Synopsis:
A new conceptual approach to marketing practice from the vice president at Ogilvy Mather Direct which describes how to build a new kind of brand loyalty that leads to old–fashioned brand growth and increased profits without incremental marketing investment. Demonstrates how to create a database of high–profit consumers and use it to generate a relationship–building direct marketing program.
From the Author:
This book is an answer for John Wanamaker.
"I know half my advertising is wasted. The problem is I don’t know which half." How many times have you heard that famous lament, or repeated it yourself? Variously attributed to John Wanamaker in the United States and to Lord Leverhulme in England, it surely is the most quoted observation about marketing and advertising ever uttered. But that was a hundred years ago. There’s no excuse for still not knowing in the current data-empowered, technology-enabled environment, when information on everything consumers buy, do, think, and feel abounds, and a computer sits on every desk, ready to help analyze it. The half or more of advertising – and all other forms of marketing communications – which is wasted is that portion directed at consumers who, despite anything an advertiser ever says or does, will never buy enough to make a difference to the brand’s bottom line. You may not even be aware that there are consumers like that. I was a marketing and advertising professional for twenty years before I did. The simple truth is that most marketing people don’t really have much knowledge about the underlying patterns of consumer buying behavior and consumer value that would allow us to spend our brand-building budgets more wisely. Our entire professional generation has been shaped by the unique challenges and opportunities of the current dominant medium – mass television. Because success for the brand seems so dependent on cutting through the boredom and the clutter, we spend all our energy – and budget - on achieving broadscale impact - cheaper GRPs, "breakthrough creative," or a :30 slot on the Superbowl or the Seinfeld finale, as though it’s only getting heard that counts, not who is doing the hearing. Most of us have lost sight of the one surefire path to success – building the loyalty of the small number of buyers who drive our category and our brand – often less than 10% of all households. But the times are changing. Some of us are starting to use the power of consumer databases to find those high-profit customers. We’re integrating direct marketing into the communications mix and planning and buying traditional media in a non-traditional fashion. We’re rediscovering that we can stop just counting the customers we reach and reach out to the consumers who really count and build our sales and profit. And the evidence is mounting that it does indeed work – today, and even more importantly, in the future. The next dominant branding medium is poised to emerge from the current crop of new technologies, led by the Internet and addressable cable. The unique challenges and opportunities of that medium for brand managers will be very different from those of mass television. Instead of aggregating audiences it will atomize them. Instead of inducing apathy it will stimulate involvement. Instead of breaking down the door, advertisers will be invited in to consumers’ lives - or not be. Instead of one way communication, or even two-way, it will be more like an old-fashioned party line, linking individual consumers into a network of shared experiences, opinions, and brand decisions. Costs will rise, but so will capabilities, including the capability of identifying and selectively targeting those consumers who can truly drive sales and grow the brand and avoiding those who can’t. I wrote this book so that the most famous and repeated observation about advertising will be heard no more. I truly believe that those of us who fail to understand that targeting is king won’t be around to bemoan our ignorance in marketing’s Digital Age. - Garth Hallberg dfmgarth@aol.com
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