Welcome to Marketing Superior

The place where we are always striving to do better, to learn more from both successes and failure, to celebrate the good and denigrate the poor and to comment constructively towards the achievement of marketing superiority
There are many many marketing sites and blogs. All seem to suffer from the same faults: from checklists of must do's to achieve marketing success; rants from a particular standpoint especially those who mistake the technique and the technology for the solution; white papers masquerading as a marketing truth but essentially espousing the benefits of only one particular software product and well you know what I mean. To my mind they demean the noble art and practice of marketing.
Thus this blogs aims to be the counterpoint, to recognise that marketing is always about achieving superiority in the customers' mind, in the media and in the market place.

This is Marketing Superior.
Looking for the good, championing the best, aiming to drive out the bad

What's the difference between MARKETING & SALES?

Have you ever wondered why you see many Sales & Marketing Directors and no Marketing & Sales Directors?
Yet it seems there is a constant debate as to what are the differences between Sales and Marketing.
In practice a Sales & Marketing Director will be responsible for the production of the marketing collateral required to support the sales effort, vital of course, but marketing kicks in long before that point. Although it does explain what so many people feel that marketing is dying or has been simply subjugated to this narrow function. Yet the brand has never been more important and the customer has more opportunites to excercise choice than ever before. Perhaps it is best summed up that marketing should spend more time thinking so that sales doing can be more effective.

Just compare these two lists;-
Firstly this is what Sales see as its priorities...
SALES

Targets
Units
Products
Benefits
Buyer
Turnover

Whilst Marketing sees these as being important

MARKETING
Objectives
Market share
Brand
USP & values
Customer
Profit
Objectives


What do you think?
And how to we all work to achive a better overall relationship between the two functions?

These ideas are taken from The Marketing Directors Handbook shortly to be published see www.themarketingdirectors.co.uk/handbook.htm for details

Honda High Flying

One of the biggest issues today is how to make the brand work across all media.The more technical and formatted the media ( this blog for instance!) the more difficult it is to assert the brand. What this means is that the stronger the brand and its core values are recognised and understood the more the recognition will permeate through all media and positively apply to a range of products.
This is what Honda are successfully doing with their DREAMS campaign which builds a 'creative sky' under which all Honda marketing communications can shine. Taken originally, perhaps, from the name of a motor bike the campaign which lifted spirits over the world cup has now been widened to include 'problem solving'. The bedrock has been to now actively involve the logo with a team putting it together form a giant jigsaw to make HONDA. Powerful stuff.
In a digital and visual world it is staggering to see how many logos are flat and immobile.
Marketing Superior thoughts...

1 - Use the power of televsion to set the brand values and create a communication framework for all your messages
2 - Adapt your logo for the digital world
If you would like to achive marketing superiority and more effectively align your brand to the digital world vist www.tarrystone.com

Egg marketing is cracked

The recruitment cost for a new credit card user most be quite high, buying list, creating mailing and sending pieces which offers free balance transfers or other inducements.
Even if it is as low as twenty pounds then what marketer would knowingly and wilfully throw away 160,000 accounts and waste over 3 million of marketing spend.
Well that is what the new owners of egg the credit card have done. Ostensibly on credit grounds only grounds but when pushed they have admitted that low usage and regular full balance payment will have contributed to the decision.
The simple proposition in the letter sent to a friend of mine was that your credit is not good enough and you should check with Experian as to your credit worthiness. My friend did, back it came after spending a fiver or so, to find that he is 999 out of a thousand for credit rating. I am not surprised he is a very high net worth individual having successfully sold several businesses he built up.
It is, of course, the prerogative of any business to have what customers it wants but has no one thought of the damage that has been done to the brand! And where was the marketing thinking in sending a letter that is as far from good customer relationship practice as it is possible to be, no apology, no offer to increase usage, no suggestion of an alternative, just cut up the card and go way.
Where is the good marketing practice to act with such lack of commercial logic as to throw away millions of expenditure when you can, not simply through away, but profoundly upset a regular customer.
Some marketing superior thoughts...
1. Be careful when you segment your customers
2. Always give customers the chance to give you more of their business (most people have several active credit cards)
3. If you are going to ask them to leave why not show them the door by which they leave with an alternative offer that meets your changed customer criteria
4. If all else fails let them leave with dignity your brand is worth more that the unnecessary umbrage.