Enterprise Experience...

" Everything Starts with the Customer" Andrew Carter (2008)

A dismal Monday morning turned into an enlightening and insightful peek into the marketing world. Luckily, i was able to meet first hand with a panel of industry members by being part of the team who helped in running the 'What Next?' event (a question-time-esque affair). Mr. Allan Rich (Non- Executive Director of Cello) spoke first highlighting that the recession was a ''fantastic opportunity'' and that a ''well run business will come through a recession extremely well". His enthusiam about the future of the marketing world was a welcome change to the doom and gloom that has seemed to consume the UK in light of the credit crunch. Many of the other panel members shared in Allan Rich's positive outlook for the industry with Ivor Peters (Board Director of the BWP Group) adding: " there is no solution because there is no problem".




Jamie Matthews (Managing Director of Initials Marketing) talked about a change in "balance of power" as many clients are under pressure, (from time constraints and budgets), therefore making marketing campaigns much more shorter term. With a move towards digital marketing and in light of marketing campaigns needing to reach all areas in a shorter term (for greater impact) there is a need for marketing companies to integrate their disciplines. This broadens their communication channels.



On a cold and dark Tuesday evening in a full lecture theatre,Tom Vic (Group Business Director of JWT), re-iterates the need for companies to embrace the new technological era especially in terms of mobile technology. A point stressed by Tom Vic was that although marketing is evolving through digital and online marketing the older traditional channels are adapting to the new times. For example, everywhere you look in an underground station or train there are advertisements. These are still effect, but, in order to update them and embrace the new technology available D.E.P.s (digitial escalator panels) have been created which link within the bluetooth of your mobile phone to produce a fluid moving image advertisement as you progress up the escalator.


Tom Vic created 5 key points of how traditional agencies should respond:

1. Forget above the line and below the line as marketing concepts.

2. Bring back the dictionary definition of advertising.

3. Re-structure business around brands and it's communications needs.

4. Invest in re-training and re-orientating agency colleagues.

5. Learn from the youth, for example, agencies using younger staff to train the older.



From Vic's lecture it became evident that technology should be embraced by all agencies as it can be used to enhance and better their campaigns. It appears that an agency should go back to basics and adapt to the times then their should be a return to "full-service" agencies but in a new format. Vic addresses the credit crunch as an opportunity to make greater focus on cost-efficiency and return on investment a concept which should be adopted in better times as well.





So, it appears that the future is bright for the marketing industry and it will not suffer greatly in light of the current financial climate. If we can all take the infectious enthusiasm of Allan rich along with the modern mind of Jamie Matthews and the experience of Tom Vic the modern marketing world seems a very optimistics place.

Advertising for the sexes..

The issue of male and female differences 'is much more fundamental than the usual myopic media one about where the ads appear: it's about recognizing women [and men's] different approach' (Financial Times, June 29, 2001)

Today's lecture entailed looking at the gender differences in advertising and how some adverts appeal more relevantly to women than to men and vice versa. Afetr being shown a slide show consisting of a variety of printed advertisements we were asked which one stuck in our mind the most and what ones we remembered. The females in the class tended to remember the adverts that involved a celebrity whereas the more humerous advert (involving a comical guinea pig) proved more relevant to the males. This experiment poses many questions about advertising for the sexes and the contrast between the two. This concept is invaluable to marketers and advertisers as they are able to target their market effectively and produce an advert which will have maximum impact through being relevantly appealing.

The advert to the right invovles a female product which is clearly targeted to a female audience. The use of sensual colours which relate to the colours on the bottle of the perfume is appealing to the visual sense;this is enhanced further through the inclusion of the celebrity Beyonce Knowles. The product is clearly shown in the foreground accompanied with the bold 'true star GOLD' title which indicates exaclty what the product is and how it looks. What is interesting is that the perfume advert does not address the sense of smell which is paramount to the success of a perfume.

In contrast to a typically female advert, the advert to the left could be described as 'typically male'. Rather than being appealing, the advert has taken a humerous approach which would be relevant to the male mind-set. The advert is aiming to advertise online bingo to the male sex, an area which is largely dominated by female directed comapanies such as Foxy Bingo. In order to have maximum impact the advert created is overtly funny with a man breast feeding a baby with the tag line 'Where have all the women gone?'.

With gender difference in mind, we are now comtemplating what our personal perception experiment would be and which variables we would test according to perception theories from theorist such as Solomon et al or the black box model.

Personality

Prior to today's lecture we were asked to take the Simpson's personality type test and unfortunately mine was Krusty the clown. However, on first glance i thought this would be something negative, however,on reading the personality it related to my personality quite accurately. It described me as enjoying lively intellectual conversations, welcoming interactions such as learning opportunities. As well as describing the strengths of your personality the test also described the weaknesses which were also quite true as i am often direct and confrontational.

Personality: "a person’s unique make up, which consistently influences the way the person responds to his or her environment” (Solomon 1999)

Self Concept: "the beliefs a person holds about his or her own attributes & how he or she evaluates those qualities” (Solomon 1999)

Personality is unique to each and every person; marketers and advertisers are interested in the concept of personality in purchase choice. If personality was a key element to purchase choice key personality aspects could be targeted by marketers and advertisers to produce a suitable and effective campaign. However, it may be that self- concept is more of a key determining factor in pruchase choice. But, both personality and self- concept are hard to segment due to the complexities of a person's unique make-up.

Hollander conducted extensive research into personality and derived 4 key aspects of personality; external, internal, dynamic and consistent. External is the way that a person interacts with other people, internal is a combination of their attitudes and values, dynamic is how they behave when faced with a new situation and consistent is their characteristic style. Although this research provides us with valuable insight into personality psychologically it does not relate personality to consumer choice. This can be best demonstrated by J. Aker (1997) who derived a brand personality framework which shows how personality could be marketed by relating something like sophistication to an upper class personality or someone that is charming. By showing something to be sophisticated a marketer is able to vaguely target a personality type which would be associated with sophistication. By clicking the following link: Jaguar commercial you are able to see how advertisers have produced a sophisticated and professional advert which will in turn appeal to upper class, and supposedly charming personality types.

Despite being closely linked with personality self- concept is very different. Solomon (2001) states that "people see themselves as they imagine others see them." For example, someone suffering from an eating disorder such as bulimia or anorexia nervosa will believe that they are fat as they have the belief that others think this of them. When in reality, they are extremely slim. William James (1890) argues that self- concept derives from social comparisons with others. A person's self-concept is probably more important to a marketer as a person will make choices upon their beliefs and consequently what they believe about themselves. This will directly influence their decision making and therefore marketer should be interested in this more as this could be their deciding factor.

However, both personality and self-concept are extremely hard to target as everyone has many different elements to their personality and self-concept. A person may also be very shy about their self-concept, for example, not admitting that they have an eating disorder whilst portrayign a confident personality. It appears that personality and self-concept will baffle marketers for years to come.