The publicity value of advertising

Sometimes an advertisement can be the focus of significant news coverage - intentionally or by accident.

It is hard to say which course of action has put the Church of England's pre-Christmas 60 second advertisement intended for screening in cinemas prior to the latest film release in the Star Wars series in the spotlight. Could the C of E really be that smart, or indeed that naive, to think despite approval of the British Board of Film Classification and the Cinema Advertising Authority it would not attract attention. Christmas is arguably the star in the C of E's biblical portfolio, but a brand under attack from the American big business promotion of 'Holidays' as a challenger to the whole Christmas franchise that should be the C of E's exclusive territory.

The 'Happy Holidays' mission to displace the original 'Christmas' branding has been slowly creeping in through business neutral greetings cards sent to customers for years now and gaining traction in retail outlets as the season becomes a huge sales opportunity that doesn't really want religion getting in the way. Interestingly the C of E has opted for the non-traditional version of the Lord's Prayer which provides the narrative for the advertisement which I think is a marketing error. One which may possibly risk alienating their traditional audience who might prefer the more dramatic wording of the original. Either way the Church of England has pitched in with two of its prime icons brought together with powerful images.

The news storm has gained far more mileage than the advertisement would have achieved alone.   

The Marketing Budget

Setting and working to a budget is one of the key fundamental   components of the marketing infra structure.

Previously we have highlighted 4  crucial pillars of b-2-b marketing - the business model, the marketing plan, the budget and the CI Manual. Today we take a brief look at the marketing budget. The first obvious question is - do you have one? Even when there is no formal budget a historic record can probably be assembled by the accounts department tracing through invoices paid. At least this will give us some point of reference and highlight where money has been spent. And here is the first issue, that word spent. It implies a reactive, even negative cost incurred, why not approach the budget as making an investment. An investment that should demonstrate valid returns. If the company was investing in new production equipment for example, then the company directors would be expecting no less than a proposal that set out the benefits and return for that investment and judge this against other proposals competing for what are typically scarce resources.

The marketing budget holder will often be the marketing manager or marketing director and the scope might include staff salaries and employment costs, an allocation charge for floor space and overhead contribution,  marketing communications, travel expenses and intellectual property such as trademarks and patents. Clients often ask me what percentage of sales turnover should the marketing budget be? Well, this will be influenced by the scope - what's in and what's out - the nature of the business and what can be afforded.

 There are two ways of looking at this. To 'cost the need' - that is to outline the plan for staffing and marcomms judged appropriate to reaching the business's financial targets, or more likely decide how much can be afforded. Client/agency meetings provide the forum where such a disclosure is usually revealed.

In practical terms the next stage is to create the budget - a spreadsheet can be very useful and allow further  analysis. I  tend to use an application such as Exel or Numbers utilising features such as formulae and relational spreadsheets to do the number crunching and  comparisons. I find it useful to provide a line for every type of marketing activity, even though some will have a zero figure entered. Also build in a contingency for unexpected expenditure.  The MD is often good at signing you up for an exhibition you don't need but is in a location he would like to visit - but that's another story.

Finally having prepared and presented your marketing budget, monitor it versus 'actuals' and take the appropriate action if you are spending too much against the plan

Writing the Marketing Plan

Not many people take the trouble to write a marketing plan - why?

Writing the marketing plan does take time, but we have to question what else we would be doing. Probably day-to-day actions that should be prescribed by the marketing plan and may actually not be things we should be doing at all, or doing differently. So take time to think about the shape of the plan. Discuss ideas with colleagues and your agencies, don’t simply dust off the last plan, but do review what worked, what didn’t and understand why. Once committed to paper, having a route plan will in turn make day-to-day life easier, because you now know where you are heading. Things will of course change. New opportunities will present themselves. New threats will emerge. At least you now have something against which they can be evaluated. Don’t be afraid to modify the plan if that is what is required. It is after all only a plan constructed at a particular moment in time. But update, build in the new items so that you still have your route map.

  The marketing plan is quite a different animal to the business plan. I see it as an important sub-set. It is a manifesto of aims and a programme of activities that should be reviewed and updated annually or quarterly depending on the business’s timescales and be used to both describe and measure progress. The marketing plan derives from the business plan and should start by restating the business objectives. Some of these may be long term and eternal, others specific to a time frame. Such a marketing plan could then include the main areas of identified activities, these could cover some or all of the following:-

Market analysis

·       Size, sectors, competition, share, products & services, channels

·       Marketing organization

·       Personnel, outsource agencies, research, areas of responsibility

·       Business programmes

·       Pricing, products, information, training

·       Marketing communications

·       Campaigns: advertising, PR, Direct Marketing, web, print support, exhibitions

·       Product development

·       New products, deleted products, maintained products – product portfolio

·       Intellectual property - Patents, trademarks, software protection

·       Budget - Expenditure and income plan

Read more about Marketing Planning in Technical Marketing: Ideas for Engineers from etbooks.

Four pillars of b-2-b marketing

There are four essential matters that should be in place before any marketing activity is initiated.

From a marketing agency point of view when dealing with any new client, or established clients, there are 4 important things to understand.

1. What is the business model?
2. Do you have a marketing plan?
3. What is the marketing budget?
4. Do you have a CI Manual?

The Business Plan
Yes, we need to go back to the Business Plan and in particular to understand : - What are the goals or objectives the company has set for the medium term? These are often set at the level where they can be measured in terms of numbers. It maybe the company aims to increase turnover by 5%,  or increase sales by 10%, or increase profit The Business Plan will also explain how the increases are to be made - new production/ facilities, new products etc. Hopefully there is a Business Plan  to refer to. Amazingly not every business has a plan, they just roll out the same de-facto plan year after year. One important thing for marketing is to understand the business model. Put simply the business model describes the method by which the company earns money. It may be the company actually designs,  makes and sells products to end users, or they may just source and sell products from others. There may be some variants within the model that are important for marketing to know. For example in the lighting industry selling luminaires created new 'sockets' and each time a lamp reached its end of life this automatically prompted a replacement sale, which may be half or dozen or more in the life of the fixture. Accessories to add functionality to the base product typically carry high mark ups, so promoting that base product can generate a further income steam from associated products.

The marketing plan
Again not everyone troubles to research and publish a marketing plan, but investing time on doing so and 'selling' the plan to the rest of the company can save a lot of time and effort in the long run. Think of it as a manifesto that sets out your strategy for helping the company meet its business goals. It establishes the agenda and provides the rationale for its implementation.

The marketing budget
A budget is essential if you don't want expenditure to soar out of control. I  have introduced marketing budgets for various companies I  have worked for and for clients as well. Without a budget marketing people are more at the mercy of sales people who sell advertising and the like on a discount basis, so it sounds like a great deal when it isn't. A company with a sensible marketing plan and well researched budget is far less likely to fall for the apparent savings on offer, because research will often have shown they should not be buying that particular advertising space at all. And if they did want that they could negotiate a better deal on a series rate.

 Corporate Identity
The CI guidelines are the remaining essential element at the foundation of the marketing programme. Repetition of a corporate style - logo, fonts, color-ways, livery etc will have a cumulative effect in building your brand and differentiating your products from the competition.

So take some time to review these four fundamentals. Understand where marketing resource will be most effectively invested to achieve business goals. Set out your plans and share them with the rest of the company. Manage the marketing investment against budget. And bring a consistent identity to your products and communications.

Talking about meetings

When I worked in the corporate world, meetings seemed to occupy much of the day. Preparing for meetings, travelling to meetings, participating in meetings, writing up the minutes of meetings and finally actioning them.

Most of my fellow product managers had files full of minutes of meetings. If I were to look in a dairy from those days I would find curious cryptic entries consisting typically of a time, a location and then an alpha/numeric code. The same code appeared on the labels in the filing cabinet. What was that all about then?  The company, the lighting division of a leading manufacturer of electrical products seemed to manage everything via a hierarchy of meetings which met on a monthly basis. At the top no doubt was a board meeting, but no marketing people ever got on to that. Our top level was the policy committee, or in fact two policy committees. A committee that planned all light source developments known as the Lamp Policy Committee and another that planned all luminaire developments and known as the Fittings Policy Committee. I got to serve on both of these eventually. Beneath the two top policy committees were sub committee and it was these that had letters and number assigned. The sub committee that dealt with outdoor lighting for example was known as PC10. And these too had sub committees such as PC3H or what ever.

But this wasn't the end of the matter. There were department meetings, sales meetings, factory visit meetings, planning meetings, staff meetings and even briefly the company flirted with a works council. Then there were external meetings at the Lighting Industry Federation - the trade organisation - standards meetings at BSI and no doubt others since forgotten.   Filing cabinets contained little else but minutes and test reports. When the time came for succession to a position on one of these many committees the departing representative handed over the files which usually dated back to the 1950s. One product manager attending his last policy committee before retiring read an extract from the previous month's minutes about the shortages of a particular type of lamp and the excuses put forward by the production site. He then picked up another set of minutes and read something almost identical and sat down. The chairman asked what point he was making.  The point he said was that the second set of minutes was when I first joined the committee 25 years ago!

Fittings Policy Committee was chaired by the company chairman  a larger than life character whose main objective was to get the meeting concluded by lunch. Outside the conference room in the then modern, indeed recently built laboratory building was a mezzanine floor where a generous lunch was set up along with a well stocked bar. On the stroke of midday the catering manager would turn up to start setting up. Our chairman seemed particularly attuned to the chink of glasses and was out of the door like a shot.  If you were to walk past you would find him clasping a large gin and tonic while his meeting droned on inside the conference room.

Yes those were days of boozy lunches and smoke filled meeting rooms. The senior managers puffed on cigars, younger men smoked cigarettes and the older hands spent a great deal of time cleaning, filling and occasionally smoking pipes. There were no ladies on any of the committees that I attended - well not for years.

Occasionally, perhaps because of this team structure we would be sent on a team building course. One of particular note was run on military lines by ex SAS types outside Hereford. A life spent drinking, smoking and eating was not the best preparation. And team players didn't tend to come up with the clever product ideas the company needed. Many of the best ideas came from mavericks, the loners and slightly dotty who were not great team players, but that's another story.