Seven resolutions for marketers in 2007

BY the time you read this column, you (like millions of other people across the globe) would have made a handful of New Year’s resolutions.

Here are seven suggested resolutions that marketers can make and KEEP to have a better, more profitable new year in 2007.

As a marketer, why not resolve to …

1. Start or continue practicing “Truth in Advertising.”

Make this one of your core values. Focus on telling the true benefits of your product to build trust with your customers. Quite a number of developers and/or their ad agencies state that their project locations in the Cavite / Laguna / Tagaytay area are a mere “45-60 minutes” drive to Makati City. Immediately, this creates disbelief and distrust for those veterans who ply the South ‘Suffer’ Highway. I have personally timed the travel to several of these projects and it is almost impossible to make it under 60 minutes. Just tell the truth and say something like “average travel time is about an hour or two, depending on traffic conditions, but it’s well worth the drive.” As BrandChild author Martin Lindstrom says, “to build word of mouth (the best form of advertising), underpromise but overdeliver.”

This brings us to a question that a reader asked: “If consumer perception is the primary basis for motivating prospects to buy, then does this mean that truth in advertising is irrelevant in marketing? ”

To which we answered: On the contrary. What this means is that marketers ought to be extra careful in their use of consumer perception to motivate consumers via their advertising. As a marketer you can use consumer perceptions for a good purpose or for a bad one. Truth in advertising is a good purpose. Deception is bad and if you get away with it at first, it won’t last. Consumers will, sooner or later, find out how you’ve been fooling them. Abe Lincoln has been, is, and will be right: “You can fool some of the people some of the time. But you can’t fool all of the people all the time.” (Read Seth Godin’s book, "All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories.")

Deception of course includes cases of keeping quiet about what you know may harm consumers. That’s withholding of a “truth.” Take the case of Merck’s Vioxx, the acute painkiller and anti-arthritis medication, that had to be withdrawn from the market because Merck or more precisely its medical researchers withheld from publication in the New England Journal of Medicine knowledge of three heart attacks among Vioxx’s patients participating in the large scale clinical study of Vioxx.

The heart attacks took place in the final five weeks of the trial study. The patients who had the heart attack were supposedly at low risk for heart problems. But this was not the only thing the Merck researchers withheld. The study had apparently found “more cardiovascular problems potentially connected to Vioxx.” These problems were not reported in the published study. They should have been since in medical science and research, such withholding is highly unethical and a serious breach of the Hippocratic oath.

In pharmaceutical marketing, published clinical studies are a powerful “advertising” material for persuading doctors. So that withholding of the three heart attacks and the connection to more cardiovascular problems was also a truth in advertising infraction.

2. Grow bigger by going after “smaller” markets.

Today, market niches are all around you ... even in the mass market. Look at Unilever’s deodorant brand, “Axe.” This brand successfully made sales and profit by nicheing into the population of young men, not all of them, but only those young men who are “after a deep relationship with a girl.” That’s a niche, a small population size. But their usage frequency is high and willing to pay a premium for a deodorant specifically tailored to their needs. We understand from our Unilever friends that it is now the main contributor to the more than 10 percent growth in the company’s participation in the deodorant category! There’s a local equivalent (though in a different category) to Axe. That’s Eskinol’s “Master,” the Eskinol for a special niche of young men.

The extreme in market niche-ing is in real property marketing. Look at Ayala Land. Its initial target market was the niche of all niches: the very few and countable Class AAA consumers. Yet selling to this niche, say, a less than 100-unit condo project gave Ayala Land billions in revenue. The magnitude of the marketing task (MMT), another marketing concept worth your mastering, is accountable and manageable.

3. Focus!

It was a joy to host marketing legend Al Ries and his daughter/partner, Laura Ries, last June 2006. One of the most memorable pieces of advice that they gave was to focus.

Al Ries’ advice on choosing what to focus on is that “First, you want to be first in a category. Remember, not just first in manufacturing the product, but first in the mind of the customer. It doesn’t matter if a hundred of people are producing it already, if you are first in mind you will generally win. Second, you want to bet on the future. Pick ideas or concepts that fit in with future trends. In food, for example, you might want to focus on low-calorie products. In clothing, you maybe want to focus on the younger generation, because they buy more and will be around longer. Third, you want to be the opposite of the leader. If the leader is Coke and focused on the older generation, then Pepsi should focus on the younger generation. If the leader is McDonald’s and focused on kids, then Burger King should focus on adults, or grown-up kids.”

4. Put effort into internal marketing.

We hate to sound like a broken record, but this resolution is one of the most favorite ones to be broken every year. Before you market and sell to the world, make sure you’ve sold yourselves and the other departments/teams in your company on your product and its marketing plan.

Marketing to the target market and consumer segment is what gets formally planned. That marketing is what has come to be called “external marketing.” But every company has its “internal customers.” These are the people in the marketing and sales department, and those in the other departments including especially, manufacturing, supply chain, finance, and human resources. To win their support, these “customers” need to be sold to the company’s product and marketing plan. They must buy in if the external customers are to likewise buy and if the marketing plan is to gain the support it needs from them. This is marketing to the internal customers. It’s “internal marketing.” If it is to succeed, it needs the same kind of formal planning, implementing, monitoring and control that we routinely give to external marketing.

We’ll be back next week for the next three resolutions that marketers need to make.