Social Media and New Markets

After years of swiping that highly volatile status symbol that supplied oodles of credit to households, Visa power has finally subscribed to doing away with the cards. Starting next week ( September ’10) Visa will roll out a new payment lifestyle for subscribers on latest launch till the Holiday season gets over in December 2010 with Bank of America customers in New York. Later it will also roll the pilot with US Bancorp. Thanks Techland

Reuters reports

Customers would then “bump” their phones with point-of-sale devices in stores — actually they need only wave the phones near the devices — and their bank account data would be collected and their purchases completed.

Bank of America declined to say how many people would be involved in the pilot, and a company spokeswoman declined to comment on Visa’s involvement.

Visa spokeswoman Elvira Swanson said the Bank of America pilot was not larger than the company’s other mobile trials, but she said it could have a more powerful impact on the market than some previous pilots.

Unfortunately the pogram requires users to install new hardware on their smartphones, which does not sound like the smart thing to do for amenable users who would want to migrate to a non invasive lifestyle that does make paying and carrying digital id easy for them, no unwieldy wallets, no embarrasments at forgeting things at home / in the car.

While HSBC is not that successful as a brand or a business in the US, it carries its Global local campaign there too. They have definitely got an enduring feel to the brand from its now almost 10 year old consistent theme in branding and showcasing of now Different values or then “The world’s local bank”. Much like the Mac vs PC campaign that ran 3 years and more to some great copy, HSBC’s understated campaign survived the crisis and esp in emerging markets a lot of establishment value accrued to it while other Financial Brands fought regulatory battles in more public and much more denigrating spats. There move out of London was almost unseen to boot.

Here is one that is outside the frame for their green insurance venture in Brazil

At home in London of course they have lassi making washing machines just two years ago while they use the same Raj Kapoor’s contemporary Adolf Hitler in the Different Values campaign print ads. The latest TV campaigns being used are a little more sophisticated, but the same cataclysm of cultures and a crowded scene establishing common aspirations across emerging markets

After the Soccer World Cup, the brand feast continues with the new NFL season still showing the stars like Drew Brees and Reggie Bush from the Saints and draft ‘starters’ like Colt McCoy, Sam Bradford, Tebow and Michael Crabtree & Beanie Wells from the class of ’09 and yore. While Pepsi took time out in Superbowl 2010 to post a social flavour for its brands, CBS, FOX and ESPN paid $20 billion thru 2011, and will be renewing contracts with NFL again when the fate of NFL Network will also be decided.

Cricket on the other hand has grown its first few seasons in fantasy games and with T20 brands IPL and the Champions League (starting around the same time as the Kickoff in Dallas) , Cricket has reached a new brand stop leaving networks and sponsors ambitious for more but surly on the wallet as pockets remain strung out. Both games deliver audiences of 100 million globally as do the weekend Red Bull one on ones with Ferrari and the now rusty Cosworths and McLaren.

T20 preseason opener this time features the Top 3 from India, including Bangalore and Mumbai, Bushrangers and So Australian Redbacks from the KFC Big Bash, Nashua and the Highveld Lions from the Standard Bank Pro Series and Kiwi, Sri Lankan and West Indian Champion teams in the sub continent with ESPN Sports still looking for 6 of the 10 anchor slots for Brands. The 23 games will drown most of September with Game shows like KBC and Big Boss and the league divvying up at least 40 million TVs equally everyday.

Traditional rivalries are as big as ever on both NFL and Cricket this side of the pond and amazingly, players have adapted to at least three formats in the game in he same season, sometimes 2 formats the same week, while playing for at least 2 teams and sometimes with a foreign domestic tourney as well, leaving calendars and auctions very insightful for the Tv audiences

The Yankees Games or the LA Angels do not seem to be of much consequence this time even as the Red Sox and then the Celtics lose some of their New England Pride but MLB and NBA continue to draw audiences and more Florida is in the air this time.

Here’s to more brand activations and better advertising in 2010, esp at game time. Responsibility is key.

We just entered the Power150 for ourselves, and as CI builds up

Also our sister blog for Marketing and Branding is an Adage Power Blog in Marketing

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• This Week’s Top 7 Buzzy Brands from AdAge & OneRiot (oneriot.com)

Kraft has just realised that with Cadbury’s spending 9% of its sales on its marketing budget,Kraft strategy to increase spends was just in time, and may be the propelling engine for emerging market growth. Consequently in the second half of the year, Kraft singles, Philadelphia Cream Cheese and even Maxwell’s Coffee House is going to get more advertising even as Unilever and Dove Mad men the consumer spending upgrades of 2010. However, we are here to sweet talk you into thinking of more such costly and market share grabbing intuitive strategies for your bouquet of brands and depending on your understanding of the select emerging markets that are the toast of everyone’s eyes, get this 40% upscaling of budgets across Consumer Lifestyle companies the emerging market attention it deserves.

Why? Well, it is also a known fact that the reverse flow from China and India and others has increased in terms of brands and products being acquired in Europe and US. In fact many more expect such brand acquisitions to continue thru 2011 according to such CMO surveys as are available. One such being of course WARC . In fact Tang and Oreo just grew 40% in some emerging markets based on the higher advertising spend (Kraft)

Companies like IBM and Hurd less HP have already established an important part of their cost strategies based businesses in India and China, but the more important thing with the lifestyle boom is how the trends from brand recall for International car brands in India and China will merge with the growth parameters that stay in the positive ambient zone for Fortune 1000 corporations only in these select markets. Coupled with the sad crisis and the relative richness of emerging market corporations building global brands and you have a $4 bn – $ 24 bn wallet for most large public listed firms in India or the satraps that have engineered western know how in China with a choice to go past existing national regulation and grow a global foot print. Of course, one cannot condone the aggressive strategies adopted iby China in this regard and they have already been blocked by Us government in most purchases in the US. India is also keener to grow with goodwill and operational excellence it can harness to create global franchises and is likely to stay in the developing / underdeveloped Africa and resource rich industries that sell commodities. The vulnerable businesses with brand values however dot the landscape and they may also become the center of regulatory maelstroms in the future as brands exchange owners in Energy, Super retail, telecom, media and aviation where flailing global might of the developed nations is more pronounced.

Thus in the world of brands though where US and European corporations have had the advantages of large economic spends to establish brands, the propensity towards private label is the most dangerous for those purveying nationalism to save themselves from global predators in Chinese Automobiles or other industries. Cash flows cannot be reinstated overnight and Capitalism is the true answer thus leaving littler room at the top for those in stagnant sectors where spending is not able to afford brands. What gives?

Well increasing advertising spending is a good start, but sooner or later you will need new owners to give a brand fillip to the rapidly whitening US and European shelves! But social media dollars are going to increase 10 fold too, with Facebook now, twitter later and increasing touch points in gaming and media which blur hardware and software into an integral human effort, but that will not help Chinese companies imitate or buy McDonalds’!

Have you seen those random attempts to integrate advertising into local content inside a movie or in the theater? Well, after BofA introduced itself as the Bank that championed America on the History Channel, Unilever has anchored its $1.2 billion National US campaign in a small show within a show in “Mad Men” The popular “Mad men” agency reinvents Dove and the ad is aired during showtimes. so the Dove is now pretty soapy, eh!

“Mad men” is a series based on the Advertising Industry’s trials and tribulations set in the 1960s hedonist era at the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce Agency. Dove is already getting questioned on are they trying to steal Mad Men content away on social fora but the advert does the job, much like BofA’s in content inserts in the History Channel series on the crisis.

Looking back at a crisis

Here’s how great quality in marketing writing and even thinking lives:

Inheriting troubles I’m mentally numb
Crazy, I just cannot bear
I’m living with something that just isn’t fair
Mental wounds not healing
Who and what’s to blame
I’m going off the rails on a crazy train
– Ozzy Ozbourne, 1987

What do Bernie Madoff, Deepwater Horizon, Goldman Sachs and WAMU all have in common? Besides three of them failing miserably, in their quest for rewards they created and embraced chaos. Some built chaos into the quest. Others generated chaos when their journey ended. More commonly, chaos occurred during and after the event. The definition of chaos is a state lacking order or predictability. It is not coincidental that the word chaos is of Greek origin. All this aside, Gonzo Bankers should introduce a little more chaos into their own worlds. But we can do it a bit more intelligently and ethically than in my examples above.

Building new memes, growing civilization¡

The non profit charter, the social web and being a global citizen

Last month, we were blessed to note that marketers were finally discovering the documentary mode. It would be a great way for brands with a ‘history’ to score a good under-5 score for the course. For one thing, these content series’ also last more critics’ reviews and they can be reused in multiple ways for extending or as in this case reviving brand life.

Bank of America spent roughly $4 million to $5 million on the campaign, according to Ms. Verdone. It spent a total of $464 million on advertising in 2009 and $618 million in 2008, according to Kantar Media, a unit of WPP that tracks ad spending.

Let’s face it. It would be very difficult for the brand manager of America’s bank to turn down an offer from History Channel to take part in a docu-drama and not end up maximising its ‘home advantage’. Bank of America has always been an important part of America’s glorious past esp. at great moments such as when it helped finance the Golden Gate.

Early in the first installment of “America: The Story of Us,” the 12-hour documentary series on the History cable channel that began on April 25 and covers 400 years of United States history, an actor depicting a British soldier bumps into another depicting Paul Revere, and the narrator Liev Schreiber says, “When revolution comes to North America, Revere will be at the center of it.”

Viewers might be momentarily confused when the screen goes dark, signaling a commercial break, only to light up again with men dressed in colonial garb on the cobblestone streets of Boston, Andrew Adam Newman writes in The New York Times. The scene cuts to a bow-tied historian named K. C. Johnson, who tells an interviewer, “American colonies before the revolution existed for the economic good of the mother country,” and then to another historian, Steve Gillon, who adds, “The British used money as a way of keeping the Americans down.” Then, to a triumphant flourish of music, the Bank of America logo appears, along with the screen text, “Fueling progress, creating opportunity, building on our heritage.”

The first half of the two-minute spot, produced by the History Channel for Bank of America, the sponsor of the series, reveals the historical significance of the Massachusetts Bank, founded in 1784 and counting among its customers Paul Revere and John Hancock (and, owing to a series of acquisitions, part of Bank of America’s historical DNA). The second half of the commercial focuses on present-day New Bedford, Mass., where the mayor, Scott W. Lang, and other residents praise Bank of America for making loans for revitalization efforts.

The History Channel is producing 12 two-minute videos for Bank of America, each beginning in the same era as the episode, then jumping to a current example of the bank’s civic-mindedness. Representatives of the bank and the cable network do not describe the videos as commercials, preferring the terms “mini-documentaries” or “interstitial content.”

..one story featured during an episode about the Depression highlights that Bank of America helped finance construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, one of the public works projects that helped the country rebound.

Both then and today, said Joseph L. Goode, a Bank of America spokesman, “you see a company like Bank of America acknowledge the industry’s mistakes but then step up and help the country move forward.” In the spots, which will run only during the documentary series, the bank makes repeated references to plans over the next decade to lend $1.5 trillion for community development projects and to contribute $2 billion to charitable causes.
< ∕blockquote> the original story here in nyt< ∕a>, that helped my discovery..

WSJ read it well, but on its own small base of 100 odd subscribers (lol) in India, they are rather stretching to meet the high bar..

Ford is but doing well after the launch of the Figo and extnding outlets to 160 including the best of rural India ( Tier 2 towns and further down in the country too) Ford is now selling thrice the cars it was selling a year back, 10000 in March and 9000 in April..

Polo is the other important newbie in India, though their cute ads have not been shopped socially yet by their big $10 million India campaign. After a connoisseur’s ad for the Beetle and a kid’s surprise ad for its fleet, the VW team, very forthcoming on camaignindia.in have launched the polo ads also for a distinct “desi” audience..keeping the fun theme the Polo follows in Europe

In this one in Europe, we have a terrorist blowing himsel up, while the singing dog and a girl in see through semilucent white material loving airconditioning (toyota) come to mind and you tube as well

Maruti ( Suzuki is also a VW holding) is meanwhile scoring high on the Ritz and the Wagon R, working on the product rather than the marketing and still have a good hand for they won’t be down shopping into skoda bodies or other plastic experiments , while Hyundai is good TOM recall for the i10 ads and an overall vfm proposition. GM has new chinese management but the smaller models score high, Toyota still looking for the killing tell from the market

And of course with due apologies to Adage and its list of $800 million spending Business Brands, that used to include my favourite banks as well, This question arose in my Marketing position in 2007 and in my desire to be a bank marketing person, i just found the very same issue list with gonzo banker..as the pilgrim prefers, i may doff the hat for the tip or introduce the relevant IP as under:

Jack Trout, author of the great little book The Power of Simplicity, said, “Marketing is far too important to delegate to middle management.” What Trout was getting at is the general notion that CEOs often see marketing as a necessary expense, not a strategic function. As long at the calendared promotions get launched, the “logo” stuff is nice, and the Web site information is up to date, everyone is happy. This limited view of marketing can be a general detriment to the organization. The evidence, you say?

• More often than not, no single senior officer has overall accountability for new product development. We tend to either suffer through a chaotic path to product improvement or just follow the lead of competitors.
• Requests for funding of customer and market research are often cut during the second-round budget inquisition.
• Requests to upgrade MCIF systems capable of pushing relevant sales messages to retail and telephone agent screens keep getting put off – “maybe next year.”
• Critical investments in online banking functionality and interactive Web tools are pushed back in favor of other priorities.
• We let marketing spend some money on “social media”, but do we have a service delivery structure that appeals in any way to the “wired’ generation? Or are we saying to them, “Come try our great branch-based delivery system?”
• We will spend $2 million for a new location with drive-up tellers but choke at spending $200,000 in upgraded online functionality – “don’t we have someone on staff that can do that stuff?”
• We make pricing decisions based on competitor actions without the benefit of accurate product or customer profitability information.

Yup, most marketing people would try to keep their jobs with the above, The kind of engaging complex creation we do in service firms and Corporate Accounts in Marketing and Product Development being a strict “sore point” with top management. It makes it very difficult for senior / middle management to survive in a marketing job in a Bank Brand or even IBM reduced to publishing n copies of a brochure or working briefs and presentations without investment in brands or anything other than projectised promotions. Part time Marketing staff have become mandatory to carry the above “menial” branding items of interest..publish logos, wall paper and something with business candy in images and a headline which today can be extended in life cycle on Twitter..

In fact with Outsourcing arnd even in India and China these functions could be reduced to Projects and Procurement by “Top” Brass” . .There is something called the Teeth to Tail ratio in designing a large engagement, they mostly get us Sales and Markeing and Account Management guys by the tail only and pile on the insults like any Brass would learn at their fave Wrestling mania match ( Believe me, even if it’s NFL, without you feeding them/us it would sound like wrestling, Cricket only fans can refer to Kochi Gate and Tharoor’s parting quotes from Vollappa Menon

My adds to the above in a Cororate Client environment at Banks

• Marketing is not the PR function with a designer PC, it needs time and effort on the business knowledge and ethos that makes you a brand
• Your advertising company / creative is used to getting five different Hi 5s on the same brief from you and is looking forward to talking to someone else in case you want to modify their creative
• Internal Sponsors and Marketing staff being absent by their “unclear goals” how exactly is Marketing to be held responsible for the budget or the brand?
• Marketing hype not only covers Technology and Market insights about competitor, it can also include with or without your presence at the show, anything material to the ethos of the firm and useful in analysing and allocating the marketing budget.
• Marketing is getting reduced to the easiest basket of expenses that can be shown to be wasted, and will likely mean that you all will be tweeting directly to the customer. Are you ready for that?
• CEOs usually have a Marketing and Deal making background combined, and that can be a winning combination.
• In its deformed form, it is ideal for duplication by any and every unit head with in a unit for wasting company time and resources and as a “power center”