New business agency blog

It was a Friday night in with the Mrs, and after subjecting her to weeks of box sets of The Wire and repeats of Family Guy, I decided it was time to give in and subject myself to a chick flick.

After half an hour of me dismissing mind numbing poop like Legally Blonde 2 and The Note Book, we decided on “The Joneses” – A sparkling satire with David Duchovny and Demi Moore… best of a bad bunch I thought, but little did I know that this was marketing genius!

Not only is this product placement galore from the moment Duchovny offers his neighbour a beer (a bottle of Stella – classy) to which his neighbour exclaims “Wow you’re right! This IS a really good beer!” (whilst flashing the label to the camera), but the plot thickens when the storyline evolves into some of the most relevant marketing we all come across on a daily basis. If you don’t want to know the twist in this film then read no more…

I admit that I am one of those annoying people that keep guessing the storyline/twist throughout a film (I am usually right) and in the case of this film it’s pretty easy to figure out quite quickly, but here is the gist:

A seemingly perfect family move into a perfect house. They have everything; the latest gadgets, the newest cars, the latest golf clubs, the “in” fashion clothes – you get the picture.

But behind this perfect facade, they are actually working for a company that place perfect families fabricated from a team of top sales people and marketers in rich neighbourhoods to push products with “self marketing”. A scene where Duchovny (an ex car salesman turned life marketer) makes the perfect drive on the golf course only to mute praise with “I can’t take credit for that, it’s this new Mizuno driver” and then goes on to gush about the lightweight centre of gravity etc.. a few scenes later the mugs are using the same club.

My point here is that with all of the very effective and worthwhile marketing disciplines we use today (Research, Branding, Advertising, Digital, PR, Events, Social Media etc) consumers are fundamentally at the forefront of marketing – we want what others have!

I hear you thinking “Whatever Dan, I make my own decisions, I’m an individual man!”

 That you are, but we all follow the crowd whether you like it or not. You may be more individual than most, wearing customised clothes stitched together from “vintage” items you have picked up in a charity shop, and listen to some new style of music like electro greenhouse pop that nobody has ever heard because they are just not on your creative level, but reach into your bespoke trouser pocket and pull out that iPhone – yeah that’s right, the same phone that half of the world owns. They had it, you wanted it. Which brings my point home, and Apple have picked up on self marketing perfectly; “if you haven’t got an iPhone… well, you haven’t got an iPhone”.

Following my part in the Designers Breakfast meeting last Thursday, here’s a summary of the content.

I kicked off the session with 5 top tips about how to create chemistry and demonstrate creativity and vision in a first meeting with a prospect (most of the tips are relevant to any client meeting, and frankly, I believe you should treat all client meetings as though they were a first one)

1. Develop insights, opinions and observations through market and competition based research – these insights allow you to express your opinions and more importantly, ask the client or prospect theirs

2. Prepare relevant case studies and examples of work based on your research; you can also use this research to prepare a list of questions to ask the prospect/client about their priorities and challenges

3. Walk a mile in the client or prospect’s shoes – think why they might want to work with you and also why they may not want to work with you – this allows you to pre-empt potential objections and therefore deal with them in the meeting

4. Structure the meeting by signposting how long it’s going to take, what it’s going to look like and where it’s heading (ie. let them know at the beginning of the meeting that a desired outcome could be a follow up meeting)

5. Do NOT take a PowerPoint presentation – the key objective of a first meeting is to get a second one where you can present ideas of how you can help them with their current priorities and challenges. The first meeting is about creating empathy and trust, identifying and highlighting those main areas of concern and showing relevant examples of work that have resonance with the two way conversation you have created.

Joe Ferry, SVP Global Guest Experience & Design at InterContinental Hotels Group made some very interesting additional observations to my process driven tips; namely that every client is different and should therefore be treated/dealt with differently and appropriately. Joe’s point was that people buy people who they can trust to deliver the work on time and to budget and that not all designers have fully developed their EQ.

This point was also highlighted by Tom Foulkes, Global Head of Marketing at Buro Happold, who very succinctly pointed out that some clients like smoke blown up their arse and that others don’t!

Other key observations from Joe and Tom included:

• Pay attention to detail – get the company name right for example (basic stuff but you’d be surprised……)
• Talk through your experiences outside the direct market sector that your prospect/client works in (they often like you to have a real breadth of knowledge as well as in-depth knowledge of their market)
• Tell the truth, but don’t go too far off brief
• Make your client look good by listening to the brief but challenging where you genuinely think there could be a better way
• Show them what you can do outside of your day job; in other words, show them some creative work that you’ve just come up with in down time or for a brand you’re not currently working with – show them your passion for design
• Don’t pretend to be bigger than you are, remember that people buy people and most clients don’t care if you’re 3 or 300 staff as long as they trust you to get the job done

There were loads of other interesting insights from Joe and Tom and you will be able to see/hear this session online in the Autumn – I’ll post the link.

Do you have any other do’s and don’ts?

I love The Apprentice, me. Every Wednesday I feverishly sit down to watch a bunch of ego maniacs humiliate themselves on national television, with a few good eggs occasionally thrown in by the programme makers to at least attempt some sort of yin and yang balance to the show.

One of my favourite things about The Apprentice is that it’s on the BBC, so it’s uninterrupted by adverts every 15 minutes or so. I know – I really should love watching ads given the industry I work in, but some shows are just too good to interrupt (which is why I get so much use out of my Sky Plus box, as you’ll see from one of my previous blogs).

This year though, it seems that the BBC has broken the rules on product placement; firstly I didn’t see a “P” at the start and end of the show and secondly product placement is still banned on the BBC.

Yes… I’m talking about Tom Pellereau’s curved nail file.

Aside from the £250K investment reward for winning the show, Tom (and by extension Lord Sugar) have probably got in excess of 10 times that amount worth of free publicity, not to mention a pretty easy route to market with buyers.

I guarantee that as a result of this show (funded by license payers, I hasten to add), Tom will pick up an incredible number of new customers for his nail file – probably more than he could ever dream of.

Well done Tom – and what a way to win new business!