Nilewide Marketing Review articles from August 2004

Nilewide Marketing Review archives from August 2004

You are kidding!(marketing management)
August 1, 2004... The debate over the McDonald's CMO's comments that the age of positioning is over and the future is based on one idea expressed via different stories for different audiences (called brand journalism or brand chronicles) continues in the US...

Snob value.(brand identification)
August 1, 2004... The glib assertion that brands are the means to higher margins in commodity industries continues to be repeated mantra-like. But this simplistic claim hides the far more complex fact that, in many markets, the margins are now so low that...

Democratised luxury.(luxury with discounts )
August 1, 2004... Discount, which used to have an air of cheap and nasty, is now drawing from its luxury cousins to become more chic. One reason for this is rising affluence, for example, incomes in the UK have grown 20% since 1995. Another is the changing...

The sound of the brand.(brand identification)
August 1, 2004... Plato argued that words were formed by imitating ideas through sounds. This onomatopoeic theory and sound symbolism, the linguistic process in which the sounds of a word provide cues about the word's meaning, certainly seem to apply to brand...

Nobody does it better.(market positioning)
August 1, 2004... Conventional wisdom suggests a company must offer something unique to be successful. This is becoming more challenging as products and services become more similar, and the usual answer is to differentiate an offer through branding and...

Ready to negotiate?(management of procurement)
August 1, 2004... The procurement department is now involved in over 50% of agency reviews and negotiations for major advertising and marketing services accounts. In spite of the desires of some parties, this is only going to increase. While for some agencies...

Four "I"s of international research.
August 1, 2004... As the demand for deep and broad research grows, there is no clarity on the best approach to international research. At present, most international projects are organised using a centralised research panel, which sends researchers out to the...

Lemonade is not always sticky.(pros and cons of online viral marketing)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... Recommendations by happy customers to their peers may be the holy grail for marketing, but for most brands, there is very little of interest to be said. As one commentator suggested, the only thing sticky about lemonade is when you spill it on...

The demon brand.(Apple's brand identification)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... Apple's famous 1984 ad typifies the strategy of demonising the competitor and its potential benefits. In this case, Apple was demonising the slow, dominating IBM and, by attacking it in this way, Apple generated solidarity among its customers...

Online grows up.(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... After a flurry of activity during the dot-com boom, followed by a period of reassessment, online advertising appears to be reinventing itself. Online ad revenues doubled in 2003 to $US1.9 billion, and Forrester Research expects them to jump to...

P2P becomes kosher.(Peer-to-peer (P2P) software for downloading British Broadcasting Corp.'s programs)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2004... Peer-to-peer (P2P) software is usually seen in terms of making illegal downloads of music, and prompting expensive court cases. This means the BBC's recent foray into P2P has raised a few eyebrows. The BBC is piloting a project to offer new...

Identity and accountability.
August 8, 2004... Thirty years ago Peter Drucker said: "The business has two basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs." Yet today, marketers will be familiar with the sound of their own...

Four steps to alignment.(practical approach)
August 8, 2004... In most companies, the marketing department may still define the customer proposition, but many other functions, from call centre to retailer or dealer, have the greatest impact on the customer. This has led to the common enunciation that...

Is marketing virtuous?
August 8, 2004... If the aim of marketing is to make it easier for consumers to choose the brand that is most likely to satisfy them, it is a noble aim. One could even ask whether marketing is, by nature, virtuous because it has the customer's best interests at...

Beware the facts!
August 8, 2004... As neuroscience opens up new insights about the brain, it challenges marketing to think differently about the way they and their customers see their world. Our "mental models" about life, far from being based on the facts, are based on our own...

Blind decisions.
August 8, 2004... One decision often involves many smaller decisions and the first decision may often affect the following decisions. So, for example, someone might decide to go to one store for an item rather than another, because it is closer to her house. But...

Plus ca change...?(Corporate rebranding)
August 8, 2004... Corporate rebranding is expensive, distracting for employees and other stakeholders, and fails more often than it succeeds, yet it is increasingly common. There are, of course, sound reasons for rebranding, the most obvious being the need to...

Away from the hierarchy.(Brief Article)
August 8, 2004... Despite its many guises and customer rhetoric, marketing in its many incantations, from brand-building advertising to technology-driven CRM, has remained firmly embedded in the hierarchical mode of doing something to customers. The most obvious...

When goals don't win.(Brief Article)
August 8, 2004... There seems to be a common belief in the importance of goals, and that people are more likely to achieve if they have goals. Yet it does depend on whether the goal is specific, and whether the goal is sufficiently or overly challenging. Some...

On switching.(Brief Article)
August 8, 2004... There may be a perception that people are not prone to switching due to their inertia, particularly for utilities, banks or telecoms. However, a study by the Henley Centre suggests that in fact nearly half of customers have recently switched...

Cultlike brands thrive?(Brief Article)
August 8, 2004... The annual Business Week/Interbrand Top 100 Brands report always creates interest, even if its importance to most marketers can be limited because the big companies have so much influence. This year, the report makes the suggestion that the big...

Optimal balance.
August 15, 2004... One of the challenges in all fields of marketing is to maximise profits, and attention is generally focused on one or more of the key contributors to profit, for example, acquisition or retention rates. This focus on one easily accessible...

The challenge of multi-partner programs.
August 15, 2004... Once described as the "big idea" of the 1990s, loyalty programs have had a mixed history. Some, such as Tesco's Clubcard, go from strength to strength while others have fallen by the wayside. This mixed history applies equally to solus programs...

Why I hate management.
August 15, 2004... Canadian academic, Henry Mintzberg, has been scathing in his critiques of many business practices. For instance in his book, Why I Hate Flying, he bitingly notes about frequent flier programs: "yes, they are bribing you with your own money". In...

Conjoint overload.
August 15, 2004... Conjoint analysis is a widely used technique for understanding the importance of different attributes, and has been variously used in new product development and even by the US military in strategy development. One of the nagging problems with...

The outcome of brand mistakes.
August 15, 2004... No brand is immune from making mistakes, but the outcome of those mistakes depends on the type of relationship that customers have with it and the type of brand. A recent American study claims that the relationship someone has with a sincere...

The dynamics of boycotts.
August 15, 2004... While few people join in boycotts of brands or companies, boycotts do damage companies. In many categories, even a small loss of sales can dramatically affect profitability and any boycott will create an opportunity for the boycotters to try a...

Persistence of identity.
August 15, 2004... Many brands become part of people's lives because they appeal to their sense of identity. Yet marketers may not be aware of just how powerful that sense of identity is, and how immovable it may be in the face of countervailing forces. An...

Critiquing the art of brands.
August 15, 2004... The link between brand image and art is logical and one that many advertising creative people have aspired to. However, there has been little real learning from art history and critique by marketing in general. While some artists may not like...

The fragmented male.(Brief Article)
August 15, 2004... The missing young male TV viewers may have reappeared in the USA, but that does not mean that media fragmentation will not continue. Intriguingly, the necessity to create stars to attract viewers and listeners to conventional media may only...

Why beauty sells.(Brief Article)
August 15, 2004... Evolutionary psychology tells us it is neither sexist nor misogynist for men to be attracted to beautiful young women, as this attraction is simply due to the evolutionary need to mate. It is therefore unsurprising that ads that use decorative...

On with the offensive.(offensive and defensive marketing)
August 22, 2004... The marketing concept, which can be simply defined as "satisfying customers", is virtually unchallenged today, and has given rise to everything from delighting customers to loyalty and relationship marketing to love. Yet, a perhaps slightly...

The collective mind.(Brief Article)
August 22, 2004... It is common in western culture to attribute good ideas to one exceptional individual. However, one leading thinker, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, believes that creativity belongs not to the individual's mind but to the interaction between people...

The branching brand.
August 22, 2004... The idea that brands evolve in the same way that species do has been advanced in a number of marketing texts. Certainly, Darwin's theories make sense for any living entity, and it can be assumed that brands are living entities that are able to...

Measures of luxury.
August 22, 2004... Perceptions of what is luxury are constantly changing, especially today as more people can afford to buy luxury items. At the same time, it is difficult to define luxury because it is dependent on the context, and who is involved. One academic...

Judging the budgets.
August 22, 2004... Sales goals and marketing budgets in most businesses tend to be dictated by the needs of corporate finance instead of being defined by a bottom-up planning and budgeting approach. This means that allocating the communication budget is done by...

Giving panels what they want.(material incentives)
August 22, 2004... While material incentives are often required to ensure continued participation in research panels, the actual amount does not appear to be important for online panels, either commercial or non-profit. Offering higher amounts does not seem to...

Measuring buzz.(word of mouth research)(Brief Article)
August 22, 2004... While there is no shortage of interest in word of mouth (WOM), and buzz, there is certainly a dearth of measurement approaches. This gap is spurring the first round of proprietary systems, which, while difficult to evaluate, do provide some...

Monitoring buzz.(word of mouth research)(Brief Article)
August 22, 2004... Consumer participation and discussion of various topics on websites, product review sites, blogs and in chat rooms, are increasingly important forms of word of mouth (WOM). Monitoring the number of postings and their content is one form of...

Cause-related attitudes.(Brief Article)
August 22, 2004... Cause-related marketing remains an important strategy for many brands, though we still lack a useful model of the ideal approach. The fit between the cause and the brand and the changes in attitudes that may result are still difficult to model....

Whatever next?(Brief Article)
August 22, 2004... The influence of technology in daily life is assumed, but its ability to influence the future may be overstated. In the search for the next big thing (invariably the present big thing), we have forgotten that technology is not the only herald...

P in a Pod.(free iPods)(Brief Article)
August 22, 2004... In its first 2 months the website FreeiPods gave away more than 2,500 iPods as promotions to attract customers. Customers can receive a free iPod or a $US250 gift certificate in exchange for signing up for various online promotions and...

Just enough, good enough.(Traditional marketing case study)
August 29, 2004... Analysis Customer delight, added features, free gift inside and even those old favourites of faster, bigger, brighter, better etc have been the backbones of marketing claims over many years. So intense is this chorus that it gives the...