Hidden Costs of Marketing #2 (No joke)

Hi,

There are some costs which cannot be easily calcuated, but which, if included in a project's P&L, might cause the project to be abandoned.

Hidden Cost #2: Foregone profits by...

... poor pricing strategy (too high, too low)
... poor product integrity, causing recall costs, product replacement costs, etc.
... poor packaging/point of sale/channels management to convert investment in awareness and demand creation to sales.

Cheers!

MK

COPY SCHOOL IS IN

What tone of voice works best? If you are selling your services as an investment advisor or the steward of your prospect's money, perhaps a serious tone is best.

For everything else, I suggest you explore the potential for humour. People remember more information when it makes them laugh. (Don't ask me why...) Humour is also a way to reach out to others. Laughing together unites people, according to one expert I heard on Tony Delroy's late night radio program on Tuesday night. For instance, she solves problems between Indigenous communities and whites by getting them to laugh together. Humour is also a good way to address difficult and sensitive issues, like
death. I'm serious.

For instance, here is a script I wrote for a dreary Funeral Insurance client:



VIDEO

Two males in close up, side of heads, facing each other. (Alas Smith & Jones style)

AUDIO

FAT MALE:Went to a funeral the other day.

THIN MALE: That’s sad. Whose was it.

FAT MALE: Mother in law’s

THIN MALE: That’s aright then. You would have enjoyed that.

FAT MALE: I don’t like funerals.

THIN MALE; Why do you go then?

FAT MALE: To make sure she was dead. Besides if you don’t go to other people’s funerals they wont’ come to yours. Still, I wish I didn’t have gone to this one.

THIN MALE: Why? Wasn’t she gone? Did she sit up in the coffin?

FAT MALE: No, She was gone alright, but I had to pay!

THIN MALE: Pay to go to your mother-in-law’s funeral. How much?

FAT MALE: Never you mind… it was a lot. The old dear hadn’t left any money to pay for the funeral and the money in the will is frozen for who knows how long…

THIN MALE: Didn’t you tell her about that insurance you can get that covers all those expenses?

FAT MALE: Didn’t talk to her much. She was an angry woman. She left instructions to write on her headstone the words: “What are you looking at?” I stayed out of her way.

THIN MALE: Well that was a costly mistake.

FAT MALE: If I could have my time over again….

THIN MALE: Well you can. You don’t want to do the same thing to your own kids do you? [Hands him a telephone handset.] Here, call (Brand) Insurance and ask about the (Brand) Guaranteed Life Plan. You never know when you might be popping off these days, do you?

FAT MALE: Popping off? Do I look sick to you? I haven’t been feeling well…

THIN MALE; Better make that call right now. 0000 000000. Before it’s too late.

................

How did it perform? We will never now. The agency I freelanced for at the time did not have creative control of the account. The client did. The agency lived by the slogan of The Goodies: "We do anything for money." So no breakthrough was possible. (Warning to budding copywriters: You can only be as brilliant as your account management will allow you to be.

Here's another icky topic - menopause - treated with humour.

Radio 30s
Stand up comedy routine

SFX: Comedy bar

COMEDIENNE: If men went through menopause, hot flushes and night sweats would be another excuse for drinking lots of cold beer.

SFX: Laughter

COMEDIENNE: Mood swings would be something you worked out on the golf course.

SFX: Laughter

COMEDIENNE: If men went through menopause, back pain and low energy would be an excuse for watching even more sports on TV.

SFX: Laughter

COMEDIENNE: Low sex drive would be a cause for a national enquiry.

SFX: Laughter

MALE VOICE: If men went through menopause they’d understand what women go through.

(Brand) Because it’s your life.

Always read the label. Use only as directed. See your healthcare professional if symptoms persist.

..........

Hidden Costs of Marketing

Hi,

There are some costs which cannot be easily calcuated, but which, if included in a project's P&L, might cause the project to be abandoned.

Hidden Cost #1: Damage to the Brand...

... by alienating core customers
... by causing confusion about the brand's personality
... by causing negative media attitudes
... by creating negative regulator attitudes

In fact, any brand-eroding activity should be factored as a cost. If a brands value can be calculated, the loss of value can be estimated.

MK

PS. Tomorrow... Hidden Cost #2

OK. COPYSCHOOL IS IN.

Follow the Logic: Powerful copy resonates and speaks to a reader intimately. The reader hears the words deep within. To achieve such penetration, you must "speak" your copy to the reader as an individual. Speak as an individual to an individual. So when you write copy, write to a single person, someone you know who fits the profile of the target audience.

Two fundamental points here:

1. You speak as you.
2. As you would to an individual person.

That is the Zen of Copy. (MTC)

MK

Famous ads are always speaking in voices

Hi,

I searched high and low for the famous Saatchi & Saatchi ad about flies shitting on food before people eat it. It made S&S famous. I wanted to show you how the ad 'vocalises'. I couldn't find it, but I found the copy - it is used by insecticide companies in their markting materials. Listen to its voice...

"Flies cannot eat solid food, so to soften it up, they vomit on it. Then they stomp the vomit in to form a liquid, adding a few germs for good measure. After this, they suck it all back up again, dropping excrement all the while. And when they’ve finished eating – it’s your turn."

What do "vocal" ads have that "literary" ads don't?

They use short words, And short sentences. And vivd imagery.

CHeers!

Michael

Is there an easy way to write compelling headlines?

Hi,

Every piece of copy has to start somewhere. Like a speech or a conversation. In copy it is usually a headline or an opening statement. How do we approach writing a headline, using the vocalising technique?

Think of it this way: You've got news - great news for the person you are writing to. Imagine rushing into the room and blurting out your news... What's the first thing you would say?

That's your headline.

Cheers!

Michael

PS. The next line of copy is the second thing you would say in our imaginary situation. Speak your news.

Radio was Hitler's favourite

COPYSCHOOL IS IN: Hitler came on the scene just as radio was arriving as a mass medium. And he discovered something only people in radio know: the spoken word dramatised can reach into the soul of the listener. He used it to control Germany. The Nuremburg rallies were broadcast. RAdio is described as 'the theatre of the mind' by those who have been trained to write for the medium.

Maybe the same dynamic that makes radio so powerful - 'voices in my head' - makes copy that we subvocalise so enchanting.

EXERCISE: Listen to Under Milk Wood, by Dylan Thomas. The Richard Burton edition. A movie could not do it justice.

Just like the PM

Most voters vote on perceptions. Howard is the master political marketer. He knows that symbolic acts are the most powerful communications. He uses enquiries to convince voters that he's on the job. The Nuclear Power enquiry. The Carbon Trading enquiry. Staged events. Like Communist Chinese show trials in which the accused admit their guilt and are denounced by the masses and led out to execution.

What symbolic acts can you use to win the voters over in a public issue?

COPYSCHOOL IS IN:

When writing copy with your natural voice, don't think about where to start. Start wherever you like. It's your copy. Start talking.

Michael

Become a copy collector?

For the nano readers: "Carbon Neutral" is becoming a buzz. Look at your product or service. How can you ride the wave of enthusiasm for saving the planet? (I mean really ride the wave, don't just paddle around in the shallows.)

COPYSCHOOL IS IN:

Why am I dwelling on 'subvocalising'* in a course of instruction on 'finding your voice as a copywriter'? (I am sorry, if I have to answer that for you, you're not equipped for the rest of the course.)

People don't subvocalise all the time (Correction: really poor readers do). But most readers tend to subvocalise when they read: 1. poetry 2. letters from friends 3. difficult to understand information. There are probably other cases. (I am doing this research as we go, OK?)

what does this tell us? Poetry - drama and emotion. Letters - intimacy, personal. Hard info - need to know. What does this suggest to you?

Homework: Collect examples of copy that you find yourself subvocalising (hearing). File them. Ask others about their subvocalising experience.

*Hearing the words spoken in their head.

Copywriting: Lessons from Jesus and Shakespeare

For the non-copy nano readers: Why is Woolworths offering the same discount Coles is offering at the bowser (4¢ + 4¢)? Stalemate = guaranteed losses. Unless they are squeezing the others out of the market long term, to then set about plundering...? Driving retail sales inside? (Afterall they are shopkeepers, not oil companies.)

COPYSCHOOL IS IN: Why do more people remember what SHakespeare wrote and what Jesus said? Because they told stories to make their points. And what do people do when reading stories? They subvocalise (hear the words spoken in their heads). and they remember more... So what will a copywriter do, knowing this? Tell stories. (Read Jon Caples famous ad headlined "They laughed when I sat down at the piano...."

Heard any good copy lately?

MK

Google you?

Hi,

Here's a nano-thought for the thought-a-dayers: Have you Googled yourself yet? What turns up? Nothing? Can this be good? You must have an online presence if you want to be someone these days, and it must google up fast.

.........

COPYWRITING...

Thanks to those of you who enquired about my offer to help you find your voice.

A week ago I was sitting here at the dining room table (it's the size of an aircraft carrier) trying to start the copy for a fundraising blog post for the Carbon Coalition (our farm soil carbon credits lobby group) and I was getting nowhere. Everything I wrote was wooden and wrong. Nothing "sounded" right. Nothing "sang".

Then I remembered what I'd said to you about finding your voice. I snapped out of "copywriting" and used my voice. (Check out the result at carboncoalitionoz.blogspot.com - "I'm blown away...") Now this is full-throated 'voice'. It is personal and emotive and risky. It can pay off big time, or die a silent death.

Not all "vocal" copywriting is like this. Sometimes the copy can be stiff as a board - because that's the tone you need. Eg. An official-sounding directive. The key with 'voicing' is that you can control whichever voice you choose - switching like a voiceover actor, to suit the character you are playing.

You see, there's a little secret I discovered: Most people 'subvocalise' when they read. They hear voices. Shakespeare calls it, "To hear with eyes..." The seeing of reading is always at once a hearing, according to Richard Aczel. Reading is an over-hearing of voices, he says.

Some German named Gadamer says reading is "letting speak" ("Lesen ist Sprechenlassen"), a returning of the written word to the dialogue out of which it arose.

The spoken word is even more powerful than the written word because is has the ability to engage the listener in a type of conversation.

According to learning theory, subvocalisation is a crucial tool when learning new material. Subvocalising can help us remember what is read.

What does all this mean?

Listen...

Copywriting is not hard

The number of brilliant people who tell me they can't write documents, copy, etc. is staggering. Writing is a simple craft that requires awareness and practice. Practice is the easy part. Just repeat the task over and over. How many of you smart people who say you can't write have spent any time practicing?

Awareness is harder to come by. Let's see if this helps: have you seen or heard of programs where trainers try to "free the singer in you" or "free the dancer in you"?
Well you learn to write when you "find your voice" as a writer. You free the writer in you once you can hear the words in your head. Like a "voice".

Once you find your own voice, you can progress to learning how to use other voices, other characters' voices. But that is rushing ahead.

If you are interested in finding your voice, send me a note (michael@newhorizon.au.com) and I'll see what can be done.

Cheers!

Michael

The Customer Service Revolution is over!!

My old mate Bob Pritchard sends me his newsletter. His latest issue has a blurb on "Positively Outrageous Service is Great Business". It has an 80s tone, reminding me of my other old mate Bob Ansett who sparked the customer service revolution.

I hereby declare that revolution over.

Bob writes, in his 'new upcoming book "Kick Ass Business and Marketing Secrets" ': There is an increasing emphasis on providing good service, whether in restaurants, retail stores or factories, mainly because today's customers will accept nothing less."

I'm sorry. That's no secret. That's just bunkum. Qantas customers continue to fly with the airline despite their high levels of dissatisfaction. Telstra offers traditional levels of service. Are Coles and Woolworths going to do anything about checkout lines? Did people abandon banks when they stripped services away? No. The banks made historic profits instead.

Sure, service can be an important differentiator, when all other things are equal. But other attributes can be more important: security, location, lack of alternatives, an irresistable urge to be hip...

Michael

michael@michaelkielymarketing.com.au
0417 280 540
(02) 6372 0329

"I know nothing."

Tonight I heard that Australian Capital Reserve - a property trust - had collapsed, leaving a lot of little investors complaining. ACR had flash tv commercials offering a big rate of return, and smooth-talking door to door salespeople. The people dudded complained they didn't understand what they were buying. "I know nothing. I understand nothing," said one. He had handed over $60,000. Understood nothing. Bosh.

Greed. The ACR's business was built on suckers. People want to believe the dream. The conned contribute to the con. Human nature. People want to be sold. so you're already more than half way there when you start pitching.

We're baaaaaaack!

Hi,

Sorry to have been so silent. We lost the database when a tsunami of love craashed our systems (see last post). We lost you...

We have a new system now - RSS Feed is an email syndication tool that my colleague Fred Schebesta installed for me tonight.

You'll be sent an email with a link to the blogsite where the Thought Of The Day lays waiting for you. You can read it any time you like. Or read a week's worth in one go.

If you don't want to be in it, there's an opt out address.

Now for today's lesson: "Plan for the worst and hope for the best."

When planning a program or campaign, think to yourself: "What's the worse that can happen?" (Loss of database through a systems crash.) Then plan for it. And hope it never happens.
It sounds a little paranoid, but it works.

Michael

Long and short of it

Hello there,

Short item for the nanoreaders: No one ever went broke helping others fulfill their dreams.

Long item for those interested in a case study: I stepped on a success landmine in December and learned so many lessons. Background: We ran out of cash to hand feed our sheep and ran out of grass. So, faced with sending the entire flock of 2600 to slaughter and lose 7 years of breeding for superfine wool (which no bastard wanted to pay for anyway), we went public and appealed to people to adopt our sheep for $35 a head, the amount required to feed them for 100 days (the planning horizon during a drought). Action: Bodgied up a blogsite with PayPal to take donations. I thought we'd get 6 or 8. (Friends
and some of you kind people were the first to respond.) So I sent press releases to 2 Sydney dailies - SMH & Tele - and waited. Two days, 3, 4, and a call from Tele asking for pix. Sent what we had. No, need a sad pic of farmer and wife. We took one, hard not to laugh. Day 6, 6.30am Sydney radio stations start calling. Small item in Tele. Channel 7 calls. Can they land a crew near
the house at Uamby? 2 hours filming reduced to 1.45 minutes on that night's news. Tele and Channel 7 put links on their websites. Channel 7 promos the spot on every break duiring the news and runs it last. Kabloom! 5000 hits on blogspot. 100 adopted. Next day: SMH online calls. More links. More radio stations. Louisa and Daniel, no training, giving interviews on air to listeners all over the eastern states. Orders pouring in. 10000 hits by start of week 2. Channel 9 sends a crew. Today Show. Daniel features.
More links. More radio. Serious backlog of adoption certificates (personalised with name of sheep (+pic) and name of adopter. Calls from adopters - when will they get their certificates? Need them for Xmas. (Xmas! Forgot about that.) 20000 hits and 1000 adopters later, 3 of us getting 4 hours sleep a night, handfeeding sheep and churning out certificates, while fielding media and 'where's my certificate' calls. Recruit local business centre for help. Disaster. Customer complaints. Recruit sister-in-law. Great. Need more sheep portraits. Maxed out hard drive in my laptop. Crash. Byebye files. Phone keeps ringing. German journalist arrives to write a piece on the drought. In the next 3 weeks his articles appear in 4 major German online and offline newspapers. We are flooded with hits from Germany - 500 in a day. Put
up a German translation of the blogsite with link on landing page. Local papers and radio arrive late for the party. What's that rumbling? The rising drone of the online conversations about us. StatCounter lets me see where hits coming from. Follow hits backwards to source to find links. Turns out people are posting stories and links on their personal blogsites, discussion groups arguing about the rights and wrongs of farming in Australia, quilters and knitters and spinners and crafty ladies telling each other they adopted, highschool girls (lonelygirl15) adopting a lamb for company in their adolescent cocoons. People telling people what they've bought other people for Xmas. Wealthy people send a cheque for $1000, 'inspired' by what we are doing. Japanese man thinks he can take delivery of the animal. "Crikey!
You'll have to pay more than $35 for that, Cobber." That's Life magazine does a feature. More radio results. In the midst of the chaos, sniping comments left on blogsite by animal rights activists and farmers accusing us of not being financially crippled enough to deserve the money. (Response: "I'm just
doing my best with what I've got.") Calls from farmers begging for some of the money. Charity begins at home. "I'll save my sheep first, then yours. I can't help anyone if I go broke." (We put full step-by-step instructions up on blogsite and flag it. We call NSW Farmers to discuss taking the program national.) Negative blog comments spark large response from other commenters, positive. Cards and letters flooding in. Visitors turning up unannounced. Guided tours. Every adopter says they're praying for rain. Christmas Day: People are opening gifts to find our one of our lambs, rams or 'ma'ams' have come into their lives. It starts to rain at Uamby. 40mls. More than we've had for a year. It's raining money, too. Results: Our target $87000. Total Week 8: $70000. (We had spent $60,000 up to when the appeal started.) Still fulfilling orders. Many fell through cracks when computer crashed. Also lots of no-show of certificate (sent via email) because customer changes email address, spam filter knocked it back, inbox full, etc. Still "where's my certificate?" Customer is always right. No, not "customer" in our case. New
friends? No. We are now family. This farm is their farm. These sheep are their sheep. We got an email from a lady in Sydney asking if "Benny" (a male lamb sponsored on behalf of Ben, an elderly gent in London who loves Australia and cricket) would send Ben a note of encouragement, as he had fallen into a
coma. I wrote back that I told Benny that Ben was ill and he said, "How sick is he?" I said: "He's as crook as English cricket." Benny said, "No one can be that crook..." and dictated a note to Ben. We heard later that, after getting Benny's message, Ben started coming out of the coma. Our first miracle! Promotional
Budget: Media $0. Website: $0. PR: $0. Reason for Outcome: 1. Novelty. Most people unaware of adopta-animal programs overseas (NZ, USA, UK), as I was until after we launched. 2. Convenient Christmas gift. many grandparents said it solved a problem for them, buying for a bunch of grandkids. They could do it all online in 20 minutes. 3. Drought. Many people were effusive in their thanks (and we were the ones who were thankful) for giving them an opportunity to do something for farmers suffering in the drought. (We told everybody we weren't the most deserving, but they didn't care. We offered them the
opportunity,. and the most deserving didn't.) 4. Spirit of Christmas. Giving. Next steps: Expand the relationship. Expand the family. Learn how to love and be loved. Due to time problems, we developed a one word fulfillment letter body copy:

((((HUG))))

We meant it, too.

Michael

PS> 500 sheep to go... to the slaughterhouse or to you, with love?

The reverse sell

Hi,

Here's 2 installments to make up for shakey start this week:

The anti-sales tactic that sells: i went to the Apple Shop to buy a new computer after my big crash. The salesman refused to sell me a new computer. SO I said I'd need an external hard drive to back up my files. He refused to sell me a hard drive, saying his were too expensive for what I wanted. He told me there were cheaper drives available down the road. I insisted on paying $400 for an external hard drive, plus books and accessories... Though not a computer. The more he said he didn't want to sell me something, the more I wanted it.

Michael

Entry 2:

Woke to this news: Sydney temperatures up 7°C by 2070. Bushfires will double. Rainfall to decline by 40°C. The coastline to be hit by 110-metre storm surges by 2100. Doom and gloom. How much of this can consumers take before it freaks them out? These reports are going to increase in frequency. And so are bush fires and wind storms and water shortages... The weather is hard to ignore. My solution: Start talking to your customers about the issue now. Start talking about managing risk, planning to adapt, to protect the future. This gives them a sense of hope that the worst isn't inevitable. Governments can't lead. Brands have to lead.

Michael

Simple, SImpler, Simplest

Hi,

It's amazing how dumbed down you have to make issues to get through to the smartest journalists like
Laurie Oakes and Kerry O'Brien. You have to pitch issues like a discount furniture warehouse commercial.
They deal in simplicities because their audiences don't want to have to think too hard. (It's the
convenience culture. News best served like a Big Mac.) Their audiences want simplicities, and if you want
their ear, you must KISS. You must practice the art of simplification everyday. It's easy to complicate
things. Harder to simplify.

Michael

The Most Important Lesson

Hi,

The most important lesson I ever had in marketing was this: "Nobody cares how much you know until
they know how much you care." The word 'con' in the term 'con man' is an abbreviation of the word
'confidence' as in 'confidence trickster'. This person operates by winning the confidence of the victim
prior to separating them from their money. Confidence is critical to the legitimate sales process as well.
How can you build confidence? You convince people that you care about them and what happens to
them. How do you do that? Simply by doing it. If you haven't got a genuine interest in people and an
ability to 'feel their pain', how do you feel about what you do as a marketer? Are you only separating
people from their money? Turning a human being into revenue scheme? There is a way to succeed in
marketing without selling your soul. Many people are thinking about this issue right now. I have spoken
about it at 4 conferences and have never had such a powerful response from audience members. SO
don't be afraid of asking the question: "How should I live my life?" (As Soctrates said: "The uninspected
life is not worth living."

Michael

You have no competition...

:
... But yourself.

We tend to over-estimate the threat a competitor represents. They might look more imposing than they really are. Let's face it: they are just a bunch of frail humans keeping up appearances, just like your side. Once we've decided that, let's look at the real threat to your success: YOU. If 85% of success is in just turning up (Woody Allen), look to see where you are not turning up in your business life. You know what I mean. Doing the boring things or the uncomfortable things. Working your list of contacts. Responding to all opportunities. Following through. Keeping promises. They (your competition) are as good or bad at it as you are. They are not your competitor. YOU are.

Michael

Repeat your successes

Hi,

The second most important and long lasting lesson I learned was"repeat your successes". Now who
doesn't do that? I hear you say... Try nearly everyone. It takes a hell of a lot of discipline to return to an
'old' idea when you've impressed yourself by your ability to have new ideas. You fall in love with the thrill
of the new. "That was good. Now what's next?" The other side of the coin is 'avoid your failures'. Too
many people return to a failed or underperforming formula only to get what they always got. Humans are
funny creatures, aren't we?

Michael