DM Weekly - mad.co.uk, 21 March 2005

As advertisers are being offered a plethora of alternative marketing ’solutions’, DMC asks if reports of a fall in traditional advertising are a little premature.

Having chaired the Alternative Marketing and Advertising Conference in Australia in February, Marketing Week’s Non-Traditional Marketing Conference in London in December and been a panelist at Ad:Tech New York in November, I’ve seen my fair share of the cornucopia of ‘beat the clutter’ techniques being touted. So it’s interesting to compare and contrast the current thinking in the alternative marketing arena and note some emerging global themes.

Firstly, there are brands being built almost entirely using alternative marketing techniques - take smoothie-maker Innocent in the UK and their twin Nudie down under.

Mainstream brands’ activities in the alternative marketing arena are best described as complementary rather than alternative, and where successful have usually been integrated strategically with broader marketing initiatives, rather than used as isolated tactics.

Despite the hype about the success of word-of-mouth and influencer marketing techniques, it was interesting to hear that P&G have no plans to roll out internationally their Tremor US model of 250,000+ teen influencers - their focus will now shift to mums.

This isn’t a huge surprise. Good mainstream advertising can still be effective - if it connects with consumers. It’s connecting with consumers to create conversations that’s now the holy grail of marketing, not the Heinz 57 varieties of alternative techniques used to reach them.

And you don’t need a panel of hundreds of thousands to create conversations and connect with consumers. The Sofitel Hotel Chain in Australia ran a simple Design Your Dream Weekend promotion online and included a viral mechanic to share your dream with your friends. The promotion increased Sofitel’s opt-in mailing list from 1,800 to 100,000+. Ongoing benefits lie in seeing how they convert that permission list into customers.

At the other end of the spectrum, Alex Barnaud from Miami agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky showed that the key to their success isn’t just the cool quirkiness of executions such as the Burger King Subservient Chicken viral campaign. It’s far more about giving your brand a personality then making sure that it’s presented in a way that’s appropriate to the media used.

As it stands, Commercial Alert is in danger of prompting another knee-jerk piece of US legislation like the CAN-SPAM Act which has driven the worst spamming exponents underground while penalising many ethical email marketers.

It’s also about using both alternative and traditional media in an innovative way that enables consumers to see brands as more than just advertisers, creating conversations that connect consumers with brands.

To summarise the universal take-away points from the alternative marketing events I’ve attended recently:

- It’s not just about which 20 per cent of your customers generate 80 per cent of your revenue; it’s also about identifying and targeting the customers who form the 10 per cent of the population that influences the purchasing decisions of the majority. The aim is to help amplify and accelerate word of mouth about your brand, often by simply involving these influencers in a trial before the product is available to the mass market.

- Your product or brand should have some stand-out quality in its class to create self-propelling word of mouth and customer recommendations. If not, focus on developing creative executions that generate buzz.

- Include in your campaign a viral element that consumers can pass from peer to peer, such as a video clip or interactive element whereby the consumer can determine the outcome and involve their friends.

What’s still missing is a standard set of metrics, so marketers can assess the merits of the wide array of alternative marketing techniques on offer. It’s unlikely that there will ever be one set of measurements that fits all the diverse approaches. However, I predict that alternative marketing campaign success will be measured in terms of the impact on customer recommendation rates and the correlation between the increasing instances of these and sales, rather than being based on a simple CPM model. Maybe this model will eventually be used to measure all forms of marketing communications, not just the alternative approaches.

In the end, you’ve got to have either a stunning product that sells itself, or buzzable creative ideas that connect with consumers to help amplify and accelerate word of mouth. Just remember, it may not be your (tr)ad agency that comes up with that good idea - it could be any one of your marketing partners, and possibly after brainstorming with all stakeholders including your influential customers.