Digital Marketing In A Recession? Just Do It (Part 2 of 4)

NIKE AS A CHANGE AGENT

Welcome to ‘The Digital Reality’, a discussion forum in partnership with Microsoft Advertising. Over a series of 4 parts, we look at how marketers can overcome their fears of the digital frontier, which they can capitalize on to create competitive advantages for the brands they manage as well as for their own marketing careers.

This week, we traced the history of Nike going from cool brand to cool digital brand.

According to advertising folklore, one of the most famous and easily recognized slogans in advertising history was coined at a 1988 meeting of Nike’s ad agency Wieden and Kennedy and a group of Nike employees. Dan Wieden, speaking admiringly of Nike’s can-do attitude,reportedly said, “You Nike guys, you just do it.” The rest, as they say, is advertising history.

But the famous slogan is more than just advertising, it embodies the spirit of innovation within the Nike organisation.

Here’s why.

In the late 80s, before the internet age, Nike was already ahead of the marketing curve when they engaged Michael Jordan to endorse the Nike Air range, making the partnership one of the most successful endorsement deals in history. Before long, Reebok jumped into the fray with Shaquille O'Neal. Pretty soon it seemed that every major athlete (especially basketball) had a shoe contract and kids were wearing the athlete's shoe they admired most.

By the late 90s, Nike’s perceived competitive advantage started to slip, as overall sales slumped in the athletic shoes industry. Consumers had grown accustomed to seeing athletes endorse a brand and were not excited anymore. Consumers were bombarded with ‘same old same old’ marketing strategies and as a result, ‘me too’ campaigns permeated the industry.

Nothing lasts forever. No winning strategy can last forever. Nike acknowledged that if they continued to rely solely on the celebrity endorsement route, when all other brands are already doing it, they will hit a dead end in no time. ‘Just Do It’ was already an established motivational mantra to consumers, so how else can Nike top that?

Either you innovate or die. And Nike knows this very well.

So realising the emergence of the internet as a powerful consumer platform, Nike embraced it not only to sell its products online but implemented a full scale digital strategy to engage the New Consumers.

Nike is still pervasive with sports personality endorsements and cool TV ads, but digital is now an integral part of its big plan.

Over the last few years, the success of its various digital platforms like Nike+, a training system partnership with Apple that lets runners track and share their data online, have inspired marketing practitioners to study Nike’s digital strategy as the benchmark for their own digital campaigns.

Every Crisis Presents Opportunities, But Only For The Brave

Nike didn’t wait for a crisis before they explored the internet as the next wave of its marketing renaissance. Dan Wieden didn’t praise the Nike folks for sitting and waiting for something to happen. Nike made things happen, whether during the good times or bad.

The US Centre For Applied Research, in a research paper on Nike’s ‘Just Do It’ Slogan, stated the following :

‘The Nike brand has become so strong it is placed in the rarified air of recession-proof consumer branded giants, in the company of Coca-Cola, Gillette and Proctor & Gamble……’

With the majority of marketers on the sidelines during the current crisis, those that invest in the digital platform can expect less competition and better returns, given the medium is able to track response rates and even the quality of the responses. During a recession, every advertising dollar has to be accounted for and digital media can measure the effectiveness of your marketing investments.

During the current crisis, consumers are more cautious about spending, and they may well do even more research on products and services online, before they commit to a purchase. With the fear of job losses looming, people are also spending more time at home. That’s where the opportunity lies.

With ubiquitous broadband connectivity, and online search as the research tool of choice among consumers, it’s much easier now to use digital media to communicate and reinforce a brand identity, and its brand values as part of its advertising campaign.

The internet not only creates opportunities for sales and brand loyalty, it also conveys information about the company behind the product or service. Never before in advertising history have marketers had the tools that can so readily facilitate the need to deliver messages to consumers about their products and services, effectively and efficiently, and with a wide range of creative delivery methods.

Sadly, although consumers are increasingly embracing the internet as a major part of their lives, slump or not, most brands are far from undertaking digital advertising. For the most part, they continue to see digital as an unproven, experimental or risky medium.

With such hesitation, brave brands like Nike are already speeding towards the horizon of greatness.

Next week, we look at managing change in the face of increasing competition.

Contributed by :
Jimmy Lim
Mindshare Singapore
jimmy.lim@mindshareworld.com

Mindshare Gets Healthy With HPB

Health Promotion Board (HPB) and Mindshare have officially confirmed the media agency appointment to manage HPB’s media account. The win marks the first time HPB has consolidated all its 3 divisions’ (Healthy Aging, Adult & Youth) media remit into one agency.

‘HPB is looking for a partner that can help us creatively capitalise on both traditional and new media in our drive to advocate healthy lifestyles to a myriad of people across all life stages with varied media consumption habits. Based on this criteria, the Mindshare business structure is best equipped for this mammoth task,’ says Dr K Vijaya, Director, Corporate Marketing and Communications Division of the Health Promotion Board.

‘With the ever commoditisation of the traditional media planning and buying model, the new Mindshare business structure seeks to transform us into a marketing, media and business solutions expert, and this win is the clearest testament of our vision to be the lead business partner of our clients,’ says Sony Wong, Leader of Mindshare Singapore.

Mindshare beat incumbent PhD and Universal Mccann at the final round of presentations. Work is expected to start in April.

‘I salute HPB for the confidence they have in the new Mindshare, and we look forward to our shared vision of raising the health standards in Singapore,’ Wong continues.

Digital Marketing In A Recession? Just Do It (Part 1 of 4)

Welcome to ‘The Digital Reality’, a discussion forum in partnership with Microsoft Advertising. Over a series of 4 parts, we look at how marketers can overcome their fears of the digital frontier, which they can capitalize on to create competitive advantages for the brands they manage as well as for their own marketing careers.

It’s official. Singapore is now the most wired nation on earth, with the household broadband penetration rate hitting 99.9 per cent last December. This figure, given by the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), puts Singapore ahead of countries traditionally thought as powerhouses in the wired world: South Korea (at 92 per cent), Hong Kong (at 83.8 per cent) and Taiwan (at 76.8 per cent), based on figures from research firm Frost & Sullivan's 2007 study.

At the inaugural Mindshare Singapore’s M-Networking session in partnership with Microsoft Advertising recently, it was highlighted to an audience of key Mindshare clients, that despite the internet’s high penetration in Singapore, the reality is only 5% of advertising budgets in Singapore are invested online. It's already a so-called mass medium in Singapore, but it's hardly taken seriously by most marketers.

The M-Networking Session, titled ‘The Digital Reality’, was organised as an industry outreach programme for marketers and media partners to facilitate the exchanges of best practices, ideas and even collaborative opportunities.

In the context of this story, marketers include our clients as well as our own people.

The current economic crisis has already changed the environment in which marketers operate in, but many of us are still struggling to devise digital strategies to capitalise on the new consumer mindsets, let alone deal with the current recession.

It seems that if a marketer’s natural reflex is to automatically avoid tapping into new media during the good economic times, then doing so during the slump would be deemed as taking too much risk.

Yet some marketers expect different results by doing the same things, slump or not. Einstein once said insanity is doing the same things over and over again, but expecting different results.

The reality is the consumer climate had already changed way before the current slump. The internet had become our new environment, where it has more and more influence over consumer purchasing behaviours and daily routines.

But another reality is consumers have led when a lot of marketers have lagged. While consumers have already discarded their fears for the digital era, as demonstrated by the popularity of online commerce and social networking in Singapore, it’s surprising to find that there are still marketers who are fearful of it.

After all, these marketers are consumers themselves outside of their work, using the internet like everyone else, yet behaving like they haven’t seen the internet once they reach their offices.

The point is not about abandoning traditional marketing, but integrating digital into an overall marketing strategy.

There are lessons that can be learned from the US market and brands like Nike, in terms of harnessing the power of the digital media to create new competitive advantages in the current recession.

In US market, it literally took years after the majority of American consumers had adopted the internet for mainstream marketers to start putting any real money into online advertising. We can learn a lot from Nike as a shining beacon to many marketers who are still fearful of new media. Nike is still a very successful brand today because it was an early internet adopter as it foresaw the internet’s immense influence over consumer behaviours.

Next week, we look at how Nike went from cool brand to cool digital brand.

Contributed by :
Jimmy Lim
Mindshare Singapore
jimmy.lim@mindshareworld.com

Mindshare’s Invention Unit Gets Cosy with Playboy.

STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP FOR PLAYBOY'S SINGAPORE LAUNCH

Mindshare Singapore’s Invention unit recently teamed up with Rabbithead Enterprise, the publisher of VIP Singapore, to strategize and develop sponsorship platforms in conjunction with its Singapore launch.

VIP is an extension of the world’s best selling men’s magazine, Playboy. Launching in Asia, it will be fronted by the iconic bow-tie bunny as it shares the same brand philosophy and renowned excellence of Playboy.

‘We are honoured to be the lead business partner for Playboy, as it is an iconic brand to be associated with. The venture leveraged on the new Mindshare Value Exchange Framework of blending our core skill of contact planning with the skill of content planning,’ said Jimmy Lim, executive director of Mindshare Singapore.

One of the content platforms jointly conceptualized is the classic Playboy Party, which was marketed to lifestyle brands like Mini, Armand De Brignac Champagne and Heineken. Billed as the private party of the year, the world famous Playboy Playmates will be in town to grace the launch event where 5 lucky men will win all-expense paid dates with the Playmates.

Check out the Drive A Bunny Contest on :

http://www.axn-asia.com/contests/drive-bunny-contest

Lim adds, ‘Our Value Exchange Framework allows our channel and content experts to work together on the VIP platform, to capture the attention of our clients’ customers – essentially creating the ideal customer journey.’


AXN Asia, the leading English general entertainment cable channel in the region, was roped in as media and production partner. The search for the lucky men will be aired on AXN, published in VIP’s first issue and streamed through AXN’s & VIP’s interactive communities. The Playmates tour will be aired on a brand new AXN original production, The Duke, a glossy men’s magazine show that showcases Asia’s elite men and their inspirational success stories, and the latest in upscale lifestyle trends and happenings.

“This is a great initiative by Mindshare, cleverly designing a platform to pull in all relevant partners to give clients a bigger bang for the buck,” said Ricky Ow, Senior Vice President and General Manager, SPE Networks – Asia.

“And what better brand name than Playboy to get the attention!” Ow added.

“VIP’s partnership with Mindshare and AXN has exceeded our expectations,” says Norlindah Sumaidi, VIP Magazine’s Associate Publisher. “For a new brand like ours to get this amount of regional exposure is extremely beneficial for all parties and we look forward to continuing this relationship for future VIP projects.”

To top it off, VIP readers and AXN viewers get a chance to win invitations to the VIP Launch Party where they can rub shoulders with VVIP guests as well as regional and international celebrities. A glimpse of the party’s antics will also be available on AXN’s eBuzz, a weekly entertainment magazine show featuring the latest in the glamorous world of celebrities, movies, music and television.

Finally, party attendees will get a chance to win an invitation to party with the Playmates at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.

‘This venture has shifted the dynamics of the relationship between agency and media owners, from a reseller structure to a partnership model,’ said Lim.

‘We are looking forward to developing more sponsorship platforms and content partnerships with media owners like VIP and AXN, to create competitive advantages for our clients,’ Lim adds further.

Our Climate Is In Crisis. And It’s Not Just Earth’s.

Al Gore used to be known as the nearly man, as the US presidential candidate who famously won the US presidential election popular vote by more than 500,000 votes, the most for any Democrat in US history, yet lost the presidency by 5 electoral votes. A lesser man would have crumbled with such a career calamity, but here is a man who went on to become an Oscar, Grammy and a Nobel Prize winner.

But many people do not know that this is the same man who had a hand in moulding the infrastructure that shaped the early days of the internet. No, he didn’t invent the internet, he was merely misquoted in a TV interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

Here is what was reported on Wikipedia :
‘Gore was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship. The Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication.As a Senator, Gore began to craft the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991 (commonly referred to as "The Gore Bill") after hearing the 1988 report Toward a National Research Network submitted to Congress by a group chaired by UCLA professor of computer science, Leonard Kleinrock, one of the central creators of the ARPANET (the ARPANET, first deployed by Kleinrock and others in 1969, is the predecessor of the Internet). The bill was passed on December 9, 1991.’ and led to the National Information Infrastructure (NII) which Gore referred to as the "information superhighway."

Little wonder that, after the presidential defeat, Gore sat on the board of Apple and was also a senior advisor to Google during its formative days. We all know how those panned out. No, he didn’t invent the internet, but it’s fair to say he helped shaped Web 2.0

This week marks the days leading to Earth Hour on 28 March, when businesses all over the world vote to switch off all lights for an hour. Here’s an except from http://www.earthhour.org/about/

‘This year, Earth Hour has been transformed into the world’s first global election, between Earth and global warming. For the first time in history, people of all ages, nationalities, race and background have the opportunity to use their light switch as their vote – Switching off your lights is a vote for Earth, or leaving them on is a vote for global warming. WWF are urging the world to VOTE EARTH and reach the target of 1 billion votes, which will be presented to world leaders at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009.’

In our own world, in Mindshare, we should take a leaf from Al Gore’s urging of people to change the way they lead their lives on mother Earth.

To those who have watched the movie, you heard the Truth. To those who haven’t, read the following and draw its analogy to our own industry – ‘Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced.’

"The truth about the climate crisis," Gore says, "is an inconvenient one that means we are going to have to change the way we live our lives."

Nothing lasts forever. No winning strategy can last forever – Mindshare, like Al Gore, pioneered the media specialist industry but 10 years on, Mindshare is now a victim of its own success because our competitive advantage has been eroded by copycat agencies who are charging lower and lower, and even lower, just to get ahead.

Our industry is much like Earth’s climate, it’s in crisis. We are at the threshold of our industry’s epic destruction. It’s an inconvenient truth to many in Mindshare, in our industry, but it’s the damn truth! Our trees/fees are being burnt, and in no time, we will have no land in our industry.

So here's the dilemma : are we content on being the 'nearly man' or should we lead the transformation of our industry?

Take a leaf from Gore’s transformation, from a nearly president to Time’s runner-up (ok, nearly again!) for 2007 Person Of The Year.

Not bad for a man who nearly became the US President. After all, he transformed the internet, which is now part of our transformation to New Marketing specialists.

In a way, aren’t we glad for that?

Contributed by :
Jimmy Lim
Mindshare Singapore

TMP Worldwide Appoints Mindshare Singapore

TMP Worldwide, the largest independent firm focusing on recruitment advertising and communications recently awarded the local and regional media business to Mindshare Singapore. The account is worth $5M. Sources said that Mindshare was up against Starcom and OMD.

Ms Lezann Chong, General Manager of TMP said, "Mindshare had certainly outshone the rest of competing media agencies in our set of evaluation criteria and I trust Mindshare will be one of our valuable partner moving forward our agency growth. I look forward to a mutually beneficial, long & productive partnership. "

‘This win continues our new business momentum for 2009, as more and more brands are convinced with the new Mindshare business structure, which is to offer clients services beyond the traditional media planning and buying model, such as digital, content planning and business planning,’ said Sony Wong, Leader of Mindshare Singapore.

Mindshare Pushes Ironman With Short Films

Maiden Aviva Work Kicks Off With Invention Platform

Mindshare Singapore launched Aviva's title sponsorship of The Aviva Ironman 70.3 Singapore competition with a different approach this year, with the launch of marketing collaterals on cable TV, MRT stations, gyms and online as well as through Focus Media's LED screen network.

The marketing campaign includes a series of ten short films on ordinary Singaporeans who are participating in this year's event and how they are preparing for the 22 March race. The key message of the films is that the attributes needed to compete in the grueling triathlon are the same ones needed when thinking about personal finances.

"To achieve and maintain a healthy, personal financial life, it takes more than just expert advice and market leading products. It also takes self-discipline, self-sacrifice, perseverance and a long-term view. These qualities are dramatically brought to life in the emotional films produced by Singapore's Zhao Wei Films," Paul Hughes, director of strategic development for Aviva, said.

In November last year,Aviva commissioned MindShare's Business Planning team to conduct an ‘Encounters' study in to the financial services category in Singapore. ‘Encounters' is a new research approach to understanding communication effectiveness and optimizing contact mix across both above and below the line contact points, specific to the target audience, brand and category.
The study revealed that, more than ever before, consumers were engaging with the financial services category and brands.

MindShare commissioned Brian Gothong Tan, a promising film director and award-winning multimedia visual artist from Eric Khoo's production company Zhao Wei Films, to work on the campaign.