities such as blogs, social media and crowd-sourcing.
  3. The Salience Framework – Analogue – This part of the model relies on advertisements being different and therefore standing out from that of competitors. There is a danger that being too different can actually put consumers off.  For example, some consumers are put off by the Go Compare advertisements (with the fat tenor) because they find them annoying. The Digital element of the salience framework is to attempt to create viral content which is shared and discussed by consumers.
  4. The Sales Promotion Framework – This element only has an Analogue element and works in that consumers believe that they will be rewarded by their purchase. Advertisements are aimed at generating sales and shifting product.  Sales promotion advertisements are invitations to consumers to engage in price promotions or to get additional benefits (e.g. free servicing on a car).

Jones, Macdonald and Ehrenberg (1991) advocate a strong and weak theory of advertising.

The strong theory of advertising assumes that messages work in that they are capable of affecting a degree of change in the knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of consumers.  This theory argues that advertising can persuade a consumer to buy a product which they have never previously purchased and that long-run purchasing behaviour can be developed.  The strong theory operates through the use of psychological techniques which alter the behaviour of passive consumers.  Often this involves a hierarchy of effects model.

Increasingly, academics looking at the psychological effects of advertising are finding that the strong theory of advertising does not reflect consumer practice – despite the fact that it is so prevalent in modern advertising practice.  Ehrenberg (1997) argues that consumer purchasing works on the basis of an Awareness – Trial – Reinforcement framework.  That for a consumer to purchase, they must be aware of he product, to repeat purchase they must have tried the product and that to get them to continually purchase you must reinforce the consumer’s decision to purchase.  In recent years, a further step has been added to this model: Nudge.  This is the use of cues to nudge consumers into a certain form of activity.  One nudge example is the promotion of Five a Day, the government programme to encourage consumers to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day to increase the amount of roughage they consume.  Therefore for nudge to work, advertisements should increase the level of reinforcement to get habitual consumers to increase their consumption.

This is the Weak Theory of Advertising.  it agrees with the strong theory that advertising is capable of improving people’s knowledge of products.  However the weak theory argues that consumers are not passive and only respond to advertisements where they have some prior knowledge of the product.  Consumers need to have some awareness of a products characteristics before they respond to advertising.  Therefore that amount of information which is actually communicated is limited.  There simply isn’t enough time in the standard television advertisement (lasting roughly 30 seconds) to impart lots of information.  For example, who actually reads the statutory small print in a television advertisement for unsecured loans?

As the time allotted to such advertising is short; and because consumers can switch off their cognitive ability to import information; advertising should be used to reinforce existing attitudes.

Those advocating the weak theory of advertising argue that the strong theory is wrong to assume that consumers are passive.  Under the weak theory, consumers should be treated as active participants in the message and that they are capable of high levels of cognitive processing.  They argue that the strong theory of advertising assumes consumers are unintelligent and apathetic.

As you can see, there are a number of competing psychological theories as to how advertising works in the minds of consumers.  I think the most prominent thing to take out of this research is that you must match your promotional activity to the type of product you are trying to sell.  If you are selling cars of mortgages, a focus on technical specifications may be appropriate, the use of a film star to promote them may be a waste of time and money.  If you are selling snack foods or leisure goods, you need advertising which is either fun or glamorous.

Defining your position

A critical element in the planning of marketing mix strategies, including promotional communications, is the management of your market position.

Market positions operate in relation to two dynamics:

  1. who is the target audience – i.e. your chosen market segments; and,
  2. how that audience views your offering – either through their understanding of how the product works or through their understanding of your communications. i.e. how their minds interpret your message.

One of the roles of marketing professionals in a business is to research these two dynamics and to develop a position which maximises the offering in relationship to them.

Most marketers use the following process to develop distinct market positions:

  1. Examine the positions of a business’s competitors.  This usually involves the development of perceptual maps taken from customer market research.  Perceptual mapping helps determine consumer attitudes and perceptions.
  2. They then determine the position of the focus brand.  This is the process of finding gaps in the market which are commercially viable or where competitors are seen as vulnerable.
  3. You then determine the positioning strategy for your brand.  Where in the market do you want to be.
  4. The next stage is critical.  You must determine whether that market position is viable in terms of the competition and your budgetary constraints.  I do a presentation on strategic marketing planning which includes a section on positioning.  I use the example of a private jet catering company.  Despite being in existence for a number of years, the company has never made a profit.  The owner of the firm believed he had identified a clear position in the market which was not being catered for (sorry bad pun) by his competitors.  However, it was clear why his competitors had not filled that market gap – there wasn’t enough income to be generated to cover the high costs of the segment.  In choosing a market position, it must be viable in the long-term.
  5. Once an appropriate market position has been chosen, you should develop an appropriate marketing mix which will maximise opportunities.
  6. You then need to continually monitor the market position; to defend against entrants to the segment and to adjust your offering to account for changing consumer tastes.

You need to develop a position which your intended customers can relate to and understand.   This means developing distinct brand attributes and values.

There are numerous approaches to developing marketing positions based upon factors in the market, customer profiles at through brand redefinition e.g.

  • Product features:  For example, mobile phones are sold on features such as software apps, storage capacity and the quality of the built-in camera.
  • The price/quality ratio:  Price is often a strong signifier of quality.  You don’t get cheap designer watches or clothes.  For many years Stella Artois lager was sold using the strapline “reassuringly expensive’.
  • The product class association: Dove is not a soap, it is a ‘beauty bar’.  Head and Shoulders began its life as an anti-dandruff shampoo, not it is sold as the UK’s favourite shampoo.  Listerine began life as a multi-purpose household detergent, now it is sold as a mouth wash to prevent bad breath.
  • The product use: A few years ago, Kellogg’s ran a highly successful advertising campaign where their cereals were redefined not simply as breakfast food but as snack foods to be eaten at any time of the day.  They also ran a campaign advertising their cereals to people dieting to lose weight where they replaced either lunch or dinner with a bowl of cereal.  Kellogg’s Corn Flakes were originally sold as a health food.  The original formulation of Coca Cola was sold as a medicinal tonic, not a soft drink.  Lucozade was a drink for invalids but its use was successfully re-interpreted as a drink for sportsmen and sportswomen.
  • The User:  Products which are designed for carefully chosen consumer groups.  This is common in the market for fragrances.  Firms such as Unilever and Estee Lauder develop perfumes with pop stars such as Britney Spears and One Direction to specifically target their fan base.
  • The Competitor:  For many years Tesco and Sainsbury’s battled to be the UK’s top supermarket chain.  They would watch each others activities closely and develop very similar offerings in terms of own brand products and specialist ranges.  Before their demise, Saab competed with Volvo as to who produced vehicles with the highest level of safety features.
  • Benefit: Sensodyne toothpaste is marketed as the toothpaste for people who suffer from porous tooth enamel.   Daewoo for many years marketed the fact that you could buy their cars directly without a dealer as a middle man.  Eliminating the dealer was seen as a benefit as it reduced vehicle costs and increased the consumer’s power in the deal.
  • Heritage or cultural symbol:  A unique aspect of heritage in the UK is the display of Royal warrants, the fact that your firm supplies goods and services to the Queen and Royal family.  It is no accident that Universities are marketed using their coat of arms.  Firms proudly display that they were ‘established in 1803’ and there are brands such as Kronenbourg 1663 lager which use a date as an indication of longevity and quality.

Whatever the position chosen for a brand or product, it must be relevant to the target customer group and have a consistent marketing mix.  It must be believable and credible to consumers and supply chain partners.  It must be developed for the long-term.  It must be adaptable to account for changing market conditions and customer tastes.

If you are looking to reposition an existing brand or product (such as Listerine) you should do so not from your own perceptions but from the viewpoint of consumers.  You need promotional and marketing activities which suppress the old market position so that the consumer dissociates the product with its existing position.  You also need to promote the new position so that consumers are educated about the change.  It is important that these two activities are complimentary i.e.  the activities which weaken the old market position should strengthen the new market position.

 

Defining marketing and why projects fail

I was chatting with a fellow member of the federation of Small Businesses at a recent networking event.  He mentioned that he had been at a talk given by the owner of a successful small business who commented that she had built her business without doing any marketing.  This was a statement which I found incredulous.

I suspect the business owner giving the talk was incorrectly defining marketing.  What she meant was that she had built her business without the use of print or television advertising.  If it is the business I am thinking of, I know she has used social media and the internet,  I also know she has used sales representatives and entered into arrangements with beauty salons to promote her products.  She may not have used traditional advertising but she has used alternative promotional channels AND THAT IS ONLY A SMALL PART OF HER MARKETING MIX.

In his book Principles of Marketing, a standard marketing text for graduates, Philip Kotler describes the forms of marketing used by businesses as they grow.

The first stage is described by Kotler as entrepreneurial marketing.  This is a company living by its wits.  Marketing activity is done on a whim, often based as the perceptions of market conditions in the mind of the business owner.  There is a considerable use of guerrilla and surprise marketing.  Marketing activity isn’t planned; it takes as and when the business proprietor believes it to be necessary.

As a business grows it is no longer possible to exist solely on unplanned marketing activities.  A business moves to a state of formulated marketing.  the scale of the business and the need to satisfy the needs of wider stakeholder groups requires a structured approach to marketing.  This is the standard marketing process in most businesses.

For very large businesses, there is still a requirement to be fleet of foot and not to be predictable.  Kotler suggests that these businesses use an ‘intrapreneurial’ approach to marketing.  He uses as an example Virgin, the conglomerate owned by Richard Branson.

Virgin is not just big brands such as Virgin Music and Virgin Atlantic, it is made up of over 200 separate businesses and several hundred legal entities.  Branson encourages his staff to come up with new business ideas within the group umbrella.  He is constantly searching for new market opportunities and new business concepts.  Not all of these succeed and several only exist in the short term, such as Virgin Cola, but several grow into significant market players e.g. Virgin Money and Virgin Holidays.

By encouraging his employees to act as entrepreneurs within his company, Branson can adapt to new markets and new technologies quicker than his competitors.  He wants his staff to act as market disruptors.  If Virgin is constantly changing the rules of the market, it is more difficult for his competitors to gain a commercial advantage. Virgin is also made up of linked but separate commercial units.  This means that if one unit fails, there is a smaller risk of that failure being a contagion affecting other business units.

Clearly, the CEO who was giving the talk was at Kotler’s stage one.  If she is to grow to a business which can compete with the multi-nationals which dominate her particular market, she may need to take a leaf out of Virgin’s book.

On a separate matter, I have being doing some CPD in relation to my project management skills and was taking notes from the book Project Management by Dennis Lock.  Again, this is a standard text for business and engineering graduates.

In the book, Lock states that a major reason for project failure is a poor project definition.  He lists ten reasons why inappropriate project definitions can mean that a project can fail at the outset.  These are:

  1. The project scope is not clearly stated and understood
  2. Vague technical requirements
  3. Estimates of cost, timescale and expected benefits are over-optimistic
  4. The risk assessment is incomplete or flawed
  5. The intended project strategy is inappropriate
  6. Insufficient regard is given to cash flows and the provision of funds
  7. The interests and concerns of stakeholders are not taken into account
  8. Undue regard is given to the motivations of people undertaking the project
  9. Insufficient regard is given to the reactions of those affected by the project by changes imposed upon them
  10. Politics and personal goals overtake the aims of the project.

Reading Lock’s list, I couldn’t help thinking of Brexit.  In particular the comments of Sir Amyas Morse, the head of the National Audit Office who has complained that the UK government proposals for leaving the European Union are “vague” and that there is a lack of cross-departmental work in government which could “crack open Brexit like the first tap on a chocolate orange”.

I concur,  the UK approach to Brexit appears so slapdash, it will likely cause severe damage to the UK economy and be disastrous for the UK business community.

How the Tories forgot the rules of brand promotion

The consensus amongst political commentators is that the campaign delivered by the Conservatives; sorry, Theresa May’s team; at the 2017 general election was a complete disaster.  At the beginning of the election’s long campaign, the polls gave the Tories a massive lead over Labour.  Theresa May’s approval rating as Prime Minister soared above other part leaders.  The election looked like it would be a landslide win for the Conservatives; the parliamentary Labour Party would be decimated; and Mrs May would get her mandate to deliver a hard Brexit.

Now, following her cataclysmic campaign, Theresa May’s dreams are dust.  She has been transformed from a reincarnation of Margaret Thatcher into a creature of ridicule.  She has lost all credibility.  She is a zombie prime minister awaiting the delivery of a blade to her political cerebral cortex.  It is only a question as to which of her backbenchers delivers the blow.

So how did May’s campaign disintegrate so spectacularly?  Many have pointed to her robotic and awkward delivery, her inability to think on her feet and her unwillingness to actually meet the electorate.  It is true that an attempt to run a campaign based on personality when your candidate doesn’t appear to have one is a major mistake.  Certainly a significant proportion of the UK population were confused by the campaign’s presidential style.  However, I believe a far greater flaw was that those running the campaign had clearly ignored the lessons in marketing strategy and brand management which Mrs May’s predecessors had successfully used to win elections.

When I was growing up in the 1970s, the presentation of political campaigns was staid and boring.  it was men in grey suits, sitting in sepia clad television studios, arguing about economic statistics.  All that changed in 1979 with the general election campaign of Margaret Thatcher.  The Iron Lady had employed Gordon Reece as her image consultant to ensure that she projected an appropriate personality to the electorate.  for the campaign itself she went outside her party machine and employed the advertising and marketing firm Saatchi and Saatchi to run the campaign.  The principles of commercial marketing and PR were applied to the campaign.  It was politics packaged like a tin of beans.

Many may think of Mrs Thatcher winning several successful landslide majorities

Mrs Thatcher’s successors took things further; Tony Blair in particular.  Blair clearly applied techniques used in Neuro-linguistic Programming such as the subtle use of repetitive phrases and mirroring body language of his inquisitors.  Blair used prominent slogans, such as ‘Education, Education, education’ but was also evident in his interviews and speeches were more subtle phrases and nuanced language designed to enter the subconscious of voters and make them act in a particular way.

I suspect Theresa May had been told of Blair’s neuro-linguistic tactics and tried to emulate them but her ability to execute them was sadly lacking.  Just repeating the same phrase over and over may get your message across but such overt declarations are will more likely bore your audience than affect their behaviour.

Perhaps the biggest fault in the Conservatives 2017 campaign was that it took an extremely old-fashioned view of promoting a brand.

The traditional view of a brand image is the creation of a solid identity.  To build this identity, it was felt that regular repetition of key attribute was required.  Sameness would build brand equity.  This was done to excess by Mrs May and it was the repetition of a single phrase ‘Strong and Stable’.  To Tory campaign managers ears this may have sounded perfect; the brand identity boiled down to three words.  The electorate however clearly read this message differently. To them it signalled not stability but a lack of adaptability, no fleetness of foot and a political ideology with its feet planted firmly in concrete boots.  The electorate clearly didn’t want a government determined to stick to its right-wing guns; it wanted a government with the ability to change in the face of a turbulent political climate.

The torpedo which sunk HMS Theresa May was her policy of using pensioners property equity to pay for their social care.  This policy directly attacked the Conservatives target audience, the over-50s.  Clearly, the unpopularity of the policy panicked Tory central office and the subsequent U-turn completely destroyed the single brand message of Strong and stable.  Such a U-turn wasn’t strong and stable, it was weak and wobbly.

A more modern view of developing a brand is to treat it as having two layers of attributes.  Kernel attributes at its core and peripheral attributes.  This view is to address a dichotomy in brand presentation.  Brands need a solid identity to provide capital but in modern markets, where consumers are impulsive and used to rapid change, a brand must have the ability to surprise and have diversity.

A brand which only has kernel attributes may have power but it will lack relevance in the minds of the intended audience.  A brand with only peripheral attributes may be relevant to the target audience but it will lack the necessary power.

The modern view of creating a brand with kernel attributes to provide solidity but also peripheral attributes which can be adapted to meet the variety expected by modern consumers.

This is where Theresa May’s campaign failed spectacularly.  It had a kernel attribute ‘Strong and stable’ but it had no peripheral attributes.  The campaign was based almost exclusively on Mrs May.  The rest of her party hardly got a look in.  So when that kernel attribute was blown out of the water by the social care U-turn, the campaign was left as a hollow shell.  If Mrs May had run a more diverse campaign, with more than a single attribute, she may have been able to ride out the social care fiasco and retain her majority.