Note to self...

This is just a small summary of the Marketing Live event I went two weeks ago from the 5 or so speakers that were there.

According to research by the University of Groningen (Peter Leeflang & Ruud Frambach 2009), in times of crisis companies should keep investing in Marketing because:

1. You risk losing your position and market share to competitors
2. You risk being insignificant versus private brands
3. Company value and shareholder value will drop

It seems a trend that CFO's become more important than CMO's due to the fact that marketing accountability seems difficult to prove.

- Price promotion do not have long term effect
- Expected effects of advertising are far too high
- Innovations fail too often (more than 50% of all product introductions fail)

British American Tobacco has investigated their consumer and described 25 consumer trends. Amongst them were:

- We want everything at the same time
- We want instant luxury (we want things to be available, easy, simple...)


According to the study companies should value the following:

1. Consumer insights: Client values & principles
2. Dare to choose and do not copy competitors (being different = positioning)
3. Market orientation (branchemarking)
4. Work together (consumer generated content, CRM systems, Product development)
5. Make marketing a core competence
6. Understanding your stakeholders (learn by connecting)
7. Creativity
8. Innovation
9. Accountability (measure from time to time: brand awareness, brand equity, client satisfaction).

Overall objective should always be creating brand (added) value.



Paul Postma presented how our brain works, by shining some light in the dark land of neurology. He talked about:

- Undetermined preferences
- Old neurology systems (millions of years)
- Determination and confirmation of our own behaviour
- Simple and quick decision making

Use your gut feeling (emotional brain) when: choosing your partner, buying a house buying art.
Use you 'senses' (functional brain) when investing, organisational changes, new product development.

How can we generate consumer insights?

1. Analyse and find patterns in historical data
2. Note behaviour of your clients
3. Surpress your own preferences and deny your marketing plan

Base marketing (also product development) on buying motivations and user experiences.

Google (Noud van Alem) had an interesting presentation about the 4 Types of engagement.

Based on attention and history they divide consumer behaviour [from low engagement to high engagement] in:

1. Adoptive (tagging, bookmarking)
2. Social (sharing, creating fan groups)
3. Collaborative (filtering, rating, voting, adding to favourites)
4. Creators (uploading, blogging, podcasting)

in 2009 group 4 is no more than 5% of total internet users, but this might grow in the upcoming years since people are becoming more and more individual multitasking creators.

Google measures engagement by multiplying: clicks x visitors x revisits x feedback x purchase x forward intell x etc. etc.

Innovation in the digital landscape is basically just doing it and optimising after launch. Don't think you know it all in advance.

Launch it, monitor it, adjust it.

[Learning by Doing]