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When it comes to marketing, less is always more
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.
Find out more:
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:
The direct connection between f(r)ame and fortune
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.
Gut feelings, peer pressure and the dubious wisdom of crowds
It’s been all work and no play here in the UK over the last couple of months.
We’ve had a slew of ‘bank holidays’: a term that confuses foreigners, even English speakers, but seems obvious to locals.
The expression originates from the very first bank holiday, way before we became 24×7 always-on people (yes, there was a time) in 1781. It was in that year that the Earl of Cambleseed decided to shut his bank on the first Monday in May.
Or so it says on Wikipedia.
So does that mean we can we believe it?
Well the natural instinct is to google the term and see what you come up with. And in this case, you get lots of entries referring to the noble banker, and to the end of the 18th century.
So it must be true, then.
But wait a minute: many of the references reproduce word for word the account given on Wikipedia. In fact, it almost looks as if they’ve cut and pasted it.
The Oxford English Dictionary makes no mention of this episode. Not the print version, and not the online version, both of which you have to pay for.
So does that make it more reliable or less?
Remember, the OED is not crowd-sourced, as Wikipedia is. So it’s not necessarily as up to date, but then since it’s had 200 years or so to sort out the bank-holiday question, you’d think it would have mentioned Cambleseed by now.
Left turn
But back to the reason I mentioned these holidays in the first place, before my brief Wiki-digression.
You see all these bank holidays (Good Friday, Easter Monday, the Royal Wedding, the May bank holiday) have had a knock-on effect on bin collections throughout the UK.
Lots of the bank holidays have been on Mondays. We had another, the Spring bank holiday, just last week.
And when bank holidays fall on Monday, the bins here in Cambridge are collected a day late. Monday’s collection is on Tuesday, Tuesday’s is on Wednesday and so on.
And my street’s collection moves from Wednesday to Thursday.
Every time.
And yet all it takes is one house to put out its bin in a bank holiday week on a Tuesday evening – a day too early – and it causes a chain reaction.
People across the street see the bin and they put theirs out too – just in case. Then people next to the original offenders see the second lot, and they follow suit.
And the bins sit there all day long on Wednesday, to be finally emptied on Thursday, right on schedule.
And yet all people have to do for reassurance is jump online to the council website to see that the collection is a day late. That would be the same online where Wikipedia lives. It’s not as if it’s that big a leap.
People know the collections are usually a day late. But they question that knowledge because they see other people acting differently.
Tweet success
The same niggling doubts affect our marketing. We do things because other people do them. We copy what our peers do. We question our own judgement, even if we almost certain we’re right.
Just last week, I was chatting to a friend of mine. He was singing the praises of Twitter as a marketing tool. But there was a note of hesitation in his voice, which I picked up on.
Did he really believe what he was saying?
Is he absolutely convinced that it’s a good use of his time, I wondered. Has he measured it? Can he track sales back to Twitter? And what’s the opportunity cost of tweeting – the other things he’s missing out on while he’s doing his thang in 140 characters?
He paused, collected his thoughts and finally answered.
“To be honest, I’m not sure I really understand the whole Twitter and marketing thing,” he said with a vague air of resignation.
But then he rallied, buoyed by the wisdom-of-crowds argument.
“I’m sure there’s something in it, though. I don’t know what, but it’s definitely there. Otherwise, why would everybody be doing it?”
Let’s see. For the same reason that everybody believes that the Earl of Cambleseed invented bank holidays? (Is it just me, or does that name seem a tad suspicious?)
Or for the same reason that people put their bins out a day early on a quiet suburban street in Cambridge?
Because other people are doing it. And that’s simply not a good enough reason.
Assume, yes. Check your gut feel, yes. Take the pulse of the masses, yes.
But always verify.
If it’s not you, it’s somebody else. Your choice.
As the super-injunction row rumbles on here in the UK, you could be forgiven for wondering why the celebs even bother. When an English court orders Calif0rnia-based Twitter to hand over the personal details of the injunction-busters, there’s a definite whiff of desperation.
So why do it?
Simple. They’re trying to control the message – and thus their image. Just not very successfully.
But celebs – whose entire existence is often nothing more than smoke, mirrors and spin – know only too well that if they’re not in control of the message, somebody else is.
That’s why they hire PR gurus to frame, explain and present their story in a way that shows them in the best light.
Because when you’re a star, only the best will do, dahling.
Rolling, rolling, rolling
But it’s not just D-listers who manage the message – everybody does it. It’s what marketing is all about.
It’s just that most marketers (not marketeers, by the way – that conjures up images of WW2 profiteers) do it with a bit more style and grace than the celebs.
Think of a car. The safest, most family-friendly, eco-friendly, steady-Eddie car you can think of. Here’s a hint: even in brilliant sunshine, the headlights are burning bright.
Just in case.
Chances are you thought of a Swedish car. S for Swedish. S for safe.
And V for Volvo.
Even the name is pretty boring: it’s the first-person singular present indicative tense of ‘volvere’, the verb ‘to roll’ in Latin (yes, I’m showing off – but those four compulsory years of Latin at school most have some compensation).
So boring, then.
But not if you look at the latest S60 advert, now splashed across billboards, bus shelters and glossy mags.
There’s more to life than being in cruise control, it daringly says. That’s why the Volvo S60 R-Design is here.
Ooh.
Can you feel the wind in your hair and the throb of the V6 (or V8 – as you can tell, I’m not a petrolhead)?
Well yes. But most of the time, people are stopping and starting in suburban traffic, desperately trying to extricate themselves from the rush-hour snarl-up.
And even when they do, they can’t throw caution to the wind, thanks to the ubiquitous speed cameras.
But why let the facts get in the way of a great story?
Dare to be different
If you look at the S60 brochure, there are the obligatory sections on safety, pollution and customisation. And did I mention safety?
But daringly, they confront head-on their boring, staid, no-nonsense Nordic image with a novel approach on the very first page.
Sexy. Volvo. Same sentence.
That’s the spirit. Different. Brave. Clever.
They’re readily acknowledging that people have preconceptions about Volvo cars, much in the same way as Skoda did with its It’s a Skoda. Honest. campaign.
Think you know Volvo? our friends in the north are are saying. Think again.
They’re taking the initiative, setting the frame of the debate, and leading you down a certain path.
Yes, they say all the EU-regulated, better-safe-than-sorry, mother-knows-best things that Volvo always says. But they’re leading with a mould-breaking, head-turning, hair-on-back-of-neck approach.
They’re controlling their image.
Makeover. Takeover.
So who’s controlling yours? If it’s not you, it’s somebody else. So get out there, do if often, repeat yourself and hammer that message home.
Take a leaf out the celebs’ book (well virtual book, as they probably don’t do much actual reading, let alone writing) and create the image you want for yourself.
Because you know what’ll happen if you don’t.
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