I recently read in Wired magazine that a 2005 German study concluded that people who take above average risks have a higher than average index of life satisfaction. Further, researchers at the University of British Columbia found that among business managers in the US and Canada, those who take greater risks are the most successful.
That got me to thinking about Australia and where we would measure up in a similar study.
I think I would have to report that based on the general output of the Australian advertising and marketing community you would have to assume we are as risk averse as the worst of them.
Where are the ball tearing flashes of brilliance and genuinely scary work? Now, I am sure that each and every piece is both strategically and creatively solid, just not that different or compelling versus anything that has gone before it.
So, why are we so damn risk averse? Could it be that each and every one of us is so focused on professional advancement that sticking our neck out now isn’t the right thing to do? Is the inherent need and desire to grow as a brand, or as an agency? Perhaps it is simply the overwhelming sense of fear that our entire community has the ability to instil in even the bravest individual – the fear of being cut down by our peers.
I would posit that it is the latter; unfortunately the great Australian tradition of attacking success and anyone that sticks their head above the parapet is stronger than ever. And poppies aren’t even a native Australian flower!
I hate to say it, but I really notice the lack of ‘we’ that exists in Australia. In my recent experiences around the world I can honestly say I have never experienced such collective distaste for one’s own kind.
Furthermore, we seem to have real issues with home grown business and marketing heroes – where are the Richard Bransons, the Dan Wiedens or the Vijay Mallyas? We need our own versions of these business superstars to demonstrate and glorify pathways to success – probably littered with highly risky decisions along the way. Our best example of this is Rupert Murdoch and unfortunately we lost him to the Americans!
I think that Franklin J. Schaffner may have had it right back in 1968 in the Planet of the Apes, when he had a particularly wise ape declare: “Ape shall never kill ape”. If simians take care of one another, why can’t we marketing folk do the same?
I recently read an excellent article by Charles Vallance called the Art of Unlearning, focusing on all the marketing orthodoxies that I have to jettison to thrive in the New World Order. To be honest with you, it gave me a faint tumescence in the pantaloons, largely because unlearning is my forte.
But then, wallop, Mr. V delivered a rather hefty kick in the spuds with one of his departing thoughts, saying that ‘the big idea’ school of marketing is rapidly giving way to that of momentum. ‘Old school big ideas can look ponderous and industrial when compared to nimble, agile innovators who tend towards hyper-activity rather than hyper-discipline.’
Times are changing, but does the old school big idea really have to take such a momentous whupping in the process? And is it really the enemy of the soi-disant nimble, agile innovator?
Sadly, big ideas are increasingly seen as an anachronism – quicksand into which the best executions get sucked rather than rock-solid platforms on which to strut our funky stuff. People seem terrified of them for precisely the reason that we should embrace them: they provide focus and continuity, a point of reference for consumers in the choppy, hyper-competitive waters of developed capitalist markets. Dare I say it, but they provide the basis for those increasingly rare things – campaigns – you know the things that we used to do back in the day shortly after getting our horses shod and our moustaches tarred.
The obsession with hyperactivity embodies one of the cancers of modern marketing and communications – the tendency just to lob one-off grenades into the market simply to achieve lots of noise, rather than to build anything. If we’re not careful, brand management will become like managing firework displays – brief bursts of glory before fizzling out to bugger all. The value of big ideas is that you can keep executing time after time, leaving the embers glowing even when you’re not doing anything in market.
And who said that you can’t be hyper-active AND hyper-disciplined? Red Bull don’t seem to struggle too much whilst sheeting back to their ‘Gives you wings’ platform. Honda’s Parachute jump, Axe’s Gamekillers and Pamper’s ‘World of Babies’ installations are all good examples of gleefully and innovatively playing off a core idea.
I’m not arguing for a slavish devotion to the big idea. As we evolve, being engaging, evocative and useful become key priorities – O2’s Bluebook, is a great example of this - but the big idea needn’t die an ignominious death in the process. If it does we may well become the Paris Hiltons of brand management, generating headlines but being utterly vacuous in the process.
Al Crawford, Executive Planning Director, Clemenger BBDO
The term ‘Social Marketing’ refers to the application of commercial marketing practices to the not-for-profit world of government, trusts and charities.
A core objective of social marketing is changing behaviour for the social good, and practitioners have enviable marketing metrics to work with.
How many of us in the commercial sector can boast that our marketing efforts have actually helped save lives or make the world a nicer place?! There’s a good deal of documentation on the effectiveness of campaigns encouraging Australians to give up smoking, stop drink-driving and so on.
Social marketers get to play with the 4Ps of the old-school marketing mix.
Their “Product” is behaviour – what they’re ‘selling’ is a behaviour change, like slowing down when driving, covering up in the sun, or making a donation.
“Price” is the cost to the citizen of changing (or not changing) behaviour, and this can range from painful death to mild guilt, depending on the issue.
“Place” is about the influence of physical location on behaviour, as anyone living in a bushfire zone would be able to articulate very clearly.
And “Promotion” comes down to classic marketing practices. Nielsen’s latest report on top advertisers has government as the biggest spender on traditional media, once federal and state government spends are combined.
So that’s how social marketers roll with the traditional 4Ps.
But social marketing is special – they have a marketing mix with two extra 6Ps, namely Partnerships and Policy.
“Partnerships” is about working collaboratively with other organizations. With limited budgets and resources, partnerships can be critical to success.
The other extra P of the social marketing mix is “Policy”.
This is where politics comes in and where connecting different policy agendas can maximize the overall impact of a social marketing campaign.
World Vision is Australia’s largest charitable organisation and their core mission is to tackle global poverty.
Poverty has many different causes and they all link into different aspects of the policy agenda e.g. employment, education, health, housing.
In recent years World Vision has connected the policy areas of climate change and global poverty, and in doing so has been able to increase financial donations from individuals and governments to fund new projects.
So they are the 6Ps of the social marketing mix.
If you disagree or think there should be other Ps, why not comment on the B&T Blog
