momorantings

Marketing 2010 will be the same as Marketing 2009. Media sellers will continue to claim their media is the best vehicle for you. Advertising agencies will continue to create many bad advertisements. Prognosticators will continue to declare that we face a new paradigm. And reality will go on. Unaugmented. The true role of marketing will continue to be about meeting customer needs and retaining their patronage. So, rather than make wild guesses about future trends that may or may not impact on your business, I'm going to start 2010 by getting some smart people to offer their answers to the basic marketing questions that will.

Thinking outside the box is a phrase that has always annoyed me because it conflates two very different problem-solving approaches. If you think the box is the problem, then you should be discarding it completely rather than merely thinking outside it (with the incremental change that implies). On the other hand, if you're happy with the box but need to approach it in a different way, you could quite profitably focus on thinking inside the box rather than engage in flights of fancy outside it. But, as the following example will show, you crucially need to do that thinking from outside of the box. Rather than assume that technology has destroyed the "box" marked newspaper production, my friends at Newspaper Club have re-thought the box and acknowledged that is has definite customer benefits in terms of design potential, tactility and portability. By combining that insight with the spare capacity of digital printing presses and some new technology, they will soon be able

I just finished reading Playbill. com's Top Theatre Stories of the Year . The leading story discusses how stars sell tickets, and in a year with a down economy, it seems that the only thing that sells tickets are the stars. From this little story it seems clear that if you don't have an A-list star in your show, don't even try a Broadway transfer. Arena Stage in the past few seasons has been lucky enough to host a few stars, most notably Carrie Fisher in Wishful Drinking and Valerie Harper in Looped (and not surprisingly, both productions found their way to Broadway). From a marketing perspective, nothing makes my job easier than a star, particularly stars that are lovely to work with as both Carrie and Valerie were. But let's be honest, it doesn't take a marketing genius to sell tickets to star powered vehicles. And it isn't just New York that has a taste for the stars. The Shakespeare Theatre Company and the Kennedy Center just presented two star productions

Having written in my previous post that Eurostar's failure was a communication issue, I noticed a letter in today's Times from one of the passengers who had been trapped for 14 hours. "The worst part wasn’t the length of the stoppage, nor the unbearable heat and darkness in the train before our painfully slow evacuation in the tunnel, nor even the lack of food and water. It was the deplorable dearth of information that really made it difficult. I would much rather have been told that it was going to take 20 hours, then at least I could have accepted my fate and relaxed." It's nice to have my wild blogging assertions proven correct. If you have to disappoint your customers, it's much better to disappoint them sooner rather than later, it's much better to then tell them what you're going to do rectify the situation and it's imperative that you apologise.

Sometimes at the conclusion of a speech that I am giving, I have someone from the crowd come up to me and thank me for all the great information, exclaiming that they are going to end their direct mail campaigns in order to shift resources to technology based viral marketing campaigns. At that moment, I usually cringe and apologize, for I definitely communicated something that I didn ’t intend to. For those that read this blog, you know by now that I am a proponent of using technology to grow audiences, building communities and diversify revenue streams. That being said, most major arts organizations find themselves with a foot in two different courts—how to please the audiences of tomorrow, and still serve the audiences of today. We sometimes forget that there are four generations in play in our audiences: the Silent Generation, the Baby-Boomers, Generation X and the Millenials . Many books have been written, white papers drafted and speeches given (including by yours truly) on how to

Snow arrives and the UK grinds to a halt. So too, it seems, do Eurostar trains. Techcrunch highlight the lack of communication 2.0 to bewildered and suffering customers, but that's to miss the wood for the trees. The problem is not that they're not using Twitter - that's a symptom. The problem is that they have no information to provide. Social media is not the solution to that. A joined-up customer service strategy that acknowledges the ameliorating power of a flow of information, how ever depressing, would be.

The national rail company changed their website and it led me to send a couple of intemperate emails to their senior executives because the new journey planner left me baffled. I tweeted about it and some people seemed to agree with me. Now, admittedly there were seeemingly issues with Firefox which meant that the crucial calender icon did not appear, but there were also loading time and loading order issues for others who could see it. My main gripe was, as the screengrab above shows, that the user is faced with a variety of visual cues (drop-down menus, and empty boxes)which meant for me that I had no idea what protocol to use when I came to inputting a date. There was no drop-down menu, there was no calender icon and the box being filled with "Today" gave no clue as to what date format to enter. In this era, it's fine (and perhaps obligatory) to speak in multiple voices to your heterogeneous audience, but that doesn't allow you to do so within the same instruction/

In Gary Vaynerchuk's talk that I mentioned in the last post, he recounted how officials of the NHL had resisted his idea that they should respond to every tweet and social media message. They felt it would be costly in terms of time and staff even though he pointed out that he personally got more than they did and he responded to all of them himself. I'd go further. I'd insist that every senior executive regularly spent a day with the people employed to do that job. It's a much better way of understanding your customers than an orchestrated focus group and shows more internal commitment than that gimmicky policy of working on the shop-floor at Christmas.

Gary Vaynerchuk and Tony Hsieh have picked up a lots of plaudits for focussing their Le Web talks on customer service. Deservedly so. But this is nothing new. That they seem so insightful to many people is simply an indictment of the levels to which things have been allowed to fall. Customer service has always been there. It's encapsulated in the P of product. If you think that your product is simply that which your customer buys from you, you're deluding yourself. They're buying the product/service plus everything that you provide to make the consumption of that product an enjoyable and fulfilling experience that makes them better at doing something. I once heard a marketing professor postulate a 5th marketing P (for Phacilitating Services) to emphasise just that fact. He was right because his base example of this was IBM's reputation for post-sales service and support in the 60s, but he was also wrong. Wrong because separating it from the product suggests that it&#

The Nokia store that I criticised on this blog back in April and August of 2008 is to close. In this report , it is claimed that the failure of the £4 million investment was because "the store may have proved a little “extravagant” in terms of cost". No, it was because you couldn't use the phones. And worse than that, it was just a store. Addendum: The Apple store across the street continues to flourish, but I notice that the staff are getting a little more officious. I recently witnessed people being dissuaded from using computers to check their email because this is an "iphone activation area". Are they in danger of becoming just a store? Not yet.

Iain really liked this campaign and bracketed it with Burger King's Whopper Sacrifice . While I like it, it's not much more than a digital version of the traditional promotional competition. The key for me is that it's utilising technology rather than the behaviours related to that technology. It works but it's not new. Social media and digital aren't inherently new behaviours, they're new technologies/ecosystems that facilitate existing behaviours. But where Burger King was really smart was in placing a new version of that behaviour - Facebook friending - at the centre of its interaction. A behaviour that hadn't existed without the technology. Marketing is all about behaviour, but changing behaviour is really difficult to do. It's much smarter to adapt your marketing to existing behaviours in a way that gets the user to think about your product/service and perhaps become inclined to change another behaviour.

Last week, Faris (a big thinker) asked me "What's the Big idea?" We were in a pub - where such questions often get asked - and it was the day of the UK ad industry's Battle of Big Thinking where a number of mutual friends (including Amelia and Katy ) had, no doubt, spoken eloquently and brilliantly about a variety of ideas. But were they big ideas? Is social media a big idea? Is branding? Faris and I agreed that fire and alcohol might both be classified as big ideas, but we weren't sure about the rest. Big idea are big because they are so rare and yet businesses are obsessed with having them, be that in their product range or their marketing. That seems like a futile effort to me. The only important big idea for business is their underlying strategy which should underpin everything they do - though, of course, the search for the big idea often causes them to ignore that fact. That aside, it's much better to focus on having a lot of arguably smaller ideas: s

Last week, I attended an unusual evening built around neuroscientist David Eagleman's book of short stories about what happens when you die. As well as the engaging conversation of Phillip Pullman, there were a series of live and recorded readings by luminaries such as Jarvis Cocker, Stephen Fry and Miranda Richardson. And it was this that fascinated me - some of us preferred the live performances, others found ourselves more engaged in the disembodied voice of the recorded readings. In an attention economy, it is crucial to remember that distraction takes many different forms.

It was interesting to hear a group of newspaper letter-editors reporting an increase in one type of letter. The type where readers make public their appreciation of customer service that they have recently received. Therein lies the seeds of an economic direct-mail campaign focussed on every local newspaper in your markets, but I'd say it was safer and smarter to focus on your customer service quality and let your customers do the direct-mail part for you.

In the last few weeks, I have been doing quite a bit of traveling. I have gotten the opportunity to speak with many of my colleagues from around the nation, and they are all saying the same thing -- ticket sales are down this year. Last year, I kept hearing that well branded products were doing very well, while less known fare was struggling. Now I am hearing that even annual cash cows (think A Christmas Carol and Nutcracker ) aren't doing well. When a classic theater has problems selling Romeo and Juliet , you know something is up. So it got me thinking about what is going on (and of course, this is just an opinion). We are all seeing reports that even though some aspects of the economy might be improving, many are still getting worse, such as unemployment. Unemployment is the highest is has been in 20 years. Last year when the stock market crashed and it became clear we were all in for what looked to be an unprecedented global economic crisis, many companies panicked. They didn&

When the new "paradigm" comes along, people often describe it in ways that differentiate it totally from what came before. Often to enhance their guru status. That's a mistake. Revolution is rare - evolution far less so. Relating the new to the old can be much more insightful and is also more welcomed by the unconverted. In that vein, I prefer to look at marketing 2.0 in terms of existing frameworks rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater. After all, the two ends of the transfer are still essentially the same - there is stuff and there are customers. They may be changed people and it often is new stuff, but the real changes lie in the interaction between the two. The traditional 4Ps still apply, but they present new problems. Price Economic theory dictates that equilibrium prices equal marginal cost. In the digital world of cost-less replication, that price is increasingly tending towards zero. While that may not make obvious business sense to producers, ther

I read this in an unlinked article about the threat that online plagiarism presents to comedians' live performances. The secret is to be unique so that they can't steal from you: "That's what comics should think about: it's not the jokes; it's about themselves. It's about your personality. They can't appropriate "you". I'm sure you can see that the marketing punch-line writes itself.

"My customers will be happy I've been honest with them." "I own my shelf-space and I can do anything I want with it." "I don't work, I just play all day long." More wisdom than you'll get from any marketing conference.

One of my biggest gripes about the development of marketing is the increasing trend towards the outsourcing of thinking and execution to third party agencies. It's not that the work done by those agencies is necessarily bad - indeed as a result of writing this blog I've had the pleasue of meeting innumerable practitoners who are smart, funny and conscientious (though rarely glamorous). The problem is that they cannot be as invested in your company as you are and they shouldn't know your customers better than you do. But, all too often, marketing directors run the risk of becoming administrators of these third-party relationships rather than poduct/service champions. Their career development is predicated on the budgets they manage rather than the results they achieve. They become the "client" and develop a client mindset. They forget that the true client is, in fact, the customer. And from there, it's all downhill.

Today’s technology seems to threaten the sort of recurring and stable reciprocity that is the building block of trust. That's the final sentence from a piece in today's New York Times about online hook-ups, but it uses all the adjectives that marketers should be double-checking. Marketing is not about conversations, it's about the quality and nature of the conversations you have and when you have them.

Once again I find myself at the National Arts Marketing Project Conference , which is being held this year in Providence, RI. This is my fifth conference, and instead of presenting like I have done in the past, I really wanted to listen in on other sessions to hear what is being discussed. I have been asked to blog about my experiences for Americans for the Arts so these posts can also be seen on their blog . This morning I was lucky enough to sit in on the Every Dollar Counts: Using ROI to Prove Marketing Effectiveness session. I decided to go to the session because one of my favorite arts marketing experts was presenting--Philippe Ravanas , marketing professor at Columbia College and former VP of Corporate Communications for EuroDisney . I have seen him speak at several conferences and he is always extraordinary. This morning he discussed a situation he found himself in when he was the Manager of Client Development at Christie's in London. Each year, they would produce a beautif

Fanfares feed the egos of creators and advertisers. Fan Clubs feed the needs of prospective and existing customers. Fanfares are big, extrovert and short-lived. Fab Clubs are small, introvert and long-lasting. Fanfares aim to create water cooler moments. Fan Clubs are the water cooler. As connectivity gets bigger, marketing gets smaller.

Many established arts organizations are finding themselves in the position of having to reinvent tried and true business models to adapt to the ever changing economic landscape. Diane Ragsdale, Associate Program Officer for the Mellon Foundation, offers a well thought out paper on this subject entitled Recreating Fine Arts Institutions . Although I don't agree with all of her arguments, I believe she outlines the overall dilemma very well. So, what do most organizations do in this situation? They bring in a branding firm to slap a new coat of paint on the organization by creating revamped messaging rules, visual systems and logos. In guiding a couple of these rebranding projects myself, I have learned the following: 1. You can slap a little lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig. Rebranding begins with artistic strategy. If an organization truly wants to address significant business or perceptual issues, it must do so with the product first. It doesn't matter how savy a brand

Lately, I've noticed a worrying increase in conversations and conferences around the issue of word of mouth and influencers. The industry's reaction to the realisation that people are ignoring their messaging is seemingly to search for an alternate way to control the message. But if you're asking how do we generate word of mouth around our product/service, you're asking the wrong question. It leads to short-lived stunts, misplaced sponsorships and seemingly the resurrection of the debunked concept of the influencer. The latter can be the only explanation for a new frozen fish campaign in the UK being fronted by a retired rugby player. The question is not how do we generate word of mouth? The question is how do we make our product/service so remarkable that it generates word of mouth? The answer is to create and continually improve a product/service that makes the users feel better about their lives - whether that be in terms of perceived desirability, genuinely increase

If you go down to the Tate Modern today, this installation will greet you. All the pre-publicity described it as terrifying, but it is essentially a very large, unlit metal container into which you ascend. It's not very terrifying and it's not actually very dark. Your eyes soon adjust and easily discern the other people therein. A couple of years ago, I walked into Anthony Gormley's steam cloud cube at the Hayward Gallery and was completely disoriented. I couldn't see beyond a couple of inches in front of me and people were consistently bumping into each other. It was an eye-opening experience. Photograph taken by Stephen White It turns out that black isn't necessarily dark and that white can be. Marketers should be very pleased about that. Too often, they're not. Addendum: And sometimes, like art critics, they even get indignant if their users don't react as expected or, worse still, told.

Expanding upon the thinking behind my post about the lessons of live performance for marketers, I've come up with eight attributes of great performance. They all begin with P. That's the law. Presence: Great performers command their stage. You should command your category. Purpose: Great performers exude so that their presence is unquestioned. You have to similarly exude a sense of purpose, the reason you’re there. Personality: Great performers radiate humanity and enjoyment. You should too. Prescience: Great performers never seem dated. You'll be supplanted by the new if you don't do the same. Poise: Great performers adapt to their audience, but crush hecklers. You should listen to your users, but ignore or destroy trolls. Playfulness: Great performers understand the power of humour and play. You will slowly alienate your audience if you insist on being too serious. Pacing: Great performers never coast. You risk losing your audience if you do. Persistence: Gr

I received an unsolicited email the other day. Apologies for the out of the blue email. However, we thought that you may be interested in a free guest post for your blog which is based on SEO, Internet and viral marketing. The article will be completely free, unique and written specifically for your blog. The article will contain a link back to our website as per my email signature. The article will be written by ********* who is a well-known SEO expert and internet marketer. He was rated #2 most influential marketer in the UK and 37th in the world in 2008. He also helps many large well-known household brands improve their visibility on the internet. We would love to add to your already well-written and informative blog. As previously mentioned it will be completely free and we will produce the article within a few days if you agree to accept our offer. Of course, I have never heard of this great influencer. And I somehow doubt his credentials given his desire to introduce a totally

While explaining their new customised newspaper business , Russell presciently observed that what they were saying to the industry was "We've broken your business model, now give us your machines." I was reminded of this last week during a presentation by an architect from Zaha Hadid's company. He was explaining how he had borrowed some CGI software to automatically generate a variety of ways to populate a piece of land with buildings. It was largely incomprehensible to me, but it seemed to work. And then he threw away this line. "We just decided to misuse it." Marketing is all too often about using tools, be that direct mail or a television campaign. The real skill is deciding how to use or misuse them. That's something that's going to be increasingly true at a strategic level too. If the tools of your trade are the tools of a failing business model, you have no choice but to misuse them.

Attention. Interest. Desire. Action. The goals of one famous marketing pathology. And the goals of any performer too. I've already written about the marketing parallels of the way comedians end their shows, but attending a recent show by Sunset Rubdown reminded me how all our marketing should aim to mirror a live performance. It must be audience-grabbing, exhilarating, pacy and memorable. It's a one-off chance to impress and you have to perform. Stealing a page from the Springsteen playbook, Sunset Rubdown started their show with three songs uninterrupted with a panache and utter confidence that had the audience eating out of their hand and me rather impressed. But then they paused to swap instruments and roles and the momentum was lost. This was repeated throughout the set and seemed to me to lose the majority of the audience and diminish their reaction. I've since disagreed with some fans about but realise they are akin to the early adopters - and thus willing to put up

I have just returned from a National Arts Strategies seminar entitled Managing People . One of the many things I love about their seminars is that they force you to take a hard look at strategic planning, and how strategic planning influences everything from marketing strategies to, in this case, human resources. Upon my return from the seminar, I started to think about a common structural problem that many organizations encounter -- the problem of silos, particularly silos between the marketing and development departments. As non-profit arts organizations became more and more sophisticated, there began to emerge two distinct entities: a marketing department tasked with maximizing earned revenue streams and a development department responsible for overseeing all contributed revenue streams. It can be said that "marketing" departments have existed for much longer, and that even for major arts organizations, development departments are somewhat of a recent development (Arena S

Niche does not mean too small for others to bother with - though it might start that way. Niche does not mean specialist - though it might start that way. Niche does not mean a different marketing mentality - though it might start with different tactics due to size of audience and budget. Every market segment is a niche. Niche simply reflects customer focus. Coca Cola are niche marketers. So are you.

I read a promotional message that assured me time was running out. Specifically, time was running out if I wanted to sign up for a seminar deigned to make my life/business happier/more profitable. The time that was running out was not mine, but the sender's. They were running out of time in which to sign me up. Time is the quintessential scarce resource and thus a potent trigger to action. But you have to ensure that the time you reference in your marketing activities is solely that of your prospects. If you don't, it won't seem truly personal and, like me, they won't sign up.

Two aphorisms I heard this week. "If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together." "Stand on each others' shoulders, rather than on each others' toes" The former is a Chinese proverb quoted by neuroscientist John Cacciopo in his excellent book about Loneliness, the latter a definition of open-source computing. Both speak to the benefit of teamwork - which, I think, is very different to simply working in teams.

Maybe this is where we as consumers are missing a trick. Too many toys do all the work of imagination for the kids, actually making them less imaginative not brighter. Every subsequent toy has to be more and more exciting as a result, whereas the kid just becomes an observer to the next fifty quids-worth of mass produced plastic as opposed to the designer of their own little piece of genius. Someone making an observation about his baby's infatuation with a toilet-roll. An observation that has implications for marketing, communication and product development.

The Bahamas Tourist board are apparently sponsoring the next Mariah Carey album. The former still thinking that exposure is their goal. The latter seeking to guarantee cashflow and not wondering how that might impact her artistic credibility. I give up.

If I had a quarter for every time I have been asked in my career how I planned on attracting new audiences to an organization, I would be a rich man. On the flip side, I am almost never asked about customer loyalty or retention. The quickest way for an organization to get in trouble from a marketing perspective is to ignore audience retention problems in favor of attracting new audiences. Some common misconceptions: 1. In order to grow, you must attract new audiences. This statement is only true if you are attracting more new audiences than you are losing the audience members you currently have (and even if this is the case, it can be much more expensive...more to come on that point). Many of us are so captivated by the allure of attracting new audiences that we concentrate much of our attention on getting the new ones in the front door while the old ones are running out the back door. A recent study of nine of the most prominent U.S. orchestras conducted by Oliver Wyman showed that

Three lessons from my post office . 1) Don't put a sign announcing changes at the entrance. It seems logical to put it there, but people have been visiting the post office since they were young and they are not there to browse. They have a purpose and will purposefully walk straight past your sign because they know what they want to do and will not be seeking guidance. If you want to change their behaviour, a sign won't cut it. You have to understand their existing behaviour and adapt to it. 2) Don't dislocate human contact with your customer. Yes, the queues/lines are a source of dissatisfaction. The solution is to reduce the waiting time not to displace it by getting people to sit down and wait for a number to be called. Moreover, a queue does give the customer some sense of connectedness with their goal where waiting for a number to be called with no indication of "time till service" is alienating. (Side note - if you do have an indicator of "time till ser

Some blogs recently suggested that fiction titles were better sources of business advice than the traditional non-fiction tomes. Accordingly I was going to recommend the new movie 500 Days of Summer as a guide to the futility of trying to match your product/service with people who are just not interested. But that's not why you go to movies, so I leave what you take from it up to you. I'll simply recommend it highly and, in line with the impact of previous recommendations here, I expect its success further to confirm my influencer status.

One of the oddest aspects of live performance is the end of a comedian's set. The end of a theatrical or a musical performance is usually very obvious. Climactic even. The audience shows its appreciation and there may well be an encore or a curtain call. In comedy, the performer tells a final joke and that's it. You don't really know it's the last joke until they say "thank you and good night". And is there anything more incongruous than a comedy encore? The performers who've thought this through are few and far between, they stand out a mile and they tend to be the best performers anyway. The way you take your leave of your audience is much under-rated. First impressions are important, but so are last ones. Is your audience's last impression one of resisting unwanted up selling offers, one of indifference as you look for the next prospect or one of unsatisfied needs that leave them in the same position they were when you strove to make that first impr

I walked into the sneaker store. Within seconds, an assistant asked if he could help me. My response was to point out that I had just arrived and might need his assiatnce shortly. The timing of when you address your customers is arguably even more important than what you say. Good customer service takes that into account. Regimented customer service manuals do not.

Three years ago today, I posted a guide to my views on marketing disguised as a discussion of technology marketing. It became my most viewed post (thanks Guy Kawasaki). Three years on, I think it still applies. Three years hence, I fear, marketers will be making the same mistakes. Geek Marketing 101 is so named because I see amongst many geeks a pervasive misunderstanding and consequent distrust of what marketing is, and a failure to recognise that much technology marketing is no longer geek to geek since complex products are increasingly being bought by non-geeks. Of course, these observations are equally applicable to geek to geek and non-geek businesses. 1) Marketing is not a department. Marketing is a combination of elements that creates the environment in which it is possible to meet a customer need (starting right back at product development). Promotion and sales are just sub-sets of marketing. 2) Marketing is a conversation, but most people don't speak geek. Successful tech

Just recently, I have had several students and former employees who have been offered their first marketing director gigs who have reached out to me for words of wisdom. Below are the fifteen points that I like to share with any first time marketing director. 1. When results at the box office are disappointing, one of two things are usually the culprit: the artistic product didn't live up to expectations or the marketing plan wasn't successful. When enquiring minds want to know what happened, don't point fingers unless you want fingers pointed back at you. Artistic Directors will fail, and so will Marketing Directors. The arts are inherently risky, and if you are taking risks, at some point you will fail. Get up, dust yourself off, and work to make up the loss on future productions. 2. I have worked for very large and extremely small organizations. I used to think that large organizations had the resources to do everything right. I have found that organizations are sometime

All too often, "marketing" adds unnecessary detail and blurs the message. Why say soon when you give me the actual date? I know what soon means. And now I'm thinking about the composition of your message and not thinking about your message at all.

Your website is an image. Your blog is a reflection. Courtesy of Thomas Mahon of English Cut . Not a bad definition of effective maketing when you come to think about it, is it?

How do you buy things? Do you try new options in the myriad categories you consume or do you just buy what you usually buy? I'd contend that even the most ardent early adopter is pretty lazy and disinteretsed in the majority of their purchases. That's why it's cheaper to retain a customer than to acquire a new one. That's why a lot of advertising serves as post-purchase reassurance (and will not be going away anytime soon). And that's why you have to do something remarkable to get people to change their habits. Inertia is your true competition.

In my earlier post, I wrote how I have observed that consumers have become ultra late purchasers this past year, while hypothesizing that with the state of the economy, most light to moderate users were waiting on a review to make a purchasing decision. Following that post, I received a lot of comments and e-mails asking how one could counteract this trend. I noted to the concern of some that we were shortening our advertising campaigns because we were finding no correlation between the amount of advanced advertising spends and the amount of advanced sales. This is not to suggest this course of action is for everyone, but I do believe it is wise for us. I further believe that we should start looking more at pricing as a strategy to encourage early purchasing behavior. The traditional approach of discounting performances early in a run is one method of attack, but I would suggest looking at what happens after a show takes off. If consumers are waiting for a great review before purchasin

That's nearly £20 per day! Or to put it another way, never assume that any single element of your marketing will be considered in isolation. Not even the last-minute, additional strap-line on your sales advertisement.

It's all about making every aspect of the product/service experience as good as they can be and thereby making the user feel great about their achievements/ownership. But job one is making every aspect of the product/service experience as straightforward as possible and thereby not making the user feel stupid.

A recent review of the scientific literature has controversially suggested that breastfeeding does not bestow the benefits that have been claimed for it in recent times. ..it is very hard to separate the benefits of the mother’s milk from the benefits of the kind of mother who chooses to breastfeed.....In other words, breastfeeding studies could simply be showing what it’s like to grow up in a family that makes an effort to be healthy and responsible, as opposed to anything positive in breast milk. I'm not qualified to question that view and the logic does seem valid, but by chance I recently heard Sarah Blaffer Hrdy mention (in an aside about infant abandonment) that primates who breastfeed experience increased prolactin and oxytocin levels which helps them bond with their offspring. The marketing lessons: replication isn't enough and the most significant impact of your product/service isn't always the obvious one.

In recent weeks, I've blogged less frequently than before because I felt it had all been said and that surely everybody knows this stuff. But tonight, I heard industry practitioners speaking of clients worried about losing control of their messaging, obsessed with identifying those mythical influencers and, best of all, of the opinion that "the internet was only for people who love us or hate us - when we should surely be focussing on the indifferent masses." Perhaps your competitors don't know half as much as you think they do. Perhaps that gives you a great opportunity to steal a march on them.

This full-page Siemens ad appeared in today's Times. Complete with those two boxes obscuring the image. Now I've nothing against VR codes. My friend used the first one in the UK, but did so via a full-size outdoor poster which was one big VR code. Here it's slotted in as an afterthought - one that won't reach many people, one that distracts from the rest of the copy and one that ruins the design. It's effectively asking the readers to do something (scan the code)before they can find out what it is Siemens want to tell them. That's like the url that leads to a webpage with an "Enter here" button. That's like the customer service number that leads to a labyrinthine telephone menu. That's like the headline offer that forgets to tell you about the small print. It's all bad marketing. If you've somehow earned the customer's scarce attention, then at least have the sense to tell them something. Directly.

To say that this has been an odd year would be a drastic understatement. A little less than a year ago towards the end of September, I remember working with the leadership and board of Arena Stage on an action plan to address the stock market crash and the, at that time, anticipated economic crisis. It seemed we had an incredibly daunting task ahead of us -- exactly how does one forecast and prepare for an economic crisis on the scale that none of us have ever experienced before? At the conclusion of our fiscal year, I am happy to report that Arena Stage had an exceptionally strong year, both artistically and financially. Our success has afforded me the time and opportunity to look back over the course of the year and analyze some of the patterns we saw to learn from them as we embark upon the next fiscal year. From an overall observation, I started to notice two things that struck me almost immediately after the market crash in September: late purchasing behaviors became common place,