Just how special and different are financial services brands?

This morning I took part in a lively debate organised by the Financial Services Forum and their newly formed Brand Strategy group chaired by the inestimable Lucian Camp.

I shared the floor with Tim Pile who is CEO of Cogent Elliott and has a long and distinguished career in marketing including being CEO of Sainsburys Bank and the insightful Mike Hoban who is now running marketing for DirectGov and has had successful stints at Scottish Widows and Barclaycard.

We were each asked by Lucian to describe the essence of brand building in either Packaged goods (Tim took this on), Services (excluding financial services - Mike took this one) and Financial Services (this was mine).

My key point was that I believe many of the principles of brand building are common irrespective of category because essentially we are dealing with human psychology but that the context of these principles within financial services does make it "special and different".

Three context differences in financial services:

1. Financial services companies are hard wired around product and P&L analysis rather than brand and customer.

This means that the power within financial services companies almost always resides within commercial product owners rather than marketing. These leaders are trained in P&L, balance sheet risk, regulatory compliance, operational effectiveness not marketing, brand, experience and customer.

The very logic of brand building, positioning for strategic competitive advantage, customer segmentation, product development based on consumer need are all more difficult concepts in a financial services organisation. The result is an industry that in general creates me-too products which are overly complex, often game the consumer, provide a poor overall experience and are communicated in complex jargon.

2. Financial services are delivered through people. And people are much harder to manage than a shampoo formulation.

Certainly in most product categories especially the FMCG companies, brands are entities created to effectively penetrate the customer mind and form associations with product performance rather than being a set of associations about a group of people doing something. In most cases in FMCG companies the brand you are marketing is not the brand you work for. Given most financial services organisations have one or only a few brand the internal service and brand alignment challenge in these brands is core and material to their success. From the Indian call centre agent to the CEO in a financial organisation each needs to understand the brand and how it applies to their job.

3. Financial services products tend to be more risky and complex than many other types of products or services. They require much more effort from the consumer and the provider.

An irony of financial services businesses is that the organisation often believes they are the most commoditised of products. I used to be told all the time at Capital One – credit cards are a “low involvement” business. Consumers take a product and then want us to disappear into the background.

But having spent lots of time obsessing about how to make white gloop in a bottle exciting to consumers, I don’t think that financial services products are or should be low involvement – they have a massive impact on people’s lives and well being.

If they low involvement its probably because they are difficult and complex to communicate and understand. This combines with the terrible mess we are in from a regulatory perspective, defaulting to complete, unedited exposure of all information, to make it extremely difficult for the consumer to make an informed and empowered decision.

And finally (as Lucian called it the "Basini bombshell") I ended up questioning one of the core purposes of brand building:

4. Financial services brands – it's not about being different but about making a difference

The strategic goal of marketing in many businesses is to create a differentiated position in the market that gives you competitive advantage through cheaper cost of sales or price premium for example. Of the many principles that we could consider this is perhaps one of the most fundamental.

Actually I’m not sure this has been proven effective for the main stream brands in financial services. If we look at our banks for example. A highly consolidated and inert market with very little to split apart the businesses products, performance or promise.  Certainly not enough to encourage mass switching to occur except maybe in those more liquid and more easily gamed products like credit cards.

In highly competitive and easily switched categories there is definite advantage to creating new ideas that better match and deliver against the consumer’s myriad needs. But the difference in financial services given their complex, impactful and long term nature is that aim shouldn’t be to create the new, new thing to gain share at the expense of customer loyalty but to focus on superior product reliability and partnership as a route to extracting competitive advantage and value. This is how our organisations and products can make a difference.

As marketers, we may not be in the right job to get to the CEO spot, we might be wired a little differently from the mainstream in our organisations but given our products are difficult and risky, and are built through human relationships and service, we have myriad opportunities to build great brands which have lasting value for our organisations and customers.

Lucian's blog on the session can be read here. 

Here is my presentation as a slidecast:

Just How Special & Different Are Financial Services Brands?

View more presentations from Justin Basini.

Thanks for reading. As always please share and comment if you've got a view.

Justin

Mail me: justin@basini.com
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Brands: if you want trust give trust

Brands and businesses always want to be trusted. But rarely do they trust their customers to understand how business works. This is why most organisations mission or values statements don't include simple direct statements of what businesses are there, in part, to do which is make money. Businesses and corporations assume that we distrust them and therefore act defensively. In some cases, often the high profile ones, covered by the media, this default position of distrust is right but the vast majority of businesses, those that many of us work for, and employ our friends and family members, are full of good people trying to deliver well for their customers and make a fair profit in return, and money for themselves.

But most businesses, especially the big ones, are pathologically scared of saying anything that isn't on message. And those messages are devoid of reality because they just don't trust normal people to understand that running businesses is not easy, a balancing act and they have to make a return on their efforts. The cancer in these organisations are the public relations and corporate affairs departments that are obsessed with controlling the message, saying as little as possible, and where success is staying hidden.

In my experience most people are fair and reasonable. We understand that businesses need to make money, but we want them to give us good services and not exploit us for super-profitability. But most corporations treat us like we are cynical, conspiracy theorists or anti-business. And this has created a culture, especially in Britain, France and Germany, where making a profit is seen as inherently exploitative and almost immoral.

Witness John Petter from BT this morning (12th Feb 2010) on BBC Breakfast. Since BBC doesn't replay Breakfast (can someone upload the interview to YouTube? YES ITS HERE) I'll give a sense of the Tweets that were going round that summarise his performance:

jhemusinsignia: BT spokesman on BBC Breakfast was v.poor: why are people lacking the necessary skills put forward? Train them or use someone else

charlie74: BBC Breakfast presenter grilling the BT rep on TV... loved it

Tommy_Hill: Anyone else think the BT guy was seriously floundering on BBCBreakfast? "I don't know if we'll make money on it".. Bulls**t

zenemu: #BT chap who was just on the BBC was a bit of a worm. BT are changing free evening calls from 6pm to 7. Odious little man from awful company

RAIPR: Wtchng John Petter, BT directr justify 7pm off-peak move on BBC. Nervy, defensive, dncng feet, looking away from cam, stuttering #fail

imogenfarr: Anyone see the BBC Breakfast interview with the squirming BTspokesperson? Blimey, he'd never have coped if he was interrogated by Paxman.

There is no doubt that his performance this morning was very poor but I suspect rather than being a consequence of not enough media training, it was caused by too much media training. Having been through several versions of this torture myself these sessions are focused on Corporate Affairs/Public Relations/Media people drilling you. "Don't say this, say that", "don't answer questions directly" and most importantly don't tell the truth. Don't lie, don't tell the truth, better to not say anything at all.

This goes right to the heart of the way that businesses present themselves currently. There is no longer a recognition, a trust, that we understand how businesses work. Read the mission and values of BT (taken from their website this morning):


"Our vision

Our vision is to be dedicated to helping customers thrive in a changing world. The world we live in and the way we communicate are changing, and we believe in progress, growth and possibility. We want to help all our customers make their lives and businesses better with products and services that are tailored to their needs and easy to use.

This means getting ever closer to customers, understanding their lifestyles and their businesses, and establishing long-term relationships with them.

We're passionate about customers and are working to meet the needs they have today and innovating to meet the needs they will have tomorrow.

Our values

Our corporate identity defines the kind of company we are now and the one we need to be in the future.

Central to that identity is a commitment to create ways to help customers thrive in a changing world. To do this we must live our brand values:

• Trustworthy - we do what we say we will
• Helpful - we work as one team 
• Inspiring - we create new possibilities
• Straightforward - we make things clear
• Heart - we believe in what we do

We are committed to contributing positively to society and to a sustainable future. This is part of the heart of BT."

I can guarantee that John Petter and his boss Gavin Patterson spend most of their time obsessing about how they can organise their business to make money, grow and be cost efficient, whilst giving a good service. That's what they get rewarded for. And yet making a fair return, making money for themselves and their employees, is no where to be seen in the mission and values of BT. These vision, mission and values statements have become divorced from reality, and its not just BT that suffer this problem.

Every business person that goes through a media training torture session comes out scared to death of saying anything, and is certainly left with the impression that having an open conversation about working hard to deliver value whilst making money is completely "off message".

That's what you could hear this morning from Mr Petter. His message was "buy unlimited packages" and he automaton-like repeated this time and time again. Charlie Stayt asked for a commitment from him that the prices would always be better value now and in the future, something which was impossible to answer on the couch in a studio. But instead of calmly responding, as Mr Petter might in a normal conversation with you or me, that BT always wanted to be good value, but that these decisions needed to be properly planned his only reply was "buy unlimited packages". He thereby demonstrated that he didn't trust those listening to his interview to conclude that he was a reasonable man with a reasonable approach and, yep, these things generally needed to be thought about.

Even when Susannah Reid asked him directly why he didn't just explain that giving customers free calls meant that they didn't make enough money, he wasn't brave or trusting enough, to agree and admit that giving a good service and making a fair profit was what they were trying to do. All he could say was "buy unlimited packages".

I felt sorry for John Petter this morning, a classic victim of media training where the goal is to say nothing, and a corporate and cultural context where trusting people to understand that businesses are there to try and give good services that we all need, and make a fair profit in return, is unacceptable.

Unfortunately until brands and businesses start to wake up to the fact that trust is a two way relationship, they will never win our trust.

Did you see the interview this morning. What do you think?
Do you work for BT? How did you feel?
Have you been media trained? What is your experience?

Please comment below and share with others using the social media icons.

Thanks - have a lovely, non-business, non-brand, non-marketing weekend and Valentine's day.

Justin

Mail me: justin@basini.com
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Morality and Banking

Yesterday I attended a talk at the RSA by John Lanchester who has recently written a book called Whoops! about the credit crunch.

The talk and subsequent questioning was mostly about the role of culture and regulation in banking; with the audience and speaker exploring how to develop a system that might be more sustainable.

I wrote a blog called Banking and the Common Good a while back which explored how the concept of common good could be placed as a central focus of a financial institution. Today’s blog picks up on some of these concepts.

The question is how we create a banking system that actually balances commercial objectives with social objectives that deliver benefit to the common good. I believe that a new language of responsibility needs to be imposed on the banks. Nearly all banks will tutor their leaders in Business Ethics; all banks have values statements that will include some version of “doing the right thing”.

But despite these words and intentions we still have a system that doesn’t in aggregate and from a macro-economic perspective deliver “the right thing” and act ethically in its impact. The frustration is that there are very few financial institutions that deliberately act in a clearly unethical way decision by decision, action by action, but in aggregate the effect is destructive.

The heart of the issue for me is one of what banks, especially investment banks, markets focused institutions and bank leadership more generally, value. And that is money, to this everything else is subservient. This is why banks are so successful, they have created extremely efficient systems for maximising profit to the exclusion of virtually all else. This creates inattentional blindness, which is the psychological phenomenon of being “blind” to anything apart from that which you are concentrating on, add hubris and you have a system that builds risk and is narrowly focused on one immediate outcome.

This valuing of one outcome only, with little assessment of second and third order effects and impacts, allows for a culture to become devoid of morals. And that moral bankruptcy turned into financial bankruptcy.

So what to do? Remembering that business ethics and values were taught and “on the wall” at our big financial institutions and offered no protection.

I would advocate a complete reversal of the incentive systems at our banks. We need an incentive system that puts most emphasis on demonstrating moral action and joined up thinking rather than seeking risk for greater return. This should be in an overtly, openly discussed moral framework. Leaders in these organisations need to become expert not just in maths and playing the markets, but seeing the impact of their business on different stakeholders and balancing this for commercial and social return.

Morality is at the very heart of our economic system. Adam Smith’s conception of markets was built on predictable outcomes between buyer and seller. The foundations of these predictable outcomes, in a time when regulation and rules of commerce were much less regimented and established than they are now, were moral action from individuals. I don’t think it is surprising that The Theory of Moral Sentiments, that Smith wrote 15 years prior to The Wealth of Nations and the majority of the books in The Wealth deal with how individuals living in society should conduct themselves. In order for the invisible hand, specialisation and the market dynamic to work as a value exchange there needs to be trust and in Smith’s conception this comes from morality.

This morality will need to be imposed. Major financial institutions have regressed back to the status quo, as John Lanchester said yesterday “the system is as risky as ever”. They will never voluntarily accept any balances to their earning power. So this will need to come from changed systems of regulation.

But this creates a paradox in that regulation, with its rule based approach, enables a moral vacuum by replacing human judgement with an attitude of “if we stay within the rules we are acting responsibly”. Ironically the FSA (the UK bank regulator) knew this. Over the past few years anyone working in a UK bank will be familiar with the pre-crash mantra of “principle based regulation”. No longer were we to work just within the “rules” but to their spirit. It didn’t work because it stayed at the surface, and people’s behaviour doesn’t change, in many cases the people need to change.

By changing what is valued in banks this will change who progresses within the organisations. This will be a key to unlock a new system. Let’s open up board positions on banks to a wider audience. What’s clear from the past two years is that having a career in banking behind you doesn’t give you any special insight or understanding so let’s have a more diverse group from environmentalists, to community leaders, to customers, having a real voice in the running of financial institutions.

It has been said that markets are amoral. That maybe true but they don’t work unless their participants act morally. Creating moral financial institutions working for commercial gain and the social common good is the challenge.

Please comment below and share using the social bookmark icons. Thanks as ever for reading.

Justin

Mail me: justin@basini.com
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Trendhunter Pro - cutting edge trend hunting from around the globe

Last year I recommended the best selling book - Exploiting Chaos - by a friend of mine Jeremy Gutsche.

Jeremy's website Trend Hunter continues to go from strength to strength. His model is fascinating. He has thousands of "trend hunters" posting interesting content about stuff happening all over the world. But what I really love is the way that they are exploiting and developing insight from this content.

The guys have launched a new service called TrendHunter Pro Trend Reports. These are great syntheses of what is hot from all the content posted on Trend Hunter. If you are in consumer insight or want to know about the real cutting edge trends happening now then they are worth looking at. Trend Hunter is great example of how powerful the democratisation of the creation of content is to delivering insight and value.

Click here to visit Trend Hunter.

[Disclosure: If you buy through the above link then I receive a commission on this sale. This does not affect my recommendation of what I think is a good product. If you prefer not to recognise my recommendation through a commission then you can use this link: www.trendhunter.com]

Have fun exploiting what's hot and what's not!

Justin

Mail me: justin@basini.com
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Cadbury-Kraft takeover: already destroying value?

This morning Cadbury, the UK multi-national confectionery manufacturer, and Kraft, the US based multi-national food conglomerate, announced they had agreed the much contested takeover bid for £11.5bn. I am a consumer and shareholder of Cadbury.

Food brands are all about trust, and chocolate even more so because it is an emotional category. Cadbury is an iconic British brand with a rich and socially aware history. In its early days Cadbury was a major employer of women and had a paternalistic attitude to its employees (in a good sense) investing in their welfare. Cadbury is one of the most trusted brands especially in the UK regularly coming in the top 10 of brand trust surveys. Even this morning on it's website the headline graphic was "values led, performance driven". 


Is Cadbury's history of commercial success in a social context important or relevant anymore? 


@urbanfly tweeted this morning "There's a romantic idea that Cadbury is a Birmingham company. They're a global corporation who buy out other companies". 


Whilst Cadbury is a global corporation I believe that history is an important part of the embedded value of any company. Brands are created by people and their actions. And the mythology of a company is important as an implicit guide for those making decisions, providing a different perspective or a pause for thought. 


Of course there is another side of Cadbury. They benefited hugely from the British Empire, but more recently have been a huge buyer of FairTrade commodities especially in West Africa.

A descendent of Cadbury's founder called the takeover "a horror story" according to the BBC. Felicity Loudon, George Cadbury's great-granddaughter said, "Every single iconic brand is going - we sell out everything." Of course this isn't important in of itself but I think it is the attitude that many will feel as we see this great British company consumed.

The takeover has been justified because the companies want to secure growth and save cost with now warm words between the parties saying how the best of Cadbury will be retained. But I doubt this will happen. I've worked on both sides of the fence being acquired and acquiring in my corporate career. Cultures rarely merge well. The company taking over inevitably dominates and imposes its values and decision making processes.

What all this means is a challenge to the very logic and price paid for the takeover by Kraft of Cadbury. Another reload of the Cadbury website this morning proclaimed "creating brands people love".

And here is the rub....of the £11.5bn paid a major part of this will be goodwill. A major part of this goodwill will be the intangible value of the Cadbury brands. From the reaction on Twitter and in the press the destruction of this goodwill has been palpable already. The provenance and corporate background of brands is increasingly important to people. In our transparent society information on the companies that make the brands "we love" is so much easier, we know their stories and a sense of where they come from. The fact that Cadbury has been promoting its use of FairTrade in advertising is all about proving they are true to being led by their values.



Given the arguments over the deal, the context of the UK economy and the shameful collapse in manufacturing in the UK's manufacturing base over the past 20 years this takeover will get a huge amount of coverage both now and in the future. The result for consumers will be the perception, even slight, that their bar of Dairy Milk is less satisfying than it was before. Even if the taste of the chocolate stays the same (a big topic on Twitter!), the "taste" of the brands will be tainted for ever.

There is no doubt that a great British company and brand died this morning.

What's your view? Do you think the takeover will destroy or create value? Comment now!

Thanks

Justin

Mail me: justin@basini.com
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Here is a  live feed of comments on the deal from Twitter:

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Innovation that your customers might actually care about

I've been thinking about the new stuff that companies do.

Innovation. Too many projects in businesses are given that title. It devalues the word and what it should really mean. It leads to that sad statistic that 80% of new products launched don't survive....which given companies are generally very risk adverse is a pretty pathetic hit rate.

Unfortunately most companies believe that implementing anything new is innovation, which is more a reflection of how difficult they make it to get stuff done rather than anything that would make a real person go "wow - that's neat".

That's not to say that a whole range of things can't build your business but if we are honest with each other most of it isn't innovation. Try this simple categorisation test for the new stuff you or your company are working on:

CATEGORY 1: Stuff your customers think you already do because you are behind the curve or is so obvious that you should do like....

• An innovation CRM project that allows your company to know when a customer has called (all service companies want this and most don't have it covered yet)
• An innovation IT system that allows your company to see a single view of a customer (i.e. you know what products I have from you) (all the big banks want this but most don't have it)
• Servicing your account online or opting for e-statements (Barclaycard have been pushing this to their customers in the last year or so as they played catch up)

CATEGORY 2: Stuff your customers think you should do already like.....

• Giving me a accurate bill for my gas and electricity (British Gas are advertising this now)
• Calling to tell me when you are going to get to my house (British Gas recently advertised this)
• Writing documents in plain English without jargon (like AXA are advertising currently)

CATEGORY 3: Stuff which customers recognise is new but don't really care that much about like....

• Making a mortgage application short or simple (ING Direct are advertising this now)
• Contactless payment (Barclaycard most famously pushed this with their blue tubes adverts and Visa have joined the party recently)
• Paying me £5 a month to swap my bank account (The Halifax Reward account with that atrocious radio show TV advert)

and finally if you have any left....

CATEGORY 4: Stuff which customers recognize is new and really want like...

• A truly easy to use fusion mobile smartphone that moulds to your needs (the iPhone)
• A drink which is 2 of your 5 day and tastes great (Innocent Smoothies)
• Off-set mortgages (Virgin One Account - this was a real financial product innovation which gave a real benefit to some)
• Hybrid cars (Toyota and Honda - true technological innovations)
• LED lightbulbs (which replace 50W halogens with 4W almost never ending bulbs)
• Widgets which gave a smooth pour from a can (can't remember who launched this first Guinness? Boddingtons? - but it was an innovation that delivered a real benefit)
• Wash and Go 2 in 1 shampoos (yes - even this was a true innovation which solved a customer need that of simplicity)

It's the last category of course that are real innovations requiring significant investments and creative thinking rather than battling with internal restrictions and bureaucracy.

How much of what you are working on that is called "innovation" could really be placed in the last category? If it's lots that's great - I can't wait for these new breakthroughs to get to market! If it's lots in the other categories (as I suspect it will be) that's not necessarily a bad thing but make sure you don't believe your own "innovation hype"- because it's your customers that really know whether what you've just launched is new, truly different and worthy of lasting.

As ever I would love to hear what you think. Get involved, share your ideas, comment below - every comment wins a personal thank you from me!

Hope "The Teenies" are treating you well!

Justin

Mail me: justin@basini.com
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A Crocodile for Billy?

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In his speech to the Financial Services Forum dinner in December Nigel Gilbert the outgoing Chief Marketing Officer of LloydsTSB talked about the role of marketing and the consumer in banking. He also talked about an initiative that LloydsTSB ran last year called "A Crocodile for Billy". This is a book / ebook about saving and spending for parents to use with young kids.

His themes about the role of marketing and brands in financial services echo my own thoughts around the rights and responsibilities of marketing departments. I outlined some of these in my Battle of the Big Thinking presentation: Escaping The Matrix. Undoubtedly there is a massive need for more human understanding in business with its overfocus with quantitative analysis and comfort with people who are technically gifted but less comfortable with vision and working in our very human and emotional world.

When operating well marketing should be the "heart of an organisation" - and I mean that not to indicate its position but to capture its unique added value. Businesses and brands, the great ones anyway, are full of heart, vision, ambition and human understanding. They are often driven by a passionate leader who captures the heads and hearts of employees and customers alike. Marketing and the brands they develop have the ability to inspire and energise even when a charismatic founder or CEO isn't available.

And there is something here that is at the core of why our big banks are not great businesses or brands. They have little heart, vision, ambition or human understanding. They can't understand why people are appalled at billions sitting in bonus pools after the past two years of bailouts. They don't have a vision for the role that banks and financial institutions need to play in our society. A senior executive at LloydsTSB recently said to me that their vision was "to become the UKs most recommended bank". If that is the extent of their collective vision for a business that has been given near monopoly share levels and billions in state money (your money, my money) then my vote would be to break it up - they don't deserve to exist with that little ambition or understanding of their responsibilities in society.

And Crocodile of Billy is a neat example of the practical impact of this lack of vision and "head beneath the parapet" attitude that most of our banks are operating in currently. Its cute, I like it, I'd like to get a copy (although I can't see how? You can't buy it anywhere?), and I'd like to read it to Luca and Daniel. There is no doubt that we need desperately need more financial education in our society. But Crocodile for Billy is a tiny, albeit positive, effort in this regard. Why doesn't the financial services industry realise that they have a massive responsibility and the resources to fill this gap? They could work together, invest the hundreds of millions needed and ensure that every child gets the information they need to make informed decisions in their financial choices.

That would be a vision. That would be added value. That could be transformative to our view of financial services brands. Until they realise that we demand more as their customers and as members of our society, especially in the light of the last two years, financial brands will remain in the gutter, actively distrusted and disliked.

Get involved in the debate - comment below. Do you work for LloydsTSB or another UK bank - are you brave enough to share your view?

Happy New Year! I hope 2010 brings you all that you need.

Justin

Email me: justin@basini.com
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Don't change what you do, change your brand position

Ever considered whether moving your brand's position is good idea?
Ever thought about whether you could thrive in a cheaper part of the market?
Ever got frustrated that you don't make much progress against your competitors?

I've often looked at these brand positioning questions and recently experienced the repositioning of Aer Lingus, the Irish national airline.

I used to despise Aer Lingus. When I was travelling to Dublin every week for work (about 7 years ago) I avoided them like the plague, they were awful. Badly run, never on time and unpleasant. They were a poor imitation of British Airways or bmi. Worse of all they were bad AND expensive.

But in the last few months I've flown Aer Lingus four times and they have changed significantly. It seems they have upped their game but the main thing they have done is reposition their brand and that has done wonders for their perceived value.

They have kept the core of their national carrier approach - assigned seats, quite generous baggage allowances, trained and uniformed staff, sober style, normal planes with normal seats. But they have changed their pricing model to be similar to Easyjet - i.e. book early get cheap seats. For all the flights I have taken with them I have been booking up to 8 weeks in advance (so not incredibly early) and got flights for under £50.

Aer Lingus are now competing in my mind with Easyjet and Ryanair for my low cost flights. They aren't competing with British Airways anymore from where I look at the market. They bring a certain national carrier quality to this low cost competition and this combination has won out for my last 4 flights. They didn't win when they were competing against British Airways, they do when they compete against Easyjet.

Sometimes you don't have to change what you do, you just have to move your brand or business model to compete in a different part of the market where you bring value.

Now, as a quick look at their results shows, the challenge for Aer Lingus will be to right size their cost base to the reduction in revenue per seat that low-cost has caused. They need to do this whilst maintaining a half decent customer experience and is currently differentiating them from their low cost competitors. Not an easy task but by focusing on the things that really matter, keeping some of the national carrier experience, and innovating on key dimensions they have a chance.

A good example is their investment in the hub at Gatwick or the very impressive self check baggage approach they have in Dublin. This self check baggage system means you can sticker and drop your bags automatically. Rather than detract from the experience this is a great innovation and almost guarantees no queuing.

We'll see where the airline story goes. The "pack 'em in like cattle model" will I think become increasingly niche, especially as flying becomes more expensive. I, for one, will be looking for great value.

Thanks for reading, as ever, please comment if you have ideas or thoughts.

Justin

Email me: justin@basini.com
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Battle of the Big Thinking....Escaping the Matrix

Well after what seems like a very tough few weeks with wet towels wrapped around my head I emerged nervous and sweating for The Battle of the Big Thinking conference organised by Campaign and sponsored by APG.

You can see the presentation plus a slidecast of the speech and the core ideas at:

escapingthematrix.basini.com

Have a look and share your thoughts - there is a great debate to be had about marketing's impact on our society and consumption economics. Let's start.....

Thanks

Justin

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The new landscape of brands

A quick post to share a presentation that I put together for the UK Marketing team for Carlsberg. An old friend of mine (Ian Hannaford @ihannaford) is now a Marketing Manager at Carlsberg and he kindly extended an invitation to talk through some thoughts on brands and marketing with the team.

It was great to meet the team and I really enjoyed the session. Some really interesting ideas surfaced which provoked lots of discussion. I learnt alot about Carlsberg including the fact that it is run as a trust contributing to Danish projects and the top board is scientists and artists. How differentiated is that?

I was impressed that the team was open to hearing ideas and thoughts from other marketers and categories - I wish all teams were as open. Thanks also go to the Director of Brands Paul Davies for allowing me a slot at his meeting.

Do you want me come to your team meeting and provoke some thinking and discussion? Email me - I might just take you up on the offer!

The New Brand Landscape

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As ever - if you have any thoughts, disagreements, energy and passion to share about brands and marketing then please comment below or drop me an email.

Update on Battle of the Big Thinking (for those that have been following my frustrations on Twitter) - I finally have a stable draft of the presentation. If you are attending see you there and if you aren't you will be able to take part because I'm going to extend an invitation for you to join the debate!

Hope you are having a great day!

Justin

Email me: justin@basini.com
My website: http://www.basini.com/
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The true value of brands in our changing world

At last I've managed to get enough time to share the presentation that myself and Tom Farrand created for the Financial Services Forum in October 2009.

For those of you that followed the presentation on my Twitter feed and asked for the presentation here are the charts and an audio commentary from me.

True Value Of Brands

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In reality the presentation took about 45 mins so I've had to rush to crunch it down to 17 mins. You can just click through the slides if you don't want to listen to me!

And for those that don't even want to view the presentation or listen to the audio here are the key conclusions:

1. There is a brand bubble being created between valuation and consumer value
2. Consumers are increasingly getting frustrated with brands and business
3. There are disruptive changes which are causing this:
4. Consumption based economic growth is now compromising our well being
5. Consumption based economic growth is unsustainable
6. Connectivity and access to information can help facilitate change
7. Social and power structures are changing

The opportunity for brands and their businesses is:

1. Engage in the debate
2. Adopt a point of view and foster conversation
3. Be points of consistency in a changing world
4. Become the ideas around which businesses can adopt a more balanced approach to delivering not just for shareholders but for the common good
5. These social imperatives are a powerful way to deliver a brand's commercial imperative - and this will constitute brand leadership going forward.

There are lots of big themes and trends here - get involved - please comment on this blog.

What do you think the future of brands is? Comment and share your ideas.

Justin (and Tom Farrand)

P.S. Apologies for the silence from my blog over the past couple of weeks - I've been working on various ideas which took my focus away from the blog.

Email me: justin@basini.com
My website: http://www.basini.com/
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The pizza of innovation

I'm a huge fan of Pizza Express (for those non UK readers Pizza Express was the first sit down pizza restaurant chain in the UK established in the 60s). Both my sons were born soon after Pizza Express visits!

And despite now having a growing family we still love Pizza Express because over the past few years they have stepped up their innovation and much of it is based on really good insight into their customers.

After a recent visit a few lessons struck me on what pizzas reveal about customer led innovation:

1. Understand the desired experience not just the product attributes. My wife and I still like to spend an hour or so in a restaurant having a simple dinner. That hasn't changed now we have three kids. We've learnt, as many parents before us have, that the art to keeping that hour pain-free is keeping the kids occupied. Increasingly kid-friendly restaurants dole out the crayons and paper but Pizza Express have taken it to another level. They have tailored their kids menu to be multiple small courses over the space of an hour. So you quickly get garlic bread or dough balls for the kids to munch, then comes a small pizza, then an ice cream, then a really cute idea - the Bambicino - which is a frothy cappucino style milk. This means whilst we eat a starter and pizza the kids meal is paced to keep them occupied. Pizza Express have understood what I want and, more importantly, what my kids want so that we all get a good experience.

2. A well tried foundation is the best starting place for new ideas. Why is the pizza such an enduring food? Because it is a solid foundation from which to add and adapt. This is true for much innovation (and indeed solid incrementalism) - start with a good process or product, understand what is great with it, and then improve. A strong foundation also allows you to engage the customer through customisation...

3. Customisation was, is, and always will be a powerful way to engage. From its earliest origins the pizza has been a customisation engine. One of the reasons almost everyone can enjoy a pizza is that the solid foundation allows personal expression and the adaptation to personal taste and creativity. This is what I love about Apple products, a great base product facilitating creativity, for example, through the music you put on them or what you create on them. Dell were the masters of mass customisation but on attributes that were intrinsic rather than 'tasty'. Only now are they realising that allowing customisation on the surface is as important.

4. Innovation isn't always about adding things - it can also be about taking things away. Most companies that I've worked with start from a foundation of their current product or process and then think about features or benefits that can be added in order to innovate. This isn't a bad path to innovation but it can be illuminating to think about what to take away from the product. Pizza Express have a new product called the Leggera. This is a pizza with the middle taken out with salad replacing it. This fills a need for those who want a lower calorie option. I admired Vodafone when they launched their Simple proposition. A simple phone and tariff for those that wanted just a phone that worked like a traditional phone not a computer. Dyson took away the vacuum cleaner bag for a better experience. You don't always have to add.

5. Different occasions are sources of new volume, canibalisation can be a red-herring. In the last few years Pizza Express have launched a line of retail pizzas. I bet this gave them some sleepless nights. I can hear the discussions now: surely this would canibalise their take out business or, even worse, their core restaurant business (especially in these more difficult times as people trade down)? Perhaps it would damage the brand because they couldn't gaurantee product quality? Overall I think it works well and from what my friends in the supermarket industry tell me it has been a hit. It has provided a new occasion for loyal users to use the brand and allowed those who don't visit the restaurants to buy into the franchise in a different way. I bet frequency of consuming a Pizza Express product is way up since their introduction. Starbucks are now launching into instant coffee with their VIA product. I suspect they had lots of similar debates. If the product is good I bet it will slowly creep into the Starbucks loyalists' non-Starbucks coffee consumption and potentially open the brand up to non-users.

What do you think? How do you innovate? Got any lessons to share? Please comment below. Feel free to share this post with other innovators (or pizza lovers!)

Justin

Email me: justin@basini.com
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Using Social Media to create communities around your brand

[This is the first in an occasional series of guest blogs that I am sharing from experts in different fields - if you want to guest on my blog send me a mail]

Social media has become almost a necessity when it comes to communicating with your audience, fans and customers. As more and more people turn to social media for entertainment and to follow their favourite companies, brands and celebrities it’s critical that you don’t get left behind. Not participating in social media will be like almost not having a website in the near future. Almost unthinkable!

Many a SEO Company are offering to integrate your business socially, some are good and some have simply no idea. I would suggest looking at your company’s own strategy before choosing any provider should you go down this route.

Social media is all about connecting and communicating with your audience, it’s not enough to create a Twitter account and then think that doing a few tweets will be enough. Your fans want to hear from you regularly, possibly once a day or more. People that are part of your network are generally interested in what you have to say or offer and want to hear more. We’re talking about real fans now, not a million pointless people who only followed you, because you followed them.

By constantly keeping in touch with your audience, you create a “momentum” and a loyal following who will support you and give you valuable feedback. Should you connect with them in the right way they will become the most powerful PR machine you could ever imagine which could make your business explode with sales or enquires or implode should there be a lot of criticism.

The trick to successful social media is effort in creating and maintaining your network and offering things that are of interest. Do not try to “market the hell” out of your network and fans, as all you’ll succeed in doing is losing them.

Social media is an incredibly powerful tool which can help you connect with your customers and fans on a personal level, almost never before possible. This tight communication reaps huge rewards in terms of customer loyalty, brand awareness and building. Social media should be embraced to grow your business as not participating can actually do more harm than good.

This article was written by Christopher Angus – An award winning Internet Marketer. You can get in touch with Christopher Angus here or read his blog here.

As always - do you have a view? Do you like guest blogs? Are you creating communities of trust around your brand? Share a comment below!

Justin

Email me: justin@basini.com
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Insights from the 2009 Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) conference Zurich

For the last couple of days I have been lucky enough to be in Zurich, Switzerland at the 2009 CMO conference. There were some great speakers and a few “Ah-ha” moments which I wanted to share. I also tweeted the conference which you can find by visiting my Twitter feed (@justinbasini).

The key theme of the conference that emerged through the excellent content was how the marketing agenda and marketers can drive inspiration, innovation and growth in businesses.

Opening the conference was Scott Davis (@scottdavisshift) who is Senior Partner at Prophet, the marketing and brand consultancy. He shared his insights on the need for marketing and marketers to make 5 fundamental shifts. There was some powerful thinking around how marketing and marketers can drive business growth and real impact by focusing on the fundamentals of the business and the ability to lead but I was particularly taken with the thought:

CONSUMER INSIGHT IS THE MARKETER’S SECRET WEAPON
This is really well put. I was always taught at P&G that you could go up against the CEO of the company as long as you understood the consumer. Marketing and marketers, with our natural consumer and market orientation, have the ability to be a great source of actionable insight for our businesses by representing the consumer in the board room. If you want to know more then Scott has published a book called The Shift.

Michael Conrad, President of the Berlin School for Creative Leadership (who was the Chief Creative Officer for Leo Burnett) then picked up some of these themes as he helped us decode the advertising of iconic brands. It was powerful to hear Michael’s anecdotes: he recalled the Nike brand being all about “the religion of sport” and how this was the guiding context for all their activities. This included building their shops, the Nike Towns, which are “temples to sporting heroes”. A powerful insight for me was:

CREATE POWERFUL THEMES THAT DRIVE A SERIES OF EVENTS
It’s not about the campaign or the advert anymore but about creating a series of events that together can create a wave of awareness about a new idea. Each domain in the value chain needs to take the theme and develop powerful expressions that bring it alive, no one thing can drive a major change it needs to be lots of elements working together.

Andy Stefanovich from an innovation consultancy (now part of Prophet) called PLAY (based in Richmond, VA for all my Capital One readers) was a force of nature as he took us outside and shared that he believes:

THERE IS A HUMAN ENERGY CRISIS
This is powerful way of representing the strands that many of us will be familiar with: the dearth of truly inspirational leadership, the over regimented approach to innovation, the lack of understanding (even fear) of creative thinkers and the creative process and ruthless focus on measures which constrain and create less than ideal outcomes. He passionately implored his audience to step up to inspirational leadership and use the creation of a consumer focused, counter intuitive marketing agenda to drive change and create energy for individuals, teams and organisations.

And finally it was fascinating to hear Chris Hughes, Co-founder of Facebook and architect of the online strategy of Barack Obama’s election campaign. His talk was full of insight and information with his perspective on the current information revolution being:

WE ARE WITNESSING THE DEMOCRATISATION OF THE CREATION OF INFORMATION
Previous information revolutions have been mainly driven by changes in the distribution of information. The changes we are currently witnessing are different because they centre on the democratisation of the creation of information. We can all now blog, tweet, comment, and share through the internet. This is causing powerful new forces to arise that bring people together for a range of different effects including those of political and social change such as the demonstrations in Brazil against FARC or the global protestations about the Iran election.

I’ve blogged about these trends before and Chris confirmed my model of how the different social networks play different roles and fulfil different needs.

Overall it was a very enjoyable and thought provoking conference and these are not all the insights uncovered but they are the ones that I wanted to share immediately. Thanks to Prophet and Heidrick & Struggles for sponsoring and the organisers for organising.

What do you think of these insights? Did you attend the conference? As always if you have a view please comment below!

Thanks

Justin

justin@basini.com
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5 rules for marketers as we move away from Greed to Fear

I was at a seminar last week organised by the Financial Services Forum where I was lucky enough to hear Lucian Camp talk about his take on the current crisis and how it challenges advertising and commuication. I agree with him that something fundamental has changed and we are moving away from a predominant focus on "Greed" to needs around "fear".

However I don't particularly like the concept of Greed and Fear since I have rarely heard consumers talk about these words directly. I prefer to think of it as "gain" and "protect". Over the past 20 years the prevailing mood has been "gain" - gaining goods, houses, wealth, quality of life, happiness, health. This doesn't mean we have achieved any of these things but we have experienced the advertising of aspiration.

We have now been shocked into a different mode - that of "protection". We have all been given pause for thought on whether our jobs, our homes, our families, even the system we rely on, are secure and around for the long term. Products and messages that talk about protecting and sustaining what one has now are more in the current zeitgeist. These messages are also more in tune with the global sustainability issues that we are all facing.

Here are 5 rules for marketers to think of as we ride this trend:

1. Invest more time in understanding consumers worries, frustrations and concerns. I've often seen research spend too much time focusing on what people want, with almost an embarrassment to talk about problems that are more negative. Spend time wallowing in these fears with your consumer. From this new insights will come which might not be positive but will resonate strongly in today's market.

2. Don't be afraid to link your brand to these concerns in communication. One of the challenges that many of us will need to battle with is that if your career is less thn 15 years old then you've only ever worked in the good times. My generation of marketers have only been used to dealing with positive messaging - I think we are a bit afraid of the brand equity we build by talking about negative situations. The best brands will go with the consumer, build equity of "understanding" and "on your side" by reflecting consumer needs hence Rule#1.

3. Move your product development to focus on protection and design products which are sustainable and thrifty. I blogged a while ago about my adventures trying to fix my toaster. Products which help consumers protect what they have whilst having features which are thrifty and sustainable will better meet these needs. Products such as LCD TVs with "eco settings", Ariel and its turn down to 30 campaign, or printers from HP which have much lower running costs are all examples.

4. Big brands have a great opportunity to gain market share. Small brands need to be faster and closer to their niche. In this environment there will be a natural move to bigger, less risky brands. The big brands that invest through this period will prosper. Those that don't run the risk that consumers write them off as having failed during the downturn (even if they haven't). Small brands need to be faster with new concepts and products and more focused than ever on their niches. Luckily more and more niches are appearing and new channels allow greater ability to connect with these groups.

5. (Small) Moments of pleasure matter more than ever. The protection agenda, and the recent crisis, for all the media's efforts to persaude us otherwise, doesn't mean a return to mud huts and sack cloth and ashes. However I suspect the embullience of the past cycle will be more muted for a long time. And that means that moments of pleasure and escape will mean even more to people. We are seeing this with consumer spending moving into cinema tickets, chocolate, staycations, and eating well at home, small moments of often thrifty pleasure.

As always please feel free to comment and share your views. I will try and reply to all comments so please leave one if you have a thought.

Also please feel free to share this blog with anyone you might feel is interested. I really appreciate your support as I build this blog.

Yours

Justin

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The different role of social networks Facebook v. Twitter

You can now listen to this blog as a slidecast going through the model and data. Click play below. Or you can just read the text below.

The different roles of social networks - Facebook v. Twitter

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There's been a lot written recently on some of the changes which Facebook have introduced to try and stave off the threat from Twitter. We all know that Facebook tried to buy Twitter in November last year and were rejected - so we know that Facebook is interested in micro-blogging and are pushing their status updates functionality.

This prompted me to think a little more deeply about the differences between Twitter and Facebook in terms of type of network built and communications employed. This leads me to believe that Twitter and Facebook (in their current forms) occupy different spaces and can co-exist quite happily.

The following diagram illustrates some of the differences between the major social networks in my mind based on the intimacy, time, numbers and purpose of relationships in a person's life.



At the core of of our relationship map are deep, loving relationships with close family. Then comes our relationships with wider family and friends. After this are community relationships and relationships with our colleagues. Then we get into the areas where social networks have really had a major impact: previous or infrequent friends and contacts and even people we will never meet in the real world.

Facebook is perfectly positioned to fill the needs of interest and connectedness with a wider circle of friends we used to know or don't see frequently. Of course it still has relevance for closer relationships but the new thing it adds is an unrivalled ability to stay in touch with a wider group of people that you have probably known in the real world. It's optimised for this purpose through features such as approval of friends, having "on platform" media rich options (photos, videos etc), allowing detailed status updates.

Twitter is different to Facebook because it extends the social networking phenomenon into a new territory of those that you probably don't know or haven't known in the real world and is optimised for fast communications. It fulfils the need of curiosity on a broader scale - following famous people, or thought leaders, or organisations is interesting and engaging. In Twitter you can follow anyone and anyone can follow you - no need for approvals. Because of this there is no real responsibility to your network of followers - as I have put it before Twitter is take it or leave it communication. Of course many of us (including me, @justinbasini!) try to share interesting updates but there is no expectation which there is more of in Facebook.

LinkedIn is a good example of a vertically focused social network focused on business contacts. It bridges between work relationships past and present, together with people you want to build relationships with in the real world for business or career success.

I think the usage numbers bear out the fact that Facebook and Twitter are used to serve different needs:



Time spent per user on Facebook is much longer than Twitter but Twitter has many more visits per month. This fits with a usage pattern that is less involved and more frequent. I also think the average number of connections is interesting. On average Facebook users have 130 friends. Social theory holds that groups of 100 to 150 are the most relationships that one individual can meaningfully hold. I suspect that this will grow as we get more comfortable with technology based contact but I don't think this average will ever be 1000s.

Now clearly at the moment the number of Twitter followers on average is low at around 20. But what I think is interesting is that if you take the top 10% of Twitter users (who we could call the early adopters and might be indicative of future usage) their number of followers on average is 483 and it is increasing fast. I think the average number of followers on Twitter could well be 1000s in the future. This definitely means it will be a different sort of network to that which one has on Facebook and potentially very exciting since you could use it to get an insight into many more different people around the world.

As always PLEASE feel free to comment with your views and share with others who you think might find this blog interesting. Oh and please follow me on Twitter (@justinbasini).

Yours

Justin

justin@basini.com
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justinbasini.blogspot.com
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