Monday 31 March 2008

Chocolate guru or marketing extraordinaire?

OK, I’ll own up straight away to watching the latest Charlie and the Chocolate Factory film this Saturday (the one with Johnny Depp in). As expected, aside from some disappointing Oompa Loompas (where's their green hair gone?), it wasn’t that bad. What I didn’t expect was to find that chocolate fanatic Willy Wonka is actually a bit of a marketing guru-cum-futurologist.

I won’t regurgitate the full plot but in a later scene Charlie visits the ‘TV room’ with Wonka and the only other child left on the factory tour, Mike Teavee. They are introduced to Wonka's new machine, the Television Chocolate Camera. This gizmo can take a giant bar of Wonka’s Chocolate and shrink it into a little sample before sending it into millions of televisions across the world. People watching their TVs can then reach in, take the sample and take a bite of the chocolate.

Although Mike Teavee vents his frustration at Wonka for not realising that he’s accidently invented a teleporter, Wonka’s real achievement is creating the ultimate in product placement (at least for the purpose of this blog!).

Imagine sampling the last bit of milk in a Cravendale ad or helping yourself to a Cadbury’s Miniature Hero before Corrie started. Or even watching Corrie and reaching in for a spoon of “Betty’s Hot Pot” – now available in all good pub chains!

Now this is all very fanciful but Rory Sutherland recently made an interesting point about ‘the medium being the product’. He notes that allowing people to respond to a DM pack by telephone or post increased response rates. This, logically, seemed strange as the key question should simply be “Do you want this product or not?” Similarly, low-cost airlines increased their customer base by using online booking - a simple effort to cut costs actually overcame the irritation of being stuck on the phone for half an hour. A simple opt-in box for Gift Aid when donating online has resulted in the generation of more money for charity. There are numerous examples.

Basically, the easier it is for consumers to reply/respond/purchase/taste/etc, the easier it is to sell the product. And Willy Wonka cracked this (well, Roald Dahl really).

TV’s tried telephone call to actions, and online, and even had a dabble with red buttons. But what it really needs is a Television Chocolate Camera. Until then it’s playing catch up with other, newer, media. Just look at those SIM only Orange banners. See the banner on a website, fill in your details without having to leave your site, 3 days later you’ve got yourself a SIM card in your postbox. Awesome.

Until then, anyone for a Smell-o-vision renassiance?

Saturday 15 March 2008

It's good to talk, but even better to listen

I was talking to a friend today about her Friday night drinks. She mentioned that she’d been to a new cocktail bar, but once she got to the bar couldn’t decide what she wanted (standard!). The barman asked a simple question – “What drinks do you like?” She told him, he made her a drink based on her answer, she loved the drink. It later transpired that her ‘special’ drink was merely a random cocktail off the menu. This mattered little – she felt special, enjoyed the experience of drinking a ‘personalised’ drink and, more importantly, told me and many others about how good it was.

It’s a simple concept really, but it got me thinking. In his “De Officiis” Cicero outlines rules to ‘Good Conversation’. Sure, this may have been some 2,000 years ago but his points still ring true:

  • Speak clearly
  • Speak easily but give others their turn
  • Be courteous
  • Deal with topics in an appropriate tone/manner
  • Never criticise others behind their back
  • Stick to subjects of general interest
  • Don’t just talk about yourself
  • Don’t lose your temper

In the marketing/advertising world we constantly talk of ‘conversations’ between brands and consumers – creating them, managing them, inspiring them, encouraging them, etc, but are we doing Cicero proud? Brands can certainly deliver clear messages on appropriate themes in a courteous way yet they often fall short on a couple of vital points: “Give others their turn” and “Don’t just talk about yourself”.

In the cocktail story above these points were vital – allow the consumer to talk back to you and listen to what they say (and act accordingly). Without these points we treat our audiences like EM Forster’s “primitive audiences of shock-heads… only kept awake by suspense”. In short, we act as nothing more than a ‘storyteller’.

In a world currently consumed in conversations us marketeers could learn a trick or two from Cicero and it’s vital to keep ALL of his rules in mind. It’s easy to be a storyteller, but what the consumer really needs is a conversationalist.

If nothing else, according to Forster storytelling can result in two possible outcomes: the audience falls asleep, or simply kills the storyteller.