Forget linear planning, embrace zig-zag
Dominic Mills discovers some useful lessons that could adjust the way planners think. Plus: It’s time to give procurement people a break.
We all know that the consumer’s path to purchase these days is extremely complicated. The best analogy I’ve heard is that it’s more like a pinball machine, as consumers bounce around the digital media system, than anything linear.
And yet most comms planning seems to take a linear approach, assuming that the consumer’s route is a) rational and b) reasonably predictable – thus leading planners to conclude that it goes in roughly straight lines.
Some new research, published the week before last and commissioned by Quantcast for its Supernova day from an outfit called Basis, throws some much-needed light on this complicated business.
It won’t answer every question, but it does provide some useful lessons and conclusions and may well help comms planners adjust their thinking.
The consumer samples were drawn from counties like the UK, Germany, US and France, and across eight product categories – including cars, travel, financial services, household goods and electronic equipment (i.e. phones, tablets and so on).
You can read the full piece here, but the main lessons I took from it were:
– The process is highly fluid and unpredictable. Basis divided consumers into two groups – actives (close to making a purchase) and considerers (up to six months away). Of its samples, 24 per cent of actives delayed their purchases, while 33 per cent of considerers brought theirs forward.
– While they may have good brand awareness, consumers enter the process with tight shortlists of brands they are actively considering – 2.6 for actives and 2.3 for considerers.
Shortlist selection, as one might expect, is based on a) previous experience and b) brand visibility – a consequence of fame and/or brand advertising.
– Most consumers lock down from their shortlist onto a first choice very quickly: 91 per cent for cars; 78 per cent for financial services; and 71 per cent for travel.
The lesson then is obvious. Brands need to be highly visible even before consumers are in the longer-term consideration process.
– But what looks like a slam-dunk brand choice isn’t always. According to Basis, only 40pc of consumers ended up buying their first-choice brand. This is thus a double-edged sword for brands and planners.
The bad news is that all the hard work they do getting brands front of mind could be wasted and the opportunity to clinch a sale is missed. The good news is that the possibility of entering the shortlist late is high if they can persuade the consumer to have a change of heart.
– It’s not hard to figure out what leads to a change of heart. It’s a brand coming in with a promotional offer or some kind of cut-price deal. This may cheer some brands, but cutting prices is neither in their long-term interest or good for brand health.
The lesson Basis draws from this is that brands need to make their brand advertising and their DR or promotional activity work in tandem. Absolutely right, but of course this is easier said than done.
To do this, brands need both to co-ordinate activities between brand and promotional teams – but many brands aren’t structured to do this, not least because the different parts of the organisation are often targeted on different measures.
The second thing they need is budget flexibility – the ability to switch brand and promotional budgets around as they go. But the same structural and organisational barriers apply.
The big lesson I take out of this is the need for fluidity. I suspect also that, for many brands, digital – where, as Basis points out, 70 per cent of its sample conducted the entire process – is still seen as primarily a DR medium, and therefore brands need to rethink their approach to it.
Time to give procurement people a break
I know…that’s a resolutely unfashionable headline.
But maybe we should just step back for a moment and reconsider our approach. A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to be invited to sit in a closed session for marketing procurement people. (Thanks, Tina Fegent. You’re a star.)
It was a healthy corrective to see something from the other side.
The session was hosted by Karmarama, in conjunction with the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply’s (CIPS) marketing procurement knowledge group.
CIPS is like the IPA for procurement people, and it has a specialist group that is designed to help educate and spread best (or better) practice.
We should applaud this, as well as Karmarama for taking the initiative in hosting such meetings. Of course, this is not entirely selfless behaviour on Karmarama’s part, but the more it can help procurement people understand our industry the better.
As far as I know, Karmarama is the only agency to do anything like this, so it deserves whatever advantages it can get from it.
Here’s a few observations:
The best quote of the evening came from Johnson & Johnson’s CPO: “To be successful in marketing procurement, you need to know what good marketing looks like.” In other words, procurement people should learn the discipline.
– The session was packed. Who knew there was so much thirst for knowledge? They’ve obviously taken the J&J bloke’s advice to heart
– Apart from the blessed Tina, there are more than a few CIPS marketing procurement experts who are extremely generous with their knowledge. Several of them presented and what shone through, apart from their expertise, was how much they love the industry – quirks, warts and all. These people should be cherished
– Agencies work best when they have an open line to procurement, and procurement ensures marketing departments stick to protocols (for example on revises)
– Agencies should invite procurement people out more. Most of the agency effort, understandably so, goes on entertaining and socialising with the end client. But why don’t they do the same with procurement people? As long as they maintain that historical sense of antagonism, agency and procurement people will each see the other as demons
– Procurement people are more likely to outlast their marketing counterparts in client organisations. That means they may well know more about what’s going on, and their agencies, than the CMO and their teams
– Marketing teams often play a double game, happy to let agencies believe their procurement people are the awkward bastards, when it reality they’re the ones to blame – either deliberately or through their own incompetence.
So, there you are, adland. Make friends with procurement people. Invite them to your Christmas parties. Make all-round nice. The season of goodwill is almost upon us.