Why A Finding Is Not An Insight...

by Keith Browning

Nailing a consumer insight can have a profound effect on a business - but real consumer insights are much rarer than many of us might think. What is not rare is the number of advertising agencies, market researchers or product developers who describe basic 'findings' as insights. A finding is not the same as a true insight.

A real consumer insight might be described as a 'non-obvious understanding' about your customers or a 'revelatory breakthrough' in your understanding of your customers' lives. This new insight would direct you to new ways to serve your customers and has the potential to change their behavior. Since true insights are non-obvious or "revelatory", they tend not to happen everyday and therefore anything below this might better be described as a finding.

Take the case of P&G, who together with Walmart, developed an insight which led to an increase in sales of 30%. P&G and Walmart discovered that during winter time when people are most likely to pick up colds, they don't always have enough products at home to deal with this e.g. Kleenex or Vicks. So when they get a cold, they would tend to take a trip to their local pharmacy or corner shop to pick up the products they need, rather than have to find parking spaces and queue up at the larger retailers like Walmart.

Based on this insight Walmart and P&G built a marketing campaign around 'preparedness', which encouraged customers to stock up on their cold products while they were in for their bigger shop. The insight was a particularly strong one. It ended up running for years and Walmart's spend on cold products increased by a whopping 30%.

Or take the example of the Pampers brand. P&G discovered that babies with healthy, dry skin are happier – and so better able to play, learn and develop. Now the fact that babies are happier when they have healthy, dry skin as opposed to nappy rash is not that surprising. In fact, this might best be described a ‘finding’. But the much deeper, emotional significance of this was uncovered by P&G. This is not so obvious and would better be described as an insight.

As we can see from the examples above, real insights are revelatory and not obvious. They are not mere findings. They have the power to change behavior and ultimately lead to a significant increase in business.

Email Marketing Legal Requirements in Ireland

by Keith Browning

Having a family member working for the National Consumer Agency means I hear about all sorts of illegal practises carried out by organisations here in Ireland – some do it unwittingly but others unfortunately just have a blatant disregard for the law. I thought it might be a good idea to review some of the main legal requirements when it comes to email marketing.

The rule of thumb when it comes to email marketing is that you must obtain the consent of the individual in order to use their personal data for email marketing purposes.

What constitutes consent?

At a minimum, you must give the individual a right to refuse such use of their personal data:

• at the time the data is collected (they must be given an "opt-out" at this stage)
• they must be given the option to opt-out on every subsequent marketing message.

For the sake of clarity, the "opt-out" must be free of charge.You must also make clear to the individual:

• who you are
• where you obtained the individual's personal data (where this is not obvious).

How You Can Use Email Marketing With Customers

If you have obtained contact details during the course of a sale, you can market to these individuals by email ONLY if the following conditions are met:

• what you’re marketing is similar to that which you sold to the customer at the time you obtained their contact details
• At the time you collected the details, you gave the customer the opportunity to object, in an easy manner and without charge.
• Each time you send a marketing message, you give the customer the right to object to receipt of further messages
• The sale occurred in the past twelve months OR you’ve sent an electronic marketing communication to that person in that twelve month period - if the subscriber fails to unsubscribe, they will be deemed to have remained opted-in for a twelve month period from the date of issue to them of the most recent marketing electronic mail.

How You Can Use Email Marketing With Non-Customers

You can’t! Unless you have explicitly obtained the prior consent of that individual to the receipt of such messages.

How You Can Market To Business Contacts (Customers and non Customers)

You can market to a business contact unless the subscriber has notified you that they do not consent to the receipt of such communications.

For more information about the rules governing electronic marketing please seeRegulation 13 of the Electronic Privacy Regulations.

If you have any question or clarifications on above, please leave a comment below and I’d be happy to respond.

Five Irish Brands with Great Packaging

by Keith Browning

Great packaging can make an enormous difference to a brand and the success of any business. Great packaging increases the perceived value of a brand, ultimately allowing an organisation to command a premium price.

Surprisingly, here in Ireland, great packaging seems to be a rarity. Most organisations look like they’re trying to blend in instead of standing out with their packaging. The result is that they are ultimately lost on the shelf, trying to compete against the more interesting brands with better packaging that surround them.

However, some Irish brands have done a great job with their packaging - here are five I spotted recently...

1. Improper Butter

For more on Improper Butter, click HERE

2. Cully & Sully

For more on Cully & Sully, check out my other previous blog post HERE or see the official website HERE

3. Bo Bristle

For more on Bo Bristle, click HERE

4. Keogh’s

For more on Keogh’s, check out my other previous blog post HERE or see the official website HERE

5. Donnelly

 
For more on Donnelly, click HERE

Attractive shapes, clever copy, eye catching colors, with a dash of that something unexpected – something remarkable. All of these elements and more combine to make great packaging and I think the five above have done a great job in these areas.

Packaging makes a huge difference to the success of these brands and helps them get noticed for the right reasons. 

Congratulations to these 5 great Irish Brands! 

New Button That Could Change The Face of Email Marketing in Ireland…

by Keith Browning

Gmail – the largest email service provider in the world, recently introduced a new feature that seems to have gone unnoticed by most marketers.

For every promotional email sent to a Gmail account, Google will now include an “Unsubscribe” button right at the top of that email, giving users the ability to unsubscribe in one easy action. No need to search around looking for an unsubscribe link or having to click on the link and then be taken to a landing page where more information is required.

Once you click the button as above, you're asked to confirm...and done!

 

The news was revealed in an Aug. 6 Google+ post, where the company stated, "now when a sender includes an ‘Unsubscribe’ link in a Promotions, Social or Forums message, Gmail will surface it to the top, right next to the sender address.”

Why Marketers Will Be Concerned With This Development…

Emails that don’t have an option for unsubscribing will not be affected but Email Marketing laws in Ireland make it a requirement to include an unsubscribe option in each of your emails. So going forward, all promotional emails sent to Gmail accounts will be affected.   

With this new feature, Google have made it as easy as possible for users to unsubscribe from your database. This means an almost certain increase in your churn rate.

Why Marketers Should NOT Be Concerned…

The new feature from Gmail should be seen in a positive light by marketers. What we should see going forward are better quality email lists. 

While the size of your database might decrease, it will be filled with those that actually want to hear from you and not subscribers that will never buy from you and just cost money to keep. Your list size will decrease but in time you should see an increase in your open rates, click thru rates and conversions. 

You’ll have a smaller list to cater to and it will be full of those who actually want to hear from you. That can only be a good thing.

When Good Contextual Ads Go Bad…

by Keith Browning
 
The highly targeted nature of Contextual Advertising makes it very attractive to advertisers.

If I’m reading an article about travel and I’m then served an ad about hotels or flights, you would expect a relatively high click thru rate on that ad, certainly compared to a more general ad about buying a watch for example.

Contextual Ads work in a very simple way and this is a big reason why they are so attractive.  An ad network, such as Google, will trawl a web page’s content, determine its topic from keywords within the content and then serve up ads relevant to the page’s topic. Many times these ads are text based but they can also take many other forms, like a traditional banner style ad.

Below we see an example of Contextual Ads in action. The article is about skin care, specifically face creams. This is the content that the visitor to the site is consuming. The ad network, Google in this instance, then serves ads related to skin care.

Relevant & highly targeted – a perfect example of Contextual Advertising in action.

However, sometimes Good Contextual Ads Go Bad…

This is an ad that was just served to me on CNN.com. It’s a story about a horrific incident including a death inside a storage container. What am I shown next? It’s an advert for me to buy a storage container – right in the middle of the article. Though you can argue it’s “relevant”, I’m probably unlikely to be in the mood to purchase a storage container. In fact, to most people it would seem that CNN and / or Buyerzone have done something in really bad taste.

A quick Google search reveals this seems to be happening quite regularly, as we can see with New York Times below. Here an article about a tragic ferry accident means I'm being served an add about winning a Cruise! This is definitely something all marketing managers need to be aware of, particularly if you're the publisher of content but also if you’re the company being advertised. 

Not exactly the PR you'd aspire to for your brand!

Why Being Just ‘Ethical’ Is Not Enough…

by Keith Browning

The advantages of ethical branding are quite apparent. Highlighting the ethical quality of a product can provide an important means for businesses to differentiate their product and add value in the consumers’ eyes over that of the equivalent commodity.

So it's probably no surprise that many Ethical Brands position themselves in such a way that their entire identity is based very much on an ethical appeal. It's easy to spot these brands - they'll be the ones talking about how they pay fair wages or how their products are not tested on animals or their approach to the third world – or maybe how they're carbon neutral etc. They’ve really become a global phenomenon in recent years.

The problem with basing your entire identity on this ethical appeal is that by itself, it's just not enough for most people.

In fact, most people that are motivated to consume these ethical brands tend to have other reasons to do so besides the ethical motivation. The more savvy ethical brands are brands that have another dimension - another brand position, a deeper identity.

In a seminal piece of research for the Journal of Brand Management, titled “Integrating ethical brands into our consumption lives”, Isabelle Szmigin identified a number of dimensions that are regularly incorporated in to the really successful ethical brands that elevate them to the point where they're saying more than just “Buy us because it’s the right thing to do”.

Here we take a look at three dimensions that have proven successful for a large number of ethical brands:

Distinction  

We know that people like to distinguish themselves from others, so here the brand tries to leverage this by making people feel like they are distinguishing themselves in some way by consuming your brand over others.

So consuming this brand shows that you are more educated or more sophisticated or more enlightened than all of these other people who “just don't get it”! 

One way people are distinguished is by having lots of money i.e. financial capital.

I think Fiji Water leverage this beautifully. Fiji are a 'natural artesian water' brand that first appeared in high end stores and restaurants. They were initially seen in New York on the menu at an elite restaurant called Jean-Georges – at a price of $10 for a litre bottle! It was presented to diners in a solid-silver Fiji Water serving case. In the UK, the brand retails for £1.95 a litre – significantly more than you would pay for other brands, like say Evian. How can Fiji achieve this? They are appealing to us to distinguish ourselves by consuming their brand that is "natural", "untouched by man", "artesian" and of course exclusive.

Yes Fiji are involved in conservation, yes they have a charity (Fiji Water Foundation) etc. But these ethical appeals are secondary elements.

Hedonism

Consumer purchases are often driven by the anticipated hedonic experience, the feelings of pleasure we’ll get from using the product. This insight has been leveraged by many successful brands over the years, including very successful ethical brands.

The organic skincare / tanning range "TanOrganic" do this extremely well. Their marketing makes reference to the fact that they are organic of course, particularly through the name but that is not their only appeal. In fact some would say it’s not even their primary appeal. TanOrganic instead go out and say we will give you "flawless, streak-free tan with the perfect fade". They offer a promise of "revitalising tired and dry skin during the harsh winter month" and then finish by saying "made from natural and organic ingredients".

This is a much better brand position than just saying organic make up is the right thing to do.

Love

This is a really popular one among ethical brands and I think the great Irish brand Glenisk do a great job positioning their brand based on 'love'. Love is rarely mentioned in marketing, which is quite a surprise given that love is such a strong motivator for so many people's behaviours. 

In this context, ethical brands are saying “if you consume this product, you are showing your love for other people or society in general”.

Glenisk discuss how "you are showing your love for society and for future generations by consuming our product". They promote the idea that we are "custodians of the land" and by consuming their products, you are showing your love for the next generation and helping "preserve the planet".

We also see actually see a hedonic aspect to Glenisk, since they tend to push the idea that all of their products are organic…and therefore they taste better! Of course the fact that they are organic is important and this provides a great way for them to differentiate their product from their competitors and add value. But if they didn't also taste great, they probably wouldn't have a business.

As we can see, ethical brands work on many different levels. Trying to base your entire identity on an ethical appeal is probably not the most successful strategy to achieve mass market appeal. It just isn’t enough for most people.

The more savvy ethical brands get this and that’s why we see the really successful ones developing much deeper identities.

Moving The Needle with Split Testing

by Keith Browning

Which subject lines get the highest open rates in your email marketing campaigns? What time of the day and which days perform best?

Which headline gets the highest click thru’s on your PPC ad’s? How about the body text?

Which landing pages convert better?

These are just a small sample of the questions you can answer with Split Testing (or A/B Testing). And these answers can have a huge impact on your business, helping you attract more customers to your website, more often and helping convert more of them once they arrive on your site.

So what exactly is Split Testing? 

Essentially it is a simple way to work out which of two options is the most effective, by testing them against each other. By "options", I mean the likes subject lines, headlines, call to action buttons, landing pages etc. And by "effective", I mean in terms of having achieved a higher open rate, click thru, email newsletter sign up or conversion - or any of many possible metrics. In the case of email marketing, a simple way to increase the effectiveness of a campaign might be to split test two subject lines against each other. In this instance, you would take a small sample of your database and split this sample in to Group A (who would receive an email with Subject Line A) and Group B (who would receive an email with Subject Line B). If you find Group A had a 15% open rate and Group B had a 30% open rate, the campaign with Subject Line B is then sent to the entire database. 

Many email marketing providers like Mail Chimp or Newsweaver here in Ireland have these Split Testing features built in to their solutions, making it very easy to do.

Figure 1: Split Testing subject lines in email marketing campaigns

How much difference can Spit Testing make? In recent testing I performed for Irelandhotels.com, who have a database of 60,000+ customers, our lower performing emails sent during split testing were getting open rates of 13% and higher performing ones were getting 20%+. As we send emails on a weekly basis, this means an extra 16,800 customers see our emails each month just by split testing subject lines and achieving opening rates of 20% instead of 13%.

What a quick, easy and effective way to move the needle - and an easy way to get started with Split Testing!

Why Cully & Sully and Keogh's Crisps Get It When It Comes To Branding

by Keith Browning

Every product or service is a brand. It doesn't matter how long the product or service has been around, how big or small the company is or how much money, if any, the company has invested in building its brand. When you think of branding as the sum total of the attitudes, opinions and associations you have about something, everything is, by definition, a brand. Just as Coca Cola, McDonald's or Nike are brands, so too are Snap Printing, UCD or your local pub. Whether you choose to manage your brand or not, however, is up to you.

A common mistake when it comes to branding is that you need a lot of money but while money certainly helps, it's not an essential ingredient. From an Irish standpoint, there have been a few individuals in recent years that have built exceptional brands on a shoestring.

Cully & Sully

Cullen Allen and Colum O'Sullivan, the founders of Cully & Sully, sold their soup company for about €9 million, less than eight years after starting. With Cully & Sully, the soup itself isn't what's amazing. Don't get me wrong, it's not bad but there is nothing spectacular about the product itself compared to the other products in their category. Further, Cully & Sully didn't actually make the product themselves - it was contracted out!

So how did two guys from Cork end up with €4.5 million each for a soup company? It's not because they're such excellent soup makers. They did it by building a strong brand. They didn't have a lot of money but they had a clear vision. It began with the name 'Cully & Sully'. As branding expert John Fanning, author of 'The Importance of Being Branded' puts it, 'it's better to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth than a wooden one' so getting the name right is important. Secondly and crucially, they had excellent pack design. This is an extremely underestimated aspect of branding, particularly in Ireland. At the time, soup packaging all tended to be cartons with lots of bright colors and text. Cully & Sully's oval containers and black coloring stood out on shelves. At that time, choosing black as the color for a food product was a risky move but certainly paid off.

They also have excellent copy, alluding to their Ballymaloe background without going completely overboard with it. They clearly found inspiration for the copy from Innocent smoothies but then Innocent got theirs from Ben & Jerry's. Generally this isn't an issue as long as you're in different industries. As long as you can stand out in your category, taking proven strategies from others and applying them to your own can be a great move.

Finally, Cully & Sully are media friendly guys, who went out to food markets, fairs and shows up and down the country like Taste of Dublin & Bloom. This combined with the name, copy, design, packaging, Ballymaloe background and media friendliness all built the Cully & Sully brand. A brand that consumers bought in to and international firms were willing to pay millions for. And a brand that didn't cost millions to build. The soup itself is not bad either!

Keogh's Crisps

Keogh's set up their crisp brand when they saw the potato market in decline, as Irish people became more and more sophisticated in their tastes. They purchased the necessary equipment and began to produce crisps on their farm. But how is another crisp brand to differentiate in a crowded marketplace, competing against long established firms? They did it by building a powerful brand.

Here we have a group of genuine Irish potato farmers making crisps. What a great story! They actually look quite cool (for farmers!) and photograph well, which is a big help. Producing "hand cooked crisps on our farm", Keogh's crisps are "grown with love in Ireland". They have a fantastic gimmick in 'Spud Nav', which allows consumers to trace their crisps back to the farm based on a number on each pack that can be entered in to their website! They have flavors like 'Shamrock and Sour Cream', which sets them apart from competitors, as it's different and distinctly Irish. The packaging is good and premium, although personally I prefer some of the others in their category like Kettle's.

I think Keogh's are one to watch. They just recently signed a deal with Tesco UK but getting on to supermarket shelves in the UK is only the beginning I feel. After all, if Ireland can't be famous for potatoes around the world, what can we be famous for?!

The point here is that it's very difficult to create a point of difference with your actual product. Products are so easily replicable. But you can do it with your marketing communication. Cully & Sully and Keogh's are just two in a long list of examples of individuals that have built very strong brands without spending millions doing so. And building a strong brand means more customers are willing to purchase from you, more regularly - and are prepared to pay a premium price for your product. What more could you ask of your brand?!

Real Time Marketing & The Herd Mentality of Marketers

by Keith Browning

The Luis Suarez biting incident at the World Cup this week has shown (in case anyone was still unsure) that the new era of Real Time Marketing is well and truly upon us. In truth, that era probably began with the famous Oreo Super Bowl tweet that received so much attention from the public. That tweet became the envy of marketing professionals the world over, clocking up over 15,880 retweets and 6,200 favorites. 

Of course, most brands’ attempt at Real Time Marketing doesn’t tend to work out as well as the Oreo tweet. In fact, many tend to be poorly executed, not on brand and simply not particularly clever. The Oreo tweet was timed perfectly and was a very quick response that made light of an unexpected event. The stars aligned and it became a hit. The herd mentality that has followed from some brands attempts at real-time marketing has only served to make them look a bit awkward and try hard. Most get little to no traction. 

Some marketers explain that they “plan” for real time events but is this really something you can do? Scott Monty, Ford’s global head of social media doesn’t think so. “Brands declaring they are planning real-time marketing initiatives during high-profile events is the modern-day equivalent of saying ‘we’re going to make a viral video’– it’s poor form and 99 percent of the time it falls flat.” I couldn’t agree more. I’ve always found the humour that comes naturally from normal conversion with friends is much funnier than someone telling a pre-planned joke. 

So should you bother with real time marketing? 

Yes! In this socially connected world we live in, you must engage with your community. You must stay relevant. And real time marketing presents us with a real opportunity. That said, creating a tweet that isn't on-brand, for the sake of it is pointless - even if it is “in the moment”. However, creating something that is natural, communicated in an “authentic” voice and on brand is a different story. 

Of course this is what you should be doing anyway, whether it's real time or not! 

But getting the first part right is the essential part. The real time element will then multiply the relevancy of this infinitely and you just might be the next Oreo! 

Paddy Power is the best example of this I’ve seen, certainly in Ireland. Their tweets are always on brand but when they add in the real time element, they usually get excellent traction. When Pope Benedict XVI handed in his resignation and the world’s eyes were on the Vatican, Paddy Power came in with a funny tweet about Peter Odemwingie (who had fallen out of favour at West Brom and then got turned down by QPR) throwing his name in to the hat. 

Here Paddy Power jumped in to a trending event with a clever tweet that was on brand and perfectly timed. They owned the moment. Interestingly, most of Paddy’s Power viral success with real time marketing has come on Twitter and this tends to be the case with most real time marketing successes. 

One of the biggest successes around the Luis Suarez incident was Snickers, with their real time marketing attempt. With Snickers' core market being young males and their product being a food, this tweet was on brand. It sounded like Snickers and it added to their brand. Notably, despite having 11 million fans on Facebook and only 50,000 Twitter followers, they managed to clock up a whopping 34,994 retweets and 14,754 favourites, compared to just 3,250 likes and 800 shares on Facebook!

This would seem to add to the argument that Facebook organic reach is dead - and that Twitter is the place for real time marketing.

Have you tried Real Time Marketing? How has it worked out for you?

***Update*** Click here to see the Tops & Flops of Real Time Marketing during the 2014 World Cup!