You're havin' a laugh...

The F1 circus is now very much in town in Singapore and many businesses have seen $$ signs appear in their eyes. From ice cream sellers to shoe shops and even bread shops, everyone is producing F1 related products or promotions.

Some are well intentioned - for example the 10% off high heeled shoes for women holding an F1 pass, for those who get invited at the last minute to Lewis Hamilton's victory ball and forgot to bring their own (even the well-heeled are looking for bargains right now - see previous posts).

Others are less smart - for example the ice cream seller who has creatively produced a range of F1 themed ice creams, which have temporarily replaced the normal menu and are being sold at vastly inflated prices. People aren't stupid - if they think retailers are taking unfair advantage, they will boycott (if the ice cream seller also had the normal range in addition and gave the choice, his sales will probably be higher).

I heard another example from my father last night - of an air show in the UK which had been hugely successful on the basis of free entry. This year the local council also thought they had the golden goose and started charging - the result? People still turned up in their hundreds of thousands, but stayed out of the official GBP5 enclosure and stood further back. The retailers suffered and no doubt next year less of both will turn up. Better to raise more money through allowing additional retail stands or increasing the charge to them.

Two morals
A successful deal requires both parties to feel like they have won.
Don't cut off the fuel that drives demand for your business by getting greedy.

Singapore on Fire!

Finally, the F1 circus is in town here in Singapore. It's been a long time coming and has generated much discussion, mainly around it being the first night race, combined with a new street circuit and the first time GP has come to Singapore since the 60s and 70s.

The fascination for a night race got me thinking - what were people hoping for? The action among blazing headlights, the evening party atmosphere? No, much of the earlier discussion was about the potential excitement of sparks flying and engines blowing under the over of night. Despite the facts that the megamega watts of lighting will make it appear as day, this re-affirmed one of the main reasons people watch motor sport - for the drama of the unexpected. Even if that means blazing fires. Touch wood.

Power to the people

Pretty much everyone knows that there's a financial crisis going on around the world, particularly apparent right now in the US and UK, with the fall of or major rescue plans for major financial institutions. But how is this affecting your average man on the street? From MEC research during the last couple of weeks, we have found that for those who have been dumped in the financial mire, they are really taking control of their own destiny. Not particularly burdened by embarrassment, through the knowledge they are by no means alone, people put in place their own action plans, which are often the polar opposite of their recent consumption behaviour. From spending freely on credit, to taking the scissors out; from regularly going out to bars and restaurants to only going to 'free' places, if at all; from not really knowing their own financial situation to be painfully very aware of it, down to the last penny or cent. While I have no doubt people do not take pleasure in being in this situation, they do derive some satisfaction from taking positive action and getting back in control. The fighting spirit of the human race reassuringly comes to the fore again.

Brands should take heed from this. Firstly, knowing what is on consumers' minds (and their financial situation is often all consuming right now) when they are standing at the shelf, using their products or researching a purchase. Secondly, to take control themselves - not to throw arms in the air and assume nothing can be done, but to take positive action - understand how consumers' decision making and needs have changed, and respond by sympathising and providing solutions to their problems.

Managing other people's money

At MEC we spend lots of other people's money. Companies' money which they want to spend advertising and promoting their brands to encourage people to buy them. This money is spent on wide range of activities, from TV ads to websites, sponsorships to retail promotions, events to trade support. Basically a potentially vast array of different activities.

Every now and then, these companies have a justifiable right to ask whether the money that has been spent for them has been spent in the best way, and has given them a good return. Often prompted by a question from the CFO at annual budget time. But a fair enough and simple question, right? Wrong. Well, actually right.

In terms of measuring return, it's a complex question in terms of evaluating the impact of the wide variety of activities and their individual contribution to the overall goal (sales, awareness, requests for information, etc.). This is where, if we have sufficient data on the spend and timing of activities, together with data on the goal - usually sales, we can employ market mix modelling to get pretty close. But to provide a clear evaluation of the return on investment requires a simple process, regardless of what activities you are employing.

First, be clear on what you are trying to achieve - are we trying to improve the brand perception among a particular target audience (or address a brand perception problem)? Are we encouraging people to try our product for the first time? Are we trying to get people to talk about something we've done? It can be all of these and more (although the more objectives the more difficult it is to measure..). Once we're clear on objectives, we need to work out how we're going to measure each one. Companies usually track sales, and may have ongoing research tracking awareness and brand perceptions. If there's not, we need to put research in place before and fater the activity to measure the change. That's all at the macro level i.e. what all activity is doing for the brand - at the micro level, we would want to measure how each individual activity has performed. For the website, how many unique users or page impressions, or downloads have we achieved? For the TV campaign, how many people did we reach and how often? Did it appear in all the desired programming we wanted in the plan? For the event, how many people attended, what did they think of the event, and did they notice any brand activity there? This combination of business (e.g. sales), marketing (e.g. awareness, perceptions) and channel (media, event, etc.) evaluation will give you an excellent picture.

In terms of the first question of making sure we spend the money in the right way, this can also cover a number of things. We should be spending the right amount in the first place, and behind the right sub brands and categories the brand may operate in. To make sure we spend the right amount on the right activities should be dictated by a core idea. This may be to always communicate with consumers in the morning, before breakfast (e.g. for toiletries or cereal brand), or may be to always associate with high performance (e.g. cars, sportswear). This, combined with a full understanding of what our target audience likes, consumes, reads, watches and talks about with friends will guide which TV programmes, which events, which types of websites we should consider using. And everything we show to the consumer should be more than just wallpaper - it should engage them, whether this makes them laugh, cry, mention it to a friend, play a game, find out more information, call a number or buy the product.

If we do all this properly, then we get to continue spending other people's money, which let's face it, is always more fun than spending your own.

Where will the cutbacks end?

We have already started seeing people across Asia making sacrifices as a result of the current slowdown - whether this be reducing luxuries or actions which are much more significant. In some markets such as Philippines and Indonesia this has been far more severe, with rises in petrol and rice prices threatening individuals' very existence.

In less extreme cases (and its slightly embarrassing talking about this following on from the crises in the aforementioned countries) people are changing their behaviour in small, but potentially important ways. Taking the bus rather than the car, buying supermarket brand rather than premium, staying home at weekends are all obvious tactics to save money. One interesting finding from some recent MEC research was that people in Singapore, especially 'middle class' people were more likely to go out to eat rather than eat at home. Through a practical calculation, many people have talked about the relative (increasing) cost of ingredients to cook at home compared to going out to a hawker centre or even cheap dim sum such as Xiao Long Bao.

Inevitably, in tough times, people will look for free stuff, especially free things to do. This could mean playing games at home, going to the park with the kids and the dog, and if you're lucky to live close enough, to the beach. If this slowdown does prove to be more significant than other short term crises, such as the 1997 Asia financial crisis, dotcom burst bubble in 00/01 or SARS in 2003, will more wholesome activities prove to be a more lasting trend? Or will people yearn for the treat of a new TV, car or pair of shoes once they have a few more bucks in their pocket?

Either way, right now brands need to be aware of consumers' change in behaviour and maintain their finger on the pulse of whether this continues over time. Companies will rise or fall as a result.

I'm a site, not just a widget!

I have only recently started using widgets, both through igoogle and at work creating one recently, so am an utter novice. I still don't really know the capability of these and have been pondering why they might be successful. Or even what defines a widget (just checking on wikipedia provided 9 distinct uses of the word). My recent experience in developing one (a very basic version) was to encourage staff at work to click through to our under-used intranet to discover results from a recent project. This has been a mixed success - I suspect more people clicking on it by accident rather than design.

Which leaves me thinking, what makes a great widget and how can we employ them better? As always, it all comes back to what the end user wants or desires. This could be a distraction (joke and famous quote widgets seem popular), information (stock prices, sports news), entertainment (see distraction). Igoogle's premise is to have your favourite areas of interest covered on one page, with the ability to click through for more info. But I have an igoogle page, but have not set it as a homepage, therefore I never go there. Your set up of easy access widgets need to be always there, at your fingertips, on your desktop or home page and must constantly deliver on your needs, or its fare too easy to delete them and replace them with the next new thing.

As ever, content is king.

Managing by numbers

Trying to catch up the US election infested international weeklies this weekend, I cam across an interesting article in Business Week, explaining IBM's approach to managing productivity. It explained that a vast team of analysts and social anthropologists were employed to gather data on every employee globally at IBM - from number of emails sent / received, response time to emails, people connect with, blogs visited, etc as well as the usual skills, experience, etc. Initially horrified at the thought of such a Big Brother-esque approaches, as with anything that hits you as shocking, I read on. The vision for this is less on performance evaluation (if its just about sending more emails, I'm there..) but more on identifying the right people to be pulled together into short and long term projects. There may be a 2 week project which needs to be delivered and needs a combination of people in different locations, with different skills, languages and contacts. The project director just fills in a form and bingo - you get your list of candidates. I'm sure IBM will admit that this is far from perfect, but with any use of data and statistics, it is designed to distance yourself from guessing.

So could this work at MEC? We are a much smaller company (5000 vs IBM's gazillions) without the investment needed to set up something of this kind. What is does highlight is that knowledge and information sharing is vitally important - both about people, projects and ideas. We do this through intranets, work groups and even things like email and sometimes even the phone.

Interesting thought though.

Free Lewis!

Right and wrong. One of, if not the central tenet by which many human beings live their lives. Religion is there to guide right and wrong (I won't get into the debate of how effective this is...), and we now have the power of social media to help guide organisations in their right and wrong practices, through shows of support, criticisms and sometimes vitriol (think recent outbursts against the likes of Dell, Walmart, etc.).

There is often nothing quite like being wronged to stimulate action.

I felt this this morning walking to work after hearing McLaren had finally lodged an appeal against Lewis Hamilton's 25 second penalty at the Belgian GP on Sunday. For anyone who saw the race, this is such a gross over reaction and its certainly got me thinking how I can mobilise support to get this decision overturned.

So right here, right now, join the cause - Free Lewis!

Creativity - the power of 3

It is a well known fact that innovation coupled with financial prudence is arguably the greatest driver of growth for companies, both large and small. Dozens of well respected authors have written about innovation and how to go about installing it in a paradoxically systematic way into organisations - but here's a small thought of how we can try and do this a little better everyday.

You may be familiar with that feeling of having worked on a project for weeks, or maybe months, project managing, chasing and pulling together the final results - into a spreadsheet, powerpoint presentation or whatever. How tough can that final stetch be when needing to write the final report, honed down to the key points with a clear recommendation path? Even when we are able to work in a team, too often we don't work as one, and properly structuring the team dynamic on any project and help oth producivity and creativity. Clearly defining roles - e.g. one person with the vision to design the outline of the project, another to project manage and deliver the results on time, and then another (often the first) to interpret the results and make the recommendations. Added to this may be someone distanced from the project as a sounding board, or additionally workshops may be required to build consensus. This should not mean that the same person always has the vision and another always does the hard yards of project management - interchanging these can aid personal development. But expecting the same person to deal with the intricacies of project timelines as well as putting the results into context will often result in a 'standard' output.

Lets celebrate!

Not just because yesterday was my birthday (Guitar Hero III is now my new religion), but it has occurred to me that there are occasions when people have very positive experiences with brands that will usually go unnoticed. These can vary from just after someone buys the car of their dreams, finds a pair of shades which they believe just perfectly suit them, or finds a supermarket running a promotion that gives away a bottle of their favourite wine for every $100 spent... Something has happened, either in the marketing or through recommendation which has driven someone to at least experience the brand and product, and likely bought it, which is usually the ultimate objective of marketiing. But what then - a multiplier benefit can be reaped if we make it easy for that person who is suddenly your brand's greatest ambassador - even if only for a few hours or days, to share their experience. This is not just about generating positive word of mouth (although usually a complex task in itself) but putting in place mechanisms to make it easier for people to feedback positive experiences.

Of course the flipside of this is that it is then easier for negative feedback to be spread. I remember a recent unpleasant experience with a particular Singaporean bank which left me walking out fuming, positive a letter would be written and heads would roll. Five minutes later and I was back in the office, the negativity had died and there seemed to be much more important things to do with my time than write a narky letter to a crap bank. I am sure many brands benefit from similar apathy.

Slowdown - so what?

There has been so much talk (with figures to back it up) of downturns, whether it be GDP slowdown, mortgage application slowdowns, rising prices, etc. and although much of this has emanated from the US and Europe, it will inevitably affect Asia. Other far more commentators will no doubt comment on this for many months to come, but how will this affect everyday people - how they behave, what they buy, how they spend their time? Are people really affected?
At MEC we believe this is important as it affects how brands might communicate with people. Should we focus on communicating with people while at home more, if they are less likely to go out to save money? Should we be promoting lower priced alternative products? Even more importantly, how should brands play a role in helping people through this period? How can banks provide sensible advice for people to manage their finances better - whether this be investments for wealthy customers, to the basics of managing your monthly earnings and expenditure?
To help make those decisions, we are undertaking some consumer research among people who are aware of the economic situation in their country and have perhaps started to feel the pinch. Will people change their behaviour, and how will this differ in countries as diverse as UK and Singapore?
Watch this space.

MRT fun

One of the first things I noticed after I arrived in Singapore (other than the heat and perfectly placed trees by the roadside) was people's interesting behaviour on the MRT (Mass Rapid Transit - or underground train system). First, everyone tends to face the same way - towards the side that will be adjacent to the next platform. I still don't have a good explanation for how it has become like this other than it is slightly faster to charge out through the doors when they open. The other explanation could be linked to conformist tendencies, which is what made me tempted to never face the same way (now I like many Ang mo's have been subsumed into the face the doors approach).

What makes this interesting (to me at least) is that on the line that I take, between Newton and Orchard there is a moving image ad in the tunnel which over the past year has been used by various brands. The problem is that it is on the 'wrong' side. Everyone is facing the other way because the next platform is on the opposite side. D'oh. Even pre-recorded announcements on leaving Newton to 'face the other way' don't help. A simple consumer observation which was not observed by the media company that installed this otherwise perfectly good ad format.

And I haven't even got on to the pretending to fall asleep and no touching rules... maybe that's enough for the MRT for now.

The first post

This is not actually at 8am. It's at 5.30pm, but thought I'd better get something up on this page - otherwise its embarassingly blank.

Who am I? I work for a communications agency in Singapore and my job is to help the brands we work with to better understand the people who do, or might want to buy their brand, and to work out just what the impact of any brand communications might be on their consumers and their business.

Well that's the official line - the real truth is that I am a strange and very lucky person who has a job they love - working with fantastic people from many organisations to understand what makes people tick. Unfortunately I should say right now I don't have the answer to the 'tick' question, and no doubt never will, but it's fun trying.

So why the blog? I was in a meeting today and was asked f I had a blog. I used creative licence and put my (not very updated) Facebook page in the blog pile and said I did. Then I felt slightly foolish and hoped no-one would ask any more questions about it. They didn't - phew. So I decided maybe I should have one, as I guess it is part of my job to understand why people do it, and how it fits into the broader world. But this blog? - I expect no-one will read it except for me and my Mum.