Proctor & Gamble’s Mission to Solve the Internet Marketing Puzzle

October 24, 2006 | 5 Comments

“I believe today’s marketing model is broken. We are applying antiquated thinking and work systems to a new world of possibilities…The traditional marketing model is obsolete.”– Jim Stengel, Global Marketing Officer, P & G, Association of National Advertisers, Oct 2004.

There is a growing realisation that marketing attitudes have to change. The mass marketing tactics of the last fifty years no longer penetrate audiences like they used to. A shift in the whole approach is needed if marketing messages are to resonate with an increasingly cynical consumer.

When discussing marketing it doesn’t get any bigger than Proctor & Gamble. With brands like Ariel, Head and Shoulders, Pampers and Crest, P & G should be leading the way in pushing their products into people’s homes.

With the mega brand no longer revered as some sort of deity, P & G are now learning how to engage with their consumers, and to persuade them to respond positively to their products.

P & G has a long tradition of innovation in the way that they market their products. They were the first advertise nationally and took product placement to another level with their TV ‘Soap’ Operas, designed to hook female viewers onto their soaps and shampoos.

P & G recently enlisted an army of 600,000 ‘connectors’ in their ‘Vocalpoint’ campaign (an extension of their earlier ‘Tremor’ scheme amongst teenagers). These ‘connectors’ were provided with coupons and free samples to spread the word about P & G products.

As Steve Knox, Vocalpoint CEO, recognised, “we know that the most important form of marketing is an advocacy message from a trusted friend.”

With Vocalpoint, P & G used the power and trust of social networks to promote their brands. People might no longer listen to advertising, but they will always listen to the advice of friends.

The fact that change was on the horizon had already been identified by their former CMO, Bob Weiliing. In a 2002 interview, Bob explained that the Internet might not replace the mass ‘push’ medium of TV. But instead could be tailored to the individual.

The web is perfect for those who want to learn more about a product or service. Gaining advice and the latest product news on demand are not services available on a ‘push’ medium. TV is about the mass market message. The internet is for individual relationship building.

Bob’s conclusion was that P&G’s future success lay in working out how to combine the two. Maintaining the relevancy of the 30 second TV ad, whilst also using the extended attention and interaction of the web. The two warring marketing factions would also have to start work ing together. The technophobes would have to start talking to the internet evangelists to find a solution.

In 2005, P & G cut their TV ad spend by 8% to a mere $677.3 million. A bold move and a definitive shift into new areas.

Earlier this year, they contacted digital and interactive agencies in the UK to put together its first digital agency roster for Western Europe. Their remit: to find innovative new ways of populating P&G’s brands online.

We are now seeing the rise of interactive websites designed to capture eye balls and encourage return visits.

Last year a music themed site for Old Spice was launched. Offering free song downloads, it was  firmly designed to appeal to the 16-24 iTunes generation.

During the FIFA World Cup, a YouTube style website was launched for Pringles crisps. People could upload videos of themselves imitating the TV ad and get their five minutes of online fame.

Websites for a youth audience clearly aim to develop the brand through interaction, relevancy and entertainment.

P & G are clearly looking to apply the philosophy of engagement to their sites. By providing content of value you develop trust and confidence. Your visitors are then more likely to want a relationship with your brand and become customers.

The Pampers website builds an affinity with its audience through the provision of advice and help. As a valuable resource for young mums, it enriches their association with the brand, and will provoke a desirable response next time they go shopping for nappies.

P & G’s Home Made Simple website is a flagship in online marketing. Instead of being blasted with product placement, the website simply provides useful tips and self help videos. Once your trust is gained you will inevitably sign up for the newsletter. The further barrage of free samples, coupons, special offers and sweepstakes will further  pull you into their trap of becoming a convert to their products.

‘Home Made Simple’ provides the perfect buying environment by developing trust, and the desire to have a relationship with their brand. What the new style of online marketing is all about.

At the Association of National Advertisers Conference, earlier this month, Jim Stengal and P & G’s CEO, A.G. Lafley, outlined their mission to carry their brands into the ‘pull’ age of relationship marketing.

Lafley reinforced the views of Bob Weiling: they had to learn how to make connections with their audience through the various ‘touch points’. Their future lay in learning how to integrate their message across all the mediums. Rather than relying on the old one way ‘push’ bombardment.

Lafley’s key point was that they had to learn how to “let go” as “the more in control we are the more out of touch we become.” P & G needed to move beyond thinking in terms of merely transactions. And instead focus on building relationships by being more responsive and receptive to what their audience wanted.

Jim Stengal opened his speech with a plea to his fellow marketers to “stop thinking about consumers and start thinking about people.” He was suggesting a paradigm shift in how they approached marketing and advertising.

Their customers were no longer just demographics. But individuals to be empathised and engaged with. They had to be able to listen to what people wanted instead of just telling them what the brand should mean to them. A new level of understanding needed to be created on why people should place trust in a relationship with P & G’s brands, rather than simply superficially appealing to their desires.

Many Internet marketers are eager to hammer the nails into TV’s coffin. Whilst traditional advertising execs sit on their hands waiting for the ‘web 2.0′ bubble to burst.

P & G have been steadily moving from a monolithic, lumbering marketing dinosaur into an Internet savvy, feedback focused advertiser. By being an early adopter of the new ‘trust’ marketing philosophy, P & G should be on the right track to solving the puzzle of marketing online, and maturing their brand’s message for the sceptical consumer.

Posted by Matt Ambrose | Filed Under Marketing 

Traditional Marketing Attacked Whilst Internet Marketing Spend Increases 24%

October 17, 2006 | 2 Comments

Traditional marketing methods have been attacked as being in “a dreadful state” by Virgin Games Marketing Director, Ross Sleight. Speaking at London’s Mermaid Theatre, Ross bemoaned the poor return gained by increased marketing spend, and how traditional methods are now failing to penetrate their audience.

Ross attributed this to the “closed loop systems in terms of blogging and social networks” with conversations taking place that were blocking the mass marketing messages getting through. He went on to recognise that it was becoming increasingly important for brands to find new ways of reaching their consumers. They ignored the explosion in online social networking, and the change in attitudes towards advertising, at their peril.

Generations have now grown up living under the bombardment of so much advertising and marketing messages that traditional methods are no longer getting through. It appears people can now block out the frequency at which advertising is pitched. Marketers are now having to adapt to both the online world, which is sucking audiences away from the box and glossy magazines, as well as to the new attitude they are encountering, which is none too appreciative of being blatantly sold to. TV and magazines have served as such excellent sales vehicles for so long that it is only with great reluctance that marketers are starting to reassess their approach.

A one way assault of the senses has sufficed in selling to mass audiences for so long that marketers seem to have forgotten what good sales technique is all about. People want transparency, honesty and trust in how they are sold to. Telling stories, relationship building and developing confidence over time are proven techniques that can achieve these aims. Marketing doesn’t so much have to evolve as go back to its roots, to go back to basics.

Its no longer a prerequisite for a professional website to open with fanfares and flash graphics exploding in people’s faces. What it still has to do is to develop a relationship with its audience so they want an association with your product or service. Web design has gone beyond pure aesthetics and a bit of hard hitting copywriting on the homepage. Your website is now becoming an organic, evolving reflection of your brand and businesses personality.

As more and more people flock to the Internet, for buying products and services, your website becomes a more potent weapon in your marketing arsenal. Not only does it have to project your brand and business, but also has to create an association with its audience. Marketers need to start thinking about digging out their old copywriting handbooks to think of ways of using their content to build relationships with their consumers.

Your website should be used for fashioning compelling stories that develop trust and confidence, and to convince your readers that you can help improve their lives. You want to create an ongoing story that will capture people’s attention and develop the sales process over time through subtle persuasion.

With Internet Explorer 7 imminently about to spread onto people’s browsers, and the penetration of RSS into the mass market, you need to start realising that your content is becoming the most important element of your website. Utilising RSS means your news and information can be distributed all over the web, and hook readers from a number of different sources before reeling them in back to your main website.

You also need to start thinking of your website as a bee’s hive with your content acting as an army of worker bees, flying all over the web to collect readers and bring them back to consume more of your website’s honey. Your content is what will attract readers, keep them subscribed to your news and information and then transform them into customers.

Ross Sleight’s comments, that traditional marketing’s influence is waning, carry even more poignancy when you consider that UK Internet marketing spend, as announced yesterday, has increased by 24%. This was part of the first overall increase in marketing expenditure in the UK for 18 months. The lion’s share of this has been in Internet marketing and direct marketing. Traditional marketing has continued to see its funding fall as its audience and impact continues to dwindle. Many marketers must be scratching their heads at how to penetrate mass audiences like they used to.

I would expect that the majority of the increased online marketing spend relates to pay-per-click campaigns, rather than ongoing website development. Marketing still seems to revolve around getting as many eyeballs as possible onto your online presence first and then thinking about what you feed those eyeballs once they have arrived.

The increase of 24% in Internet marketing spend also has to be put into context. Although 11.5% of businesses allocate a significant budget online, 49 % still allocate 1% or less on the web. There can be little doubt, however, that we will be witnessing a dramatic rise in this percentage over the years to come.

Posted by Matt Ambrose | Filed Under Copywriting 

Chris Anderson on ‘The Long Tail’

October 12, 2006 | Leave a Comment

The Internet can potentially turn the traditional business model on its head. It is now possible to sell your niche products to a global marketplace, and reach consumers way outside your normal 50 mile radius catchment area.

Chris Anderson – editor of Wired magazine – coined The Long Tail to explain how the Internet was changing the means of consumption and commerce. In this audio he provides a summary of his theory and the background to writing his ground breaking book.

Posted by Matt Ambrose | Filed Under Search Engine Optimisation, blogging 

Before You Can Conquer The World You First Have To Secure Your Own Backyard

October 10, 2006 | 2 Comments

These are exciting times for small businesses. The rush is on to find the best way of using the web to propel your product to a larger audience and reach the global marketplace. But before you start dreaming of exotic holidays and fast cars you have to first ensure you are already covering your own backyard. After all, The Beatles would never have cracked America if they had failed to sell any records back home.

Business models are changing fast. But you should never underestimate the importance of reaching your local consumers. The fact is that the majority of businesses conduct most of their trade within a 50 mile radius. Ensuring that people in your vicinity can find you as easily as possible is crucial.

The latest research from the US suggests that more and more people are searching for, and finding, local businesses and services online. Global exposure can still be your long-term goal and dream. But reaching local consumers should be your priority - and is a lot easier to achieve.

Research by Comscore networks showed that in the US 63% of interviewed net users conducted a local search in July 2006 compared to only 43% the previous year. These searches were for local restaurants, entertainment and businesses. The most promising stat is that this in turn led to 41% making contact online.

The Yellow Pages is now being left to gather dust in a cupboard, whilst the days of ringing costly directory enquiry lines might be coming to an end. The Internet is a resource for information and is increasingly the medium on which people will find your business.

Developing your web presence so that the search engines push you onto people’s screens has never been easier. And it doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg via a short term pay-per-click ad campaign. PPC is fine if you know your conversion percentage. But for smaller businesses, just looking to capture more targeted visitors in your local area, it’s probably not the most cost effective solution.

Posting to your blog once a week with relevant material will not only develop the sales process but will ‘organically’ optimise your website for search. Depending on the competitiveness of your keywords, you could be hitting the top of Google and Yahoo for local search terms in less than two months.

The advantage we have in the UK is that business blogging is still in its infancy. This is largely due to lack of awareness and reluctance to invest time and money in a new marketing technique with no obvious, immediate ROI. This simply means that the early adopters will find it easier to push their website to the top of their local search terms - and capture the most targeted traffic as a result.

Research by Fasthosts (a web hosting company) revealed that although half of UK SME businesses think they should be blogging only 3% actually plan to start. When you consider the growing importance of local search, ensuring your website is as easy to find as possible should be regarded as mission critical.

Marketing is no longer simply a case of carpet bombing your area with leaflets and placing an ad in the local paper. Maximising the optimisation of your web presence for search is essential for reaching an increasingly web savvy population.

Posted by Matt Ambrose | Filed Under Search Engine Optimisation 

Spin is Dead. Long Live the Political Blog and Cue David ‘One Take’ Cameron

October 2, 2006 | Leave a Comment

“I think it’s called the internet, isn’t it, or blogs or something. I’ve only just got used to letters…I haven’t got into all this new technology.” – John Prescott, 6th July 2006.

It was admitted earlier this year that Tony Blair struggled to use a word processor, whilst his head of communications, Alistair Campbell, had never watched YouTube or networked on MySpace. Some politicians might even have grown up with chalk and slate at school, but if they want their message to get through to the web savvy generation they are going to have to catch up fast.

There is a popular theory that people have been bombarded with so many adverts and one way messages that traditional marketing techniques just aren’t effective anymore. People have simply stopped believing, or listening to, the hundreds of adverts they are exposed to everyday. The same theory can be applied to modern day politics.

British Politics has, for the last decade at least, been awash with the use of ‘spin’ and manipulation of the media to strategically release news stories and influence voters. This has always been fairly easy to do. TV and newspapers are always hungry for headlines, and their front pages can always be directed by throwing them a few choice disclosures and ‘quotes’. Elections are being fought by teams of PR executives and image consultants as much as they are by policies.

The problem that politicians now face is that a generation has grown up with ‘spin’ enshrined in their psyche. This generation no longer accepts what they are told at face value. They have been fed so many false claims and massaged figures that they simply are incapable of believing anything a politician has to say. The double whammy is that they now have the resources to question and corroborate what they are told and discover when they have been lied to. This could have a major impact on the ballot box.

As with traditional marketers, politicians are going to have to learn how to engage with people online rather than dictate to them with one way messages. This means greater transparency and visibility into explaining how they formulate their policies and why. Otherwise their online presence is going to have a very short lifespan before it is discredited and abandoned as yet another vehicle for ‘spin’.

Last weekend David Cameron launched his new blog, webcameron.org.uk, kitted out with YouTube style videos and a whole section for people to post their comments. This has been intended as a ‘risky’ new way of engaging with the growing online audience and providing a new stage for political debate.

The first video presents an image of domesticity and casualness carefully stage managed to reflect sincerity and develop familiarity and trust with the audience. Any online marketer would be able to tell you that anything too contrived or polished would carry short shrift with the web savvy community. David ‘One Take’ Cameron’s videos are designed to give us an insight into who he is and what he stands for. But they will only succeed if their message is genuine and kept out of the spin doctor’s grasp.

David Cameron’s blog reflects the growing awareness amongst businesses and institutions of the importance of a web presence, and using it to engage and interact with your target audience. More and more people are abandoning newspapers and TV and getting their news and information online. But it is not only the format that is changing but also the style of the content.

Marketing spiel and corporate claptrap don’t work on the web, and using ‘spin’ has every chance of enraging enough people to create a tsunami sized backlash. The politicians are going to have to tread carefully as there will be plenty of people looking for when they veer too far from the facts. And will be eager to report it when they do.

It would be nice to believe that Cameron’s new blog reflects a shift in politics towards greater transparency, honesty and a clear move away from spin. His blog will only succeed as a political tool if he can provide commentary of substance and robust discussion. Unfortunately, substance seems to be where his campaign is receiving the most criticism at present.

By starting a blog Cameron is opening himself to be challenged by his online commentators. How he responds and presents himself will show whether he relies on shallow spin and point scoring - or actually has something to say.

Posted by Matt Ambrose | Filed Under blogging