Nilewide Marketing Review articles from July 2005

Nilewide Marketing Review archives from July 2005

Dialogue or still a monologue?(relationship marketing)
July 3, 2005... Relationship marketing, or the way managers execute it, is struggling to demonstrate its worth in some companies. So it may be an appropriate time to reconsider the philosophical basis of the theory and its application. At the heart of...

The people not the strategy.(Jim Collins says best way to handle uncertainty is by having the right people)
July 3, 2005... The marketing literature is replete with case studies describing the strategies that led one or more companies to their outstanding success. Each one comes with the implicit assumption that, if you take the same actions, you too will succeed....

On the edges.(need for new social software platforms)
July 3, 2005... One of the tough realities of business is that there is no long-term sustainable competitive advantage. In the past, factors such as geography gave an impression that there may be, but today these barriers to competitors have been broken down....

Valuing IP.(how to value brands)
July 3, 2005... While there are many approaches to valuing intellectual property (IP), such as brands, there are equally as many people sceptical about the values placed on them. While claims that the Coca-Cola brand is worth $US70.45 bill make headlines in...

It's not what you own.(traditional forms of consumerism shrinking)(Brief Article)
July 3, 2005... The concept of ownership is so central to marketing, it is little wonder that we could fail to recognise the slow erosion of the need to own. Yet, that great juggernaut of ownership — materialism — appears to be slowly changing...

Faith, trust and confidence.(branding)
July 3, 2005... One of the most used words in branding is "trust", because the original purpose of the brand was to give the customer something to trust. This was necessary as shoppers increasingly bought from large supermarkets and less so from the local...

Online ad market unprepared.
July 3, 2005... In what is now a widely discussed speech to the Online Media, Marketing, and Advertising (OMMA) conference, US ad critic Bob Garfield suggested that the lack of effectiveness of broadcast advertising will inevitably lead to big chunks of ad...

Print does it quietly.(print advertising less intrusive than TV )(Brief Article)
July 3, 2005... Widespread claims that advertising is losing its effectiveness tend to assume that all media are equal. However, it could be argued that consumers are simply avoiding the more intrusive forms, like TV and radio, but staying with the less...

Feed the man ads.(really simple syndication (RSS) feeds)(Brief Article)
July 3, 2005... Regular users of the Internet may go to many different websites for their news or blogs, but this can take up valuable time. The principle of really simple syndication (RSS) is that an aggregator collects all the headlines from the sites that...

Sometimes best to forget the ad.(Brief Article)
July 3, 2005... We know there are differences in the efficacy of advertising for big and small brands, but less is known about the difference between advertising strong and weak brands. A strong brand is defined as one with high penetration and market...

Understanding the teenage brain.
July 10, 2005... Advances in neuroscience are taking us beyond generic descriptions of what may be happening when adults make a decision, to addressing the developing teenage brain. The US research suggests that the developing teenage brain is very different to...

Looking for gay friendly brands.
July 10, 2005... A number of surveys of gay and lesbian consumers in the US have suggested that up to half of this group seek information on whether a company is gay friendly or not in relation to at least some purchase decisions. This information seeking is...

Virtue is a niche value.
July 10, 2005... The big question about corporate social responsibility (CSR) still has an equivocal answer. Noble attempts to quantify the positive effects of CSR continue to clash with hardheaded claims that it is no more than a niche strategy, for some...

Ambiguous is ok.
July 10, 2005... There is an art in naming products whether it is the name of the business, the brand, the colour or the flavour. The name must reveal something about the product that will draw people in. It might be expected that the name should be familiar or...

CRM where it really matters.
July 10, 2005... The path of CRM has not been smooth, with many spectacular failures and limited successes. This does not change the fact that it appears to be a good idea when it works. While no CRM is perfect, good CRM has many characteristics that good...

People who need people.
July 10, 2005... A UK case study adds to our understanding of where so many CRM implementations have foundered. Based on interviews with managers and the people who use the CRM systems, the research identified three phases in the implementation process. These...

Planning a luxury extension?(model of Ambler and Styles)(influence of Brand equity )
July 10, 2005... The decision to extend a brand is based on the premise that the brand already has some equity, and an extension will be more successful than trying to create a new brand. The process of deciding whether or not to extend an fmcg brand was...

Tongues in check.(Brief Article)
July 10, 2005... The CEO of Gillette states that the company treats the world as a single country and, hence, uses the same ads but in different languages. However, this fails to reflect that consumers in many countries are bilingual. At present, most research...

Humility wins.(Brief Article)
July 10, 2005... Some 54% of Europeans believe brand advertising is devious, others claim brands are becoming less distinct, and only 2% think brands are very trustworthy in the UK. Yet, more brands are turning up the hyperbole, such as McDonald's with "I'm...

Religious differences in consumption.(Brief Article)
July 10, 2005... All religions highlight the shallowness of over-consumption and, in western societies, it is no surprise that the rise in consumption and materialism has been matched by growing secularism. Even so, we should be wary of suggesting that religion...

Modelling v blind faith.
July 17, 2005... Many marketers have claimed that the profitability of marketing cannot be calculated with any accuracy. But making such a claim probably harms the profession, as it gives an illusion that marketing is beyond numbers, or worse, immune to them....

Weak in practice.
July 17, 2005... Most companies would concur that customer retention is a good thing, but few take a professional approach to it. Conventional wisdom, that it is cheaper to retain a customer than to acquire a new one, may even be damaging customer retention in...

It takes all types.
July 17, 2005... The idea that a company should concentrate on its best customers is intrinsically appealing, but the effect of ignoring the rest may be counterproductive. Failing to recognise that some customers may not be the best but still contribute a...

Why we've been Wiki'd.
July 17, 2005... Many of the original visions of the internet revolved around a world of connected individuals all contributing freely to the creation of new ideas and works. Instead, the dot-com boom changed the vision to one of fast wealth and since its bust...

I have a fantasy….
July 17, 2005... Fantasy worlds are increasingly popular among young people, and fantasy games have long been successful on computers and in board and card versions. With such interest it is no wonder that many marketers are looking to online fantasy games as a...

Just don't ask.(Consumer behavior )
July 17, 2005... In response to the well recognised problem that people do not do what they say they intend to do, most research into intentions uses a bias figure. This is derived from a sample whose intentions were asked and whose actual behaviour was then...

America's cool change.(brand market)(Brief Article)
July 17, 2005... People's opinions of America continue to be negative in many parts of the world, including Europe, China and the Middle East, but it is positive in India. Perhaps as a consequence, negative attitudes to American brands persist and research...

Export celebrities?(Brief Article)
July 17, 2005... Widespread use of celebrities in advertising is a sign that celebrities do sell products. However, as advertising becomes more globalised, marketers should be wary of trying to export all their celebrities. An Austrian study using an American...

Guaranteeing that it's cheap.(Brief Article)
July 17, 2005... Guarantees to match another seller's price are common tactics in advertising and sales promotions, but this does not mean they are effective for everyone. Combining the findings of a number of academic studies suggests that they work best under...

Off in their own world.(virtual worlds)
July 24, 2005... Analysis Some people bemoan the loss of the spirit of adventure and discovery in our modern world, believing we have already scoured the planet, mapped every metre of its terrain and the only unknown cities are those that may exist in deep...

The cost of TV viewing.
July 31, 2005... Watching TV is the western world's biggest leisure time activity, making TV the most important ad medium of recent decades. However, we are only now beginning to understand that heavy viewing of TV may have some serious negative effects. While...

Uncontrollable marketing.
July 31, 2005... Pressure to measure everything that marketing does has led to numerous attempts to value brands, customers or the worth of marketing itself. Forced to measure even the unmeasurable, marketing may be in danger of losing sight of one of the main...

The nature of communing.
July 31, 2005... It was not so long ago that few people knew what a search engine was, and Google sounded like some kind of child's toy. Now by market capitalisation, it is the world's biggest media company. This offers a metaphor for how marketing has been...

This too will fail.
July 31, 2005... Business obsession with success and prescriptions to ensure it fly in the face of what Paul Ormerod calls the "Iron Law of Failure". Failure is the norm and is certain: 99.99% of biological species that ever existed are extinct and 10% of...

Performance questions.
July 31, 2005... Peters and Waterman's In Search of Excellence was a publishing phenomenon in the 1980s that signalled the start of a quest to define what leads to true high performance companies. Although it has since been shown to include fake data and...

Cutting down the classics.
July 31, 2005... Marketing has its seminal papers, like many disciplines, that it constantly refers to and quotes widely. They achieve untouchable status, at least in the minds of marketing academics, teachers and editors, and are rarely challenged. It is...

Not guilty appeals.(advertisers who manipulate people through fear or guilt appeals should be cautious)(Brief Article)
July 31, 2005... Guilt appeals are quite common in advertising and other communications, but it appears that their success depends on whether the viewer perceives the manipulative intent of the advertiser or marketer. If they do, then the ad is not seen as...

It's their shout!(corporate advertising)(Brief Article)
July 31, 2005... As corporate scandals continue to emerge in the USA, silence, carefully taking stock of the situation and instituting actions to resolve it before going back to the marketplace are no longer the preferred options. Instead investors are putting...

Adwary and spywary.(Spyware)(Brief Article)
July 31, 2005... In a recent Pew Internet study nearly all American net users say they now use the internet differently to avoid the intrusions of adware and spyware. They do not open email attachments, choose to avoid sites that they think will download...

Puff! The magic ingredient.(Brief Article)
July 31, 2005... Advertising has often relied on exaggeration and, if Stephen Brown is correct, that is what many consumers expect from it. As claimed by Wonder Bread in one famous court case, it is acceptable to lie as long as nobody believes the lie. In other...