Accenture bans the C word (sort of); good times for OOH and TV

Karmarama says the ‘customer’ is dead – too bad its parent company thinks the opposite, writes Dominic Mills. Plus: a bonanza beckons for OOH’s long tail, while the IPA Effectiveness Awards prove that TV still rules

The ‘c’ word is dead, you may be surprised to hear. That’s according to Karmarama and its big daddy parent, Accenture Interactive.

Yes, that’s ‘c’ as in customer, and it’s been replaced by the ‘h’ word, or as Karmarama/Accenture call it, the human being.

Who doesn’t like the sound of that? After all, marketers profess the customer king/centricity/customer-first and all that malarkey. But often it’s just a fig leaf for abusing us or treating us as a dehumanised, aggregated series of data points. With a few exceptions, it feels like there’s an inverse relationship between the way they talk about it and the way they do it.

Campaign subscribers will have received this point of view in a booklet titled Brand Nirvana: Closing the Human Experience Gap bagged up with its 50th anniversary issue. Those who don’t get Campaign can find it here.

It’s a good read, challenging and stimulating.

Here, in Karmarama’s words, is the basic premise: “…people don’t necessarily want to be spoken to like a ‘customer’ – they want to be engaged with as the living, breathing, well-rounded human beings they are. Reducing a target audience to a ‘customer’ strongly influences the way brand custodians behave. Nowadays few relationships with brands exist solely in the moment of consumption. Only thinking, talking and pursuing people as the transaction they might make…means brands will only ever be sellers and the audience will only ever be buyers.”

Amen to that. It’s hard to disagree in principle.

Now here comes the ‘b’ word – as in ‘but’. Customers have rights. Brands have obligations. In theory, it’s not an equal relationship. From the customer point of view, it works best when the relationship is biased towards them.
[advert position=”left”]
The best brand marketers will understand this, but there’s a danger the majority won’t. I can see three pitfalls.

One, brands interpret this as a charter to be ‘mates’ with their, er, customers at all times. That’s a step too far. I don’t want mateyness at the best of times, and I most certainly don’t want it outside of the transaction period.

Two, and this is very much part of Accenture’s shtick of working with the whole client organisation, treating people as human beings isn’t just a marketing thing. It’s a philosophy that has to be embedded at every level. The joined-up client, in other words.

And three, they can’t just treat people as humans when it suits them, and revert to dehumanising behaviour when things go wrong. Look at BA over the credit-card hack and the baguette death. As soon as the crap hit the fan it hid behind its corporate wall. And as for Pret, an organisation that I would say normally practices the Accenture mantra…when push came to shove, it failed utterly.

Now for the sting in the tail. Go to the Accenture Interactive home page here. And what hits you right up front? Why, it’s the phrase ‘customer experience’ as in “customer experience is the new battleground for brands today.”

So here we have Karmarama, the shiny jewel in Accenture’s crown, telling us the ‘customer’ is dead. And there we have the parent hanging its proposition on the opposite.

Not very joined-up, not very practice-what-you-preach. Talking human to human, it’s not just embarrassing, it’s crap.

Bonanza beckons for OOH’s long tail

Bloody hell. Those Global people have moved into OOH faster than Michel Barnier says ‘non’.

Last week’s swoop on Exterion certainly took the industry by surprise, even more of a surprise than that on Primesight and Outdoor Plus less than a month ago.

Those three purchases, all decent sized, put Global head to head with JCDecaux in terms of UK market share of around 35% each, according to Campaign.

But now what? The assumption – yet to be publicly tested with the Competition and Markets Authority – is that acquiring market share above that level would be anti-competitive. If so, that means JCDecaux and Global must slug it out through organic growth.

So it puts the focus on the next two biggest players, Clear Channel and Ocean. Clear Channel is in a state of suspended animation while its US parent sorts out its future. So, unless it ends up in the hands of new owners soon – possibly private equity – it must sit on the sidelines.

Ocean is due to float soon as an OOH player in its own right, and must therefore fancy its chances as the obvious consolidator of an industry that, despite the concentration of share at the top, still has a long tail. But its owners might be a little nervous about the reception the stock will get from investors when it is made available.

On the one hand, as Global has demonstrated, there is value in OOH. On the other, markets are generally a bit queezy and reluctant (as Aston Martin shares show) to embrace new issues.

Notwithstanding this, Ocean may be the most likely buyer. Just one buyer isn’t always good news for sellers, but it may be for the long tail of regional OOH owners and the likes of 8 Outdoor. Unless it acquires, Ocean faces a lonely time sitting in the middle ground between the big three and the tiddlers.

TV still rules

Grand Prix winner: Audi’s Clowns ad by BBH

This is not another ‘TV-ain’t-dead-despite-what-everyone-says’ column. Rather it’s an observation based on the list of winners at last week’s IPA Effectiveness Awards.

Other than for some of the small brand winners, TV was the crucial or lead medium for all the big names. These included Audi, Guinness, Direct Line, DFS, Lidl, Suzuki and the Army. Those nice Thinkbox people can rest easy – for today.

That doesn’t mean other channels were unimportant – indeed, looking at the winners I’m aware of seeing/hearing activity across a range of channels – but it does underline that if you want effectiveness, you need to hit a lot of consumers fast and often. In other words, reach and frequency – or broadcast.

One brand, cosmetics products True Match, won the social media prize by leading its efforts with influencers, but still used TV – as you can see from this ad here.

Finally, let’s highlight a moment of piquancy on the night. A gold for Lidl and it’s ‘Lidl Surprises’ campaign from the agency – TBWA\London – it doesn’t think is up to scratch and is poised to replace any day now.