Alternative marketing thinking

For the sixth year in a row, Logo Lounge has their annual round of logo trends. And unlike in the past where a new trend would emerge when Photoshop or Illustrator would unveil a new filter, this year is different. So here goes logo trends 2008.

After bringing the Card Lab, Capital One Financial Corporation has now tied up with Flickr to bring the first ever Capital One Image Card. Customers can either choose pictures from Capital One’s gallery of images or upload one of their own. The company claims that personalization will help customers create cards that are distinctly them. Users have to follow a simple online procedure to get their own cards. Last November, Capital One launched the Capital One Card Lab which provides consumers with a new level of transparency and choice in credit cards. Customers are offered a series of interactive choices related to interest rate, annual fee and reward options, where they can click to select the combination of features that are most important to them. As choices are made, the tool narrows the options in the remaining categories, eliminating options that don’t work together. For example, consumers who are willing to pay an annual fee can earn rewards faster. So while banks are focussing on the many benefits that they think will attract customers, Capital One is probably doing something better by going on the creative track. Read what some bloggers are talking about the latest offering by Capital One here.

The Royal Bank of Canada has started a unique web portal to help students learn about money management, through video and text blogs by six chosen bloggers. RBC p2p claims to be a place where students can voice their own thoughts about the kind of banking they really need and want. The six bloggers are a mix of university students, aged between 19 to 29 years, right from all the way in Saskatchewan to British Columbia. A good thing would be to link up this blog to more student-popular social websites like Facebook, MySpace and others. We think that Twitter updates on what students are discovering would also revolutionize it and make it more interactive, something that students would actually talk about even when they are not using it.

Often it is simple ideas that can create unique opportunities to build loyalty with audiences. Like this one from Boots. A simple marketing message delivered at the end of a receipt that’s customized to the person who has just completed the transaction. Nice and easy.

Measurability, interactivity, customization, segmentation, some of the terms that we see being associated with new media marketing. And if you have ever looked in the dictionary of direct marketing, chances are these words would have been looked up the most by the practitioners of the trade.

For the uninitiated excited about the future of marketing, let’s take you on a tour into gardens of direct marketing. Two of the tenets of the DM business, that have become the foundation on which digital marketing is built on are measurability and interactivity. Who saw the communication, was the communication looked at. Did someone click it; spend time with it and finally what happened. What was the ROI of the piece of creative.

Customisation and segmentation. Now there’s nothing much to explain here, but anyways. When you search anything in Google, “ballbearing manufacturers”, you end up with a bunch of paid for ads that don’t show up when you search for “rollerbearing manufacturers”. Direct marketing has been using such techniques for decades that web and new media marketers have come in and co-opted.

Technology Marketer’s dilemma. One of the issues that is facing new media and technology marketers is that they have little or no understanding of brands, branding and brand strategy. While these people understand new technologies like nobody else, what is missing is their understanding of brand building and the process around it. Brand managers and marketers see this as a serious problem and are hence reluctant to give pure technology marketers a larger role in their marketing and brand building activities. Direct marketers have never had this problem, as they have honed their skills by working closely with researchers, brand managers and CMOs and hence are ready to partner them with ideas that flow off new technology. The only thing that is missing in the consummation of this marriage is the shortage of understanding of how technology works in the minds of DM professionals. And that is a big, big problem.

Technology, noise compounds problems. Any marketer who has been evaluating technology marketing solutions has often felt overwhelmed by the choices that are available out there : banners, microsites, email, blogs, streaming video, podcasts, vodcasts, widgets, mashups, SMS - that list is endless. The person who had to pick between radio, print, TV and outdoor, all distinct and simple to understand media was now being inundated with options and all of them being delivered through the same interface.

Direct marketing. The road ahead. The future is bright for DM professionals who work closely with technologists. While the DM strategists will not need to write code, they will need to understand how new technologies work and how they can make a difference in marketing. There is a great opportunity for people who can help make sense out of all the confusion that abounds around new technologies, delivery platforms, devices and tools. People who first understand the tenets of branding and brand management, have experience in creating engaging interactive that can be measured and then delivered seamlessly across media mostly will be the ones who will make their mark in the future.

Beautiful campaign from Akron Children’s Hospital’s childhood cancer centre that tells stories of real patients undergoing treatment in the hospital. The site features videos, web 2.0 tools and more to show how young children with cancer do better if they are in a children’s hospital. Powerful stuff.

With people cashing in on the high interest rates offered by online saving schemes from the likes of HSBCDirect and ING Direct, one may ask if the banks are really reaping profits from them. Having burnt their fingers earlier in the 1990s when banks had introduced standalone Internet banks that paid high rates on checking accounts, the first bank to take up this initiative again was ING when they introduced their Orange account in 2000. True, banks lose out on the high interest rate they promise, 4.69% versus the 0.54% in ordinary savings accounts but what they do garner is customer acquisition. Also, their brand name spreads to places where they may not even have a branch. The Federal Reserve also has a role to play in this trend, because when they up the rates, banks will follow too. More on this story here.

There are many interesting experiments happening out there trying to help websites and web experiences stand out from the sea of sameness. San Francisco ad agency Publicis & Hal Riney has redesigned its website to enable a mouse-free experience. Use a webcam to navigate the site. Try it with an iCam enabled Mac, it really works. Modernista has gone in for web 2.0 coolness with this attempt with a floater. StrawberryFrog did something similar with GirlSmiles. Blog formats are catching on too. Coudal Partners started this trend. Now Barbarian Group is going that way too.

A bit late reporting this one, interesting nonetheless, IKEA has opened its doors to shoppers who want to spend a night in one of their Oslo warehouses. From Guardian.

This is not a new idea. Really. It’s been around for decades in some form or the other. Affiliate Marketing Programs abound on the web making focussed targeting possible. In the physical world, there have been many great partnerships.

From simple relationships, like when Mini Cooper and Apple iPod came together to create iPod compatible cars. To more elaborate relationships in the form of the LG Prada Phone. Or this new one, where Samsung and Armani have come together to design a range of HDTV sets.

But there is a new wave of Partnership Marketing taking root around the world. One where the relationships are closer and more transparent. The Economist calls this partnership cooperation. In their report Companies Without Boundaries, the authors say that the best corporations of the future will be cooperations.

Today the key area of partnership is sales and marketing. To provide products they are unable to deliver alone, to keep up with competitors or to expand their global reach, among others. These relationships are not just one-off connections as in the past, where a company hired out a database to do some mailing or bundling products or product literature with another company’s service. The most visible of such a partnership in the past was between AOL and Microsoft.

But these relationships are growing deeper. Like the one between Apple and Nike to create Nike+. While there have been reports of a cooling off between the two companies, the recent news is that Nike+ will soon be seen on iPhones.

Another interesting example of cooperation is one where a UK based design firm Artomatic and Royal Mail have come together to make people want to receive direct mail. At a time where the direct marketing industry is going through strife having seen the biggest fall in spending in the first three months of 2008, Artomatic tells us that people like to receive stuff and showed us their belief through their wonderfully designed Matter boxes. If you would like to receive a Matter box, you can go here and sign up for one. They sent us a box down here in India, so the mail outs are not restricted to the UK alone.

Partnership Marketing. In the future it will not be only about bringing two companies with mutual goals to work together for a while and disengage once the job is done. These relationships will have to be far more transparent and deep helping to create true cooperations from within corporations.