Kevin Harrington // marketing // blog

Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

May 2007 saw the start of this blog. Three years on it’s still here! The cosmetics have changed a couple of times, it’s moved from Blogger to WordPress, but it’s still here.

It made me wonder how old some of the more famous blogs are. It appears that the top 100 blogs had an average length (mean) of blogging of 33.8 months. And the median figure was 28 months (ie half the blogs have been going for longer than 28 months and half shorter than 28 months. Source: Problogger.

Overall it looks like there are around 150,000,000 blogs globally(source: Hat Trick Associates). So I’m always rather chuffed that this one gets so many readers. Thank you.

A lot of my activity on this blog has been about learning what works and what doesn’t. It’s helped me form an understanding to help me do things better elsewhere. But, as is the way with these things…on with the learning.

Charlotte Graham-Cumming, joint managing director at Ice Blue Sky started a debate recently on LinkedIn about B2B marketing.

B2B Marketing Focus – is there an appetite? I have had a couple of discussions with Marketing Society members around increasing the amount of events and information that the Marketing Society provides for B2B marketers. I wanted to see if there is anyone else in this group that would have an interest in B2B specific information?

I’ve been following the debate and comments (in the Marketing Society group area) and it has helped me observe other things going on. And yes; B2B marketing does take second place in many magazine titles and trade organisations. Charlotte debates the point further on the Ice Blue Blog.

Like Charlotte, I’m keen on the idea of trying to raise the profile of B2B marketing. Oddly one of my fears is a bunch of agencies using it as an opportunity to sell to me. But the reality is always going to be that FMCG and consumer marketing disciplines are the sexier and more attractive areas.

Differentiation in marketing is key, whether you are managing a budget or a premium brand. It is important that the consumer can quickly see why your product or service is better, different or beneficial to them. Whole chunks of the marketing industry are invoicing clients daily to help them with differentiation.

And then there’s UK politics. Now we know what Rizla cigarette papers are for…to fit in the gap between the main UK political parties.

But the great thing about our democracy is that we can all get involved and challenge the status quo and come up with new ways of doing things. So, well done to the parties that have differentiated themselves with ideas like:

• The 99p coin.
• The £ sterling to invite other European countries to join it.
• Increase the minimum statutory retirement age to beyond death.
• Public officials who are convicted of abuse of office offences to have their pictures printed on toilet roll packaging.

Read who is campaigning for these ideas, and a lot more from the BBC News website.

A bit more of this lateral thinking by us all may help us break out of the cycle of developing ‘me too’ offerings.

I like it when a new agency gets into gear. Sometimes the benefits of this comes through with some really simple, clean communications.

We’ve been working with Hunterlodge for a while now. One of the things they have recently delivered is a range of posters that address different reasons why someone might buy and use childcare vouchers.

These need to cut through in busy work noticeboard environments. This example and the rest in the range I really like and they appear to be working well…have look.

The Mars bar used to often be a benchmark to compare pricing. The Mars bar price tended to vary with inflation and was therefore a good item to gauge relative prices.

Today we are running out of noughts to use for some of the news items about the trillions of pounds of debt our nation and banks have. So along has come a new measure to help us: the Tesco.

Using the Tesco as a standard unit (about £60bn) then:

Read all about this use of Tescos at the BBC website. A new definition of Tesco’s value?

It must be seen as really bad luck when you say ‘yes’ to your creative agency and get a TV ad delivered that uses exactly the same concept as another advert hitting the UK television screens.

The ads I’m talking of here are Age Concern featuring Brain Cox and that one with Keeley Hawes for Boots No7. They both use an actors image with changing voices. Spooky that they should both be on air at the same time.

Lilley Brook Golf Club does look wonderful from their website. Almost good enough to make me take up golf.

It is disappointing that they are selling a winter promotion past it’s close date i.e. on 16 April. Or perhaps it is just early for next year. The thing is; one piece of out of date information tends to make me wonder if the rest of the content is accurate.

Note to self: make sure we check all our site to ensure promotions and information is current…I bet I find something!