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From: World Advertising Research Center

Creating customer “excitement”, rather than maintaining ”satisfaction”, should be the key aim for marketers, McKinsey has suggested.

In a new report, the consultancy claimed satisfaction is useful for retaining consumers already loyal to a product or service, but that excitement is needed to attract new customers or encourage shoppers to pay a premium.

The study defined consumer excitement as “the feeling of experiencing something unexpectedly positive”.

“Companies that want to acquire customers for the long haul must surprise, thrill, and captivate them,” it added.

Excitment builds value

“Customer excitement creates immediate value because it gets customers talking about products and increases their willingness to buy and pay higher prices … marketing experts need to understand and channel these supposedly random occurrences and set up a process for systematically producing excitement.”

McKinsey claimed that selecting the correct market research techniques is a crucial part of this strategy.

For example, customer sentiment might not be most usefully gauged by gathering as much data as possible and then looking for average responses.

Excitement occurs at outlier points

“Customer excitement … always occurs at outlier points and is not found in standard quantitative measurements,” the report stated.

“It is therefore recommended to use new techniques and metrics that enable the tracking and assessing of emotions, such as capturing sentiments in social networks.”

Case studies cited by McKinsey as evidence for this view included that of Fiat, which successfully launched its Fiat 500 model in 2007 through a “big bang” campaign which resulted in a “huge wave” of customer excitement.

Fiat price 30% higherAs a result, the Italian carmaker was able to charge as much as 30% more for the Fiat 500 than rivals in the same category.

Tipp-Ex was also praised for creating “wow effects” thanks to its viral “A hunter shoots a bear” video, spread via YouTube.

The spot generated 10m hits soon after launch and “massive” word of mouth on social media platforms, blogs and online forums.

Data sourced from McKinsey; additional content by Warc staff15 February 2011

From World Advertising Research Center

Brand owners must face up to the “daunting task” of creating marketing systems reflecting the demands of the digital age, according to a new study.

As consumers gravitate towards social networks, search engines, blogs and the mobile web, advertisers are “abandoning traditional media at a shocking rate,” the Booz & Co report suggested. Such a trend has been demonstrated by the comparative resilience of online – and to a lesser extent mobile – adspend during the recession.

This is partly because both channels allow for precise targeting at low cost.

“The many virtues of digital marketing – its speed, flexibility, interactivity, and accountability – require a whole new set of marketing strategies and skills to make it work,” Booz said.

“In a Web 2.0 world, however, taking part in that market isn’t simply a matter of throwing some banner ads against a few likely websites and seeing what sticks.”

Exploit the vast amount of data available

Any adequate response to the evolving preferences of shoppers should be premised on exploiting the vast amount of data now available, the Booz report added.
“It demands a close collaboration between CMOs and CIOs to build technology to automate new marketing processes and provide real-time decision support.”

Firstly, this encompasses establishing methods to track the behaviour of consumers, including their communications and media usage habits.

Delivering programmes enabling executives to “target customers 24/7 via the right channel, at the right time, and with the right message” is also assuming centre stage. More broadly, corporate leadership, skill sets and incentives ought to be “geared towards the digital world” rather than reinforcing outdated models.

Develop a single view of shoppers

Achieving this goal ultimately means brand managers need to gain a “single view” of shoppers drawing on the mass of facts and figures hosted online and offline.
“They must use that information to make specific offers to individual customers based on their value to the company – both in the past and in the future,” Booz said.

“They must build a marketing platform that can help automate the process of publishing a consistent set of marketing messages and content … from classic TV spot to Facebook app to YouTube video to Google AdWords to blog entry.”

A novel solution may be necessary

Given the complexity of handling these tasks, and the challenges of coordinating technology vendors, advertising agencies, media owners and publishers, a novel solution may be necessary.As such, advertisers should establish a dedicated digital unit to act as an intermediary between management, IT and marketing departments, as well as running campaigns and dealing with corporate partners.

Google has recently released details about its real-time search engine, which trawls the web to provide all the latest results, and can be refined by location.
“We’ve added a conversations view, making it easy to follow a discussion on the real-time web,” said Dylan Casey, a product manager at Google.

A full conversation view is the objective

“Often a single tweet sparks a larger conversation of re-tweets and other replies … With the new ‘full conversation’ feature, you can browse the entire conversation in a single glance.”

Procter & Gamble, the FMCG giant, is one firm planning a major investment in this kind of approach at a corporate level, according to its ceo, Bob McDonald. “With digitisation, our goal is to standardise, automate and integrate systems and data so we can create a real-time operating and decision-making environment,” he said.

“By getting the right data to the right decision makers at the right time, we can become increasingly efficient and productive.”

Coca-Cola Enterprises, which distributes goods from Coca-Cola’s portfolio, has also leveraged software called SugarCRM to integrate various elements of its operations.

The main goal is a global solution

“The main goal was to get a global solution that combined e-commerce, CRM, and logistics into one package that everybody could standardize on,” said Pierre Fredet, group director for dry outlets, Coca-Cola Enterprises.

Data sourced from Booz & Co/Procter & Gamble/Google; additional content by Warc staff, 02 September 2010

November 11, 2009

Gaining visibility as thought leaders

eMarketer estimates nearly 28 million US Internet users write a blog in 2009, and those bloggers run the gamut from hobbyists and part-timers to self-employed and corporate bloggers.

According to a Technorati survey of bloggers worldwide, most are men, ages 18 to 44, affluent and well-educated. About one-quarter work for a traditional media outlet in addition to blogging, and most still don’t make any money from their self-publishing activities. But there are other ways to create value.

Fully 70% of bloggers polled by Technorati said they talked about products or brands on their blog. The most common activity was to post about brands they loved—or hated—as well as to write reviews or post about experiences with stores or customer service.

Bloggers who post about products and services may get some attention from brands in the form of free items and other perks—enough to attract the notice of the US Federal Trade Commission, at least—but the visibility they gain through publishing their thoughts also helps them in less-tangible ways.

Nearly six in 10 of all the bloggers surveyed said they were better known in their industry because of their blog, and one-quarter had used their blog as a resume or sent it to potential employers.

Further, bloggers who post for a business reported even higher levels of success: 71% had increased visibility for their company, 63% had converted prospects into purchasers through their blog, and 56% have seen their blog bring their company recognition as a thought leader in the industry.

Negative personal consequences, such as losing focus on work or getting in trouble on the job, were far less common than gaining visibility or even changing professions entirely based on blogging activity.

Printed with permission of emarketer.com