Top marketing trends for 2009

From the Marketing Executives Networking Group:
http://www.prleap.com/pr/130718/

Book review: Brand Immortality

I recently finished reading my review copy of this book and I am very impressed. This book is must reading for brand managers and anyone involved in marketing management.

Drawing conclusions and culling data from 880+ case studies submitted to the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) dataBANK and detailing numerous case studies from winners of the IPA Effectiveness Awards, the authors have compellingly made the case as to why the eventual death of any given brand is not an inevitable fact of life. The authors point out the pitfalls and dangers in much current thinking in the field of marketing.

This book delivers some visionary thinking about how to view your brands in the face of decreasing control over brand messages by you and increasing control by consumers. Your customers and the market will determine what your brand really means and it is up to you to listen first and only then continually develop and hone your brand's personality, emotional elements and communications in order to stay unique, salient and profitable.

Learn why applying the Boston Matrix to brands is dangerous and why tagging your brands with labels like "cash cows", "dogs', and "question marks" almost assures them of eventual death. Learn how to make your brands transcend product categories to live long and prosperous lives. Learn the truth about how the effectiveness of TV advertising has actually grown over the past 25 years despite what you may have heard or read about its alleged demise and decreasing relevancy. Learn about the fallacy of Rosser Reeves and why people who buy your brand are more aware of your brand rather then the other way around. Learn why the ratio between share of voice (SOV) and market share is so important and gain an understanding of how this ratio can be managed to extend the life of your brands indefinitely. Understand the difference between leading and lagging indicators and why it is essential to keep a well-balanced scorecard when monitoring KPI's. This book will change the way you think about product brands and brand management.

Very interestingly, the authors are based in the U.K. and many of the brands they talk about are U.K. brands. These were not brands that I have generally heard of before. The interesting thing was, when reading the case histories I was able to remain objective about the analysis precisely because I had not heard of some of these brands before. This stood in stark contrast to many other books on branding that I've read in which the author(s) discuss well-known American brands. It is surprising how your perspective changes when you read about successful brands that you've never heard of before and then realize how your own awareness of brands being analyzed in other books influences your opinions not only about those books but also those authors. This little dynamic surprised me and only reinforced to me the power of strong brands.

Brand Immortality represents a truly new and refreshing approach to the subject and I absolutely recommend it. The only downside is that most will have to wait until January 28 for the book to be available. When it does become available, buy it.

How NOT to evaluate your marketing communications

Here is an interesting article that describes how not to evaluate your marketing communications. I think this is timely as many business owners are planning or adjusting their marketing plans for 2009.

I especially call your attention to item #8, The Rosser Reeves Fallacy. In my opinion, there is too much confusion over cause and effect. Just because people are more aware of your brand does not mean they prefer it. In fact, the opposite might be true. It might be those who are already loyal to your brand who are the ones more aware of your marketing communications simply because they preferentially "hear" your messages to reinforce their establish habit or purchasing decision.

Let me know what you think.

Book review: Habit - The 95% of Behavior Marketers Ignore

Neale Martin is a marketer with a background in psychology which I believe is a winning combination for understanding consumer behavior. This is a very solid book that puts forth and then supports effectively the key insight and premise that marketers would be wise to focus their efforts on creating customer habituation rather than customer satisfaction.

As I've stated in my previous works, people attach to brands emotionally first and then support their position with logic later---if they are forced to support their position at all. Neale Martin made my own words come alive to me as he describes the underlying brain science behind the process of the human mind going on "auto pilot" as much as possible to cope with the vast complexity that we deal with every day. Our brains try to automate decisions as much as possible to avoid having to consciously and logically think about most of the decisions we make. A strong brand is a way to help people automate their behavior so they don't have to invest the extra effort to think about their decision amongst available brands.

Martin's bottom line on effective marketing is contained in the last sentence of the book where he states that unconscious customer loyalty is the most important asset any company can own. Marketers would be wise to keep this in mind. We design marketing campaigns and we often tend to only think of brand and advertising messages in terms of making logical and rational arguments as to why people should choose our brands. We should also ask ourselves what it would take to help people choose our brands out of habit so they don't have to make the extra effort to even think about the brand selection decision.

This book is a solid effort that I recommend to anyone involved in marketing any product or service.