10 tips – The Survival Guide to Communicating in a recession

With his theme being “most of what people do is wrong” Les Binet of DDB Matrix kicked off his Media 360 presentation by telling the audience they could cut their budgets by 75% by being more effective.  Wow. If that happened there would be budget shockwaves, but he is how he suggests you do it.

Ten tips from research that make advertising more effective in a recession

1. Clear and detailed objectives.

Binet starts by saying that so many objectives for campaigns are too vague. Increased brand awareness is not enough as an objective. He says campaigns briefed in this kind of way under perform in business terms.  That’s a fail then. He says you need:

a)    Clear business objectives: ie quantify it: increase market share.
b)    Clear behavioural objective : ie increase penetration.

2. Focus on profit

Great point about how when the business objectives are most often spelled out it is usually to “sell more stuff”. That’s no good.

Binet says the most effective campaigns are not one that increase sales but boost price sensitivity. Sell more at a higher price.

3.  Engage whole market

Says during tough times marketers have a tendency to focus on existing campaigns. This is wrong – these campaigns are not effective he says.

The most effective campaigns are those that talk to customers and potential customers alike and give a maxium chance for success.

Says that campaigns that manage to talk to potential customers are three times as effective as a whole.

4. Touch the heart

Says human decision making is to a large extent is emotional. Don’t give people reason to buy your product: this is wrong. It is much better to make people feel something about a brand rather than giving them rational messages. Emotions are more profitable than messages.

5 . Create ripples of influence

The most effective of all campaigns are the ones that create an emotional bond. The ones that create a social feeling. He gives the example of fame: getting you brand on everyone’s lips.

Apple of course gets cited as an example here. Binet says that Apple, it is not just a brand of computer. It is bigger than its category. That’s because of the feel.

He says that famous marketing gets talked about because the emotional bonding has become social currency ramping up the effectiveness. He says doing news worthy stuff that is in the social space is what works.

6.  Lead with right media

If you are talking to the category of a whole that means you need media that is shared. You need media that creates emotional bonds.

Interesting here he makes a big play to remind people that TV is as powerful as ever. Says TV is not dead. Says so much stuff that gets said about TV (myths if you like passed off as fact) is wrong. Young people watch it. Is one big example of this he cites.

Says part of its strength is that TV has a tremendous power to affect people emotionally. Highlights the power of TV during general election debates. This will make Tess Alps at Thinkbox very happy. She is sitting just in front.

He finishes his TV point by saying it is becoming more effective.  Yes that’s right. More.

7. Harness the power of integration

Says that the rational part of the brain can not be overlooked in marketing messages; smaller than emotional but still important. “We don’t do much thinking but we do it (like cats and swimming)”.

Binet says you need to pacify the rational brain by giving it the information it needs (beyond the emotional message) to make decisions. He says this is where direct response and digital comes in.

8. Commit sufficient resources

You still have to spend. Says there is a growing myth in the marketing world that you don’t have to spend money, that you can get away with doing clever things virally and digitally that will do the work for you. Not true.

Shows a slide – share of voice matters

Binet says the idea that you can get away with spending less with digital media is wrong. Share of voice is the key metric. The rules are not changing

9. Measure the right things

Says it means you keep on track and spend it budget the right things, but for that to happen he says you need to measure the right things. That means measure a range of things.

Beware of single metrics – this is a guarantee of crap advertising.

10.  Does it matter?

Says that pre-testing reduces the effectiveness of advertising. Says it produces mediocre advertising. Not great advertising.