www.viewpoint.net.nz - NZ Transport, Aviation, Logistics & Supply Chain Blog

Does advertising really work?

'Old marketing is dead
10 years ago we were able to advertise a position in a paper and know that people looking for a job would see it. Nowadays you need to advertise in many papers and on multiple websites and you are still not guaranteed a good response.

It used to be that you could build a product and market it really well and people would naturally use your service. Nowadays we are all bombarded with advertising and media and information. We as consumers often ignore these messages. When was the last time you made that call after hearing an ad? It is almost impossible to make an impression and a thousand fold more difficult to actually get them to pick-up the phone.

New marketing is everything we do
Brand is no longer about just having a great logo and good advertising. Brand is now driven by everything the company does. Every time we answer the phone or deliver a sales proposal or email a client or they use online, we build our brand. The aim of new marketing is to get talked about, in a positive way of course, because of how ingenious we are!

To have a strong brand you now have to have a service that is so ingenious, so smart and edgy and stunning that it gets talked about.  Think about Google. How many of you started using Google because you saw their ad. None, they didn't advertise. You heard about it, tried it, liked it, kept using it and if you're an early adopter like me, probably told others about it.' - quote from my eBook called 'Being INGENIOUS @ agoge'

All this means that the old way of attracting candidates or getting customers works less and less. It will get harder and harder get peoples attention. Your only chance is to focus on providing a stunning service or being an incredible employer, so that you get talked about.

Finally, fyi, we measure most of our advertsing, we change ads and try new and creative things. When you measure advertising, the results generally dont make good reading, it forces you to think outside the square. You should try it!

Ingenious Rating

I have decided to create an ingenious rating table that I can rate different businesses and ideas that I can see, against my meaning of Ingenious.

Ingenious means providing remarkable and inventive and edgy and customer focused and stunning service.

5 = Ingenious

3 = Very Good
2 = Nice Try
1 = What were you thinking?
0 = Dumb Ass

The table deliberately has no #4 to remind us that there is a huge gap between Ingenious and Very Good. I will post the ratings to different businesses in the comments below.

A quest for an ingenious business

If you buy a Lighter then you would expect it to have gas in it – right? Well when I purchased one from the Oasis Superette  in Papamoa it didn’t. I went back and they put it right for me without blinking. They were really helpful and its an enjoyable experience going to their store.

The service I experience at the Oasis was great, if not very good, better than I had experienced at a dairy or superette in years. And yet it was not remarkable or ingenious (save for the fact that I now tell you about it)

I would go back to that store as opposed to the store 50 metres down the road (and recommend that you do), but I wont drive for 20 minutes to go back the next time I'm in Tauranga

A recently read book by Seth Godin called “Purple Cow” ^ which says the “remarkable is the opposite of very good”, and this has caused me to think about our ^ desire to provide ingenious services.

The America Heritage Dictionary ^ defines ingenious as “1. Marked by inventive skill and imagination. 2. Having or arising from an inventive or cunning mind; clever: an ingenious scheme.”

In business I believe that Ingenious means providing remarkable and inventive and edgy and stunning service.

Ingenious companies care about their customers and are truly creative about meeting their needs. The type of service they provide gets noticed and talked about and ingenious businesses are known to be the experts, the geniuses, the elite, the ONLY place to get that service.

I am starting a short-term quest to post comments on businesses that are ingenious and those that aren’t and why.

What does a Purple Cow have to do with Marketing?

"Very Good" is not being "Remarkable" is the single biggest thought I will take out of the book 'Purple Cow' by Seth Godin. It has significant implications to my business and will drive me to explore being more remarkable and ingenious in the services we provide as I think we are often Very Good.

'Purple Cow' is about making sure that your business is offering remarkable services.

It talks about traditional advertising basically being less effective and in most cases totally ineffective, and then offers insights into making your business remarkable. It is a thought provoking book and is (by default of marketing generally) targeted more towards product development that service based business. A key quote for me is:

"The opposite of 'Remarkable' is 'Very Good'

Ideas that are remarkable are much more likely to spread than ideas that aren't. Yet so few brave people make remarkable stuff. Why? I think it's because they think that the opposite of 'Remarkable' is 'bad' or 'mediocre' or 'poorly done'. Thus, if they make something very good, they confuse it with being virus worthy.

If you travel on an airline and they get you there safely, you don't tell anyone. That's what's supposed to happen. What makes it remarkable is if it's horrible beyond belief or if the service is so unexpected (they are an hour early or comp my ticket because I'm cute) that you need to share it.

Very good is an everyday occurrence and is hardly worth mentioning.

Are you making or doing very good stuff? How fast can you stop?"

Purple Cow - Page 67

Seth recently had an article in the Guardian which he posted on his blog called "How to be Remarkable". It is a great summary of thoughts from his book and blogs. READ IT!

Book Summary

Purple Cow - Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable ^
Seth Godin - www.sethgodin.com

Genres        Marketing, Business, Product Development
Pages         142
Readability   3 (1 = Easy, 5 = Hard)
Enjoyment    4 (1 = Never Read, 5 = Remarkable)