Yes, you’re quite right – it has been too long since I swapped words for pictures and saved myself a thousand of the former.
So Copycam it is.
Realising that I was heading straight for the scrap-heap of mobile telephony, I traded in my Nokia N73 for a shiny new all-singing, all-dancing HTC Desire. It boasts a Snapdragon 1GHz processor, a 3.7″ AMOLED screen and Android 2.2. And all topped off with a don’t-mess-with-me 16GB Micro SD memory card.
Because you can never be too rich, too thin, or have too much memory.
And maybe, just maybe, I was the teensiest bit influenced by HTC’s cutesy line: You don’t need to get a phone. You need a phone that gets you.
It got me.
I got it.
With all that free memory, I’ve been happily snapping left, right and centre with the Desire’s nifty 5MP camera.
So what’s been on the other side of the lens?
Smile and the world smiles with you
Buying things is scary. There’s too much choice, you have to talk to new people, and you have to part with your hard-earned cash.
So you’re already out of your comfort zone. We all feel like that when we’re the buyer, so why is it we so rarely remember it when we’re the seller?
One of the best ways of making people feel comfortable in a buying situation is humour. It breaks the ice and makes people smile. It gives them a reason to use you and not somebody else.
And that’s all they need.
In a busy street in Cambridge with more cafes than you could shake a wooden spoon at, I was stopped in my tracks by this sign:
Builder’s breakfast.
Everything you need to clog your arteries – including the gloriously-horrible-but-actually-quite-scrumptious black pudding. And all for a lip-smacking £7.60.
Not only that. It also has a perfectly placed apostrophe, at no extra charge.
I stopped, I smiled, I snapped.
Now I’m more a light veggie than a brickie brekkie, but even I was tempted. It was 3pm, so I wasn’t that tempted, but the sign had the desired effect.
I’d struggle to name the other eateries in that street. But Orange Tree, with its decidedly playful approach, has stuck in my mind.
Next time I need an organic latte and a dolphin-friendly muffin, I know where to go.
Lesson 1: you’re never too big, important or professional to deploy a helping of humour (and the bigger you are, the more effective it is).
The cat sat on the… rug
I may have left my N73 behind, but that doesn’t mean I’ve abandoned the brand.
Like somebody who wonders what an old flame is up to, I sometimes stare into the middle distance and remember the happy times.
And in the middle distance just down the road from the Copy Unlimited nerve centre, I spotted this:
No, I didn’t think it worked either. And I don’t mean the dodgy focus (a curved picture plane is my defence, though my newbie status may have something to do with it).
Snaps. Apps.
You know what should come next, don’t you? And it’s certainly not chats.
It either rhymes or it doesn’t. It either works or it doesn’t.
And this doesn’t do either.
Lesson 2: if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. Think of something else (before they do).
Final countdown
As the recession bites, companies are downsizing, rationalising and consolidating. And that means closing and merging branches.
Much as Currys did recently in Cambridge. Its city-centre store was on the hitlist, as it consolidated its operations at a PC World/Currys megastore in a nearby retail park.
(You did know they were owned by the same people, didn’t you? Choice is often the illusion of choice.)
So, the city-centre store. They needed to shift their stock, so they created a sense of scarcity (see my last post) and looming deadlines.
But in their rush, they forgot where apostrophes go. They obviously don’t eat at the Orange Tree Café.
Perhaps they were led astray by their own apostrophe-less name. That’s part of a wider trend when it comes to business names in the UK. Just look at Barclays, Selfridges and Debenhams. In the US, Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s still stick doggedly to the apostrophe, defending good old-fashioned values.
It should, of course, have been 5 days’ time. In fact, strictly speaking, it should have been five days’ time, as the convention in English is to write in full the numbers one to nine, and use figures for 10 and above.
That said, in a countdown, figures work best. But the apostrophe still hurt.
Two days later, I walked past the store, in the vain hope that some literate customer had pointed out the error.
Not a bit of it. They were too busy pushing past grannies and young children to bag a deal at 20% off.
3 day’s time, it said.
I thought it would be too sad (and OCD-ish) to make a date in my diary for two days later, to see the magical 1 day’s time.
But I was tempted.
Lesson 3: if in doubt, don’t leave it out. Just look it up.
Find out more:
Snap dragon. Great photos – and it makes calls too. The HTC Desire gets you. Get it (or at least its successor, the Desire S).
Just last week, I almost paid full price for a book – The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes.
Now I never pay full price for a book.
It’s not that I think authors aren’t worth it. They are. In fact, they’re the only thing helping me keep my fragile grip on reality in a world buzzing with social media gabble and virtual friends.
But at heart, I’m a cheapskate, and my bargain-hunter instincts almost always knock my literary leanings into second place.
So what made me break the habit of a lifetime?
Two words. Julian. Barnes.
Written by Julian Barnes himself on the title page of the book.
His handwriting is, unlike so many of his fellow scribblers (how well named they are) surprisingly legible. Neat, tidy, precise.
Much like his prose.
I knew I could get a big discount over at Amazon or play.com. A quick check on the Amazon app my trusty HTC Desire (yes, I’ve finally had my trusty Nokia surgically removed) revealed that I could, indeed, get 40% off.
So was Julian’s precise penmanship worth the extra £5.20?
In a word, no.
But that wasn’t what other, less price-sensitive, book-lovers thought. The slim volume was flying off the shelves, no doubt helped along by the prospect of ludicrous sums being forked out by eBay-ers in years to come for a first-edition signed copy of JB’s latest work.
A scarce commodity indeed.
When it’s gone, it’s gone
Scarcity is key to getting people to take action. Nobody wants to miss out on an opportunity, a bargain, or the chance to get something your neighbour, colleague or brother hasn’t got.
That’s why petrol queues build up at the merest hint of shortages. And it’s why saucer-eyed shoppers shiver through the night on the pavement in Oxford Street, waiting for the New Year sales.
Because when it’s gone, it’s gone.
Just look what’s happened with the HP TouchPad.
In a saturated market-place, Hewlett-Packard simply couldn’t shift its tablet. There were sexier ones (the iPad), slimmer ones (Samsung Galaxy) and cheaper ones (Archos 101). The TouchPad also sported the webOS operating system, based on Linux but proprietary to HP.
Not good.
The result was that the tablet just didn’t catch the imagination. One US chain was said to have 250,000 that it simply couldn’t move.
And then, something remarkable happened. HP pulled the plug on the TouchPad, and slashed the price to clear stock.
Let’s just stop here for a moment.
So now you’ve got technology that’s discontinued, a piece of kit that will one day be unsupported (despite HP’s claim to the contrary), that nobody’s developing for, that’ll fall behind in a fast-moving market.
So in other words, a really bad idea as a potential purchase.
And what did people do?
They beseiged online and offline outlets, causing stockouts in a matter of hours. The TouchPad tsunami happened in the US first, and then the shock waves spread to the UK and elsewhere.
Websites ground to a standstill as bargain-hungry shoppers piled in and overloaded them. Amazon was said to be offering refunds on orders it couldn’t fulfil. Tech websites were supplying regular updates on stock situations across retail outlets.
And all this madness came down to one word.
Scarcity.
It trumps good sense and level-headedness every time. When something’s running out, and it’s been slashed to $99 or £90, who cares whether it’s a pig in a poke? You want one.
Right now.
Now you see it…
So how do you make scarcity work for you?
Simple.
Whenever you’re devising a sales or marketing campaign, figure out a way of limiting it, so people take action.
You don’t have to be devious or manipulative. You just have to make sure they realise that it’s better to do it today, not tomorrow.
Scarcity comes in many different guises:
Time. Ever seen a Ryanair or a Dell promotion without an end date? No, me neither. That’s because there aren’t any. Both companies make sure people know they need to take action now. That’s not to say they don’t have flexibility. Our winged crusaders often prolong their offers just to get another few passengers through the door. Extended by popular demand is always a good line (and let’s face it – it beats extended by greed, which is probably more apt).
Stock. If you produce a product, then the obvious limit is the number of items you have on hand. Once they’re gone, that’s it.
Orders. If you produce a service, then there are no stock limitations. Instead, you can set a number of customers or orders. First 200 customers! will get people reaching for the phone or their mouse.
Oddity. Do what you do, but make it different. Gold-plate it, gift-wrap it, repackage it, bundle it. Add extra memory, call it something different (even the much-abused Limited Edition will do).
Extras. Extend the warranty, add an hour’s consulting. Promise 10% off the next order, or throw in a little bit more. The icing on the cake could just be what makes the deal too sweet to ignore.
But whatever you do, set a limit – a natural or a manufactured one. And make sure people know about it.
The lesson here is simple: if there’s no reason to act, people don’t. Doing nothing is always easier than doing something.
Scarcity sells. And there’s no shortage of it, so use it whenever you can.
Four wheels, two brothers and endless possibilities.
In between videos of gangsta rap, X-Factor also-rans and teenage popstrels, my in-house gym TV channel is running ads for the new BMW Series 1.
Let’s pull up for a moment.
Why do you buy the car you do?
Probably because it fits in with your perception not only of the brand, but of yourself. So you’re a Mercedes person, or a Toyota person, or a Peugeot person.
You’ll have guessed by now, if you read my post on specs, that I’m not really any type of person. Well maybe a no-name person, but that’s an advertiser’s nightmare.
But back to the BMWs.
In a mass-production market, how do you make your customers feel individual? Your cars come off a production line, but you don’t want your customers to feel like they do too.
Simple. You create a difference – even where there isn’t one. BMW have done precisely that with this latest advert.
There’s Adam and his brother Freddie. One’s an architect, one’s a model. One drinks ‘mini, skinny lattes’ and the other drinks espressos. The brothers look identical, apart from the hair (sober architect, funky model).
Oh, and one drives a red BMW Series 1, the other a black BMW Series 1.
They say that they never agree on anything. Until they pull up, double-park right in front of their destination (this is TV, remember) and look surprised and delighted that they’ve got the same car.
So you can be the same and different. Who would have guessed?
Back to the feature
Now let’s stop for a moment here, and rewind.
You can dash off and pick up the newest, coolest Beemer in a moment, but first, let’s look at the reality of the Adam and Freddie scenario.
They’re actors, not real people. So they’re young, handsome, charming and irresistible. Moreover, they’re probably played by the same actor, thanks to the magic of television.
They’re driving left-hand-drive cars on the left-hand side of the road.
The cars have German registrations (M = Munich).
There’s no traffic on the roads, so they’re obviously not driving at rush hour. That means they don’t work in offices like real people, to earn the money to pay for the car, or to get a company car.
And lastly, they’re not in Britain, with its narrow streets, dodgy weather and occasional riots. And despite the German registrations, they’re not in Germany either. So where are they, then? The answer is Cape Town, where untold car ads have been filmed over the years. Powder-blue skies, the N1 snaking through the city, and a glimpse of Table Mountain in the background.
So reality, then?
Hardly.
BMW has realised that they’re not selling cars. Or at least, not just. They’re selling sex, lifestyle, location, freedom, individualism, aspiration and coffee.
Oh, and cars. Let’s not forget the cars.
And most people (except hopeless cases like me) turn a blind eye to the obvious deception. It’s not that we couldn’t see if it we tried. It’s just that we choose to look beyond it, and accept fiction as fact.
Or perception as reality.
Remember that when you next write a blog post, draft an email, design a marketing campaign or write a sales letter. People are willing accomplices in your marketing magic. They see what you want them to see.
So what do you want them to see?
Find out more:
Double trouble: Adam and Freddie drive you to distraction (well they do if you spend an hour at my gym).
The man who broke the news was chubby, red-faced and very short-sighted. And therein lay the first clue. Not so much wearing his heart on his sleeve as wearing his wares on the bridge of his nose.
An optician, then.
And he was breaking the news that sooner or later, we all need reading glasses.
And for me, that moment was sooner. In fact, right now.
He squiggled some numbers on a prescription, gave me a clammy handshake and sent me downstairs to the shop floor, where I was faced with a startling array of eyewear.
There was no shortage of shapes, sizes, designs and prices. Luckily, there was a smiling saleswoman to guide me through the optical maze.
But let’s change the focus for a second.
Brand wars
There’s a big debate about the value of brand building – and often, I’ve been caught in the middle.
When I talk to sales people, they tell me their marketing counterparts just don’t get it.
We need more sales materials, they say. Forget that touchy-feely, big-picture, blue-sky nonsense. We need datasheets and whitepapers, TCO studies and ROI calculators.
They’re not wrong. All of those things help oil the wheels of the sales process.
But wait a minute, the marketing folks say. If we didn’t create the image, build the brand and raise our profile, they wouldn’t have the sales slots. They’d be selling in a vacuum to people who weren’t as receptive. We’re the ones who oil the wheels. They just turn the handle.
As you can imagine, the middle isn’t a very good place to be.
But actually, they’re both right.
Marketing tells the story, creates the promise and prepares the way. Sales deploys the ground troops and finishes the job.
And the truth of the matter is that the terrible twins need each other. Because on their own, they’re not nearly as effective.
And brand building is an essential part of this. Because it’s not just touchy-feely, big-picture, blue-sky stuff. It’s also directly related to price.
Which brings us nicely back to my specs.
View to a thrill
“So what were you thinking of?” said the saleswoman, with an oleaginous smile and an expansive wave towards the endless selection. “D&G? Armani? Guess?”
Guess again.
If, like me, you’re more Primark than Prada, then you’re not really swayed by brands. Yes, a terrible admission for a marketing professional, but then the counter-argument is that it gives me a cold, level-headed objectivity and much-needed detachment.
At least, that’s what I tell myself.
In any case, I know, thanks to the geeky Alex Riley on BBC Three, that virtually all fashion glasses are made in one big factory in Italy. Same staff, same production line, same basic components. All that differs is the brand badge.
And the price, of course.
The ones in the opticians ranged from £25 for basic, unbranded, wire-framed glasses to an eye-watering £350 for some of the higher-end ones.
The difference? In a word, brand.
It’s the difference between selling one pair at £350, or fourteen pairs at £25 to make the same revenue.
So it’s not just touchy-feely, intangible, unmeasurable stuff. It’s also a big boost to your bottom line.
Build your brand and you build your sales. Tell the story, create the myth, drive the desire.
Then make the sale.
Making a spectacle
So which pair did I go for?
Do you really have to ask? After my voucher-discounted £5 eye test, I was hardly going to blow a fortune on reading glasses – and £350 is a lot of books.
“I’ll go for the no-name brand,” I said nonchalantly to the saleswoman.
She smiled a tight professional smile and rolled her eyes ever so slightly heavenwards.
At least I think she did. I couldn’t actually see that clearly.
Just as well, really.
Find out more:
The secret’s out. Alex lifts the lid on technology, food and fashion in BBC Three’s Secrets of the Superbrands.
Trial and error, Marmite and recovering from heart attacks.
A few months ago, I was chatting to a client about possible emails for a marketing campaign.
He was unsure which was the best one. He had three choices, and couldn’t decide. And yet the answer was staring him in the face.
All three.
Take his prospect list, lop off a sample, divide the lopped bit into three equal parts. Then send out one email to each part. Whichever works best is the one you go with.
Encouraged by the results, he decided to take it one step farther. Rather than send this email to the remainder of the list, he had me write three variations on it. Then, he lopped off another bit, and split it into three again.
Even more encouraging.
The results were stellar for one, and average for the other two. So the stellar email was the one that eventually went out, with the best response he’s had in a long time.
And yet it wasn’t the obvious choice.
In fact, I know if he or I had seen it on Day 1, we’d both have said it didn’t stand a chance of success. It wasn’t assertive enough, didn’t have a killer offer, and was slightly left-of-centre. We’d have dismissed it as an also-ran.
And we’d have been wrong.
But the only way of getting to the right answer was by trying out different solutions, and daring to fail. On a small scale, of course. Then, we succeeded – on a much bigger one.
Trial and error was at the heart of Tim Harford’s recent talk at TED Global in Edinburgh.
Harford is the fresh-faced economist who makes numbers sexy and explains the realities behind dry statistics in an engaging way.
It was thanks to him that I learned last year about ‘vanity sizing’ of jeans – where waist measurements are deliberately understated, so you think you’re thinner than you are.
In a world obsessed with certainty, and desperate to be right, Harford makes an eloquent plea for a little humility. If we admit we don’t know, it makes it easier to find out. If we stop trying to nail everything down and open our minds up to other outcomes, problems often magically fall away.
Trial, error and the God complex is, as all TED talks are, limited to 18 minutes, and Tim comes in right on schedule. (Note the countdown clock at his feet, by the way. Enough to give even the most assured presenter the jitters.)
If you’re reading in an email, click here to view the video.
And if you want to find out more about jeans that flatter the fatter, check out Tim’s programme More or Less on the the BBC Radio 4 website.
