Deutschland, Deutschland über opt-in

With the spectre of edited Roll access still looming over the heads of UK marketers, the ‘Age of Opt-in’ has dawned across in Germany. The country’s data protection regulations have been amended with the explicit aim of curbing the trade in personal information between companies. There’s a three-year transition period involved as well as some exemptions (non-profit organisations, for example), but it’s an ominous sign when a Ministry of the Interior puts out a statement which says, in part: ‘The targeting of advertising is increasingly felt to be a burden, and to work against the desire for greater self-determination.’

From Nietzche’s Übermensch to über opt-in. Dunno about Denmark, but there’s certainly something rotten lurking over in the direction of the Black Forrest.

In other developments… Another day, another data breach, it seems. Brickbats to three HSBC firms (HSBC Life UK, HSBC Actuaries and Consultants, and HSBC Insurance Brokers), who last week were fined £3 million by the Financial Services Authority for losing personal information belonging to over 180,000 policyholders in - you guessed it! - the post.

To all those affected, my commiserations. I can only hope that none of the ‘lost’ information, which included unencrypted name, address, date of birth and NI numbers, has fallen into the wrong hands. And to HSBC management: Kindly remind your staff about the importance of data security, will you? Having previously ‘lost’ 370,000 customer records in April 2008, is it just me or are data protection lessons not being learned in certain quarters?

Spell What??

 Give me an ‘L’! Give me a ‘U’! Give me a ‘V’! Give me a ‘W’! Give me a…

Actually, enough of the alphabet-obsession when it comes to describing the shape of this recession. Is it just me or is a lot of the media punditry of late beginning to collectively sound like some sort of deranged, dyslexic cheer squad? Only without the mini-skirts and pom-poms. All I know is: (i) we’re still in it up to our proverbials; (ii) a few isolated green shoots of recovery do not a sustained upswing make; and (iii) none of Westminster’s rather expensive recovery programmes seem to be doing UK SME’s much in the way of good.

‘Tis indeed a cruel business summer. But maybe – just maybe! – bad times aren’t around the corner and the outlook isn’t necessarily vile. Branding consultancy Clear reported in a recent survey that 42 per cent of Britons are still spending money and feeling positive about their financial situation, so there’s still market share to be gained. In a zero-budget environment, however, the burning question is, of course: How?

All things marketing have earned especially close attention from yours truly since January. Not in any pejorative sense, but as a means by which we can cut better deals with advertisers, gain the most insight from our current client data and generally try to determine which combination of channels delivers the best return. In my opinion, getting ahead during tough times is all about understanding trends. For if you can quantify what and when your sector’s buying, you’ll be able to cut your marketing cloth accordingly. N'est-ce pas?

Unlike some CEO’s I’ve observed (and who shall remain nameless), one’s first impulse during tough times shouldn’t be to slash marketing and PR spends. I’m not advocating blithely carrying on as usual, please note – a recession is attention-worthy, after all – but it is possible to market in ways which increase response rates and ROI even during a downturn (DM and digital is an excellent channel combination, for example). Ditching ye olde volume-based, ‘bigger is better’ approach to marketing in favour of a marcoms stance which is more targeted and that emphasises value is also a canny move. But before you direct your marketing people to press ‘Send’ on your next e-mail campaign in the mistaken belief that online will provide a cheap, accessible channel by which to spam your way to recession-busting sales glory, I suggest you think again. My observation is that online is all but maxed-out at present. Open- and click-through rates are in freefall as punters are being inundated with unsolicited offers. It’s as if we’ve come full circle and are repeating the mistakes of old Eighties-styled direct mail – only digitally and not via letterboxes.

The companies and brands that will not only survive but even prosper during the rest of 2009 and beyond will be those whose marketing messages reassure consumers and whose products/services are perceived to add value. Now is definitely not the time for clever tricks or expensive marketing gimmicks, I believe. So let’s accentuate the positives, better manage the negatives and continue to give clients the right encouragement to part with their hard earned, shall we?

On His Majesty’s Not-So-Secret Service

 
The Prince of Wales has calculated that we have just 96 months left to save the world. Yep, he who has multi-million pound estates, dozens of staff and whose worldwide jaunts cost the UK public hundreds of thousands of pounds each year delivered a searing indictment on unfettered materialism at the annual Richard Dimbleby Lecture last week.

Kind of ironic, huh?

All (considerable) cynicism aside, however, it was good to see HRH mixing with leading industrialists and environmentalists at the Dimbleby talkfest. Charles seems increasingly eager to embrace topical issues in high-profile public fora, so if this gives him a sense of purpose and helps avert looming environmental crisis, then good on him. As the future monarch the Prince deserves to be remembered for more than just wanting to be Camilla’s ‘tampon’ (Charles’ words, not mine!).

Hence am thinking of adding ‘royalty’ to my lexicon of important, recession-busting ‘r’ words, which includes ‘recyclability’, ‘relevance’ ‘responsiveness’ and ‘retention’. Maybe we should ask Charles to endorse PAS 2020, the DMA’s Environmental Standard. PAS 2020 has inextricably linked key environmental performance indicators with marketing fundamentals like better targeting, data hygiene and recyclability in ways which can only but enhance the reputation of the DM industry as well as help us to reach the industry’s next recycling target.

Charles is right: without ‘coherent financial incentives and disincentives’ we could indeed only have 96 months to avert ‘irretrievable climate and ecosystem collapse, and all that goes with it.’

The clock’s ticking, folks. Give PAS 2020 a shot today – if only for the sake of tomorrow.

 

Game, Set and Match

Congrats to Roger Federer on winning the Wimbledon men’s singles crown on Sunday. That this is his 15^th Grand Slam title is a remarkable achievement. I swear the man is a tennis machine. And he’s only 27! Quite astounding.

Of course conspicuously absent from Federer’s epic final against the über cool Andy Roddick was that other Andy – as in Murray. Just prior to Andy M’s semi-final loss on Friday, the amusingly banal Andy Murray-o-Meter (tracking the burning issue ‘Is Andy Murray a Brit or a Scot?’), had peaked at a ‘yes’ vote of 86%. I checked this morning and see it’s down to 77%. My bet’s on a further slide south over coming days. We Brits are an unforgiving lot, no?

Yet again, after all the acres of press coverage and gargantuan hype, Mr Murray failed to deliver a Grand Slam victory for Team GB. Not his fault – the guy did his best but was beaten on the day by a better player (Roddick). So is Andy Murray the nation’s next planet-conquering sporting brand in the making? I think not. As the always insightful Mark Ritson observed in Marketing recently, ‘the harsh reality is that Murray is a fine tennis player, but a hopeless prospect as the next Beckham, no matter how advanced the brand strategy applied to his future career.’

So best of British – and Scottish! – to you, Andy Murray. But to paraphrase Monty Python in The Life of Brian, I suggest we all remember that you’re not a sports brand messiah, you’re just a very moody and petulant boy who does a fine job swinging a tennis racquet.

Oh, and the day after Michael Jackson’s three-ring circus send off (sorry, Memorial Service), in Los Angeles, this exclusive report just in: He’s still dead, folks. I just love our ‘sleb-obsessed culture, don’t you?

Deliver us from SPAM evil

Bravo BS 10012!

Almost one in five UK businesses have breached the Data Protection Act at least once – so found a BSI survey of 500 SME’s recently. That’s worrying news indeed, given that there’s around 5 million small-to-medium sized businesses in GB dealing in all manner of sensitive personal information, ranging from credit card numbers and addresses to ethnic origin and criminal records, on a daily basis.

So great to see BSI Group launching the first British Standard designed specifically to promote data management best practice – BS 10012. The Data Protection Act (DPA) is certainly very detailed and a rather intimidating document to the uninitiated, but given BSI’s finding that 65 per cent of SME’s provide nothing in the way of data protection training for their staff, this is a data management ‘best practice’ Everest we’d surely all do well to climb and conquer as quickly and effectively as possible.

If you’re interested (and I hope those of you who don’t have adequate data handling policies/strategies in place will be!), BSI is running a conference entitled Information Governance & Data Protection Standards, Guidance and Best Practice from June 30 – July 1. For details, visit www.bsigroup.com/conferences.

Watson’s No Longer On

I’m no great Labour fan, but I have to admit I was disappointed to read about Tom Watson’s resignation from Cabinet on June 5^th – on Twitter, no less.

I don’t think many Brits will be shedding tears over the departure of the likes of Jacqui Smith, Hazel Blears, Caroline Flint and James Purnell from Brown Gordon’s (now rather anaemic-looking) front bench, but Mr Watson’s a rare politician indeed – engaged, tech savvy and articulate on all things data and IT. Tom had been doing a great job championing the importance of information and all things digital within Westminster over the past 18 months – work which I only hope he can continue from the back bench.

So kudos, Tom. Hope you indeed can enjoy more quality time with your family while continuing to go the whole nine political yards.

Bank Swindles and Grateful Dead

The weather’s too lovely to dwell on grim news, but I’m going to stick my neck out and foreshadow a gathering storm methinks we’re going to hear a lot more about in the autumn.

Was intrigued/disturbed to read Andy Kroll’s article Bank bailout: The greatest swindle ever sold about the six ways in which US taxpayers are being scammed by the American government’s US$12 trillion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). It seems the biggest bank bailout in history is rife with flaws – a lack of oversight, endemic overpayments, no coherent plan for returning failing institutions to profitability and perpetuating the Byzantine, overleveraged financial practices which sent the whole system down the crapper to begin with, among them. Given the big, blank cheque that Darling Alastair wrote the City, I have a sneaking suspicion similar shortcomings are going to bite us all in the proverbial on this side of the pond too. Am more than happy to be proven wrong on this one, but…The fat financial lady hasn’t sung the last sorry note on this ongoing saga, that’s for sure.

With the Ashes approaching, we Brits can be forgiven for indulging in a spot of light-hearted Aussie bashing (my PR guy’s from Oz and he’s already ducking for cover). So I was bemused to see reports last week that A$14 million of the Australian government’s recent A$900 per taxpayer cash handout designed to stimulate the economy was sent to people who had died. Seems Westminster isn’t alone when it comes to government data handling ***-ups. With all due apologies to the late, great stoner Jerry Garcia, it seems Australia’s the place to be if you want to join the ‘grateful dead’.

Have a good weekend, folks.

Rolling back the Faux-Green Tide

Arun Sudhaman’s article How to fight a green backlash (PR Week, 1/5/09) made for interesting yet not entirely surprising reading, I must say. That 81 per cent of consumers indicated that they are paying more attention to cost over environmental credentials is entirely understandable as this god-awful recession bites ever-harder into household budgets.

We’d be doing Green ‘Team GB’ a disservice if we painted ourselves as frugal spendthrifts all too willing to trade off long-term ecological sustainability for short term savings at the supermarket, however. The market outlook isn’t necessarily that vile, after all. At the risk of countering one survey with another, Branding consultancy Clear recently reported that 42 per cent of Britons are still spending money and feeling positive about their financial situation. This is surely cause for celebration, and evidences that there’s still market share out there to be had.

Business rules of engagement have fundamentally changed these past months, obviously. The companies and brands which will not only survive but even prosper during the rest of 2009 and beyond will be those whose marcoms reassure consumers and whose products/services are perceived to add value – to their hip pockets, sense of wellbeing and the environment. Now is definitely not the time for clever eco-tricks or marketing gimmicks, in my opinion. Offer the punters something tangible and aspirational and believe me, as the CEO of a company who’s products stop over 1.3 billion items of unnecessary junk mail being sent each year, they can and will respond.

At the risk of sounding like a heretic, maybe this is the recession we had to have to roll back the faux-Green marcoms tide once and for all. The public, environment and marketing practices will be all the better for it in the long run, I reckon.

Customer Marcoms: A whole different kettle of Tweets?

 Discovering that Twitter – Britain’s favourite digital channel du jour – has a retention rate of only 40 per cent really doesn’t come as much surprise. Maybe I’m getting a little old in the tooth, but Nielsen Online’s confirmation that even the short term appeal of reading such scintillating Tweets as ‘back from gym, swore at cat, now making cuppa’ points to the limited appeal of 140-character messaging. Even for ADD types.

The marketing moral of this story? Gathering more and more followers on Twitter is one thing, but keeping them engaged and interested is a very different (and difficult) kettle of Tweets for brand managers. My company’s on Twitter and this week I’m setting up my own account as the new Chair of the DMA’s Data Council, so I’m not just barking from the sidelines here. You can be sure I’m giving my ‘sticky content’ fingers a very thorough licking. (Sorry – didn’t mean to gross you out.)

In this post-content age, do the Twitter stats point to the medium no longer being the message, perhaps? Sure, Twitter’s now adding applications like Tweetdeck and TwitterGadget in a bid, I assume, to enhance the service’s retention rates. But at the risk of sounding like a cyber-canary tweeting in the digital coal mine, maybe we’d all do well to heed this warning: Online’s no ‘magic bullet’ for recession-bred client communication strategies.

Must fly. Stephen Fry’s just Tweeted that he’s going to the loo. Can’t miss that now, can I?

This little piggy goes to…

 
Darling Alistair’s budget, swine flu and news that a stage musical based on the life of Jade Goody is possibly in the offing. What do these disparate events have in common? Nothing, actually – except that all are in no way welcome, if you ask me.

I won’t add to the acres of column inches which accompanied last week’s budget, except to say that we should probably warn our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren (should we have them), to get used to hearing the word ‘DEBT’ quite often for the next fifty years or so. And of course the less said about the late Primark Princess the better.

Unlike ‘debt’, a word we’re not hearing too often enough currently is ‘responsible’ – a concept which has particular resonance for DM. Great to see President Obama calling for US banks to clean up their mailing practices, for example. As reported in past days on Brand Republic, that 200 million Americans each receive 10 to 15 credit card offers per week verges on the obscene, in terms of damage to both brand image and the environment.

Times are obviously tough at present. Yet surely the brands which will not only survive but even prosper during this recession will be those who show a  more respectful relationship with customers by not playing fast and loose with their information, mailing deceased persons and/or boring punters senseless with mismatched offers.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Welcome to DM’s Mission Imperative, as opposed to Mission Impossible. 

Re-invention

Madonna has a PhD in it; Meryl Streep’s won countless gongs for it; President Obama thankfully has no need of it; wily Nicolas Sarkozy does it en Français and poor old Brown Gordon is desperate for a dose for it.

No, I’m not talking about falling into suave, Cole Porter-styled l’amour, but the mercurial talent for re-invention.

Steeped as we all are in a culture that’s premised upon success-at-all-costs, the current recession is biting anyone who can’t or won’t adapt to tougher market conditions especially hard. 

So what can we do? We can adapt offerings; tweak business plans; better manage cash flows; retain the most customers possible and/or generally do whatever’s necessary to keep our collective heads above water.

But amidst the umpteen challenges facing us are also opportunities for re-invention. How can we do what we do better and more cost-effectively? How can we expand our income streams? How can we better market and PR ourselves? The answers to all these questions can be strategic catalysts for growth and re-invention – even during tough times.

I’m not talking about applying empty, Alastair Campbell-styled spin tactics, either. At the end of the day, there has to be some solid substance to what we all do. But ask yourself this: What can I be doing now to not only survive but prosper once markets improve?

There’s always new and smarter ways of doing the ‘same old’ and keeping one step ahead of the pack, after all. Just don’t publish a book entitled S.E.X. and/or marry a French pop star. Both are more of a handful than they’re worth.

Q1 down, only four to go…

‘April is the cruellest month’ – well, at least T.S. Elliot thought so in The Waste Land. As Q1 of 2009 disappears into our collective rear view mirror, unlike Mr Elliot’s morose opus, I hope you aren’t spending this month burying dead projects, client files and/or business plans.

The first months of this year have seen many of us trying to make sense of a plethora of statistics, what with the RPI (Retail Prices Index) recently heading south to 0% for the first time in 49 years while its cousin, the CPI (Consumer Price Index), unexpectedly heading north to 3.2%. Meaning? We’re buying more baked beans while waiting for deflation to bring LCD screen costs down, if the econ-boffins are to be believed. (Bollocks, in other words.) All of which is cold comfort to the many talented people who are currently looking for work through no fault of their own.

‘It’s enough to make you want to drive your Mercedes over a cliff!’ I remember Dame Edna remarking rather colourfully about the 1987 crash. Well, this time around there’s no Mercedes. It’s been traded for a second-hand Vauxhall to help pay last month’s school fees or mortgage.

The rules of engagement for UK businesses have obviously changed; and not necessarily for the better – at least in the short-term. But before any of us reach for the Prozac, it’s worth remembering, even in our darkest moments, that: (i) the economy hasn’t entirely ground to a halt, it’s merely slowed; and (ii) there’s still business out there to be had.  We just have to fight even harder for it.

Keep the faith folks, is all I’m saying. One quarter down, only four to go until better times return.

Hopefully…

It’s official – marketing rocks

Good news: A recent KDB survey of one thousand UK finance directors has yielded a heartening stat, namely that four-out-of-five bean counters favour investing in consumer spending during the recession.

Listen closely. Hear that? It’s the sound of hell freezing over. Or an Eagles re-union concert – one of the two, anyhow.

Yep, 84 per cent of FD’s surveyed by the consumer insight firm believe that ‘increasing marketing spend during a recession does indeed help position companies to gain market share coming out of a downturn.’ As I’ve always been a big believer in the benefits of aligning well-targeted marketing campaigns and consumer insight with solid product/service delivery, I can only hope KDB’s sample wasn’t skewed.

Nice to see FD’s finally waking up to what we, as a sector, are all about.

Have a great Easter, Passover or whatever other High Holiday you may or may not be celebrating over coming days.

A Bite of the Big Apple

Having just swung back from the Big Apple (he said, ever-so-gloatingly!), I have to say that, as a city, New York never ceases to amaze me – what with all the buzz, the arrogance, the sheer scale and 24 hour culture.

This wasn’t just a downtime jaunt, however. I was speaking to a bunch of senior US marketers at a conference – trying to enlighten them in typically insensitive manner about how backward and downright inept data hygiene is, States-side. For a nation that mails 100 billion pieces of DM a year (that’s 868 per household, folks), it seems utterly implausible that their suppression industry barely exists.

It’s bad enough that the deceased and home-movers are being bombarded unnecessarily, but must shocking of all is the fact that 40 billion pieces of DM are being poured into US landfills unopened. Long story short: Almost 50 per cent of US DM is discarded and never read. Appalling, no?

My views on the UK’s rather shoddy suppression rates and attitudes to consumers are well documented, but compared to our American cousins, we’re paragons of best practice virtue. Keep up the good work, everyone.

PS. Great news that Jack Straw’s much-cherished Clause 152 of his Coroners and Justice Bill has gone to whatever inner circle of hell is reserved for ill-conceived legislation. The unfettered exchange of personal information across Whitehall and beyond that this Clause would have permitted really was a step too far, in my opinion.