Alternative marketing thinking

Too dramatic a headline perhaps, but the traditional tightly controlled, top down organization is finding itself having to adapt and change according to this post by Michael C Gilbert at Nonprofit Online News. Read more here and here.

Daniel Thomas suggests that India is emerging as a country with better investment credentials than most of its counterparts in the region, including China. One of the most recent additions to the list of funds that already boasts of names like Fidelity and F&C, is the Jupiter India Fund that will hold around 60 stocks, with a penchant towards medium and large companies. India’s very established stock market, with around 7,000 companies quoted, and more than 225 companies with a market capitalisation more than $1bn makes it a lucrative platform for banks and investment houses from all over. According to Fund Library, Indian funds are among the best performing funds in its Bric (Brazil, Russia, India and China) category over the past three months, with leading funds from Fidelity, Aberdeen, First State, Franklin Templeton, Neptune, HSBC and JP Morgan. More here.

When Google’s Eric Schmidt announced that “Corporate marketing is the last bastion of unaccountable spending in corporate America”, it created a stir in marketing and advertising circles. Now there’s news that Microsoft is putting together a new approach to measuring ad effectiveness of online campaigns. Beyond the last click. More from Publishing 2.0.

The French Government is bringing in new thinking that tries to go beyond gross domestic product (GDP) to measure the state of the nation’s economy. Nobel laureate and economist Joseph Stiglitz has been tapped to head a new study that will measure the quality of life in France and compare it with other countries. Stiglitz believes that there is reason to go beyond mere meteralistic production, when measuring the state of a nation’s economy. “If you improve the quality of life, but it doesn’t show up in more material consumption, it doesn’t show up in GDP, and you’ll be criticized,” the economist said. French President Nicolas Sarkozy had announced in Paris that Stiglitz and a fellow Nobel economics laureate, Amartya Sen, will participate in the project. Read more. Also read Bhutan’s quest at reframing GDP, to GNH or Gross National Happiness.

In the world of banking Jyske brings in a difference. When asked by management to double the number of retail customers, the marketing and product team decided to build a new kind of retail experience. Like Starbucks, which people call The Third Place, a place between home and work, Jyske is the third place in Denmark. Where they serve some very fine coffee for free. Anyone can walk into the bank, just like they could into a coffee shop, read papers, hang around, and maybe even check out some new products and services the bank offers. All the products that the bank sells is available in a packaged form, with a barcode that you scan on specially designed computers and the computer then shows you a small movie about the product and what it has to offer. Jyske not only managed to double its base, it also managed to get so much free press for its efforts that the bank’s awareness skyrocketed (see the Google trends graph here). Here’s a small video from AdAge that shows off the bank’s new point of view.

Forrester recently asked consumers how much they enjoyed doing business with their banks, credit card providers, and investment firms. The data highlighted significant problems for each institution to work on: Banks need better sales support; credit card providers need better sales and service support; and investment firms need less complicated offerings. When looking across generations of consumers, Gen Y females, the study identified, had the most problems with each of these firms. Their analysis also looked at which consumers enjoy (or don’t enjoy) doing business with these institutions. The consumers that are most at-risk to
shift their business are young, affluent consumers. Link to the Forrester Customer Experience page.

One of the things about a design job is that the entire process is driven by gut feel and individual opinion. So when Well Fargo Bank decided to redesign their website, they relied on gut, right? Wrong! The new site has been driven by inputs the bank got from analytics. And the results are already there to see, a spectacular, 50% increase in online applications! The team behind the site redesign collated the 100 most-popular search terms to determine what customers most wanted to find out and couldn’t. Topping the list were mortgage rates, security information, and ATM/branch locations – which subsequently were handed premium positions on the new home page. The experts like what they see on the Well Fargo site. Forrester’s Brad StrothKamp “The Wells Fargo home page is a best practice for financial services, and a blueprint for how eBusiness managers should use metrics to develop more effective Web sites.” Some more from Finextra.

Any knowledge business will attest – competition for top talent has never been as fierce as it is now. Thinking creatively, which was once the domain of artists and a narrow group of people working in the movie, music and advertising business, has now moved mainstream. Books like The Rise of the Creative Class and War for Talent have looked at the need to find, train and retain the best. The Organic blog has an interesting post on how cities, like Toronto, are finding ways to grow, nurture and retain talented people. The five steps outlined at the Imagine Toronto Case Study are: Grow your own, recognise the leaders in the local, use the underground community, use the bullpen, be aware of the domino effect. Details on the Organic Blog.

A study to be published in the Journal of Marketing that covered 167 companies including Procter & Gamble, Microsoft and Apple over a five-year period concludes that CMOs on top management teams don’t have any effect on a company’s financial performance. ‘Chief Marketing Officers: A Study of their Presence in Firms’ Top Management Teams,’ is sure to reignite the longstanding debate afflicting the C suite: Should a CMO be judged on tangible or intangible metrics? On solid stats such as sales, or on more amorphous concepts such as brand equity or even awareness? The authors themselves admit the study is limited because it focuses on financial-performance metrics, such as sales growth and profitability, and not brand equity, and both were quick to offer caveats to the conclusion. Providing a counter view to the study is a presentation by Raj Srivastava, executive director at the Zyman Institute of Brand Science. He points out that the market value of an average company is about four times its book value. A few companies, like Coca-Cola deviate from this rule. Coke has a market value seven times higher than what the accountants think the company is worth. So where does that intangible value come from? Brands, he believes add value well beyond the short-term growth in revenue. They help to reduce volatility for established goods and services by reducing churn, increasing a company’s leverage with retailers and resellers, and ensuring faster market penetration. Read more from the Millward Brown Blog.

Marc Andreesen, people who have been following the evolution of the net will recall him as being one of the pioneers of the Internet revolution. Having founded Mosiac Communications Corporation, the company that released Netscape Navigator when he was just 23. Now, years later, Andreesen is an angel investor and founder of the new social networking company Ning. He writes a blog, Pmarca on which he shares his knowledge people who are starting out fresh. A recent post on hiring is worth a read for all of us in advertising, an industry like many other looking to hire the very best. In fact his ideas go contrary to what most managers define as ‘best’. His list of three things to look for start with, hold your breath, Drive (people who will walk right through brick walls, on their own power, without having to be asked, to achieve whatever goal is in front of them.), curiosity ( Curiosity is a proxy for, do you love what you do?) and ethics (watch for any whiff of less than stellar ethics in any candidate’s background or references and avoid, avoid, avoid). The Andreesen laws of hiring are not just mandatory reading for those who do the job of hiring, but also for those who want to get ahead in life.