Innholdsfortegnelse for June/July 2015 i Marketing

CONTENT PARTNER: a Marketing Content Partner is an organisation with which we’ve entered into a partnership to collaborate on content for the magazine (see page numbers listed for each), as well as exclusive content only available to Marketing Advantage Members. Learn more at marketingmag.com.au/advantage  Marketing would like to recognise and thank the members of its Editorial Advisory Board for their invaluable guidance: Michael Valos, chair; Brook Carter, AustralianSuper; Cameron Woods, L’Oréal; Caroline Ruddick, MYOB; Christine Khor, Chorus Executive; Erik Zimmerman, Littil; Mike Harley, XPotential Australia New Zealand; Peter Little, Cbus; Shannon Peachey, ANZ; Sifat Bhatia, Western Union; Skev Ioannou, IBM.…

Verb 1. Interrupt (an event, activity or process) by causing a disturbance or problem. 2. Drastically alter or destroy the structure of something. Origin: Late Middle English: from Latin disrupt- ‘broken apart’, from the verb disrumpere. The Oxford English Dictionary “Successful disrupters are people who are capable of an active imagination.” – Best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell at the World Business Forum in New York. “Ironically, for incumbent businesses it is often their in-built adversity to risk that presents as the biggest risk in the face of disruption.” – A report by University of Sydney Business School and Capgemini titled ‘Digital Disruptive Intermediaries’. Read more in our interview on page 32. “We talk about the importance of technology and knowledge and resources… but we don’t talk about frame of mind –…

But does that mean disruption is done? Not a chance. Five of Australia’s brightest entrepreneurial sparks list five things each – businesses, industries and trends – that deserve your attention. “Deals in your email? So 2014.” – Simon Dell Simon Dell Managing director at TwoCents Group 1 Co-ignition (recruitment) Co-ignition was born out of one of the core problems with recruitment: the cost. A UK-based platform that is launching in Australia concurrently, Co-ignition allows employers to place a job free of charge and then invite recruiters to bid on how much they’ll charge to fill the role. Immediately, the software disrupts the typical recruiter and employer relationship and, while the cost and speed benefits are obvious for the employer, the recruiter is accessing many more potential clients without the costly…

Imagine a young couple standing in the aisle at a major hardware chain trying to choose which tools to buy for use at home on a few routine maintenance jobs. They stand there lost in confusion, staring at brands they don’t recognise and a range of prices that don’t provide any insights. At that moment, a neighbour walks past and asks what they are looking for. As the young couple explain their dilemma, the neighbour breaks into a smile and suggests they try Openshed.com.au, a sharing platform where neighbours lend and share tools among each other. The young couple follow the neighbour out of the store, smiling with relief. At last, a solution they can understand. This small event is typical of a groundswell movement that is allowing consumers to…

MCCAIN OVEN CHIPS: Cooking chips at home once meant the use of the dreaded deep fryer, cause of kitchen fires the world over. In the late 1970s, McCain invented oven chips and everything changed. Ever since, innovation has guided the business and it has launched countless convenient oven-baked and frozen goods. HEINZ SQUEEZABLE SAUCES: Ketchup, mayonnaise and other sauces in squeezable bottles seems a no-brainer today. Yet, until Heinz launched them 1983, there were considerable technical challenges and safety concerns from consumers. Plastic has now replaced glass in almost every supermarket category, but it all started with the humble tomato sauce. LATINA FRESH: Trading-up buyers of dried pasta and jar sauces to chilled, fresh products was a major coup for Latina Fresh, a General Mills brand. It was arguably one…

Background: Australian mid-market businesses represent the great untold story of the Australian economy. GE Capital has been championing this high performing sector for some time. The ‘GE Capital Australian Mid-Market Report’ checks the pulse of mid-market businesses, conducting in-depth analysis of sentiment, seeking to understand the challenges and opportunities that drive the mid-market, so that GE Capital can provide better products and services. It is one of the largest single studies of mid-market business sentiment in Australia. But, like many research reports, its hardcopy format was tired. GE Capital worked with Edelman to develop fresh and innovative ways to engage this important customer group for the 2014 version of the report. Its core focus was the key growth sectors of food and beverage, technology and transportation. Objectives: The communication goal…

The purpose of these articles is to shift the focus away from the role of the CMO as one of marketing execution and tactics, and replace it with the view that the chief marketer role is both holistic and strategic. From the discussions I’ve had with chief marketers in developing this program of articles it’s apparent that CMOs who are valued show their relevance by guiding organisations through uncertain futures, shape internal cultures and represent the customer’s viewpoint in strategic decision-making. Unless CMOs carry out these roles, they are likely to be reduced to a tactical focus and limited to being in charge of marketing communications and not much else. Industry disruption in Australia is evidenced by Deloitte’s identification of 13 industries – comprising 65 percent of the Australian economy…

What’s the top imperative at your company? If it’s not a transformation to make the company more customer-focused, you’re making a mistake. Technology and economic forces have changed the world so much that an obsession with winning, serving and retaining customers is the only possible response. Welcome to the age of the customer – a 20-year business cycle in which the most successful enterprises will reinvent themselves to systematically understand and serve increasingly powerful customers. We’re in an era of persistent economic imbalances defined by erratic economic growth, deflationary fears, an oversupply of labour and surplus capital hunting returns in a sea of record-low interest rates. This abundance of capital and labour means the path from good idea to customer-ready product has never been easier, and seamless access to all…

• New-market disruption: a product (or service) that addresses a market that could not previously be served. • Low-end disruption: simpler, cheaper or more convenient product than the existing one. • In Christensen’s own words, “It’s not a breakthrough innovation!” DISINTERMEDIATION: • Removal of intermediaries, AKA cutting out the middleman, such as the distributor, wholesaler, broker or agent. This is most commonly confused with disruption. See: disruptors Amazon, Netflix and iTunes, and the disrupted travel agents, newspapers and record stores.…

As anyone worth their salt will tell you, the future of marketing (and PR, and advertising) is digital. And anything digital, be it a website, app or social media analytics report, needs to be programmed in some way or another: ‘coded’, in the vernacular. So why do so few marketers know how to code? I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s to do with how these disciplines are taught at university, where strategy is vaunted while execution gets swept under the syllabus. It could be that coding remains uncool among the artistic and creative types usually drawn to marketing (at least, until their geeky programmer friends make a million bucks). I’m not saying that every marketer should double as a software developer. However, a basic understanding and appreciation of code is very…

Most candidates for a job would take it as a hint and move on if a company goes silent for two weeks after an interview, but not Katherine Nguyen. Acer’s head of marketing spent hours researching and coming up with a strategy for the company that she then boldly emailed through, hoping for a second chance. It worked – the hiring manager invited her for coffee, and when he offered her the job right there and then, she was so thrilled she spilled her drink all over the table in front of him. “My cup just spilled over. I was so excited, I couldn’t hold it back,” the petite and charismatic 39-year-old remembers with an embarrassed laugh, reliving the stress and panic she was feeling as a new resident of…

DISRUPTIVE ADVERTISING IS not dead, but your brand will die without it. That’s because disruptive ideas are the new norm in advertising. In today’s environment of media fragmentation and multi-screening – where you can’t just buy eyeballs anymore – you have to disrupt or you’ll be ignored. As consumers, we are now wired to look for disruptions – it’s what excites us and it’s what engages us. Constant brand launches, product iterations and technological advances have conditioned us to take incremental innovation as a given. No one ever said, “I love that it is now 10 percent better.” In the same vein, Triple Choc Tim Tams are not a disruption. True disruption creates excitement. The disruptive innovation that has transformed our lives is the ultimate proof point. Think Facebook, iTunes,…

I am very tempted to plead the Fifth. The media, marketing and advertising industries have been disrupted from top to bottom and our businesses will never be the same. Many may not survive. However, some will find opportunity in adversity: Recognising the opportunity, acting quickly and organising or reorganising. It sounds easy but if you have been in business for any length of time you know just how difficult that is. The reality is that embedded structures, cultures, employees, boards and leaders find it hard to ‘pivot’ but if they don’t, if we don’t, we face irrelevance. Never has it been more important to be willing to fail in order to succeed.…

The way we pay, the way we play, even the way we stay – innovative players have not only been able to penetrate the market in recent times, they’ve dominated it. New players capture the market’s imagination with a heavy dose of chutzpah on the side, unfazed by regulatory hurdles or geographic blocks. It’s hardly surprising then, that some established companies, internationally and in Australia, have been caught flatfooted and the implications are being felt across the corporate spectrum. Mature, multinational, high value companies have seemed to fail overnight. The reality is that their decline took rather longer but, scratching a little deeper, what has caused these brands to move from icon status to the business scrapheap? What did they miss? One word: innovation. It does appear, however, that the…

Disrupters are no longer chomping away at your market with lower priced alternatives. They are fundamentally changing the rules and dynamics of industries and creating new markets and economies. They attack markets with new business models that are agile and scalable. And they let their customers do their marketing, creating ripples across industries and redefining customer expectations. Looking at the key characteristics of disrupters and the implications they have on the market, disrupters are fundamentally different to traditional competitors. They develop their products through rapid low-cost experimentation utilising popular platforms. Products are marketed to all customer segments immediately, enabling them to trial and perfect their products as they learn about their users. As a result, the adoption of product and services is significantly accelerated. Drawing on their access to market…

Background: Bookworld was launched as a new pure-play online retailer into the highly competitive Australian book industry in August 2012 after rebranding from Borders.com.au. With online competition coming from major overseas retailers such as Amazon, and traditional competition from an already established bookstore network in Australia, Bookworld needed to stand out from the crowd. The first year was focused on creating a unique brand voice that was different to anything else within the local book market, while also creating a compelling consumer proposition. Bookworld launched with Australia’s biggest range of books, a price guarantee to be cheaper than Amazon and free delivery on every order to ensure it was providing its customers with an industry-best experience and giving them a reason to consider Bookworld over the overseas companies. Bookworld experienced…

http://www2.deloitte.com/au/en/pages/ building-lucky-country/articles/ digital-disruption-harnessing-the-bang.htm Internal branding is one way of developing a facilitative culture that is deemed necessary for organisations undergoing digital transformation and attempting or succeeding in industry disruption. These reports highlight the link between culture technology and industry opportunity. http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/235881 This article talks about mindsets and perspectives that precede successful disruption. An organisation that has succeeded with internal branding is more likely to be able to share an innovative and disruptive mindset. http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrymyler/2014/10/03/ ten-companiesthat-are-disrupting-their-industries-through-technology In contrast to the first article, this has examples of why the new business model was successful and how it was different to the existing industry players. As you can expect, digital and technology was a common feature in these success stories. https://hbr.org/2013/03/big-bang-disruption This article provides more rich examples of disruptive start-ups, but an interesting…

I invest a lot of time working with companies born of the industrial era, and the questions I get asked most often are, ‘Can you please give us an example of a company that survived and thrived as their industry was disrupted?’ and, ‘What should we do to ensure we don’t get disrupted?’ Survival rule number one: Culture is the core of change, technology is just a tactic In truth, there are some answers to these questions. But here’s what they're really after: ‘Please tell us a simple story of a company where everything turned out OK, so we can all relax and avoid uncomfortable decisions and changes.' This is the key danger most legacy companies face. They ask for examples and strategy, but they rarely want to do the…

We’re being media-boarded, smothered and suffocated by marketing communication – some of it valuable, most of it not. And distinguishing between the two is getting harder and harder thanks to copycat approaches and off-the-shelf campaigns. Well-trained consumers and new anti-marketing innovations are already acting as natural selection agents, extinguishing noisy brands. For example, Brand Killer, a head mounted display that blocks brands and logos, has become a great filter against branded pollution. But the best answer to disrupt through the rubbish lies in providing useful marketing communications services, something the industry has been calling ‘brand utility’. Brand utility aims at making brands become more integral parts of people’s lives as opposed to the usual transactional interactions. It’s when media and creative combined make everyday life easier. Simply put, it is…

If you were born a hundred years ago, all that would exist to record your existence would be a birth, marriage (if you got married) and death certificate. Fast-forward to today and things could not be more different. In one very ordinary day, by swiping your credit card at the petrol station, handing over one of your many loyalty cards at your favourite clothes shop and emailing from your mobile, your existence is mapped, tracked and recorded. Before lunch, you would have generated a vast amount of data accessible to the government and other organisations. All these traces of information that you leave behind through your everyday activities are known as your data shadow or digital footprint. As a long-time professional marketer, the implications of this ‘data shadow’, for consumer…

The market’s showing promise for jobseekers out there, which is making it difficult as an employer to attract the talent you need when you need it. Candidates at the moment are often toying with more than one job offer and the interview process is moving at the speed of light! With this in mind, how do you stand out from the crowd and become an employer of choice, so that the top talent is knocking at your door? What’s your USP (unique selling point)? Have a think about how you market your company to potential candidates and the key points that separate you from your competitors. These points will help you attract the best employees on the market, so don’t forget to highlight these when running your recruitment campaign. Posting…

Birds do it. Bees do it. Even educated fleas do it. Let’s do it – let’s all disrupt. Or let’s not, at least not before thinking. Although business environments experience unique changes at any given point, with this decade’s theme being fast, competition and innovation isn’t new, and the overuse of the word ‘disruption’ has reached a point of being unhelpful. Two decades since his seminal book came out, the ‘father of disruption’ (writing that phrase made me groan, to illustrate the point) Clayton Christensen was interviewed last year by Businessweek to respond to a take-down of disruption by Jill Lepore published in The New Yorker. The article started out as an attempt to rein in the almost random use of the word ‘disruption’, but quickly veered into a less…

The internet as a social and commercial force – mobile internet most notably –has given rise to new intermediaries, unchained from the legacy overheads of physical distribution. The dotcom book saw pure-play ecommerce companies, online stores and new media. The Web 2.0 era and its collective and converging channels and trends, of apps and audience participation en masse, has middlemen everywhere quaking in their boots. Retail, finance, transport, labour… it’s the circumventing of central pieces of the value chain, the ‘digitally disruptive intermediaries’, that are so often spoken about when we talk about disruption. It’s important to note that digital intermediaries aren’t the only topic under the ‘disruption’ umbrella, but have emerged as the default talking point thanks to prominent and public examples, starting at the turn of the century…

2000 Founded in New Zealand by Dr Corran McLachlan and Howard Patterson. 2003 Commences selling milk in Australia and New Zealand via licences. 2007 Establishes joint venture with Freedom Foods to sell A2 branded products. 2009 Enters agreement with Jalna to produce co-branded yoghurt products. 2010 Assumes full ownership of the Australian joint venture, under the A2 Milk brand. 2012 Commissions new milk-processing facility in Smeaton Grange, Sydney. Launches A2 Milk, via a joint venture, in the UK. 2013 Launches A2 Platinum infant formula in Australia, New Zealand and China. 2014 Extends in Australia into cream and continues growth of the fresh milk range. Enters the fresh and long-life milk market in China. Assumes full ownership of the UK joint venture, under the A2 Milk brand. Announces plans to enter…

Background: When clients brief their media agency to help roll out a global campaign, they don’t expect to learn things about their product they never knew. Colgate briefed MEC to launch Optic White into Australia, expecting the best possible use of its existing creative and media assets. What Colgate wasn’t expecting was for the media agency to come up with a totally new set of claims about the product, moving it from a purely rational reason to believe, to a highly emotional one. It all begun with a world-first neuroscience research MEC initiated and conducted into ‘The Science Behind The Smile’, and culminated in an online video series showing the competitive edge whiter teeth gives you socially, romantically and at work. The overall media strategy was to move Optic White…

It can be unpleasant, damaging and can come from anywhere – top down, bottom up or even laterally – but the one thing disruption always does is change businesses. And once you understand how it happens, it presents as a major opportunity for those who are ready to embrace it. TOP DOWN DISRUPTION When disruption comes from the top down, it’s often sparked by a large player deciding to take on an existing competitor or move into a new space and undercut the market. Often, a company will use the assets of a successful line of business to support the new venture, working to a five- to 15-year plan to claim significant market share or even drive a competitor out of business through cutthroat pricing. Good examples of this include…

1 understanding previous positioning and obtaining views from longer-term employees 2 opportunity for employees to have a say (workshop/questionnaire/other) in future brand values (so they believe that they are heard) 3 CEO/executive information sessions for employees 4 opportunity for teams to identify what they need to ‘stop’, ‘start’ and ‘keep doing’ 5 review and alignment of employee values (close liaison between CMO, CEO and HR) – ideally employees provide feedback 6 identify future champions in the business 7 process to develop ‘quick wins’ within teams to start delivering the brand promise 8 integration of internal communication tools such as intranet and Yammer etc 9 feedback and celebrations of demonstrations of brand values and beliefs, and 10 integration into the way we do business (integration into KPIs) and continued championing by…

While the toddler analogy may only make sense to new parents, it works on many levels. You see babies, on the whole, are ‘difficult’. Not only because you have to keep them alive (all the time, and for an eternity), but also because they blindside you regularly, and normally just after you’ve finally developed some confidence in their routine or behaviour. This is very disruptive and, furthermore, the disruption itself becomes more sophisticated every time. So thinking that you know something because of the way it behaved in the past is the work of the new parent… and an unskilled marketer. There was once a time when we all ordered ‘a coffee’. If you ask a waiter these days, “One coffee please,” you’d be indicating to all around that you…

In 2002, Mercedes-Benz let the world know that after a 60-year absence it would be reviving the historic Maybach brand. The goal was to use the Maybach as a platform to compete head to head with Bentley and Rolls-Royce in that exclusive club known as the ultra-luxury car market, where price is no object. Unfortunately for Mercedes-Benz, the brand was a complete and unmitigated disaster, with the company announcing that it was closing the division after less than 10 years of production. So what went wrong? Basically, everything. But first, a quick history lesson... The Maybach got its name from Wilhelm Maybach, who founded his eponymously named car company in 1909. Previously, Maybach had actually worked with Gottlieb Daimler, one of the founders of the company that would go on…

One of the latest buzzwords to get everyone in our community fired up is ‘digital transformation’, even if they don’t necessarily understand it. Actually, especially if they don’t understand it… It’s got all the key ingredients guaranteed to whip the marketing world into a frenzy: shiny, idealistic and reliant on synergy. Being a negative-Nancy, I’ve been watching all of this with somewhat of a critical eye. The details of what it is (the use of technology to work synergistically and improve performance across organisations) and what to do are well-covered. However, I find that everyone’s coming at it from ‘what’ as opposed to ‘how’. Frankly, it is a huge undertaking and really important, but while everyone is going on like it’s the second coming of Christ, some details and intricacies…

UNLTD. – PRONOUNCED ‘UNLIMITED’ Our brand was developed to emphasise the unlimited potential of the disadvantaged youth we support. But, however clever our name and however powerful our cause, when we were articulating it as ‘UNLTD’ we weren’t fully connecting with our audience. The more momentum we built as the industry’s only charitable foundation, the more we realised people weren’t quite making the ‘unlimited’ association. As a brand, we were failing to resonate with a discerning and brand savvy audience: the media, marketing and advertising industry. Our logo, a device that should’ve provided a solid base for us to build our movement upon – was disrupting our cause. NOT A CHARITY, A FOUNDATION Logo and brand name aside, many people have difficulty understanding exactly what we do. That’s because UnLtd.…

The crowd As a person with a penchant for trivia, inquiry and general nerdy behaviour, I recently asked myself which one website I most frequented. In the end I settled for Wikipedia, the “internet’s largest and most popular general reference work” (according to Wikipedia itself). The beauty of Wikipedia is its simplicity and scope. On this crowdsourced labyrinth of constantly updated clickable content, it is easy to spend many stimulating hours circling topics, their antecedents and tangents. Wikipedia commenced in 2001 and is now almost permanently entrenched in the upper echelon of the world’s top sites. A quick trip to alexa.com, as I typed this, had it at ranked at number six (behind Google, Facebook, YouTube, Baidu and Yahoo!). Wikipedia stands out as a non-commercial giant. It’s operated, along with…