Video: Interviews at the Social Media World Forum #smwf

Huzu, a very innovative London-based Social Media Platform agency had been in charge of the video element of the #smwf and are releasing 12 short videos covering specific topics using interviews of the main speakers at the forum. I have a short cameo somewhere near the end.

“What role does Social Media play in the overall Marketing Strategy”

Huzu at the Social Media World Forum 2010 – Interviews from Huzu on Vimeo.

My presentation at the Social Media World Forum on “Successfully Monitoring and Measuring Social Media Campaigns” is covered here. and is downloadable on Slideshare.

Successfully Monitoring and Measuring Social Media Campaigns #smwf

I presented this at the Social Media World Forum (#smwf)

The event itself was very enlightening, the insights and perspectives were inspiring. Although, I kept seeing on the #smwf back-channel (that is, the twitter conversations using the hash-tag, just in case you didn’t know) as well as on blog postings that some people were calling the event a re-hash and “saying the same thing as last time”, “not adding value”, etc. I would like to wholeheartedly disagree. There was tremendous value even if it was a re-hash, which I don’t believe it to be.

I think “Social Media Experts” who always attend these events have always heard the propositions and presentations and similar ideas floating around and hence are more akin to believing and seeing the same things over and over again. But there are MANY, MANY others who do not.

Coming from a marketing background and working across many departments, even currently, I know for a fact that in most organisations, even though employees are versed in Facebook and Twitter and whatever, they do not even know where to begin when it comes to applying Social Media for Business purposes.

The message still needs to be spread, no matter how many times it is said. The point these “Experts” need to get is that the message needs to get to the right audience. Yes further and new thinking needs to take place and take the entire Study and Philosophy to the next level, but the foundations need to be built before you start constructing high towers. These people, the organisations and their departments, are the ones eventually funding the entire Social Media enterprise anyway.

This is the context in which I made my presentation… Download it from Slideshare and go through it with the notes for a fuller explanation and understanding :)

Creative Design: Read at Work

A very creative campaign from Clemenso BBDO, an Auckland based Advertising agency, for the New Zealand Book Council is the launch of the site Read at Work. What this flash site does is mask your entire screen as a Windows Desktop and fill it with folders of faux Powerpoint presentations (which actually look like real work documents! but are works of literature by some of literatures greats such as Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Oscar Wilde and Emily Dickinson.

So for those who would like to do a little reading at work but don’t feel comfortable kicking back with a paperback, here’s the site for you to do just that… Read at Work.

P.S. The Windows desktop might arouse more suspicion if you work on a Mac :P

: Read at Work, Creative, New Zealand, Clemenso, BBDO, Books

Shifting Brands: Soup vs. Soap

Recently, I’ve just shifted brands. The Marketing/Branding at it’s essence is the same, but what I find most interesting is how different brands are… like the personalities of people, they behave differently, they act differently, they talk differently. To give you some context, I’ve moved from a Personal Care Category Brand where I was marketing soap (Lux) to a Food Category Brand (Knorr) where I’m now marketing seasonings and soup.

The brands are very different as you can imagine. I find Knorr a lot more complex than Lux simply because when it comes to food , the brands get far more personal with the consumer. This is, of course, with good reason because they are ingesting the product whereas with soap they’re not. But in terms of the brand itself, I find the consumer far more intimate when they speak of the brands they use in their cooking, etc. The level of involvement from an emotional point of view is very high.

When I was on Lux, the entire soap category can be seen to be very low involvement and so if a certain brand isn’t available in-store it’s not hard to imagine that a consumer will just pick up whatever other brand with the similar colour/smell on the shelf. Also with the recent price increases on everything in sight, low-involvement categories get the hardest hit, especially in South Africa, because the market is extremely price sensitive. AC Nielsen reports show this correlation in a lot of detail the volume drops the minute the price goes up even by 20c.

With food it’s a different matter, price sensitivity is still an issue but not as much as in the Personal Care categories. Consumers love the brands and will pay more to keep them simply because they believe and love the brand.

The variation of this dynamic is also based on the priorities of the consumer. Some people take far more interest in their personal care products and don’t really care what they eat, ad vice-versa.

Overall, it’s an interesting change and I’m enjoying using marketing skills in a different category environment and in a totally different brand. I’m sure the dynamics mentioned above would play across every single product which are available in a person’s life. But, by looking at them individually we get to see the detail behind how they work and how they affect people every single day.

Technorati Tags: Knorr, Lux, Marketing, Brands, Marketing

Unilever out Performs the Market and Bucks the Trend…

Analysts and market watchers seemed to be falling over themselves yesterday (8 May) to pat Unilever on the back for bucking the trend of an anticipated poor day in the UK financial sector.

UK
The London Evening Standard summed up the overall mood saying: “Inflation in the shopping basket is doing no harm to the bottom line of household goods giant Unilever.”

In the Daily Telegraph, columnist Damian Reece coined the term “the Cescau effect” reporting: “Unilever shareholders saw about £25 billion (€31.8 billion) of value added to their holdings from 2005 to the end of 2007 under the stewardship of Patrick Cescau… What makes Unilever one of the more comprehensive turnarounds is the fact that Cescau is now delivering growth on growth.” He concluded: “From profit warning to out-performing is quite a journey for the old lady of Port Sunlight.”

Graeme Evans of The Press Association reported Hargreaves Lansdown equity analyst Keith Bowman saying: “Unilever [is] heading in the right direction… This is an extremely encouraging start to 2008 with sales continuing to outpace expectations, profit margins still improving and management remaining optimistic for the outlook.”

International Agencies/Websites
Financial website MarketWatch.com reported unnamed Citigroup analysts saying: “Putting the undoubtedly strong results against this backdrop and keeping in mind the relatively weak year-to-date stock performance, we would expect a strong share price reaction.”

And Reuters went a little further. The international news agency’s Toni Vorobyova wrote: “[FTSE] losses were limited, however, by strong results from consumer goods conglomerate Unilever, which pushed up shares in the group by more than 4%, making it the largest individual positive influence on the broader market.” Stable mate David Jones agreed, reporting high praise from brokers Collins Stewart, whose analyst Rob Mann said Unilever’s “improved innovation has boosted its overall performance… A fifth consecutive quarter of underlying sales growth in excess of 5% begins to look like a trend.”

Matthew Scuffham, for Thomson Financial noted that the same analyst had highlighted the balance in growth between divisions. He quoted Mann as saying: “Having spent so long being held back by the supposed slow growth food business, that business grew quicker than the HPC side of the group.”

The Netherlands
Dutch newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad said Unilever had bolstered investors’ confidence “by showing growth in emerging markets” adding simply, “Unilever is doing well”. It quoted SNS Securities analyst Richard Withagen saying: “Unilever is showing evidence that it has returned to the league of best performing consumer goods companies.”

That mood was repeated in De Telegraaf, which said: “Unilever adjusts outlook upwards for the first time in six years.”

De Volkskrant, meanwhile relied on analysts to make the point. R J Vos, at Fortis was quoted as saying: “Competitors can be jealous of the enormous exposure Unilever enjoys in many emerging markets… Unilever itself has also raised its expectations. That is a clear sign.” While Theodoor Gilissen’s analyst J Meijer sounded a rare cautionary note, saying: “Of course Unilever will have to continue to explain any price increases it carries through.”

Asia
Pakistan’s Business Recorder(online) said Unilever “beat quarterly earnings forecasts, boosted by profits from disposals, as it raised prices to offset the rise in raw material costs.”
While across the border in India, Delhi’s Business Standard said Unilever had “recorded an underlying improvement in its operating margin of 30 basis points.”

South Africa
Business Report(online) reported that “aggressive pricing” had paid off, saying: “Increased prices and sales of Dove soap, Hellmann’s mayonnaise and Lipton tea would help Unilever beat its forecast for the first time in six years.”

Americas
The results earned positive comment north and south in the Americas region. Lionel Laurent, writing for US financial website Forbes.com said: “Investors were hungry for Anglo-Dutch consumer goods firm Unilever on Thursday, piling into the stock after a strong set of quarterly results vindicated the company’s pricing strategy.” He also quoted ABN Amro analyst Julian Hardwick saying: “I’m a high conviction buyer of these shares. I think the evidence is the strength and depth of recovery.”

And rival financial publisher Bloomberg was also upbeat, quoting Corne van Zeijl, who manages about $1.4 billion (€911 million) at SNS Asset Management in the Dutch town of Den Bosch, saying: “Unilever has done very well by aggressively raising prices… because of the structure of the company, they will probably never be able to build brands like Danone and Nestlé have and get similarly high prices for their products, but Unilever is getting close.”

Mexico’s financial newspaper El Financiero reported on its website: “The giant Anglo-Dutch food products, cleaning and hygiene company Unilever won a net profit of €339 billion in the first quarter, 32% more than the same period last year, thanks to sales in emerging countries and price increases.”

Technorati Tags: Unilever, Market, Finance, Out-perform, Forbes, MarketWatch, Daily Telegraph, Cescau, Port Sunlight, bloomberg

Unilever Increases Focus on Sustainable Palm Oil

Update from previous post on Unilever vs. Greenpeace.

Unilever has taken the recent GreenPeace protests to heat and have really focused on changing the situation on the ground as well as via it’s communication channels. At least, that’s according to Unilever’s communication, let’s hope some accountability will be rendered in order to make sure Unilever is living up to its promises, this statement of mistrust is not baseless, since corporations are known to bend the rules and the PR machines to their will.

Back to Unilever… CEO, Patrick Cescau has announced a new policy on palm oil.

Unilever will begin using Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO) later this year, as soon as it is available as a tradeable commodity. For the palm oil it uses in Europe, it has pledged to have fully traceable supply chains in place by 2012: just four years away. And by 2015 all Unilever’s palm oil will be certified sustainable.

Announcing the move at the Prince of Wales’ May Day Climate Change Summit in London, attended by the Prince of Wales and UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Group Chief Executive Patrick Cescau said: “We are only part of the solution of course, but we want to be an agent for positive change, as we have been in fish, tea and other areas.

“We are committed to doing this because we believe it is the right thing to do for the people who use our products, for the environment and communities in and around which palm oil is grown and for our businesses and brands.”

Leading environmental campaigner Jonathon Porritt, a member of Unilever’s Sustainable Development Panel, said: “We are delighted to see these new commitments on palm oil… These are ambitious targets and Unilever’s readiness to take a leadership role in establishing secure, certified supply chains for palm oil is particularly significant.”

And the Prince of Wales personally welcomed Patrick’s announcement, saying: “This is a ground-breaking development that could make all the difference to the future of the rainforests.”

Unilever is also supporting the call for a moratorium on any further deforestation in Indonesia for Palm oil.

If anything else, this at least shows that one corporation is active in making a positive change in our world. the seriousness of the situation cannot be underestimated both in terms of the environmental situation in terms of sustainable palm oil as well as Unilever standing up in front of the Public in full view and committing itself to making a real change on the ground and not some dodgy PR manipulation.

for urther information on Unilever’s position, you can visit http://www.unilever.com/palmoil

Technorati Tags: Unilever, Environment, Sustainable, Palm Oil, GreenPeace

The Kama Sutra of Marketing

This was a cool write-up I found on Bizcommunity. the tie in between the Kama Sutra and Marketing is very clever and makes a lot of sense, especially in today’s era of Social Media where Marketers really need to get intimate with their consumers.
——————————-

For most of you, the first thing that comes to mind when you think about the Kama Sutra are two bodies entwined in a variety of passionate and exotic embraces. For those who dare to see the word a little differently, the classic “Treatise of Love” reveals just as much about marketing as it does about love.

Kama Sutra of marketing 1: Find your soul mates
According to the Kama Sutra, men are divided into three classes according to their physical features, namely, hares, bulls or horses. Women are classified as deer, mares or elephants. A hare is compatible with a deer, but not with a mare or elephant.

Similarly, as a marketer, you need to discover your brand’s soul mates. You need to court the right people for your brand’s positioning. The first step to successful marketing is defining a target market that fits with your brand.

Kama Sutra of marketing 2: Get to know them
While the sutra suggests that you learn as much as you can about your real life soul mate, don’t forget that it’s no different for your brand. Make it your business to study and understand the ins and outs of your target market. What are their interests? What are their desires? What keeps them up at night? Then – and only then – are you ready to get up close and personal with them.

Kama Sutra of marketing 3: Don’t forget foreplay
Be warned, foreplay takes time and cannot be rushed. Nor should you expect instant results. Also remember that communication is the most important element of seduction. The best marketers are patient and realise that luring potential customers is not about forcing your brand on your target market, but teasing them with just the right information at just the right time.

Kama Sutra of marketing 4: Be a great lover
In marketing, this is the important step of delivering on your promises and allowing your target market to experience the fulfilment of desire that comes with your brand.

Kama Sutra of marketing 5: Afterplay will make or break the relationship
The Kama Sutra implores lovers not to roll over and fall asleep after a passionate experience, and so should all marketeers. This is the perfect time to enhance your connection. It’s no different for marketers. Your after sales follow-up and brand reinforcements are vital to keeping your customers coming back for more. And importantly, for encouraging a little coffee shop conversation.

By Desiree Gullan (Creative director of the Guerrilla Group)

Technorati Tags: Kama Sutra, Marketing

Unilever vs. Greenpeace: Palm oil and the Borneo Forests

Protests by Greenpeace at a Unilever factory in Port Sunlight, near Liverpool (left) and dressed as orang utans outside the companies headquarters at Blackfriars, London (middle and right)

On Monday 21 April, Greenpeace protesters, many wearing ‘orang-utan’ outfits, descended on Unilever to protest about the use of palm oil in its products. They entered Port Sunlight in Liverpool, UK, at about 6.30am and chained themselves to machinery, stopping production on some product lines.

In London, a mobile advertising hoarding was placed on a traffic island in front of the corporate headquarters and protesters were ‘aping’ around on a seven metre high balcony above the entrance to the building.

Meanwhile in Rotterdam, abseilers unfurled a large banner on the glass frontage of Unilever’s building overlooking the river.

That was a Unilever communication regarding the recent Green Peace Protests against Unilever. When reading the full story though, it wasn’t only the Palm Oil that Greenpeace were protesting over, it was also the fact that the production of Unilever’s products contributes to the destruction of the orangutan’s last forest habitat in Borneo.

What irks me is that Unilever’s communication doesn’t tie the orangutan outfits the Greenpeace activists were wearing with the fact that they were trying to make a point about the orangutan’s habitat. The communication just makes it seem like the Green Peace activists are a bunch of monkeys.

Greenpeace’s report, Burning up Borneo, says that Unilever uses 1.3 million tons of palm oil or derivative products a year, some three per cent of global production. It says the company gets half of this from Indonesia, now the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet because of deforestation.

The report says there is currently a massive expansion into Kalimantan’s peatland forest areas by Unilever’s suppliers and accuses the company of derailing international efforts to tackle climate change. - The Telegraph

From Unilever’s perspective, they assert that Unilever does chair the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm oil and that “the real problem is that demand for palm oil has exploded in recent years as demand from India and China has increased. Another major factor is the use of palm oil as a feedstock in the production of biofuels.”

Gavin Neath (SVP of Unilever Global Communications) says: “Unilever has a long history of promoting sustainability, for example in fish and tea. But in both cases, we only made the commitments when we had done sufficient work to ensure that we could keep our promises and maintain the security of our supply chain. This is the responsible and sustainable approach.”

Protesters on the roof a Unilever factory in Port Sunlight and an orang-utan talks to a passing motorcyclist

What needs to be highlighted here is that we should, like Green Peace is doing, hold corporations accountable for their practices. Especially since the main aim of corporations is to turn a profit and increase shareholder value, we need to make sure that this motive doesn’t overshadow the corporation’s environmental and social responsibilities. Equally, we need to give credit where credit is due and Unilever is one of the most socially responsible Corporations there is. Let’s hope their focus on Sustainable Palm Oil will render some fruitful results for everyone… including the Orangutans.
UPDATE: Unilever Increases Focus on Sustainable Palm Oil.

Technorati Tags: Unilever, Green Peace, Environment, Activism, Protest, Borneo, Orangutan, Rainforests, Palm oil

Advertising Cutbacks should make Marketers more Effective

With the World’s dipping economy and the US recession corporations could look to cutting back Marketing and Advertising budgets in order to save money. It might not make sense, from a marketers point of view, to cut back marketing spend during tough times but this could usher in a new challenge to the marketing fraternity in terms of making their marketing strategy and plans more effective.

Marketing has cemented its place in the global economy as a key department which ensures the creation of wealth. Reading a recent Bizcommunity article, a figure quoted was that of 20% of all advertising in South Africa, not only being ineffective, but actually damaging the brand it’s supposed to promote. Another R50 bn was quoted as being “wasted” marketing spend every year in South Africa. That’s an extremely huge number to ignore, and although I can’t find the global figures, one can only assume that these numbers remain roughly the same across different countries if not getting even worse.

Research agencies such as Millward Brown, Mindshare, AC Nielsen and Initiative are excellent tools for corporations to use in terms of understanding fully how to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of their marketing spend. Tons of money gets spent on market research every year which test everything from distribution to ad effectiveness.

What’s missing is the appropriate use of the information on every level of the marketing plan. Millward Brown has years of experience testing various ads and what separates the great ads from the good ones, those that exceed objectives and those which just barely meet them. This information is even broken down by country and LSM profile which means you get extremely targeted information. Using this information as criteria for judging creative work from agencies will put the effectiveness of ads on a whole new playing field.

Another aspect is the choosing of appropriate media, especially from a South African perspective, not many corporations are taking advantage of the new media landscape in terms of leveraging their brands on social media platforms such as Facebook, Myspace and even Twitter. Mindshare and Initiative are companies which specialize in media and have information which cover all types of consumer interaction with brands. Are we really using our media agencies to their full capacity? A few brands are, the rest are getting left behind.

Essentially what is being proposed is going right back to the basics of marketing, getting the core of the brand on the right path and following on from thereto make effective and efficient marketing plans and strategies. It is no longer the case of making a great ad and watching sales fly, consumers are more media and marketing savvy and they now have less to spend. Marketers need to ask… “What will make them spend the little money they have left on my brand?”

Technorati Tags: Advertising, Marketing, Effectiveness, Efficiency, Agency, Research

Interesting Work Email…

How fast would you jump from your seat if she was talking about your car???

From: Naude, Chantelle
Sent: Friday, January 18, 2008 9:52 AM
To: _ml_am_Unilever-ZA-all-ridge-users
Subject: Would the driver of a VW Polo, ND 560-0XX, please proceed to your vehicle as it is not stationary

LOL, shame… apparently this happens occasionally at the office, last year an Audi rolled and fell over the edge of a platform face down in the company garden.

Technorati Tags: Work Email, Car, Not Stationary

Next Page »