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QUESTION: What is the hardest/easiest product you've had to market?

1

Lisa Sassella

General manager marketing, National Gallery of Victoria

Toothpaste, laundry detergent, paint, telcos, soup… and the visual arts. Over a 20-year marketing career I’ve marketed many diverse products, working from both the client and agency sides of the business.

There’s no doubt that the arts has been both the easiest and the most difficult to market – ‘easiest’ because it’s a great product. As one of Australia’s most trusted institutions and home to the nation’s finest collection that tells the whole story of art, the NGV’s reputation for excellence has led to its well-deserved ‘halo’ status in the community.

People are talking about the NGV to friends and family at a time when positive word of mouth and social media are fast becoming the most valuable tools in marketing. 

Imagine working on campaigns for exhibitions featuring some of the world’s great masterpieces by the world’s most celebrated artists. Sounds easy, right? How can you go wrong? 

Yet art can be quite difficult to promote behind the scenes. When you’re working on the creative brief with the agency, you can’t allow the creative thought to overpower the art itself. 

The marketing campaign needs to be guided by both copyright and important curatorial considerations. I wish I had a Picasso for every time someone has asked why we didn’t use this or that fantastic artwork as the hero image to promote an exhibition.

Despite the fact that admission to the NGV Collection is free, which is a great message to communicate in tough economic times, you need to try to remain top of mind as a leisure option for visitors for 365 days a year.

2

Pip Hainsworth

Marketing director, Clear Channel Outdoor UK

It was going to be a challenge: a new mobile marketing service from a company known for outdoor advertising. But there was also a perfect logic to it – outdoor works well with a direct response mechanism that is easy and quick to access when out and about.

The product is superb, owing to a joint venture partnership with experts in mobile marketing technology and functionality. We own our own shortcode, ensuring consistency for advertisers. 

The problem is that mobile often sits in completely different departments or divisions in agencies, and the mobile call to action also needs to be briefed in to the creative teams. Furthermore, many larger advertisers already have arrangements in place with mobile companies. 

Our strategy was to target smaller advertisers and their agencies, and especially non-users of outdoor. Advertisers such as King of Shaves and Rosemount Wines were encouraged to trial Adshel six sheets combined with the Interact mobile service. We built mobile websites where people could find out more.

King of Shaves took a medium-weight campaign in London and received over 7,500 entries to a competition to win an iPod or a shaving kit. The client has now started using outdoor regularly. 

Rosemount Wines used the text service for a national magazines campaign as well as on London six sheets pre-Christmas, and received over 7,000 entries to a competition to win a ‘£10,000 Taste Adventure to Australia’ (where else?). Other clients use ‘find my nearest’, ‘send me a brochure’, ‘download a film clip’ services.

As use of mobile internet services increases, and as we develop our understanding and bank of case studies, the use of mobile marketing services will grow, and there is no better call to action than a great poster.

3

David Goldman

Group marketing manager, Canon Australia

Consumers are very savvy and they know what they like. We recognise that while the product itself needs to be compelling, this must be coupled with a consumer desire or need. 

In the case of cameras, for example, we have been fortunate, as all manufacturers have, to ride the wave of increasing adoption levels and upgrading of technology by Australian consumers. The camera as a whole is an easy product to market because it fulfils an inherent purpose – consumers love getting creative, taking pictures of their lives and sharing these moments with friends.

So we appeal to these motivations and our marketing for this category is a constant play of creativity, ease of use and fulfilment.
For example, Canon’s EOS (digital SLR sub-brand) launched the ‘World of EOS’ recently – an online world that exists to inspire photographers to express themselves creatively through photography.

The site has been created to take consumers on a journey, and through challenges and tutorials it will transform entry level or enthusiast photographers into advanced shooters. 

The hardest product to market is often one that may be complex or difficult for the consumer to immediately recognise the benefits of, such as some of the printers in our range. 

Often the difficulty of marketing a ‘hard’ product is linked to the swell or clutter of competitive offers that destabilise or make your product just one of many. Differentiation is key, but sometimes market forces, such as price cuts, can and will dilute that unique point of differentiation.

Marketers are challenged to pinpoint the motivation or to harness the consumer’s desire to purchase the product. What we find works well is to provide a platform by which consumers can explore the benefits of the product and discover their own point of motivation in wanting to buy the product.

4

Rachel Bitzilis

National marketing and promotions manager, Boost Juice Bars Australia

Boost Juice Bars really feel the impact of winter, with the very smoothies and juices Boost is famous for less likely to be front of mind for consumers on a cold and wet wintery day.

To minimise the impact this year Boost introduced a more winter-oriented offering: Boost Soups, with the goal of keeping both existing and new target markets visiting year round.

Launching and marketing the new Boost Soup range was always going to be a challenge: it was a product outside of our core offering, was something available from so many other food retailers and cafés and this would be Boost’s third attempt at marketing and selling soup in as little as five years. So, how did we approach this marketing challenge? 

The first question was how to make Boost Soups unique and stand out from the competition. Rather than selling someone else’s product, we developed our own with the added convenience of being able to heat up and serve in-store or takeaway. This was relatively new outside of supermarkets. 

Aware that soup could be perceived as pretty boring and more for the oldies, we wanted to add spunk to soup, targeting our core demographic with a fun ‘looking for some hot stuff’ message, which was used on staff t-shirts and on in-store point of sale. 

Now comfortable with the product and message, we selected radio as our advertising medium to promote the new Boost Soup range and even enlisted the help of comedian and radio host Dave ‘Hughesy’ Hughes who gave Boost Soup a free plug on air after receiving free samples.

Boost Soup was launched and marketed in June this year.

5

Paul Clark

Development manager, Zoos Victoria

Our Animal Adoptions program recently underwent a major change, including moving from a paper-based program to an internet-based program. The change was made as part of our green commitment, and in line with our aim of being carbon neutral by 2012. 

After many successful years without change, this posed a number of challenges to ensure that the changes we made to support Zoos Victoria’s goals were also aligned with the views of our donors. We have a number of long-term, passionate supporters and we did not want to lose their valued support.

To ensure that we were making the right changes and keeping our donors involved in the journey we undertook a number of key steps.

First was the research and review process. This involved identifying the areas of the program that needed to change to achieve our goals of reduced paper use and improved donor communication. We also looked at other fundraising programs being offered within Australia and overseas to gain inspiration for our new Animal Adoption program.

Obtaining donor feedback was the next important step. Before finalising changes to our program we contacted a number of donors to discuss our plans and gain their views. The feedback we received influenced our final decisions and ensured that we were aligning our changes with the views of our donors.

The last step was communicating the final Animal Adoptions program. Our communications, based on insights we had received from the donor feedback stage, highlighted why these changes were important to the values of Zoos Victoria and to our existing donors.

I am happy to say that two months on the initial response from our donors has been extremely positive.

2 Comments

Ysl shoes
  • Wrote on 26 Feb, at 01:52PM
Shoes have so many decorated material, stuff in the three-dimensional flowers, metal studs, bow ties, and a variety of precious crystal, YSL shoes were decorated with the metal materials, even the classic bamboo with a small increase or heel-catcher at the top.
David welzman
  • Wrote on 5 Mar, at 02:13PM
The hardest for me was many years ago at a trade show, I was booked through an agency, so I had no client contact before the show- I arrived an hour before my trade show presentations and the product I was pitching was........

You know Chico rolls?- they are made of ingredients (the stuff you see), and those ingredients are made of different chemicals (stuff you don't see)- and it was these chemicals which I had an hour to create a pitch for and to sell for 3 days at whatever food expo all those years ago.

A few years back I was booked at the fitness expo as the promotional speaker for a new exercise equipment- this was OK but the biggest hurdle is I am (how do I say) on the larger non fit side of things) all these bricks walking around and I am trying to pitch an exercise tool that I clearly never ever used. But that was actually a good show, we were the only stand with a fattish guy promoting and we stood out like a sore thumb- we generated massive leads (they looked at me as though I was the scientist you developed it, rather than some exercise guru. - interesting the way people perceive things.

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