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Why don't we ever learn?

Monday, 24 August 2009

I came across this and thought if any political party published this and only this as its manifesto it would probably win the next election.

"The budget should be balanced and the Treasury should

be refilled.

Public debt should be reduced and the arrogance of

officialdom should be tempered and controlled.

The assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed, lest

Rome become bankrupt.

People must again learn to work, instead of living on

public assistance."

Cicero - 55 BC


We don't learn much do we? 2,064 years later and we're

still making the same mistakes. Amazing...

Clive Reeves Organises Retail Therapy

Thursday, 13 August 2009

Our Knowledge Hub event for retailers is almost upon us, where we’re going to find out about the benefits and opportunities of TV advertising from our friends at ITV. Because we’re an ad agency, we already know about that – it’s our job – but it’s good that we’re going to get a refresher. Things are definitely changing at ITV, so perhaps there are some new ways of TV planning and deals to be done. I know that a presentation from ITV wouldn’t be complete without a sneak preview of their next season’s offering. Looking forward to that. Shame there’ll be no more Inspector Morse!

We’ve worked with NLP expert Matt Caulfield for some time. He’s great at giving really simple techniques for moving things in either direction – either jollying everything up, motivating people and getting things cracking, plus, he’s also an expert in slowing things down and making the most of life! He’s always an interesting listen, and despite having heard him speak many times before, there’s always something new and at least one nugget that makes you think ‘I’ll have a go at that!’

I’m not sure whether I should be proud of the concept of this session, which is borne of my ‘grumpy old man’ status, where retail staff haven’t provided me with the shopping experience I believe I deserve. It often results in me inconveniencing myself to buy elsewhere, despite the store having what I went for in the first place! Maybe I need to have a word with myself.

Back to our event, it’s open to retailers who would like to increase footfall and then actually sell stuff to people once they’re in store. Simple principle, but it’s one of the basics that can sometimes fall by the wayside in the fast moving chaos that is modern retailing!

It’s invite only, and there are only 14 spaces, so anyone wanting to join in needs to be snappy in letting us know they want a place. It’s free, it’s lunchtime on Thursday 20th August and it’s at our Knowledge Hub, located next to our offices at junction T7 on the M6 Toll.

Latest Press Release Just received at Ward Lovett!

Monday, 27 July 2009

Months ago we talked about the media frenzy around doom and gloom of the credit crunch and then the recession. Every news channel and newspaper vied for the ultimate doom and gloom story and it absolutely frightened the business sectors into not spending on their marketing for quarter 1 2009 and certainly told the public reduce spend in the retail and leisure sectors.

The immediate effect was that the media owners have seen their advertising revenues decimated and reacted with the wholesale redundancy programmes of their sales teams. Still editorial teams did not see that they were partly responsible for the sharp decline in spends hiding behind their moral duty to report and ploughed on with their purge.

Press was in decline way before the financial meltdown and online was always going to grow. However this negative coverage certainly accelerated the decline and as we hopefully emerge from the recession it is proving highly difficult to persuade clients to return to traditional advertising methods.

I believe both paid and free titles have an important part in maintaining our regional news networks. The problem is that they need to be profitable and this currently comes from advertising spend, the very people the editorial teams frightened into change.

It our job to educate regional clients that if they don’t have regional media platforms, then the net result is it will inevitably become extremely expensive for them to reach the public in the future. This is proving really difficult.

Anyway finally the proverbial penny has dropped with the editorial teams as the media owners move to close unprofitable titles and streamline their businesses for the post recession arena. This places the editorial teams potentially into the same redundancy programmes as their advertising sales counterparts found themselves 6 months ago.

Popular opinion is that the major players like BBC and the FT will dominate the online market and there will not be the opportunity for smaller players to enter the market.

This of course means there is not the need for the numbers of journalists that the newspapers networks have carried over the years. In short there is no opportunity to jump ship for many of these editorial guys. We do now run the risk of losing a lot of this talent but then some would argue they have brought it on themselves.

I would think there is many an advertising sales person resisting a smug smile this morning as they look at their chunky redundancy cheques and question whether their opposite numbers from editorial will get the same deal.

Anyway here is the press release:

Journalists at The Birmingham Post and its sister titles are planning a one-day strike on Thursday because there is no guarantee compulsory redundancies will not be made among editorial staff.

Trinity Mirror Midlands, the company which owns The Birmingham Post and The Birmingham Mail, last month announced it was closing a series of weekly titles including the Walsall Observer and the Tamworth Times with the loss of 94 jobs across the company.

Neil Elkes, joint NUJ father of chapel for the Birmingham-based titles, said: "We are opposed to the closure of newspaper titles and branch offices as we believe this will damage the business in the Midlands. But we are taking industrial action as a last resort in a bid to prevent compulsory redundancies among our members, particularly a number of trainee journalists whose careers are just beginning. We will review the action if there are no compulsory redundancies."

Bosses at the company have branded the decision "reckless and negligent".

Trinity Mirror Regionals managing director Georgina Harvey said: "It is highly frustrating that the majority of our journalists should be held to ransom like this when only 27 per cent of our entire editorial workforce across the Midlands businesses voted for this action. We are fighting to secure the future of our businesses in the Midlands which are now running at a loss, and this will not benefit the NUJ or their members in any way whatsoever."

Are clients being sold digital duds?

Tuesday, 16 June 2009

Investment in digital marketing continues to grow and despite the recession spend online is holding up (although growing at a lower rate). Equally good is that more and more brands are recognising that digital must now be an integral part of their marketing mix.

So what’s the bad news? Despite the continued growth in online spend many clients are buying into ill conceived, poorly planned solutions that have absolutely no relevance to the target audience. This isn’t meant as a criticism of all digital agencies. There are plenty delivering superb, on-brief sites, campaigns, content, etc that deliver great returns for the client.

However, there as many, if not more campaigns and digital products being sold that are not fit for purpose. Let’s take games as an example. We’ve seen several this week all of which are well executed in terms of playability and use of Flash. But exactly what relevance do they have for the consumer who is supposed to buy the products that the client produces (and wishes to sell)? None.

Here’s an example. Brand X is an FMCG product targeted at and bought by women who are likely to have families. Great media planning has located the kind of sites that they are likely to visit. What is the call-to-action for our busy mums? Is it a chance to get a free sample of the product? Is it a voucher offering a discount to incentivise a purchase in place of their usual brand? Or even a competition so that they can capture data? No. The result of the strategic plan was a game. In this case there was little to redeem this content which was ill conceived, poorly executed and creatively weak.

How is this good marketing? If marketing is defined as satisfying customer needs profitably, then how does a game meet this particular audiences needs? It doesn’t. A client has seen/read that games are good. The agency concerned has the capability to develop games and has either sold the concept or merely agreed with the client’s wishes rather than challenging the brief. Most likely is that the agency simply lacks the skills and expertise to offer a genuinely insightful solution.

If digital agencies are to ever reach the position of strategic leadership that their (offline) advertising/media counterparts enjoy they need to be doing several things. The key change is to become much more audience focussed. They need to embrace planning and insight so that the solutions they sell as absolutely right for the target audience. What’s frustrating about the lack of planning is that digital is such a highly measurable channel that there are many sources of research, etc that can really help with campaign planning.

The supply-led approach to selling is wrong. Agencies are getting away with it because digital is new, perceived as technical and in great demand. Sadly as a new industry not all the suppliers are of equally quality or as experienced.

But if we really want clients to embrace digital as central to the mix then practitioners need to show the same level of insight and audience understanding as ad agencies. Then, and only then can digital really command a seat at the top table. Planning is where it’s at. Planning is the future of digital…


This post was written by Jason Navon - Director at Clarity Digital

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Happiness Factory - Achieving Digital Goals

Friday, 29 May 2009

A question that I am starting to ask a lot of people is: “what is the purpose of your website?” You will be surprised by the amount of people that are not able to easily answer that.

For most of us the purpose of our website is to generate leads to create sales and profit.

Is your website achieving your goals?

Even if it is, I am sure you want you to exceed them. The web is great for determining your ROI. By embracing social and email marketing you can create a very engaged audience and we all know that an engaged customer is a highly valuable one. By using the latest in web analytics we can see what channels are creating the best ROI for us.

As a business we all have KPI (Key Performance Indicators) and we can use these to make effective decisions in achieving your goals.

· Quantitative indicators which can be presented as a number.

· Practical indicators that interface with existing company processes.

· Directional indicators specifying whether an organization is getting better or not.

· Actionable indicators are sufficiently in an organization's control to effect change.

· Financial indicators used in performance measurement and when looking at an operating index

The web is a measurable medium.

· How people arrive at a website

· How they navigate a website

· How they find information on a website

· How they value website content

· How they respond to alternative offers

· How they react to email or search marketing

· How they interact with the online buying process

· How they manage online self service

· Etc...

Measuring the measurable

1. Interaction – This can be anything from comments on your blog to forums, reviews and ratings. Remember that it cannot just on your website. If you have not already, set up some Google Alerts that can help with this.

2. Sales – This where your bottom line has increased by working hard on your digital presence. Tracking which channels are creating profits for you. Dell made $1m from twitter in 18 months.

3. Traffic – We all understand we want to increase our traffic but it important that its quality traffic that will help your bottom line.

4. Leads – Tracking your leads is another source that needs to be measured. Some of our clients for example those in the car industry do not sell online so their goal is measure brochure requests, test drives, call backs etc)

5. PR- This is one medium that is really starting to take to work closely with digital departments the world over. The last few years have been hard for traditional PR types not being able to figure out the blogosphere. Twitter is prime example as to how it has given blogging to the masses and they all need something to shout about. The worlds of, customer service, PR and marketing are merging.

Car Sales on Line - the phenomenon

Tuesday, 28 April 2009

Those of you who know Ward Lovett Advertising and Pr will be aware one the company's specialisms is retail marketing and in particular for the automotive trade.

Historically the marketing spends in this sector has been as follows in order of spend:
Manufacturer Marketing: National TV and Press
Dealership Advertising: Regional Press, Local Press, Direct Mail, Radio, Local TV(RARE)

The spends by the dealerships tended to be in the classified sections in the local press and can hardly be described as cutting edge in media planning. I.E. if you owned a dealership in Manchester, you would be in the Manchester Evening News on motors night. 9 times out of ten across the country motors night is a Friday to drive weekend footfall and sales to the dealerships advertising. Rocket science it wasn't but for over 40 years it was the standard.

However in an incredibly short period The automotive sector has followed its other slightly uncool classified neighbour, the Recruitment sector, and shifted its focus on line.

It started with a web site promoting their stock with a series of pictures, then progressed to microsites which focus on immediate sector issues. Ukscrapscheme.co.uk is a prime example of this sort of activity. Using Google Pay Per Click this microsite was at the top of anything to so with the Government Scrappage scheme around the recent budget. Indeed they stole a march on the competition.

At recent Ford Dealer Marketing meeting, one of the leading used car sales managers announced he had pulled or traditional marketing in the belief that his award winning website, Auto trader on line listings and Google campaign would be more effective. The monthly results show he is correct.

Worrying times for Press and Radio and TV certainly but there is a real opportunity for online marketing in this sector. Auto Trader Digital claim a mighty 30% market share but there is room for more player in this market if they get a move on. One to watch is carsupermarketsearch.com  which is one of the best I have seen.

I think the regional press and radio should unite and create a web portal to compete in this arena. It is a unique opportunity to create a true number one in the sector but to get the dealers on board it needs to be an automatic upload, for free initially for all dealers who advertise in a given paper on a commercial radio station. Crtical mass of vehicles is key to popularity.

The media can push the site through their titles and stations and once the tipping point is achieved it would be viable to implement a pay per click model to the dealers.

I would like to see the NPA, NS and RAB try to take a longer term view and create portals such as this for sectors rather than the go it alone approach which I believe simply will not work. Some of the individual newspaper sites are appalling and in reality the web has moved on beyond the comprehension of these traditional media owners.

On a final note I believe Car Advertising is now officially cool - now that is something I never thought would happen..

The New Ward Lovett Web Site - Its Alive

Tuesday, 17 March 2009

March the 1st Deadline Met.
http://www.wardlovett.com/ is now live!

After 12 months of deliberation and what I call the decorators syndrome - i.e. we have simply been to busy doing other peoples sites to look at our own, the team at Ward Lovett have pulled out all the stops to launch their new web site.

Special thanks to the following (and no you cannot poach them!)

Dominic Cushnan
Anthony McLaughlin
Richard Cole
Leigh Smith
Jason Navon
David Bennett
Kate Sherratt

Utilising all the latest SEO good practice methods the brief to the new media team was to build a site that looks great but also ranks well and will continue to evolve with new technologies.

Most advertising agencies previously out-source lairy flash sites that show case their best work and our old site with on screen presenters was no exception.

The new one is deliberately different though. We absolutely practise what we preach and look to find the balance between great inhouse design, SEO friendly content (but not pages of irrelevant copy aimed at courting Google), and ofcourse constant evolvement. This site is an ongoing live portal.

Anyway it is up and we would value your reviews. It has been ranked and has already overhauled many of our competitors but to really succeed we are going to need to attract real input from you. if you have relevant content then forward it to us. We will credit all external contributors.

This site is not just about work we would be proud to show our moms, all clients feedback and case studies are welcome. If you can spare the time to give us feedback on work we have produced for you be it customer and staff reaction or even better results and returns on investment then we will feature it.

We also have launched "the knowledge hub" which is a unique facility to promote everything good about marketing. Yes it looks cool, yes we will be holding training seminars for prospects and clients but also it is a centre for research and training. If you have a digital or marketing subject you would like to know more about or would like the opportunity to present to us or our clients then please do get in touch.

Remember opinions are like axxxholes - everybody has one!

However we would like to know what you think of our efforts to date and if you have any ideas how to improve it then send them over..

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