On-line research has some major advantages.

It is often less expensive than standard methods and also quicker to yield

#results. However, as currentlypracticed, it is fatally flawed."We're

perpetuating a fraud," is what Simon Chadwick has to say. Mr. Chadwick is

former head of NOP Research in the U.K. and is now principal of Cambiar, a

Phoenix consultancy.

Surveys tend to poll the same people over and over.In fact, a study done by

ComScore Networks indicated that one-quarter of one percent of the

population provides about one-third of all on-line responses. This means that

instead of getting one vote, each of these respondents is getting the equivalent

of 128 votes.We are getting the same people responding over and over again to

earn points so they can win a toaster. Or as Mr. Chadwick calls them,

"professional respondents who go hunting for...dollars. What's so terrible about

professional respondents, you might ask? Pulitzer Prize winning New York

Times science writer Natalie Angier says: Nothing tarnishes the

credibility of a sample like the desire to be sampled.... a good pollster will

hound and re-hound the very people who least want to cooperate. So not

only are these people ridiculously over-represented, they are the wrong

people. "It's like the hole in the ozone layer," said Shari Morwood,

VP-worldwide market research at IBM in an article in Advertising

Age. "Everyone knows it's a growing problem. But they just ignore it and

go on to the next project." Kim Dedeker, VP-consumer and market

knowledge at P&G, describes an example in which online and mail surveys

came up with diametrical results. "If I only had the online result.... I would have

taken a bad decision right to the top management," she said. In another case,

two surveys conducted a week apart by the same online researcher yielded

completely different recommendations. Furthermore, most of these on-line

researchers don't validate their samples. They don't know who is responding. It

could be my daughter using my computer saying she's me. Or saying she's you

for that matter. And if all that weren't enough, many of them don't limit

responses.

I can log in as five different people and respond five different times. Or

fifty. Or a hundred and twenty-eight. Another lovely bit of hokum they

perpetrate is the degree of confidence. They tell us that their results are

accurate with a 95% degree of confidence. However, they never quite tell

us what it is that they're confident about. Is it that, in general, a study with

this many legitimate respondents will be statistically valid 95% of the time? Or

is it that their interpretation of subjective data will be 95% accurate (by the

way, no one's interpretation of subjective data is 95% accurate) Or is it

something else? Let's give them the benefit of the doubt for a minute and

say that their sample is legitimate (which is highly unlikely) and that they

are brilliant people who can interpret data almost flawlessly. Let's take a

look at what 95% degree of confidence means under the best of circumstances.

Once again we'll turn to Ms. Angier from her book The Canon. Here's an

example she gives. You go for an HIV test. You test positive. The test is said

to be 95% accurate. This means you have a 95% chance of having the HIV

virus, right? Not even close. What it means is that 95% of the time people who

have the HIV virus will test positive. But it also means that 5% of the time

people who do not have the HIV virus will test positive. Now let's say

you live in a town with 100,000 people. Fortunately, the HIV virus is very rare

and only appears in 1 person out of 350. So in your town of 100,000 people,

this means that there will be about 285 people with the HIV virus (100,000

divided by 350). But if we tested all the people in your town, we would get

about 5,000 positives (remember, 5% of the time people who do not have the

virus will test positive) and almost all of these 5,000 positives would be

false.,mIn fact when you do the math, after testing positive not only is

there not a 95% chance you have the virus, there is about a 5% chance you have

it. And an almost 95% chance you don't have the virus.* So much for a 95%

level of confidence.We advertising and marketing people are drowning in

opinions and starving for facts. But we have to be very careful about

distinguishing between the two. In the advertising world, research is no

different from creative work. Some of it is very good, some of it is worthless

and dangerous.To figure out the accuracy of the result, you divide the total

number of true positives you'd expect from your sample (95% of 285, or 271)

by the total number of true and false positives (5,257) and you wind up with a

probability of having the HIV virus is actually about 5.2%, not 95%. If you

can't follow the math, and you don't trust me, don't worry. You can trust Ms.

Angier, she has a Pulitzer Prize. All I have interactive marketing

communication.

An article in American Express says, "not so fast".

Senior marketers were asked which components of their current digital

marketing programs"search, email, display advertising, social networking, and

mobile advertising"delivered the best results. Only 11% cited social

networking.

As you know,IMG is highly skeptical of this type of research. The remarkable

thing, however, is that with social media getting so much hype, the tendency of

people who have invested in it would be to exaggerate its effectiveness.

Instead, it was tied for effectiveness with "I don't know." Marketers also said

that social media is significantly less effective than banner ads (display

advertising), and I just don't know how anything can be less effective than that.

Mobile advertising, by the way, didn't even make the chart. As I said 6 months

ago in a previous posting. "IMG predicts that when the frenzy over Facebook,

Twitter, and other social media calms down and the dust clears, email and

search will continue to be the dreariest and most productive forms of online

advertising."!

Discover the surprising benefits of using interactive marketing communication

contact PaulAshby on paulashby40@yahoo.com or (UK Landline) 01934

620047.

　

　

About 2 months ago I wrote a piece called "Social Media's Massive Failure".

It was about the failure of the Pepsi Refresh Project. Most of you disagreed

with my observations that the Refresh effort was a failure. Recently The New

Yorker published an article called "Snacks for a Fat Planet". It isn't specifically

about the Refresh project.

It is about PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi's attempt to transform the

company from the world's largest maker of soda and crappy food into a

company with respectable standards and values. It is actually a very interesting

article and Nooyi comes off as an intelligent, thoughtful but somewhat jargony

leader.The article talks about Refresh as part of Pepsi's desire

to be perceived as a "good" company ...the strategy was to use social media to

promote the image of PepsiCo... to bring the flagship brand more in line with

PepsiCo's "performance with purpose" agenda...Then it goes on to note that

Pepsi's share had dropped 4.8% since the program was introduced.

... the Refresh campaign garnered more than eighty million votes,

got three and a half million likes on Pepsi's Facebook page, and drew some

sixty thousand Twitter followers. But the campaign didn't sell Pepsi.Which to

my ear sounds an awful lot like this paragraph from Social Media's Massive

Failure...

"Over 80 million votes were registered; almost 3.5 million

"likes" on the Pepsi Facebook page; almost 60,000 Twitter followers. The only

thing it failed to do was sell Pepsi." The article concludes...

"It appears that hearing about all the good things that PepsiCo is doing to help

make the world a better place does not tempt you to down a

Pepsi". As we know, there are many in the marketing world who

cannot see the limitations of social media, no matter how compelling the

evidence. Consequently, those of us with open minds and functional synapses

need to remain skeptical and vocal about the "magic" of social media.

"Man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to

believe." -- Euripides

Are you doing anything about Swinging back the web clutter?

Last summer, Starcom released a major study on internet clutter finding that the more ads on a page, the more click-through rates, brand impact and product consideration decline. Jeff Marshall, senior VP-director of the firm's online arm, said since the dot-com bubble burst, many sites have cleaned themselves up. But "not everybody's moved that way. ... We may see that pendulum switch back toward clutter."

And then there's mobile marketing, where perhaps the greatest risk lies for a new avalanche of commercial content. Though hailed as one of the ad business' great growth areas, it hasn't really taken off, partly because the jury's still out on just how receptive consumers are to commercial messaging on their phones. One commenter from New York City gave this no-duh perspective: "The cellphone is way to [sic] personal to be considered another advert medium. If companies start slamming people with messages, people will be turned off."

In the end, permission marketing may be advertisers' best bet for gaining acceptance in emerging media that don't come with social contracts of the kind that's governed, say, the TV business for so long -- that is, viewers' tacit willingness to put up with ads since that revenue's underwriting the programming they enjoy.

"Anytime there's a new destination for people, like YouTube or mobile phones, the assumption is we've got to find a way to put some ads there," Mr. Barocci said. "That's just going to make things worse because there's no social contract. If mobile-phone companies say, 'We'll reduce your bill if you accept ads,' then that's a contract and that's smart."

Why do People need to Interact?

People respond to interactive opportunities because it seems to offer some intangible quality long ‘missing in action’ from modern life. In sharp contrast to the alienation wrought by homogenised broadcast media, interactive opportunities provide a space in which the human voice would be rapidly rediscovered.

Unlike the lockstep conformity imposed by television, advertising, and corporate propaganda, interactive communication gives new legitimacy – and free rein – to play.

People long for more connection between what we do for a living and what we genuinely care about. We long for release from anonymity, to be seen as who we feel ourselves to be rather than the sum of abstract metrics and parameters.

We long to be part of a world that makes sense rather than accept the accidental alienation imposed by market forces too large to grasp; to even contemplate.

Would you like to discover more about how effective interactive communication is? Then simply contact Paul Ashby @ paulashby40@yahoo.com or (UK) 01934 620047 and please feel free to discuss any aspect of Interactive Communication.

Do you think that The dangers facing advertising and marketing are many and complex?

,

however we have to stop and stand back and re-examine the whole process of commercial

communication for the practitioners have lost sight of what we are supposed to

do. It is true that Marketing inertia is causing so many problems, together with

the fact that they will not face up to the unpalatable truth that the whole

process is just not working these days. The situation is so bad that any attempt

to mount an argument for reform gets buried in the old narrative of "advertising

works"!

Well the fact is that the era of getting rid of big advertising agencies and cutting wasteful

expenditure is upon us. After all we've had years of ever increasing marketing budgets and

throwing huge amounts of money at media has resulted in clutter and unaccountability.

Advertising in its current form must come to an end, not just because the money has run out,

but it is also shown to have failed! Although it must be said that Advertising and Marketing

are not the only scenes of gross wastage and mismanagement.

One can liken the current Advertising scene to an unstable Ponzi scheme.

Advertising and Marketing departments promised higher benefits than were

justified by the money being allocated to pay for them as in the swindle known

as a Ponzi scheme. The fact that advertising doesn't work makes all this

expenditure unsustainable right now!

There is an urgent need, like "Right Now" to overcome the hostility to big

business generally, the normal cosy relationships must not be allowed to resume.

The flawed policy-making in Marketing departments, without a doubt the Saatchi

brothers are responsible for the over rated benefits on spending (wasting?) huge

amounts of money on advertising! They were the most incompetent advertising

people in the history of advertising! The Saatchi Brothers encouraged the

slavish adherence to rational expectations stemming from the Creative Process,

and yet all knew that slavish belief in Creativity alone is fatal!

Where should we go from here? A huge and daunting question. Advertising

Agencies must learn the theory of "communication" they must also try, in all

honesty, to become totally accountable, it can be done.

Interactive Marketing Communication

allows you to explore the multi-dimensional benefits of understanding customer needs in a digital era.

Customer loyalty is seeing several trends rapidly overtaking existing

understanding. Platforms of the future will record every interaction - they will

understand consumer preferences and pre-empt evolving needs.

Interactive Communication, properly executed, includes the next generation of

loyalty schemes. Embracing the fourth dimension of loyalty Interactive Communication comprises

every aspect of digital advertising and is totally accountable!

　

　

　

Game Playing and Marketing Games Offer you a Unique Way to Entertain...

-- and sell at the same time!

Whilst experimenting with social networks, user-generated content and on line video,

marketers appear content to view games as little more than another

class advertising platform. The untapped potential of game

playing lies in their ability to tell stories, thereby more closely linking

brand benefits with game play and blurring the lines between brand and

entertainment. Games, properly structured, fundamentally alter the customers

perception to the presentation and content of your marketing messages thus

making the advertisements themselves a source of meaningful information. Games allow Brands to

become engaging, and entertaining -- thereby providing something of value in exchange for

attention.

Brands such as Persil, Birds Eye and Quaker Oats have relied on game playing to create

narratives that consumers want to be a part of. In the process, they've done

more than just break through the clutter, or better position themselves in

consumer's minds. Games remain one of the biggest untapped

opportunities for marketers, for the simple fact that they are, indeed, engaging

interactive and entertaining. Well-conceived games require users' active

attention and enable them to drive the story line as they experience a world

that can be entirely of a brand's making. Games represent a unique opportunity

for brands to be the entertainment rather than just sponsor it.

So what do original games get you? If you're Quaker Oats,

you get year-over-year double-digit sales growth, as well as a

marketing program that has generated significant

revenue. So what does this mean for marketers? It

demonstrates that there's a burgeoning mainstream audience increasingly

receptive to branded entertainment in the form of original episodic games and

willing to grant brands their attention in exchange for enjoyable

experiences. Games need to be implemented strategically.

As with any marketing approach, objectives and performance expectations for

game-based marketing need to be considered upfront. Here are some things to keep

in mind: A game tends to work best as a component of an integrated campaign

rather than an afterthought. Original episodic games can

counteract this imbalance by delivering a high level of play and replay value to

consumers while putting the brand at the center of the experience.

So does a brand need to be interesting or provocative in order to make a

good game? Absolutely not. All our examples show that basic games deployed and

used well were effective at making a low-involvement category more interesting

and engaging. And implemented properly, games could address many of the

challenges facing financial-services companies -- building involvement,

generating a prospect , creating a sense of community, even delivering a positive brand halo.

Discovering Interactive Television

　

　


This form of interactive communication dramatically alters the way the viewers perceive the commercials, instead of being seen as an interruption the commercials now become a meaningful source of information (a form of programming) and thus are watched in a totally different way.

Presenting advertising within this format allows the most dramatic evolution of advertising itself. This renaissance in this period of the ongoing history of advertising will be know as advertising by true, accurate, more predictable, instant and measurable results.

Clients will pay only by results. The interactive nature of the new technology will allow InteractiveTV to measure the results and present these results as a post-evaluation of their participation. Clients will then pay for participation based upon these evaluations.

　

　

Better Marketing Without Reform? - Forget It!




　

　

　

　

The current state of Marketing is such that the need for change and "New Models" are desperately needed.

The trouble is the "New Models" will not prove to be financially sustainable

without substantially changing the way advertising and media services are

organised. The first thing we must do to start to tackle the problem is to

embrace our lack of knowledge about the process of communication. We must allow

outside organisations to question the fundamental ideas that shape current

advertising. We must allow them to innovate and keep the money saved through

innovation. That way there is a chance that advertising and marketing will keep

improving without costing more. One thing is for sure. We can't carry on as we

are. Pretending that without reform our money will go further. This is

definitely the time for creative innovation in Marketing, not the ridged belief

that Marketing and Advertising can still show us all the answers to our

problems - it never has and it never will.

Our only hope lies in a fundamental re-examination of the Marketing values we

have lived by in the past 30 years. Our future depends not on whether we get

through this, but how deeply and truthfully we examine its causes.

So just when are we going to prick our bubble of denial?

Because the Advertising and Marketing world is living in a world of denial.

They use rhetoric that blurs their perceptions and have become addicted to the

world view it represents.

At the same time reinforcing themselves by a stream of cheery models engaged

in consumption and leisure, they shuttle from workstation to mall, increasingly

insulated by a media consensus that leaves out the rest of the world. We have

had a band of denial built around ourselves, thus this belief cost us the

capacity to self-correct. Thus this delusional self-image is finally catching

up with us. And make no mistake marketing will benefit hugely when reality

breaks through.

Marketing can baffle the most intelligent people. That is most

understandable, for a start, making large marketing investments accountable is

a very inexact science. They rely, to an unnerving degree on assumptions that

may or may not be, accurate!

And Shout-as-Loud-as-you-can advertising is proven less effective every day,

Clients are looking for ways to get closer to their customers and prospects.

Brands want to deliver engaging, entertaining and educational messages in

environments they create, not in spaces they rent.

Without a doubt Marketing and Advertising management is dying under the

weight of its own contradictions! The old world of simplistic marketing

strategies no longer works. Certainly the easy certainties of the past are

over.

　

What happens in real life is what matters to or between customers

.

Marketers should focus on creating social meaning and social utility-things that help real

world social interaction or support the group's interests-rather than forcing

meaning on individuals through brain washing or bribery. Products or services

could be devised to be interesting enough to become talked about in the first

place. The first change in the way we think about media, must be a major

shift away from thinking about media as channels' down which we tip messages

and information. Only in so far as they serve and help advertisers access and

harness the power of the social networks that lie behind them.

Incidentally, an interesting piece of research has just emerged which confirms

what I have long suspected, whilst, at the same time, going along with my

suspicion about the creative ego and the use of very high priced Hollywood

directors! Advertisements starring high profile celebrities such as David

Beckham and Jamie Oliver do not sell products as well as those featuring every

day people, new research suggested. A study by the University of Bath and

the University of St Gallen in Switzerland, found that ordinary members of the

public are more effective in selling products than super stars paid millions to

endorse them. That's because people are more worried about keeping up with the

Jones's than the rich and famous! Never-the-less we guarantee that those

Advertising Agencies will keep on using highly paid Hollywood movie directors as

well as using the rich and famous as models, there goes millions more of the poor

old clients budget again;again;again! All I will say is this, use

Interactive Programs, properly executed, and you will not have to spend money on

Hollywood Directors or, for that matter, the likes of David Beckham etc.

So the next time your Advertising Agency comes with their invoice, go through it

with a fine toothcomb and delete the name(s) David Beckham, or whomever. Then

check out who the director is, if he's Hollywood, strike him out as well; we

guarantee that you'll be surprised at how much you can save. Then half

your budget and start using Interactive Marketing

programs, again, you'll be surprised at the positive results at a fraction

of your normal advertising costs!With Interactive Marketing

you don't have expensive, unnecessary add-ons! With Interactive Marketing

Communication you don't have wasteful coupons! With Interactive Marketing

Communication you don't have wasteful promotional activity! With Interactive

Marketing Communication you don't have David Beckhams! With Interactive

Marketing Communication you don't have expensive Hollywood movie Directors!

With Interactive Marketing Communications you do have sales and increased

profits! - plus a whole lot more.

You Have Huge Amounts of Data…so Why are you Starved of Knowledge?

Despite spending hours on the 'phone or online your customers are just not connecting with you, resulting in angry customers hanging up and going elsewhere.                         

 We are becoming more and more divided by technology. Your customers' dread interactive voice-response, the on-hold  music that doubles the annoyance of queuing, the codes  are all barriers to effective communication.  The rage among your customers has reached an intensity, which is now causing great damage to your relationship with your customers. We are now dehumanising our customer relationships even more than conventional advertising ever did, the very objective of which  was to do the exact opposite! Your customers appear to be invisible to  you except as  computer generated stereotypes, while your organisation is viewed as remote and unreachable causing stress and suspicion rather than customer satisfaction.  According to a recent study by database software specialist Data Vantage. Fully eighty nine percent of service providers are failing to deliver the seamless service your customers want.  Causing damage to your brands, customers to defect, thus putting more pressure on sales. It would appear that most customer information in to days service organisations, expensively acquired, is wasted, and what does get through to Management is contaminated, diluted or otherwise unusable.  All this results in huge amounts of waste. Companies are drowning in data however, they are, oddly enough, starved of knowledge!  All resulting from a misunderstanding of that little word "Communication"! It would appear, understandably I hasten to add, that one of the main reasons this frustration and anger occurs, is when one of your customers calls your 'phone centre to complain about a bill. and then they receive a threatening reminder through the  post a week later!  In reality you and your customers are being divided  by technology, your relationship, conducted through computers has become so depersonalised as to be dangerous to the very well being of your brands and business.  And sad to say any new channel of communication simply increases management's' opportunity to repeat mistakes. For example if you send an email, your call centre will not have seen it!        As we said earlier, all resulting from a complete misunderstanding of  that word "communication". So let us examine that word ˜communication' a little more closely. The dictionary definition of communications is as follows:  Communication. n. 1. transmitting 2. A giving or exchange of information, etc.  by talk, writing b) the information so given 3. A means of communicating  4. The science of transmitting information. The interesting fact is the  expression 'the exchange of information' . Communication is not a one-way flow of information. Talking at or to someone does not imply successful communication. This only occurs when the receiver actually receives themessage, which the sender intended to send. Message rejection, misinterpretation and misunderstanding are the opposite of effective communication. However most marketing communication today depends on a single-step communications model. A message sender,  the message receiver. This basic model assumes that the sender is active, whilst the receiver is inactive or passive and the message is comprehended properly. In this case if  the message is creatively prepared and sent through the right medium and, if it cuts through all the other noise, and then if it is decoded correctly the messagehas done its job!  In closing please allow me to stress that we are, despite appearances, creating more problems than we realise, all this new technology is doing is alienating your customers more than ever before. With all the other problems, clutter, meaningless noise, mistrust, it is now vital that we rethink  our position on all commercial communication. The fact is that you, the Clients, can literally halve your colossal marketing budgets and, armed with a true interpretation and understanding of the word "communication" and be far morecost effectiveâ¦on all counts! 

The lack of education about the communication process...

...means that millions are being poured down the black hole of ineffectiveness!   The problem is caused by advertising agencies, we all secretly feel that they are all a bunch of charlatans and yet! And yes, we have all met advertising people who were touchingly sincere and believed in what they were doing despite the lack of accountability! However the fact remains that most advertising people have minds so devoid of realism that they are still prepared to believe the mantra "advertising works!  

The science of communication is so mind-shatteringly elegant and inspiring that advertising, by its very nature, is demeaning and shallow and a total betrayal of what it is to actually communicate, especially when one considers what the human species has achieved in all else.  Perhaps the periodic swellings of emotion in the Western World over the past few years are, in actuality, the anguished pleas of a lonely and atomised populace dehumanised and depersonalised, and totally removed from any real social interaction, and desperate for company!  It is true to say that advertising is the enemy of rational thought, it encourages the victory of feeling over reason. Nevertheless there is a tremendous danger  to which big business appears to have succumbed in believing that advertising, in whatever form, is somehow invincible and all that we can do is debate alternatives within its framework.     Now advertising is dazzling us with the wonders of technology. It is  all so new, exciting and wonderfully opportune  and anyway if all that fails to excite us lets use cool sounding jargon!   The fact of the matter is  that Advertising is a grotesque manifestation of Top-Down-Management and has about as much intellectual rigour as Bambi! What is really foolish is that it clearly appeals to insecure political leaders who desperately want to be all things to all people!  In the current era of "The Market is always right", where have all the sceptics gone? There is no one to expose the bogus realities of much of advertising and marketing. Such is the grip of modern advertising that to question the omniscience of advertising is to bring down the wrath of God!  Which results in the Emperor still parading in his new birthday suit  and still totally unaccountable!  Advertisings' amazing benefits are simply an illusion conjured up by exotic advertising personalities of whom the biggest culprits were the Saatchi Brothers!  And boy did they lead the business world on a merry dance!  Advertising people refuse to learn from experience, and strive instead to discredit any new, superior methodof communication  denying us all of enlightenment and the benefits stemming from a superior method which, in turn, condemns them to repeat the past.  There is a far better way and it is proven accountable and very cost  effective!

Interactive Communication provides strong, accountable...

...(New) advertising.

Marketing leadership in driving business success has never been in more

demand, however they desperately need proven examples of "New"

Advertising...and Interactive Communication is the most definitely proven

"New Advertising" with over $10 million invested in independent research.

With Interactive Communication in place as a regular feature of your marketing

programme CMOs will discover that Interactive Communication provides a

strong marketing communications programme and will change the way in

which all advertising is conducted. Because it is totally accountable in both

analogue and digital.

Senior management is increasingly on the outlook for marketeers who don't

merely do things better but re-invent how they go about things. This is

particularly true in the face of vastly changing consumer behaviour dynamics

as evidenced by the explosion in Social Media. It's forcing a massive

reinvention of ways to both interpret customer needs and to market more

successfully.

As interactive moves in to quietly replace old advertising, the old advertising is

leaving us & Interactive Communication is arriving.

As we emerge from the recession we must resist the temptation of sliding

backwards. Take the time to study Interactive Communication, both you and

your organisation will be the better for it!Because Interactive Communication,

properly structured, will allow Senior Marketers to finally "engage" with their

audience. Sad to say despite the fact that interactive communication offers

unique opportunities for true accountability, many Clients still hold onto their

analogue mindsets!

Your complete and utter lack of understanding of the word "communication"

together with a lack of appreciation as to what can, and does, stifle effective communication.

All advertising is a form of learning whereby the advertiser is asking people to change their behavior after learning the benefits of the products or services on offer. However, we all tend to filter out information, which we do not want to hear. This clearly alters the effectiveness of conventional advertising in quite a dramatic way.

The final purchase decision is invariably a compromise and this leads to a certain amount of anxiety; the worry that perhaps the decision was not the best or the right one. In order to minimise this anxiety the purchaser seeks to reinforce their choice and begins to take more notice of their chosen product's marketing communications.

Due to a lack of understanding of the communication process we have created a media society during the past 40 or 50 years, where the whole process has been de-humanized.

There is now an extraordinary reduction in interaction because conventional advertising and marketing have become a one-way practice whereby information is disseminated in a passive form.

So what are you going to do about this?

It can be said with confidence that Interactive Communication,



properly executed, will emerge as the New Advertising and is proven to be far more effective. It allows Clients to save huge amounts of money, it will also allow Clients to make very accurate decisions upon where to position their brand(s) in fact it will allow Clients to emerge highly successful and arguably healthier than ever before!

Interactive is a bold call for a new Advertising. The phrase "In the Clients interest" so out of fashion for a long time has returned and Clients can only benefit from it!

It also frees the best marketing people to abandon their claim that "We have the best creativity" Interactive Communication proves to Clients the utter banality of that claim, Creativity has never been the sole criterion for the success, or otherwise, of marketing communication.

Advertising-as-usual is long on self-promotion and back stabbing and very short on talent & personal responsibility. Advertising-as-usual is so conservative that it lacks entrepreneurial talent and it will only be through new ideas and new companies that marketing will pull through from from their travails.

However that does not mean that you should rush onto Social Media - all things in moderation wont hurt you, Social Media, properly executed, belongs in the media mix! However the problem is that we are in this evolutionary period, nothing is factually based, it's all new with the sole exception of interactive communication!

Your customers are sick to death of being treated as mere abstract numbers

.

Advertising has dehumanised and depersonalised the whole

process of communication, there just never was a mass market! They are

also sick to death at the rampant corporate dishonesty all around them, again

more evidence of Management being totally unaware of the real world and the

communication process. Evidence of their ability to dehumanise and depersonalise

the process of marketing. It would appear that customers cannot trust

anything or anybody these days. There was a time, for example, when we trusted

our banks to look after our best interests and play fair with their charges. If

so these days are long gone. The bond of trust has been broken, not only in

banking, and people are rightly suspicious. However Interactive Marketing Communication could be

 a positive start to resolving all theproblems facing advertising and marketing.

Interaction can be defined simply as straightforward communication between two

parties. Presently we are in danger of losing the real meaning of

interaction, as we tend to focus discussions on the emerging technologies and

neglect the communication process itself. With an understanding of the real

meaning of Interactive Communication, existing media can be made interactive,

and subsequently far more cost effective. Interactive Marketing

Communication turns passive advertising into active advertising and actually

alters behaviour during the communication and learning process.And all the advertising in the world

cannot help you solvethat problem!

 

ACCOUNTABILITY

　

　

Professor E.L. Roberto, PhD, Coca-Cola, foundation professor of International Marketing, reviewed the £A15 million of independent research conducted on behalf of Shopper’s Voice and provided this summary as to the technique’s cost efficiency:

"The Shopper’s Voice participating advertisements generated recall scores that are more than 50% productive than normal advertising. The effect on purchase intention is just as impressive if not much more.

All these productivity increments are attainable at a reasonably inexpensive budget. One Shopper’s Voice Client revealed that for his participating brand, his quarter television expenditure was $US5.7 million as compared to its Shopper’s Voice budget of $US0.5 million. This 1:10 ratio has been obtained in Shopper’s Voice experience in other countries."

Sources: AGB, Gallup, Martyn Research, Bourke, NOP, City Insights & more.

　

　

　

　


The desperate need to restructure advertising and marketing




Only interactive marketing communication will provide clients with the

necessary communicaion and feedback necessary for effective marketing to take place.

For too long, marketing functions have been vertically organised by media

type. This approach is mirrored on the agency side, with rewards based on

discipline-specific models. These must be torn down.

On the client-side Marketing and Brand Managers must involve and lead a

team of colleagues who have the responsibility, vision, understanding and

commitment to engage in a media-agnostic planning process. And this team of

enlightened marketers must be willing to let strategic goals -- not historic

patterns -- drive budget allocations.

Achieving strategic integration requires a top-to-bottom reinvention of the

marketing organisation. Holistic professionals who are system thinkers,

customer-centric believers, innovators and dreamers must lead this

transformation.

These individuals should be cross-trained to understand the entire marketing

spectrum and learn discipline-specific skill sets. And to specifically

understand the real meaning of the word "communication" Increasingly, these

leaders will need strong quantitative skills -- in order to analyse the

data-rich resources and leverage mathematical tools now available, especially if

they are to drive cross-disciplinary approaches that fuse disparate

consumer-engagement channels. Above all, they need to be superior team

leaders who have the insights, talent and passion to take marketing integration

to new heights.

Engaging in conversations with relevant markets (Interacting) will become an

important source of knowledge and innovation, the quality of this market

intelligence has already (and will do so more in the future) proven to be more

accurate than research and will determine market share.

　

　

What on Earth are they teaching these days at our Business

Schools?

Because it certainly does not include honesty! It can be said with certainty that

the current global financial crisis was created by the utter dishonesty of the

banks. The reputations of the largest corporations in the world are being

questioned more and more as a tsunami of evidence emerges as to the utter

indifference of Top-down-Management to their customers needs and

expectations. And the weasel words used by Marketing and Advertising

agencies to justify spending (and thus wasting) more

and more ineffectual advertising on new and old media are examples of

creatively brilliant lying! Traditional TV advertising is under further threat as

the take-up of personal video recorders (PVRS) soars, and still they

recommend advertising on TV, where no research evidence has ever emerged

as to its efficiency and accountability.

Just how dishonest is the Advertising Industry? For thirty years at least there

has been a well researched, well documented communications technique that

proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that interactive communication, properly

executed, is far more cost effective than traditional advertising. However given

the method of remuneration enjoyed by the Advertising Agencies/Media

Agencies they have chosen to ignore this far superior method of

communication. Here in England, the Home Office has admitted spending tens

of millions of pounds on TV advertising. £20 million was spent on TV adverts

rather than the hiring of more police! A spokesperson said "People will be

appalled that so many millions are being wasted on spin at a time of economic

hardship. People want more police on the streets, not more PR on the TV. It is,

to say the least disgraceful , that at a time of economic hardship, the Home

Office chooses to spend millions of pounds of taxpayers money on

propaganda."