The West has been arrogant

The 2008 crisis changed a lot. Close to an end, we can say it didn’t last for a long time. But the effects will. The West learned they’re not immortal. At least they should. That’s the best thing that could happen to the world.

People who go beyond their limits end up in a burnout. Companies that blow up themselves go bankrupt. It’s as simple as that. You can’t just obtain more and more, when there are not enough capabilities or resources. A road with no limits is a dead end street.

”Back to basics” is a very wise adagium. It should not only be a motto in times of crisis, but it should be daily practice to everyone and every company. We only have to ask ourselves three questions: What do I want to do? What could I accomplish realistically? And how do I pursue that?

The West has been arrogant. I noticed even more when I lived in Asia myself. In that respect, I fully agree with the general statement of Kishore Mahbubani in his book ´The New Asian Hemisphere´ (I did not finish the entire book yet). I hope the crisis made the West start throwing some of their arrogance overboard. They better. 

The East is quickly and surely becoming more powerful than the West. And with even much better growth perspectives. Companies over here better start realizing that. Those who don´t, will discover they’re not immortal after all.

Humor sells

Yesterday results of a recent scientific study were being published on the effects of humor in advertising. The study showed that humor in ads does have a positive impact on customers. The study was being performed by Madelijn Strick from the Radboud University in Nijmegen, Holland.

If humor helps to bring across messages to your partner, colleagues or family, it is not very surprising that it smoothens communication with other target groups, like customers.

I was pretty surprised though by one other fact that had been proved by the researchers: viewers of a funny tv commercial or an ad next to a cartoon, for example, do not always remember the brand, but do make a positive association with the right product once they are in the store. This is called the ´humor paradox´by Strick. And even better, this positive association makes them move in the famous AIDA-customer behaviour model from the letter D (Desire) to the letter what we all target for: the A for Action. Bingo! Humor sells!

I do not exactly remember how many, but I wrote several articles in the (recent) past, stating how much I disliked advertising trying to be funny (of course there are lots of really funny ads), but do not succeed in making me remember what brand is being advertised. Now I know that that is not important at all, according to Strick, I think I have ask Google to delete these articles. After all, they might make some people laugh. Oh wait…that´s good!

Comment conversion: 0.25%?

Don´t get me wrong: this is not my personal frustration about the number of comments on this weblog:-) I am honestly having the idea and wondering why in general the number of comments on popular weblogs worldwide is so low. And then especially on knowledge platforms (news sites is a different story).

To stay close to home: if I look for example at the number of reactions to posts at Molblog , probably the Netherlands´most visited and high level marketing weblog, I think it´s pretty stunning how low the number of comments actually is compared to the number of visitors.

A quick hypothetical sum up:

• say you have 100,000 unique visitors per month, which is about 25,000 a week;
• then assume the weblog publishes 30 posts in that week, that means on average you have 800 unique visitors per posting (allow me this unique but relevant unity:-);
• I think that by far most of the posts at a weblog get 3 comments per post. Of course there are posts that have 30 comments or so, but these are exceptions. I feel that 3 is already a high estimate, because you see a lot 1´s and 2´s, but ok;
• that means ´comment conversion´, as I call it, is 3 on 800 = just above 0.25%.

Please prove I´m wrong, but my feeling is that this figure is pretty close. And low! I mean, even spontaneous response to a direct mailing is higher and in that case you have to take specific action! ok, you probably get an incentive, but still, the sender wants something from you.

This is strange when you think that commenting to a weblog is good for four reasons, in my opinion:

1. it´s an interactive and open discussion platform, so the purpose of a weblog actually IS commenting;
2. it´s free, easy to comment and most of the times low entry (therefore I´m not a big fan of registering before commenting);
3. it´s a good way to share your ideas and opinions with other visitors and that way increase the quality of global knowledge on a topic;
4. it´s a unique way to position yourself -if you want- as a knowledgeable and capable specialist on a specific topic.

Do people need more push to take action, is that it? Do people tend not to take action when they are not directly asked to do so ? Is it because they think there is ´nothing in for them´?

When you think so, I think you better read the four reasons above one more time.

And please, leave a comment when you have something to add to this posting or don´t agree with me:-)

Do it: more PR, more events!

When I worked in Asia, it striked me how many events were being organized: client events, networking events, seminars, workshops, conferences. You can fill your agendas the whole day, the whole week visiting useful events. With Amicorp and The Economist, the companies I worked for, we followed that strategy successfully as well. From that perspective, I think the two Dutch guys guys Frank and Arnout who started global conference platform Conference Bay, did a wise thing.

Anyway, people who know me, know I think marketing and communications in the West should be closer to the external world (client, press, prospects, etc.), more down to earth, closer to the company goals. I think that sometimes we can be a bit arrogant and should come out of our ivory towers.

And then, what did I read last week at Molblog? Philip Kotler, my university hero, the man who paved they way to my huge:-) marketing career with his practical, easy to read blue books on marketing management said that `marketeers should make more use of social media, pr and events`. I would like to add that this depends on whether you are marketing b-t-c or b-t-b and products or services.  For investment banks conferences would be much more effective than for a company that sells dipers (despite the fact that investment bankers might need a diper these times).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kotler furthermore thinks that quite often ´we don´t conduct marketing the way we should´. I´m quite sure he must have read my former articles:-), although I´m not sure he agrees with me on the ivory tower part;-)

His mission statement is clear enough, too: ´Our mission is to help clients achieve profitable growth.´

And that´s all we have to do.

What does internet look like in 5 years?

With current legal measures being taken by music producers to have their artist´s properties removed from sites like YouTube, the future landscape of internet is slowly but surely being set.

Internet, in my view, will not stay the free global platform it is now. Unfortunately, but understandable. With content and other intellectual properties being spread around the globe for free, it´s just a matter of time before the owners stand up. And I fully agree, however I have to admit that I liked the rebellion-like first years of the internet.

But if we want to have a grown up medium that competes with conventional media like tv, radio and papers, we have to take the consequences. That means professionalization. And that means rules and procedures. And a price to be paid.

I wonder how the internet looks like in five years from now. Do I have to pay to watch CNN online?

Power to Albert Heijn

Albert Heijn (part of worldwide Dutch retail giant Ahold) is Holland´s biggest supermarket chain. And probably the oldest, too. Having been positioned as a high quality retailer with dito prices, they were forced to lower their prices the past few year under competition pressure and the ´supermarket war´ a few years ago in the Netherlands. Actually, this war is still going on with just a bit fewer gunshots at the moment.

Albert Heijn is one of the strongest brands in Holland and they do a great job to keeping it that way. Look at the current commercial to convince yourself. The power is original and smart simplicity; and that is scarce in today´s advertising. (Sorry for those who don´t know the Efteling or don´t speak Dutch.)

Are Western marketeers arrogant?

Two weeks ago I published a column on the Dutch Marketing weblog Molblog.  I was writing on the fact that we, marketing and communciation advisors, can be pretty arrogant. At least, that´s a conclusion you can draw from what I see. I have been looking around quite a bit in the corporate world and especially with the bigger companies I see a lot of employees who accept what they know for the truth and don´t try to think originally. They can tell exactly what tone of voice to choose, what channel to push the product through or what medium to pick without taking one step back and look at their products or markets from a green perspective.

The result of our current behavior is that there is a lot of crap going around. And because everybody´s copying from eachother, there´s even more crap going around. And it´s not just big companies who do it, it´s also the smaller ones and agencies are very good at it as well. Evidence of the last is that a fresh brilliant idea of an agency´s creative director is a trend in the whole industry within a few weeks or months. I´ve been seeing that process now for years already.

I think the reason is that apart from forgetting to be original, too many professionals have never seen a company´s client themselves! At the least, that´s pretty shocking for people who are trained to reach target groups. Unilever sets the example here. Exactly fitting in what I´m preaching.

In Asia I saw that the distance between marketeers and clients are much smaller. Although the Asians have some of the highest buildings in the world, the marketeers of the East don´t live in ivory towers, at least not as high as in the West.

I think the best solution is in the middle: in the West marketeers should become a bit more of a salesman, in the East they might wanna think a bit more strategically. But hey, in those booming markets (6.5% growth in China during a worldwide crisis), you don´t have to plan five years ahead. You´re selling anyway!

In the West; please let´s try to be original. Don´t copy an idea of a competitor or from another market, but really think what fits the values and goals of your product or your company. It will make the world a bit more colourful and your job a lot more inspiring!

Will crisis finally kill short term illness?

It seems like global business is suffering major short term illness. The internet hype in the late nighties was a great example of companies conducting ’sky is the limit’ strategies. After 9/11 and the Asia crisis we just went on-and-on possibly leading to the current global crisis.

That we are in a crisis, is no doubt. US just last week published BBP figures of -3.8%, unemployment increases to levels where the old adagio ‘the sky is the limit’ appeals to and Europe (especially the UK_ is suffering badly as well. And we are still in the middle of it.

Still, I recognize some overreaction with companies in their way to cope with the crisis. It now seems that companies are taking the chance to cut labour places like they are dealing with tropical rain forests. Complete departments are being laid off, although business in most of the cases has maybe declined for (only) 20-30%, which is bad, but not coherent with the numbers being laid off.

I predict that part of people fired will come back within a few months. Not all of them of course, since the crisis might and will deepen further, but at least part of them. Because what happens now, is more than cutting of the fat on the bones. We are also cutting the bones.

As Willem Buijter said at the FD Summit 2008: “it might be good that the crisis deepens further, to really bring some change to the world”. I think that is a very wise thing to say and that it will change the companies’ policies to a bit more longer term, consistent focus.

Selling to expats

Last week I entered clothing shop Jukebox in shopping mall Central in Singapore, looking for pants to wear for informal business meetings. I knew exactly what I was looking: kaki pants, cotton. No jeans. Although I actually saw imediately that this was not the shop to be in, I decided to have a quick look: after all, you never know. The moment I entered the shop, the three sales people who were obviously not too busy at that moment, remembered everything they learned at their sales training and sang “Hello Sir, welcome, can we help you?”. Although I remembered I clearly answered their question with “No, thank you, just looking around”, one of the sales ladies repeated the question another time after 30 seconds and one minute later her male colleague had a blue jeans hanging in front of me. He had apparantly been taught to be proactive, and he was. I made clear that I was not looking for jeans, threw a quick glance at another rack and left the shop slighly irritated because the sales people didn’t ask for my needs and tried to push sales.

Intercultural business does not go without speaking. Thousands of handbooks have been written about how to negotiate with the Chinese, what diner etiquettes to remember in Japan and how to shake hands in Brazil. And this case was a typical example of intercultural business on the floor.

Although a Westernized society, here in Singapore, I can see on a daily basis that differences are big. The original cultures come to the surface in shops and restaurants. And although quite often annoying or even irritating (nobody can help; that’s what cultural differences sometimes cause), you can only respect it. I hope I don’t sound arrogant, but I even feel kind of sorry for them sometimes. They are trying so hard, but it doesn’t work. At least not for me and a lot of other foreigners I know.   

In addition, this is not only a matter of culture, it’s also the stage of development of service. Singapore is doing very well and developing really fast. But there is still a way to go. Service is not yet at  the level we are used to in the US or Europe. But Singapore, and Asia, are catching up very quickly.

However you look at it, it shows once again; one can change the environment in a year, but you can’t change a generation in the same time. Selling to the Chinese in Singapore is something completely different than selling to a foreigner, especially when he or she lives here. Maybe the National University of Singapore (NUS) should start a training program ‘Selling to expats’. They can call me to do some teaching:-) Time will do the rest.

Asians don’t market

When I came to Singapore one year ago, I thought I would be doing interim marketing jobs for international companies. This is what I did in Holland for the last few years (Leaseplan, Delta Lloyd and Fortis) and it suited me well seeing a lot of different ‘kitchens’ and cultures, not being bound to one company and meet a lot of interesting people.

But Asia is different. First of all, they don’t know an interim market like we do in Europe. The labour market in Asia is very flexible, so probably there has never been a big need to work with temporary employees. I think that’s one of the reasons this market developed so fast in the Netherlands where it can take lots of time and money to fire somebody -if possible at all-. Consequently, if a company has the choice, it doesn’t want to go and hire a permanent one. Whcih makes interim the perfect solution. Several friends of mine own interim agencies and they make good money transferring managers from to company to company for several months. But not in Asia.

 

Next to a lack of interim opportunities, Asia does not market the way we do it in Europe. Asians sell, they do not market. Branding, advertising, creative concepts; they were not invented by the Asians. Business development, conferences, discounts: that’s what counts here. And that’s what works. And the explanation is not hard: the Chinese, who dominate the Asian market (also  in Singapore, Indonesia), focus on one thing; money. In other words: trade, selling.

Of course the multinationals (MNC’s) plan branding campaigns. Singapore Airlines choose their new advertising agency last year (TBWA was the lucky one) and there has a lot of creative work to be done. And of course, a lot of other big companies spend their dollars on branding. But still, it’s not a lot compared to the US and even Europe if you think that 3.3 bilion people are living in Asia and figures are even below those of Europe. And the amount for Asia also include Australia and New Zealand.

So, what does Diederik do now? I’m working with financial services company Amicorp as marketing & sales manager for Asia. That’s right, marketing AND sales and it’s a great experience:-) Amicorp is in the booming hedge fund business and services banks, law firms and other financial services providers with international tax and estate planning solutions.