Anyone seen the brand manager?

According to the now accepted story, the concept of the brand manager was invented in the early 1930s by a young Harvard Graduate by the name of Neil McElroy when at Procter and Gamble. The core of his approach was that clearly focused attention should be given to individual ‘brands’. There should be a nominated person who would take charge of the brand, and to go with this there would be a team of people devoted to thinking about all aspects of the marketing of that brand. This dedicated group should attend to one brand and one brand only. The concern of these managers would be the brand, which would be marketed as if it were a separate business. In this way the qualities of every brand would be distinguished from those of every other brand in the business.
An interesting history lesson certainly, but is there something here to take on board today? In today’s shopping centre world there appear to be a plethora of individuals taking on any number of roles – advertising and promotion, asset management, leasing, development, operations, to name a few as well, as the centre managers themselves. In fact we seem to have a veritable number of people in any number of committees and working groups all ‘working on the shopping centre’. If we assume that the shopping centre is a ‘brand’ and I am sure I can find enough people who will tell me that indeed it is, the logical question is where is the brand manager?

Is it for instance the asset manager, since he or she invariably has a role to play in the product mix? Possibly, but they often have no role in the day-to-day running of the centre itself and in these current times act very much in a business to business sales function rather than getting close to end consumers.

So is it the centre manager? Possibly, but they conversely don’t always have personal responsibility for the marketing of the centre, which is certainly a core function of the brand manager, and that role usually sits quite logically with the marketing manager.

So is it the marketing manager? Possibly, but they are often the junior member of the team and have to defer to either the centre manager or the asset manager on many matters.

We could also argue that the architects and the development team have a brand management role since they are often the ones who design the centre in the first place but who after a successful launch, somewhat like a midwife hands their newborn over to the centre management team.

Now I’m not saying that this is a problem but some of the most successful marketing organisations in the world have used the brand management model to this day, and whilst the brand manager is nearly 80 years old I still think there is life in there for many years to come. So the question for shopping centre owners is ‘could you learn something from the model and would it help your schemes to become real brands if indeed that is what you are really trying to build?’

Are those my numbers?

It is always pleasing when a client actually quotes us, and in the Daily Telegraph recently we read just that. In an article about Liverpool, Iain MacGillivray, Centre Manager for St Johns Shopping Centre, quoted some average spend figures directly from surveys that we have undertaken in his centre. This helped to show that even in the midst of a recession and with the recent opening of Liverpool One, the new 42-acre shopping centre on their doorstep, average spend per shopper party had risen by around £2 per trip from £24.96 in Spring 08 to £27.05 in Spring 09. This is great for Iain and St Johns since it proves independently of anything he thinks what has actually been going on. It is critical at this time with only footfall as an indicator of performance which has a +/- accuracy of 10% and random feedback from retailers that you know how well you are performing – especially when the pressure from underperforming retailers is probably at its peak. There is nothing more effective and powerful than being able to confidently talk about your business and be able to quantify your customers behaviour and their opinions and thus help the retailers in your centre to understand their context and their potential.

No hunches, no gut feel, no finger in the air, just good solid facts direct from your own shoppers. On a personal level it is particularly pleasing to see just exactly what insights we can bring through our unique brand of shopping centre research. I can’t think of a better advert for us, thank you Iain.

Top 10 tips for Market Research

One of the events of our month is the arrival of Management Today magazine, within which they never fail to deliver a list of top tips.  On the basis of if you can’t beat them join them, here is a top 10 to do list for marketing research projects:

1. Understand the client’s needs: sounds simple but it is important to recognise the needs of different stakeholders and to be aware of the demands on them. 
2. Play back the brief: the brief may not always be written down, yes really, so it is vital to confirm back to the client and/or budget owner exactly what you will be doing.
3. Clarify deliverables: whilst you may visualise the output, this may not be as clear to all parties, so confirming what everyone will get is vital.
4. Develop a step-by-step plan: all the clichés about planning are true and none more so in research, and there probably can never be too much detail.
5. Remain objective: the purpose of market research is to deliver an independent, expert opinion based on credible, rigorous  questioning and analysis of your customers. 
6. Track the whole process: regular updates are vital to the successful management of the project.
7. Clarify who does what: make sure everyone involved knows exactly what is expected of them.
8. Accept that things can go wrong: stuff goes wrong, don’t be surprised by it, but do ensure that you have alternatives in place.
9. Keep your client informed: we’re all inquisitive, so  make sure there is a mechanism for keeping the brand owner aware of progress.
10. Learn from it: A de-brief at the end of the project is a must to ensure constant improvement.

Qualitative Research Venues

We are often asked “where is the best place to hold Focus Groups?”  This is actually quite straightforward.   Here are some tips.

1. Brand image: As the identity of the client or business under study may be announced it is important that the location used is somewhere which reflects the status of the brand. 
2. Easy access: This means that a location should be chosen with good public transport links and with nearby parking.
3. The basics: The room should be big enough to accommodate your respondents and you sitting comfortably in a circle with some additional sits for observers ‘at the back’, have some natural light, be at a comfortable temperature for up to 15 people (not have a noisy air conditioning or heating unit to disrupt the voice recording) , be totally quiet and closed off from any people wandering in or past,  and tea/coffee/water (but not alcohol) should be available.  Having a separate area to meet and greet the respondents so they can gather until all our present is really helpful.
4. Beware cheap alternatives: Be aware that the brand owner’s own premises may not be ideal, for instance with shopping centre research attendees are less likely to be critical of their experience if groups take place actually in the centre’s management suite.
5. Rented rooms: Most branded hotel chains offer more than adequate facilities for the purposes of holding Focus Groups.  Again the savings to be made in ‘no cost’ alternatives are usually false savings if the facilities are inappropriate (see point 3) since the cost of the venue tends to be less than 10% of the total project cost.
6. Filming: One final point, if clients wish the groups to be filmed they should ideally be held in bespoke studios which are available around the country. These locations are usually fitted with two-way mirrors and an observation room.  If a viewing facility is not available filming can be arranged through a freelance professional service.

Focus Group Respondents

Another question we get asked is how do you determine who to recruit for your Focus Groups? Essentially we will aim to recruit to a given specification which is likely to be defined by criteria such as age, gender, or life stage, but can also be determined by attitudes, values or behaviour.  Where a clear recruitment brief is available that is one thing, but I’ve also been faced with the comment “I want to appeal to everyone from 18 to 80.” It’s a nice concept but essentially flawed, as far as Focus Group research is concerned, unless you are able to stretch your budget to cover all these groups.  Our approach is that in qualitative research we are aiming to talk to a small group who between them may help us uncover those issues relevant to a particular demographic, in other words each group’s composition should be of ‘like-minded’ individuals to maintain relevance. 

 

So it is important that we recruit along certain lines.  A too tightly-defined group, for example ABC1 current users, aged 28, non-working mums and married with 3 children, might be feasible to recruit given enough time and money but is almost certainly one extreme.  At the other end of the scale a group spec of ‘Female shoppers aged 18 to 44 years’ is probably too wide, since the 18 years olds are more likely to be living at with their parents, or possibly students, and the forty-somethings may well have children if not grandchildren of their own.  This means that they will have quite different perspectives on most issues, including your brand or market.  Mixing genders is also something that we try to avoid.  For example, combining young male pub drinkers and young female pub goers in a group could be a complete waste of time and money as each potentially is oppressed by the others expression of their differing motivations and needs from a pub. Female shoppers also have particular views on shopping which males frequently do not begin to comprehend and mixing them is not at all advisable.

 

The key issues to consider when creating groups, therefore, are:-

 

1. Gender: the ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’ cliché is true in most markets.
2. Age/life-stage: Pre-family respondents probably don’t have any interest in nappies, and many retired have no need for a mortgage!
3. Social class: Although this has fallen out of fashion it is still in vogue in the popular press and a number of brand owners still target using social grade or class.
4. Income: students, unless they are independently wealthy, are probably not in the market for Ferraris and many of the better off are not likely to be motivated by a lot of promotional offers.
5. Usage/behaviour: This is possibly the most important issue when?, how often? and have they ever used your brand? - if recruiting for ‘regular’ users what is your definition of ‘regular’? Lest not forget the all important lapsed user or the non user group where it is vital to ensure they fit your criteria of ‘non’ or ‘lapsed’ customers.
6. Values, beliefs and motivations: These are the deep-seated drivers that influence behaviour, and that help to explain the reasons behind the behaviours that take place.

Discount off next visit

The other Friday evening my wife and a group of her friends went out for a meal. The restaurant has had a good reputation, they had all been there before and there was no reason to doubt that they would not get great food and service. When the meals arrived however the food tasted bland, and most of the dishes were not sufficiently heated through. It got to the point where they did actually complain to the waiter. The response they received was that they could “get a discount off their next visit” – not a particularly good one since the whole party has vowed never to go back again anyway.

We know that a complaint properly handled can actually increase customer satisfaction and even go so far as to create a real brand advocate. On the other hand in the current climate this was probably not the best way to respond to customer feedback.

Valentine’s Day

I heard on the radio over the weekend that, according to research by Asda, 39% of respondents were looking to ‘cut the cost of Valentine’s day’.  It’s an interesting statistic, but is this something that any normal person would actually think about doing; I mean totally unprompted. Sure we look to cut the cost of our groceries, manage the cost of Christmas, or try to budget our summer holiday. But Valentine’s day? Believe me, I’m all for market research, but I’m not sure what this really tells us other than that thankfully the media still lap up ‘research’ statistics and brand owners will continue to source them.

Tweet tweet

It seems at the moment you can’t open a newspaper or turn on the radio without hearing about Twitter – so I thought if you can’t beat ‘em.  Here in the office we’ve been trying to figure it out as well for a couple of weeks now. I think we fall into two broad camps, one just can’t figure out what it is all about at all, the other, albeit a much smaller group, and the one that I am in, is intent on trying to understand more about it and its potential business applications.

Hearing about what Wossy is getting up to or hearing about Stephen Fry stuck in a lift is of course one thing, however what I was interested in last week was how Fresh & Easy the US grocery chain owned by Tesco was using Twitter to communicate to its customers promotional offers, recipe ideas or new store openings.

However what is also interesting is that despite 4.4 million users, of which 220,000 are in the UK alone it seems as though the founders have not got a clear idea about how they will actually make any money – not the first time we’ve heard this about an internet start up.  This means they are now thinking about charging brands to use Twitter, so I’m fascinated to see how this develops since I’m sure there is a way to harness this technology for our own particular business use

The other thing I’d really like to know though is how Twitter researched before launch, if indeed it ever went into research at all, my guess would be they skipped that bit in the business plan.  Apparently the fastest growing demographic group are the 35-44 year olds – I wonder if this was predicted.  And did anyone foresee its application for political candidates to ‘tweet’ tens of thousands of  voters? As I say I have to believe there are some interesting applications but maybe ones we have yet to invent.

I guess it doesn’t need a particularly powerful crystal ball to predict that we will see a degree of convergence and /or consolidation in what are defined as these social networking services.  If I’m regularly going to check Facebook, get off my latest ‘tweet’, log into LinkedIn to see what my professional network are up to, check my office emails, and also those who I prefer to contact via my personal email account it figures that whether in the office or at home the whole process becomes a bit of a chore and doesn’t allow much time for…living! 

What’s in a name?

As we at Business Blueprints debate our own possible name change I’m reminded of the current campaign for Norwich Union. One of the things we do is measure awareness, be it specific brand awareness, advertising awareness or individual media recall. So perhaps it is interesting to see a company spending heavily on TV using such cultural icons as Ringo, Bruce Willis, Alice Cooper and Dame Edna to highlight their name change to Aviva.

Interesting perhaps but maybe also a little misplaced. I’m sorry, but didn’t they change the name to Aviva some years ago or as a customer am I imagining it? I’m all for getting a news story across which clearly they feel they are doing but where is the benefit? Where are the brand or product messages? Are they targeting current or new customers? Or is it in fact a very expensive b2b campaign for the city? How many people can you see saying ‘Honey, I must change our insurance cover to those nice Aviva people now they’ve got a new name!’

Which brings us back to research, and I hope they’ve done theirs properly. I worked in a sector a few years back where company and brand changes seemed to come around every three months. The only people who seemed to gain anything from it were the design companies who were paid to re-logo anything that moved and a few things that didn’t. I can’t remember a single change doing anything other than further confuse the very people they should have been considering most – their customers.

One assumes that an established company such as Norwich Union knows what it is doing. That is has weighed up the values in the existing brand name and evaluated the potential benefits of the shift to Aviva. But as we know but for every good name change there is a not so good name change, for every 02 success there is a corresponding Consignia.

Last orders?

With reportedly nearly four pubs closing down every day is there now a need for the traditional pub to redefine itself? How can a pub maximise its sales opportunities? Does it even know what they are?

The factors behind the current problems are well documented. Cheap supermarket booze, the smoking ban, an ageing population, drink drive awareness campaigns, all now combined with the current economic environment. In these conditions pub operators probably need to think beyond cost reduction initiatives and explore initiatives that will both keep those customers they already have happy and find ways to tempt others back into their locals. With a raft of restaurant deals out there of which 2-for-1 offers are becoming the norm one local pub has gone even further and introduced the £1 meal. Apparently customers have been queuing up to try the home-cooked pub grub at The Piltdown Man near Uckfield in East Sussex. I hope they have done their sums on this one since it seems like a fantastic offer which I must surely try myself.

There are other ideas around, but not necessarily linked with pubs but that seem to make some sense include a dropping off point for goods bought on the internet or a place to recharge electronic equipment such as laptops, ipods and phones. Whatever the solution might be, the pub along with the post office, and even the church, now more than ever needs to define its place in our lives. According to The Guardian there are now 350 village pubs that are also shops, or post offices, cook school meals, or provide IT training.