MV newsletter - December 2004

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Those of us who live in the Valley of Mud are optimists, as we suspect you are.

We would like to come across an expert system where all you need to do is to feed in a few facts, press a button, and the absolute answer to everything pops up.

Better still, we would like to sell it.

This happened to us first about ten years ago. We were sitting around idly playing with the controls of one of the Research International brand research models (Brand Locator), when we clicked a button that we had never used before. Aha! It solved a problem we had spent 2 years and $100,000 addressing.

It happened most recently last week. This time it was one of our models (The Brand Gap Locator), and it took less than $1,000 and 20 minutes, with an e-survey. That’s the power of “e”. Sometimes we publish this newsletter, and we are receiving responses before we have even sat back in our chairs. It is a feeling that is rather special when much of the time over the Internet it is more like you are whispering into deep space.

We ourselves subscribe to the school of “Don’t give me more answers; give me better questions”. Our tools offer you nothing less than blood, sweat and tears, but they are also rigorous and there is sure to be victory at the end.

If you want the other kind, and you are racking your brains to work out where to promote yourselves, you can try the UK government’s Business Links site. It told us that we should do some PR and build a web site, which left us wondering what we do with our $50 million cash pile. The kids are in for a good Christmas this year.

Heads up……………..

We are sure that you are as avid readers of Larry Chase’s Web Digest for Marketers , and related newsletters, as we are.

For us, it is our bible, and we are somewhat distraught that Larry (as we like to call him) doesn’t give us a mention from time to time. There again, we don’t get many mentions in the Bible either, even though you would think that Mud Valley would have been a great place for a bit of slaying or begetting.

Actually, we are beginning to think that Larry is a bit of a myth, a branded entity dreamed up by a mass of teaming hacks to bring glamour to their sordid trade.

It is said about (Lord) Andrew Lloyd Webber that he walks into his song factory, hums a few hums, then turns to his team saying “Work that up boys!”, and goes off again. We think that Larry Chase might be like that too.

Actually, our favourite story about Andrew Lloyd Webber is the one where he asked a friend why everyone instantly took a dislike to him. “It saves time, dear boy,” came the reply.

All of which leads us to a blog recommendation by Larry in a recent newsletter. The site is run by Laura Ries who, with her father Al, wrote all those excellent branding books (“22 immutable laws”, “11 immutable laws” etc.). Her current blog is on whether Starbucks is over-extending its brand.

In her various blogs, she makes some excellent points about branding we thoroughly agree with.

1. you will never beat the #1 brand by claiming to be better at delivering their brand proposition. The way to position against the #1 brand is to stand for the opposite of whatever it stands for (please read our “Attacking the market leader” article to this effect)
2. if you are establishing a brand category, you need an enemy: Coke and Pepsi, Microsoft and Netscape, Apple and IBM, Nike and Reebok, McDonalds and Burger King, that sort of thing. It is a sad fact of life that we love to sign up to groups that hate other groups, but it serves to build a branding advantage nonetheless

The point we do not agree with her at all on is that what you name your brand is the fundamental determinant of brand success. She has a whole article on the 9 things you need to know about creating effective brand names (simplicity, ease of spelling, alliteration, shock value etc.). Our view is that your name is about the least thing you need to worry about, which is probably why we chose Mud Valley. And if Laura thinks it is so important, why is her site called ries.typepad.com?

Load up a bucket full of money, and throw it off your rooftop……………

We believe that marketing communications have fundamentally changed over the last 3-4 years.

Once upon a time in B2B markets, we would spend 6 months dreaming up a direct marketing campaign, only to have the budget slashed in the 7th. All that effort, and we never spoke to the customer.

Now, you can get in front of your target audience as often as you like more-or-less for free. E-mail and websites are most people’s favourite means of learning about what is available. They are non-intrusive, time-shifting (you can attend to them in your own time), and informative.

According to industry statistics, most business people search the web before making major purchasing decisions.

And while SPAM e-mails for various suggestive products are deeply irritating (and Bill Gates reputedly gets 4.8 million of those a day), most people do not mind e-mails from brands related to areas of genuine interest. Even if the e-mail is deleted, you will have made a brand impression.

On top of all that, the people with whom we should communicate the most (and often communicate the least), are our biggest, most profitable customers.

We love landing that $1 million pound new customer, forgetting that the cost of snaring such a big fish is about 18 months of payback. On the other hand, there is a bunch of people who already like us and are buying from us, but who are wondering whether we care about them at all. Sure, our sales representative turns up periodically, but s/he is not our company. If our MD phoned up, that would be really saying something. And our loyal customers account for nearly all of our profits.

So, put those thoughts together, and decide to have at least a two-weekly contact strategy for your most important customers. Tell them interesting things, ask them questions, make them offers, just say “Hello!” (not in the subject line) – but e-mail them, and make a brand impression.

And, if you want to listen to someone who can rant on this subject very much better than we can, go to Chris Cardell’s site . His more than interesting observation is that you should make the primary objective of your site to collect e-mail addresses. Your site itself has probably one chance to make a sale. Once you get someone’s opt-in e-mail address, you can communicate with them at every opportunity until they either unsubscribe themselves or change their e-mail addresses.

And if you don’t collect as many e-mail addresses as possible (or if you collect them but do nothing with them), you might as well sit there setting fire to $5 bills, or fill that bucket with cash and throw the contents off your rooftop.

Loyalty rules……………………….

Somewhere in our travels over the last few weeks, we came across these rules for building brand loyalty, which we are pleased to pass onto you:

• Play to win/win: never profit at the expense of partners.
• Be picky: membership must be a privilege.
• Keep it simple: reduce complexity for speed and flexibility.
• Reward the right results: worthy partners deserve worthy goals.
• Listen hard and talk straight: insist on honest, two-way communication and learning.
• Preach what you practice: explain your principles, then live by them.

We would also like to pass on the source of this advice – someone very eminent – but, unfortunately, we have forgotten who it was.

Maybe his lawyers will be kind enough to tell us, in which case we will tell you.

Have an excellent festive season, and look out for our New Year’s Resolution Party Pack, to be advertised on all the articles of our website (and in the next newsletter) as of the beginning of January.

• Belgium tel: +32 (0)2 747 0945
• France tel: +33 (0)1 76 63 74 09
• UK tel: +44 (0)208 099 7385

or by e-mail at enquiries@mudvalley.co.uk.

© 2004, Mud Valley ™ brand marketing community.

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