Cricket Australia recruits John Howard and Jimmy Barnes to promote Ashes

by Marketing ON 17 June 2013

Cricket Australia has launched a new ad campaign promoting the Commonwealth Bank Ashes Series that highlights the intense rivalry between Australia and England and features former Australian Prime Minister John Howard and Aussie rock legend Jimmy Barnes.

John Howard and Jimmy Barnes were asked to appear in the campaign, based on their enduring public support of the game, to remind Australians about ‘the national pride at stake.’

Long time cricket fan, Barnes says he was honoured to be involved in the commercial.

“The Ashes is a battle that almost all Australians, including myself, are passionate about. I love what it brings out in every player and every fan,” he says.

“It’s not just about the winning, it’s more about the courage and determination the players show and what that makes the country feel. It’s about giving everything you have to be a part of something that brings us all together.”

The TV spot was developed by GPY&R, and brings to life the notion that The Ashes is more than a game of cricket, it’s the epitome of the world’s greatest sporting rivalry with the ‘unique ability to unite the nation.’

Cricket Australia senior manager of marketing, Julian Dunne, says the advertising campaign highlights the rivalry and tension that exists among the players and fans in an Ashes year and was delighted with the result.

“Cricket is the number one sport in Australia for passion and we wanted the campaign to capture the intense passion, rivalry and anticipation that only an Ashes Series can deliver,” Dunne says.

GPY&R senior copywriter Evan Roberts says he hoped the ad would encourage more Australians to get behind the Australian cricket team as they battle it out for the urn.

“This Ashes campaign is all about the rivalry that exists between Australia and England. The rivalry is bigger than just a game of cricket, wanting to beat the English is part of who we are as a nation. Our hope is that this ad will encourage more Aussies yelling support over the fence, at their TVs and radios this summer,” Roberts says.

Corporate Reputation Index: Apple falls, Toyota rises and the banks bite back

by Marketing ON 22 April 2013

Flying in the face of the apparent turbulence present in the local car manufacturing industry, Toyota was today rated as the most reputable company in the nation according to the 2013 Corporate Reputation Index released by AMR and the Reputation Institute.

Knocking Apple Australia off the number one spot (Apple fell to five), Toyota has peaked in first position for the first time in the Index’s existence. It is quite the achievement for Toyota Australia who announced a $13.2 million loss after tax in June 2011.

Other automotive companies ranked well, with Mazda rising two places to rank 8th this year, Holden 10th and Ford Australia leapfrogging the competition by 12 places to rank 20th overall.

“While there may have been recalls, doubts cast over financial performance, staff layoffs and other issues facing the car industry in Australia, most people admire the fact that the companies are still here, and still operating in the local market,” says AMR’s managing director, Oliver Freedman.

Surprisingly, two of the nation’s big banks, Commonwealth and NAB, both rose significantly in reputation with Commonwealth up 21 places to rank 27th overall, and NAB jetting up the list 16 places to sit at 38th this year.

Bendigo and Adelaide Bank was ranked highest of the banks, coming 12th overall.

Westpac dropped six places to 52nd and ANZ fell nine places to rank 58th out of 60 companies measured in 2013.

“For many years, the Australian public have believed all four major banks are ‘the same’ but this year we have seen two – CBA and NAB – really separate themselves from other major players,” says Freedman.

“Interesting to note that these banks have undertaken significant communication programs and there is the perception that they have implemented real improvements in their products and service,” he adds.

Meanwhile Apple Australia’s reputation decline has more to do with how Australians view Apple’s products, its openness and transparency, and financial performance, says Freedman.

“While Apple may have initially differentiated itself in the local marketplace through true innovation, many of its more recent product launches have veered on the edge of novelty; simply updates on existing technology.”

Electronics were strong with JB HI-FI and The Good Guys in the top 10 with Air New Zealand again a surprise at 11 and the improvements in reputation for both Fairfax and News Limited a testament to their move into the digital age.

Reputation index

Aussie banks gaining on US/UK leaders: Brand Finance

by Marketing ON 19 February 2013

The latest The Banker/Brand Finance Banking 500 report released by global brand valuation firm Brand Finance shows that the brand values of Australia’s banks have risen considerably over the past year.

The report reveals ANZ as the most valuable banking brand, on top of having the highest global gain in the Top 50 banking brands. Rising eleven places, from 50 to 39, this is seen as being major movement at the station, particularly with 14 Australian banks named among the most valuable banking brands overall.

In fact, the total of Australia’s banking brand values are up 27.3% compared to 2012, with ANZ leading the Australian banking list (valued at USD$5.8b) ranking ahead of Commonwealth Bank (USD$5.29b), NAB (USD$4.98b) and Westpac (USD$4.1b).

In terms of overseas markets, US leader Wells Fargo (USD$26b) has overtaken UK’s HSBC (USD$22.8b) to become the world’s most valuable banking brand in 2013 while another American bank, Chase (USD$23.4b), has risen from fifth to second, also overhauling HSBC.

As the European banks continue to struggle post the fiscal insecurity of the previous four years, plus the troublesome Eurozone, the Brand Finance league table highlights the issue in its data.

As it stands, only five European banks are in the top 20, led by Spain’s Santander (6), France’s BNP Paribas (9) and Germany’s Deutsche Bank (12) with North American and Far Eastern making up the bulk – Brazil and China also feature well at the top of the list.

On releasing the results, Brand Finance chief executive, David Haigh explains: “This year’s results suggest that globally the banking crisis is nearly over as both brand ratings and values are rising. While UK banks continue to lag the global recovery in both reputation and brand value, Australian banks are increasing their brand value.”

Full results from the report are available here.

Mobile commerce and banking: moving consumers from showroom to sofa

by Rohit Dadwal ON 15 January 2013

Commonwealth Bank (CBA) recently announced an increased focus on its mobile banking systems in what was another signal that Australian consumers are becoming more comfortable with their mobile devices.

CBA’s numbers speak volumes: its Kaching app has already had 700,000 downloads and counting, having processed more than $3 billion in transactions in 2012, and mobile now powers 46% of all banking transactions. That is just for a specific mobile banking app – CBA also reports that almost one in three Australians now accesses Netbank services, and that over 50% of those NetBank logins occur via a smartphone or tablet device.

Capitalising on the digital boom over the Christmas period, PayPal Australia has estimated that 22% of Australians used a mobile device to make a purchase, and that $5.6 billion worth of purchases were made on mobile phones by the close of 2012.

Almost a third of purchases made on mobile devices occur between 8pm and midnight – and this might be a clue as to the allure of mobile commerce and mobile banking. Using mobile devices frees Australians from the tyranny of operating hours, limits the time spent lining up to get to a bank teller, and allows busy working adults time-shift so that they can do what they want, when they want.

In other words, mobile commerce and mobile banking are moving these activities outside of trading hours and into the comfort of people’s homes, where they are free to take care of their financial transactions at their own leisure, and where they can shop from the comfort of the living room sofa.

Australia truly is the lucky country, as its infrastructure supports precisely this sort of activity. No wonder Australians have the highest tablet take-up in the world – the Australian Communications and Media Authority reports that 29% of Aussie homes access the internet via a tablet. This may also be why Microsoft is offering its Surface tablet computer in Australia ahead of other nations, in the hopes of taking advantage of our fondness for the flat screen.

The level of connectivity here supports the use of these devices, and it appears that people are happy to use these devices to make the most of the limited free time that they have.

This comes as no surprise – mobile marketers have always known about the promise and potential of the mobile device. But it is only now, as infrastructure has matured, and as services and technology have come to support the extended use of these devices, that we are beginning to see how powerful mobile really can be.

It is doubtful that even five years ago anyone would have foreseen that millions of people would be paying bills with a handheld device that they carried with them all the time. Even ploughing through their Christmas shopping without leaving the comfort of home, using their mobile tablets with a hot cuppa close at hand seemed implausible, but now it’s a given.

Sources:
CBA responds to mobile banking demand
www.financialstandard.com.au/news/view/24274473

M-commerce spikes in Australia
www.econsultancy.com/sg/blog/11336-m-commerce-spikes-in-australia

Australia has highest tablet take-up in the world: study
www.smh.com.au/it-pro/business-it/australia-has-highest-tablet-takeup-in-the-world-study-20121218-2bkie.html

The fate of retail banks: embrace technology or lose market share

by Marketing ON 24 October 2012

By Jonathan Greenacre, University of New South Wales

How are retail banks – the incumbents of banking – likely to fare in the era of mobile banking?

This is an increasingly crucial issue for banks. Mobile banking is a major technological development, and history suggests that incumbents can be reduced to obscurity as new players, or ‘market disruptors’, use improved technology to upset the old order.

For example, companies such as Netflix, which uses postal and later online distribution of rented films, are revolutionising the way consumers access movies. A consequence has been that Blockbuster, a traditional bricks-and-mortar DVD rental company, has lost enormous market share. Similarly, as at January 2011, Amazon was selling 105 digital books for every 100 analogue books and contributing to sending Borders, a regular bookstore, into obsolescence.

In the era of mobile banking, banks may be next in line to see their relevance diminished. Internet, telecommunications and technological companies — the market disruptors in relation to mobile banking — are probably better placed to develop key components of mobile banking than banks. Traditionally, banks ‘owned’ the retail banking relationship with customers. They designed, manufactured and distributed banking products. However, mobile banking emphasises disintermediation and these processes may reduce that advantage for banks because market disruptors can provide some (if not all) of these steps.

Market disruptors are becoming increasingly adept at distributing banking products through payment systems. For example, mobile payments constitute one of Google’s three main strategic goals, and it already has a digital banking licence in Holland. PayPal is reportedly scouting for a major retailer to embrace its mobile phone payment services. Square, which provides small devices that attach to smartphones and allow small businesses or tradesmen to accept credit card payments, has signed up more than 1 million customers since its launch in 2010, including the Salvation Army. Around three million customers now use mobile prepaid to pay for their coffee at Starbucks.

New technology is making these processes ever easier. For example, Australian-based mHits has developed a SMS-based technology where natural language messages are used to transfer money to another mobile phone number. (For example, ‘pay 0412345678 $3 soy latte’.)

Many of these developments come under the label of near field communication (NFC), which involves establishing radio communication between smartphones and similar devices by touching them together or bringing them into close proximity, usually no more than a few centimetres. In late 2010, Google introduced the first NFC-enabled smartphone, the Nexus S, made by Samsung. A simple app turns the Nexus S into a portable payment processor. In 2011, market researcher Pyramid Research forecast that 28% of all smartphones (around 250 million) sold by 2015 will be NFC enabled.

Clearly, banks need to reform to ride the wave of mobile payments. To compete with these market disruptors, banks need to remain relevant, attractive and create value for customers. Doing so in relation to mobile banking will require a fundamental reappraisal of a bank’s relationship with customers, and it is unclear the extent to which the major clearing banks have come to terms with this need. In a 2011 survey of over 150 European banks, McKinsey reported that almost 55% assigned 10 or less employees to mobile banking, suggesting a lack of investment in this field. For those who do want to compete with the market disruptors, how should they do so? Four strategies may be helpful.

Collaborate and listen

The first, and perhaps most obvious and fundamental step, involves banks accepting that they will no longer own the customer relationship — and that they should collaborate with the market disruptors. This will involve, for example, supporting contactless point of sales, and generally either determining mobile payment solutions themselves or partnering with potential market disruptors such as Telstra, EFTPOS, BPAY, and PayPal.

Some banks have started. For example, Barclays has adopted a contactless mobile payments partnership with Orange in the UK.

Size matters

The second strategy involves banks becoming bigger so that they can afford the technological innovation required to build mobile banking into their operations. The Economist has argued that the high cost of technology and the gains it promises may mean that in the era of mobile banking, bigger, wealthier banks are more likely to succeed than smaller ones. This is partly because regulation has become more intrusive in the years since the financial crisis, so raising relative compliance costs that may inhibit the capacity of smaller banks to invest sufficiently in the requisite technology.

Furthermore, larger banks such as Citigroup, HSBC and Standard Chartered, appear better able to standardise their procedures and systems, and so can replicate their successful practices across the largely unserved but potentially highly lucrative banking markets in Asia and the Americas.

Use branches to facilitate conversation, not transactions

The third strategy is to leverage any face-to-face contact with customers towards engagement rather than transaction. This may enable banks to stay relevant to customers as a source of financial advice, a capacity that market disruptors will take time to develop. Banks are already heading in that direction. For example, SNS in the Netherlands decided to remove cash from their branches in 2009. In the middle of Paris, BNP Paribas’s flagship concept store contains red, green and yellow beanbags, and white benches with iPads and rooms with couches and flatscreen televisions. The idea is that a customer can see a financial advisor while having a coffee. ING Direct Café near San Francisco Union Square serves coffee, and the barista serving the latte asks whether the customer would like to talk about money or open a saving account. Transactions are not permitted at this bank branch.

Trust: Brand

Fourth, banks can leverage customer information entrusted to them to provide tailored products that retains a customer’s attention. Banks seem to have worked this out. A McKinsey report suggests that some banks have been able to double the share of customers that accept offers of loans and reduce loan losses by a quarter, simply by using data they already have. However, market disruptors are also getting in on the act. In America, Visa has teamed up with Gap, a clothes retailer, to send discount offers to cardholders who swipe their cards near Gap’s stores.

Even then however, banks’ ability to leverage their supposed trust advantage may not last for long. Currently part of the reason that customers trust banks over market disruptors is because they are not used to the non face-to-face aspect of mobile banking. However, as a new generation grows up in which mobile banking is the norm, they may trust the market disruptors, so reducing the trust advantage of banks. In a recent MasterCard survey, 37% of respondents aged 35 and older said they would be comfortable paying for items via NFC, but this figure was 63% for those aged 18-34 years old, suggesting that younger people are much more willing to interact with market disruptors than their parents’ and grandparents’ generations.

It is clear that banks will need to embrace the changes that mobile banking is forcing upon them. There are strategies that are available to them to do so, but they will need to move quickly. As Blockbuster or Borders might tell you, in the information age, the future belongs to those that are nimble and far-sighted enough to embrace it.

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
Read the original article.

Career profile: Andy Lark, CMO, Commonwealth Bank

by Marketing ON 19 July 2012

He has no interest in golf…

Or so his LinkedIn proudly declares. Andy Lark’s stepped into one of the longest shadows in the Australian marketing landscape, but having grown up under the long white cloud he’s no stranger to proving himself.

Andy Lark has had the best of both worlds. Born a New Zealander, Lark gained a wealth of Stateside experience and has landed in Australia. His day job is untraditionally marketing one of the most traditional of all categories (it just happens to be the second largest Australian listed company on the ASX by market capitalisation), but he is also a director at No 8 Ventures a New Zealand-based technology venture capital firm. He remembers sweeping the floor in his first gig at a small promotional company as he boards the innumerable flights that make him a difficult man to lock down on the phone. And it isn’t just a ‘line’: he humbly apologises as our interview is interrupted by another meeting, making time for a few extra questions even as the room fills.

He tells me his first boss – at the promotional company whose floors he swept – taught him not to value money and title so much, early on, but rather to make sure he was having great experiences that taught him something. He eventually moved up to production and design work and credits this lesson with driving his career down a path of seeking out places that allowed him to make a difference and do meaningful work.

More recently, Lark has worked with Gary Hamel – author of… well a lot, but specifically The Future of Management, Leading the Revolution and Competing for the Future – on a project worth your time checking out. He says Hamel challenged him to think of the new technologies such as social media as not just communications tools, but potentially devices to transform the way people work and create meaning at their day jobs.

Of course, no one who worked with Michael Dell could fail to cite the man as an influencer. For Lark, Dell inspired entrepreneurialism and the ability to drive results.

Lark made headlines globally last year when he decided to leave a highly successful 14 years with Dell – finally as vice president and general manager, large enterprise marketing and online – for Commonwealth Bank following Mark Buckman’s departure to Telstra. Banking seems a strange leap for a marketer with a pedigree of over two decades in the technology category, both B2B and B2C. Despite by his own admission bleeding Dell blue, it came down to a “soft and fluffy” reason: he wanted to make sure his kids got some “Down Under DNA” at the right age.

Marketing: You obviously value entrepreneurialism quite a bit. Do you think entrepreneurial experience is critical to corporate marketing roles today?

It’s funny, when you sit with marketers and you talk to marketers about what drives them. I did this yesterday with a group of our leaders in the business, and I said, “Why do you do this? Of all the things you could possibly do with your day, why the heck do you do this? You dreamed one day of being a fire fighter or a jet pilot or whatever you dreamt of doing, and somehow you ended up in marketing, and marketing doesn’t describe actually what you do anyway. So why do you do this?”

And it’s really interesting because it basically comes down to two things when you talk to people about it and you drill into it. And one of those things is they love change, they love changing people’s minds, and they love convincing people of things. So they’re the debaters, the arguers, the fighters, and that’s a real hallmark of being an entrepreneur.

The other thing is they love creating, they love creating stuff, writing stuff, designing stuff, building stuff; we’re all creators at heart, and so I think it’s a long answer to your question, but at the end of the day, it really helps to have been an entrepreneur.

It might be cynical but it’s a comment that is made about Australian marketers in comparison to American marketers, that they lack that courage and entrepreneurialism, and having worked in both markets at major organisations, what’s your comment on that?

I think there’s an element of truth to it. I think that you’ve got to challenge yourself down here. Australia works to a different clock than the high paced, high energy clock of the US market, so there’s also a different sense of entrepreneurial outputs or outcomes.

So in the US, when you’re surrounded by start ups and these 24 year-olds are making hundreds of millions of dollars off the back of their iPhone camera app, there’s a different sense of the entrepreneurial outcome, and there’s role models around you to follow.

So your newsstand is full of magazines like Fast Company and stuff that aren’t covering the mining industry; they’re covering start ups in Silicon Valley and Boston and New York and San Francisco and Dallas. The companies where young leaders doing really revolutionary things with different cultures, different approaches, different ways of doing stuff, and so you’re surrounded by all these role models or innovations that you don’t get so exposed to down here.

Comm bank

SAS: Forrester has come out with their CMOs Imperative Report for 2012 and it identified social as the number one imperative across all verticals for CMOs. You’ve taken CBA to the forefront within Australia, not only among the banks but also large B2C enterprises. How are you measuring the business results from that investment?

There’s two things. First, I’d say: number one is I only get a little tiny bit of the credit. I started here eight months ago, and the reality is that the social initiatives here were well in place before [me] – okay, I added some spice to them and lit a fire under some of it, but boy, they’ve been doing some amazing stuff in social for a long time here. So I just say that because it deserves to be said; they’ve got a great social team… But my predecessors deserve a lot of credit for embracing social and driving social, even before I got here. Second thing I’d say is Forrester is wrong, I don’t buy that. I think that marketers are struggling with a whole raft of issues, and social is just one of them. I think it’s convenient to make social a priority but we’re equally struggling with the accountability of marketing, with demand generation models, lead generation. Social is absolutely in our top four priorities, but it’s right there alongside building the brand and building brand resonance in the market. It’s right there alongside demand generation, marketing automation, CRM etc. falls into that bracket. Mobile, I would argue, is more important than social – arguably social is an inherent part of doing mobile well, but if you don’t get mobile right, social is really your second problem. Mobile is big.

How are you actually measuring your investments in mobile and social, in that case?

Direct revenue generated. I can tell you the direct revenue flow from social. I can tell you the value of the community members and engagement. we look at reduced service and support costs, we look at improved customer service. There’s a whole raft of metrics there that flow from social. Now, admittedly, I had a bit of a head start on that because at Dell we did a lot of this very early on, so we really understood the models for assessing our return on social, and we’re doing that a lot here at the Bank now. But we see significant returns from social, both internally and externally.

Scale is obviously one of the challenges, but also the advantages at your organisation. How are you managing to synchronise and measure the leads and service levels with the kind of volume of customer transaction and data you have across so many brands and channels?

We’re working really, really hard on it. It’s a big activity for us, and so frankly, you’ve really got to watch that you don’t spend most of your time measuring stuff as opposed to doing stuff, because there’s so much to measure; there’s so much data. So we’re putting a lot of effort into measurement, but we’re putting an equal amount of effort into doing, because there’s so much data. You could spend all your time measuring stuff.

Marketing: I see from your blog that you’re personally quite interested in content marketing. What role is data playing in the Commonwealth Bank’s content marketing deployment, and how does it work at an executional level?

Content, I really believe is the single biggest – one of the single biggest challenges facing all marketers. Because for the most part, marketers have been brought up not as domain experts but rather specialised experts, and so marketers aren’t necessarily experts and trained in financial planning and financial advice, they’re trained in demand generation and branding and all these other things. Content hinges on domain expertise as opposed to specialisation, right. And so your ability now to become creators of content, editors of content, reporters of content becomes really crucial.

Do you believe that these developments in content marketing means that marketers need to upskill into this, or is this something that you see agencies being able to handle for their clients?

I actually think marketers need to upskill. I think agencies will struggle because they’re too far away from the content itself. I think marketers need to become experts in great content and context – not just content but context. The ability to look at content and put it in the right context is what the game is going to be all about, because otherwise you just can’t speak to the audience in a way that’s relevant or relative to their life.

I’ve been talking to a lot of agency heads about working upstream lately, and I’m wondering if you work with any particular agency partners in this capacity, and if you do or don’t, why or why not?

We just started working with M&C [Saatchi] and they’re providing some interesting thoughts in that area, but as of yet, no I haven’t really seen any of them come to the table in that manner. But there’s certainly an opportunity for them to.

I actually just got off the phone with Dan Gregory, who was discussing the shift of interruptive advertising to utility advertising, and he’s putting forward the idea that marketers and agencies are now all in the entertainment industry.

Absolutely. I talk about the five new Ps of marketing, and one of the Ps is ‘Play’. I think every single one of us needs to tune our industries into play, whether it’s entertainment, whether it’s games, whatever it is. If you look at the highest yield marketing activities we do, they involve some form of play, and play drives engagement.

Do you actually see a difference in this between B2B and B2C marketing?

No. Exactly the same things happen right across the board, albeit with different constructs, right. There is no question that at the high end of the B2B market, where there are complex sales cycles and long funnels and you’re trying to reach the C-suite, it’s a slightly different game. And you’ve got to be far more sophisticated and clever about what you’re doing from a relationship standpoint. That’s a little different than the transactional B2B market or the B2C market, but they’re all following similar paths, albeit in different ways. So it’s like the earlier comment about context, right. It’s just the context that shifts. I do think that one of the major changes with seeing though that differentiates the B2C from the B2B market is in the collapse of the funnel. So this idea that you would build awareness, build preference, drive demand, sell off demand, build loyalty, that’s collapsing in a lot of the B2C funnels, because people now search, it does everything for you. You believe the algorithm on your device of whatever kind it is, is suited to every task from selecting a new mate and partner through to selecting a new book through to doing whatever you’re going to do next.

Woolworths most valuable Aus brand, pockets of hope for decimated retail

by Marketing ON 12 June 2012

More than half of Australia’s top 30 brands registered declines in their value over the past year, with Harvey Norman and David Jones among the worst hit, a study has found.

There were clear winners and losers over the past year, Brand Finance found in its annual study into the value of Australian brands. Retail and finance brands bore the brunt of the tough conditions, with many in these sectors experiencing a 10-20% decline in the value of their brands, but it wasn’t all bad news for these sectors with standout brands performing well.

In the retail sector, Bunnings, Coles and Target showed that growth is achievable despite difficult trading conditions, notching 20.3%, 14.5% and 10.0% increases in brand value respectively.

Coles, valued at $4.7 billion, succeeded in closing the gap on rival Woolworths, gaining $597 million in value and moving up the ladder to reach third position. Woolworths, valued at $7.1 billion, maintained the top spot despite losing $504 million of value, prompting managing director of Brand Finance Australia, Tim Heberden, to point out three areas where retailers could step up their game. “Due to increased international competition and changing consumer behaviour, Aussie retailers are learning the importance of customer service, brand differentiation, and omni-channel strategies,” Heberden says.

Australian finance brands also recorded mixed results over the past year, but on the whole outperformed their global peers with six of our banks featuring in the top 100 of Brand Finance’s global list of the top banks. MLC declined the most out of the top 30 brands, shedding 25.8% of its brand value. Macquarie Bank and St George also experienced significant declines, but at the other end of the scale BankWest and ANZ increased in value by 16.5% and 9.8% each. The Commonwealth Bank (CBA) seized the title of Australia’s most valuable banking brand from NAB, increasing its value by $185 million.

Another brand value study, Millward Brown’s BrandZ, recently ranked CBA as the most valuable Australian brand on the global stage at $13.1 billion, compared to the $4.1 billion valuation given in this study. However, Millward Brown does not release Australian results or include all Australian brands in its global list, making no other comparisons possible.

Brand Finance calculated the overall value of the top 30 Australian brands at $51 billion, well below the value it attributes to the largest global brand, Apple, at US$71 billion. The researcher calculates a brand’s value by looking at a company’s market share, profitability, reputation and emotional connection with consumers.

Telstra held on to second place in 2012, gaining $294 million to reach a value of $5.1 billion, placing the telco on par with the once great Nokia brand in an international context.

The Qantas brand continued to free fall dropping below the billion dollar threshold, although this year’s drop of $108 million represents a reduced rate of decline.

CommBank reveals new can-do brand image after ‘CAN’T’ teaser build up

by Marketing ON 27 May 2012

CommBank has owned up to the ‘CAN’T’ teaser campaign, launching its new brand campaign ‘CAN’ over breakfast today with the aid of a new ad solution from News Ltd.

The bank will change its brand tag line to CAN and feature the new positioning of its staff’s can-do attitude in its advertising, beginning with an augmented reality in the morning paper, which will play the campaign’s TVC on readers’ smartphones. News Ltd mastheads in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, will feature CommBank Logos that when scanned using the app ‘News Alive’ will trigger the TVC.

Since last Sunday the teaser campaign for the brand relaunch has been executed through a series of outdoor, digital and stunt activations all displaying the CAN’T message. The reveal phase of the campaign sees the ‘t’ in ‘can’t’ replaced with the bank’s diamond logo.

The TVC features Australian actress Toni Collette, who was chosen as an exponent of the can-do attitude, speaking directly to camera. “Toni is a credible personification of CAN, having ‘made it’ in Hollywood from humble beginnings in Blacktown in Sydney’s west,” according to the bank’s CMO Andy Lark.

CommBank’s CEO, Ian Narev, adds that the campaign is also an internal one, with the bank promising to embody the CAN attitude through its staff, and raise their standards. “I want all our people to focus on what CommBank can do for our customers. We will strive to empower our customers – whether individuals or businesses – through every interaction we have with them. I want our customers to feel that they ‘CAN’ with CommBank.”

News Ltd has chosen to piggy back off the campaign, using it to showcase its augmented reality advertising solution, which is similar to Fairfax’s AirLink smartphone to print integration launched in the Sydney Morning Herald on May 18.

‘News Alive’ will also showcase the featured property of the week as a 3D interactive display embedded with a downloadable CommBank property guide app, offer body+soul readers 3D interactive articles and reveal 360° location views of tourist destinations featured in Escape.

CommBank breaks top 100 global brands

by Marketing ON 22 May 2012

The Commonwealth Bank has become the first Australian brand to break into the world’s top 100 most valuable brands, debuting at number 60 on Millward Brown’s BrandZ list.

The annual ‘Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands’ study valued CommBank at $13.1 billion, in a climate which saw almost half the top 100 brands lose value, a decline not seen since the depths of the 2009 global recession.

However, of the 49 brands that dropped value over the past year, financial performance, not brand, was the more critical determinant for the lion’s share of the decline, with brand measures remaining generally stable or growing for most. The study uses financial data, market intelligence and consumer measures of brand equity to arrive at its ranking.

Read: Marketing’s things to keep in mind when reading a top brand list.

Technology and telecommunication brands dominate the global list, accounting for seven of the top 10, 31 of the top 100 and nearly half the value. Apple took out top spot, with a jump of 19%, or more than $30 billion in a year, to take its value $182.9 billion. IBM grew 15% in value to $115.9 billion and overtook Google as the second most valuable brand, which dropped to third place in the ranking and is now worth $107.8 billion.

Millward’s Brown Australian spokesperson, Johnny Panagiotidis, says brand has served as an insurance policy for businesses over the past year, providing the buoyancy to navigate economic turbulence. “Ultimately, businesses with a strong brand are much more resilient, with people willing to pay a premium to buy from a desired brand.”

While Millward Brown would not release any data on Australian businesses, Panagiotidis revealed that CommBank has one of the highest brand strengths in the country. Combined with its financial performance this was enough to propel it into the top 100, and to number 11 in the banking category worldwide.

Fast growing markets also performed well over the past year, to account for 20 of the top 100 (up from 2 in 2006), including the first entry from an African brand – South African mobile company MTN placing at number 88 with a value of $9.2 billion

In the retail space, brands successfully creating an omni-channel presence prospered, as demonstrated by the growth experienced by Walmart, which knocked Amazon from the top spot in the category with a value of $34.4 billion compared to Amazon’s $34 billion.

The report found that mobile, to some extent, has been shielded from the economic slowdown as one of the few items consumers don’t want to give up or cut back on. The most valuable telecommunicationss brand, AT&T, consolidated to seventh position on the overall list, with a value of $68.8 billion. Nipping at its heels was the USA’s largest mobile service provider, Verizon, which moved up four places to eighth spot, with a 15% increase in brand value to put its worth at $49.1 billion.

Closer to home, China Mobile topped the list of the most valuable Asian brands, despite a brand value drop of 18% on last year, with a value of $47 billion. Three banks made the top 10, as did Chinese search engine Baidu, valued at $24 billion, and Samsung, which entered the top 10 for the first time with a 16% increase in value to boost its worth to $14 billion.

According to Panagiotidis, while Apple’s value increased this year even more than the previous year, it was now facing stiff competition from Samsung. Thanks in part to the success of its Galaxy handsets, Samsung is successfully outpacing Apple in a significant number of markets by positioning as a cool, well-priced alternative to the ubiquitous, the study found.

The study also found that, globally, brands with women on the board outperformed those without them. 77% of the brands appearing in the list have women in the boardroom and the average value of brands with women on the boards is $27 billion, double that of companies without female directors.

An analysis of BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands as a ‘stock portfolio’, shown as part of the infographic below, found that strong brands performed more favourably in trading over the past seven years.

Click to view in full screen.

Top10 gamification executions

by Marketing ON 10 May 2012

Gamification, or the use of gaming dynamics to influence user behaviour, is gathering steam as a marketing tool for engaging consumers and delivering messages. It’s been praised for its ability to help brands engaged with consumers on a deeper level and step the consumer through to purchase intent. While it is still a discipline in its infancy, pioneering brands are turning their attention to it as an alternative to advertising to get their messages out. Going deeper, the technique shows the potential to redefine the customer-product relationship and involve consumers in experiences that help them develop stronger relationships with brands.

Marketing presents this Top10 looking at gamification executions, primarily from Australia but also including a few stand out examples from around the world. Game on.

10. Fruit Ninja Kinect, Neuroscience Research Australia

A version of Fruit Ninja, where players smash virtual fruit, is being used by Neuroscience Research Australia to assist the elderly in recovering from medical problems, staying fit and even preventing devastating falls. As part of the research body’s iStoppFalls program, which also uses other video games to the same effect, a slowed down version of the game is available on Xbox Kinect, allowing the elderly to play along with their grandchildren.

9. Fallen Angels, Lynx

Lynx involved commuters in an interactive augmented reality game in a subway in London in March 2011. Passengers were lured towards patches on the floor of the open concourse, which activated by sending a virtual angel to earth when someone stepped onto them. Participants could then watch themselves interact with the virtual angel on the a big screen overlooking the concourse.

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8. Coinland, Commonwealth Bank

Designed for children aged five to 10 years, Coinland is a virtual world where children can learn about the benefits of earning, saving and investing money by undertaking a series of tasks, designed to help them develop financial literacy skills. Players create an avatar which represents them as they explore and interact in Coinland, as they complete tasks or jobs to earn and save coins. Players can then choose to save their coins by depositing them in the bank, or spend their coins on games and rewards. Children can play alongside their friends by adding other users to their buddy lists.

7. Dream Team, AFL

AFL’s Dream Team game is open to anyone to join for free, select a team of 30 players, and then receive point based on the performance of those players in order to go into the running for a prize pool. Participation rates in the game are high, and the AFL generates content around the game including a Dream Team show and news updates on player performance. Teams must be selected in a realistic manner, within the salary cap restrictions. Players also compete in public or private mini-leagues against friends to go into the running for the grand prize of a Toyota FJ Cruiser.

6. Nike+, Nike

Nike has essentially taken a lone sports in running and other training pursuits, and made them social with its suite of Nike+ applications. For example, the Nike+ tag running app, links running directly with social gaming, pitting users who have downloaded the app against each other in a game of tag. Nike’s gaming strategy makes it easier for people to get motivated to exercise, by using gaming mechanics such as rewards and trophies in return for challenges met, incorporating the social element of competing against friends.

5. Re-Mission, HopeLab

Re-Mission is a video game developed by HopeLab specifically for adolescents and young adults with cancer. Players of the game pilot a nanobot named Roxxi as she travels through the bodies of fictional cancer patients destroying cancer cells, battling bacterial infections, and managing side effects associated with cancer and cancer treatment. Messages delivered through this game hit home, to the point that kids involved in the game were more likely to take their tablets and had better recovery rates than those that didn’t.

4. Sparx, New Zealand Ministry of Health and University of Auckland

SPARX is a self-help computer program for young people with symptoms of depression. A 3D fantasy game, it was was developed by adolescent depression specialists from the University of Auckland, to engage youth in a self-learning depression management program. Players learn cognitive behavioural therapy techniques for dealing with symptoms of depression by travelling through different stages of the role-playing game geared at addressing different aspects of the illness. Results from the trial of the game found it to be more effective than medication and as effective as face-to-face treatment.

3. Investorville, Commonwealth Bank

Combining actual market data with innovative technology, Investorville is an online simulator that lets users try their hand at property investing without risking their own equity. It’s an engaging way for the bank to deliver complex messages around investing and whet the appetite of consumers thinking of taking on an investment property. The site has had over 100,000 visitors and of those 23,000 have taken the time to register and enter their details into the game, resulting in 630 loans. The game also supported the position of being technology leaders that CBA is gunning for, and resulted in significant PR for the business with editorial coverage in 88 pieces reaching an audience of 6.6 million.

2. Taste Invaders, Moove/Masters/Big M

Created by RedLever, interactive augmented reality game Taste Invaders enabled event goers to participate in a game where they watched a screen that showed themselves with virtual milk cartons falling around them which they needed to catch in a butterfly net. The experience developed for Lions’ milk brands Moove, Masters and Big M’s, visited three states alongside giant sculptural ‘Mphones’, which added to the visual spectacle and entertained the crowd with music.

The buzz factor of augmented reality appeared to capture the attention of the milk’s brands’ target audience, integrated new technology with simple, fun gameplay.

1. Jay-Z: Decoded, Random House Publishing Group (RHPG)

For the launch of Jay-Z’s memoir Decoded, RHPG launched using a unique social game that attracted public interest and incentive. Engaging the curiosity of customers, pre-released pages of the memoir were printed on various surfaces and hidden around the world – from food wrappers to the silk lining of a Gucci jacket. Conducted as a partnership with Bing and headed by New York ad agency Droga5, the campaign aimed to get an audience not known for reading books interested in doing so. Over 300 pages in 600 placements in 15 locations worldwide were hidden, for players to find, assemble and decode the book together online before its release date.

Which bank is launching a game targeted at C-suite execs?

by Marketing ON 10 May 2012

After a successful foray into gamification with the InvestorVille virtual investor game, the Commonwealth Bank is set to launch another game to help market its services, this time targeting C-suite executives.

Commonwealth Bank general manager of consumer marketing, Martin Whelan, told attendees at this morning’s AIMIA gamification event that the new game will launch as part of the bank’s partnership on the upcoming news app from the Australian Financial Review, which is due to launch in a few months. The game, which is yet to be named, will draw on RP Data similar to InvestorVille, but target C-Suite executives with the bank’s investment banking messages.

Whelan revealed that the partnership with AFR originally came to the bank as a sponsorship opportunity, but the bank elected to take the gamification approach instead. “We ended up going with a game because we didn’t want to just advertise as part of that – it felt too passive,” Whelan explained.

“What we thought there is we can build our investment name much, much larger by creating a game around it, engaging people in it and then delivering a much broader message around investment banking which is a very complex area of our business.”

Whelan believes the gamification approach is just as suitable to the C-suite audience as the mass audience, an assertion supported by other presenters at AIMIA’s event. Director of The Project Factory, Jennnifer Wilson, spoke about the use of the gamification technique in the health field and praised its ability to motivate people to exercise or treat themselves. Wilson gave the example of a game developed for child cancer patients, ‘Remission’, a ‘shoot-em-up’ game where cancer cells are the target. Messages delivered through this game hit home, to the point that kids involved in the game were more likely to take their tablets and had better recovery rates than those that didn’t.

Another presenter, Marigo Raftopoulos, director at Strategic Games Lab, spoke on gamification’s ability to transform company policy and training delivery, and workplace engagement. “Only 20% of staff in the average organisation are engaged,” she said. By making internal communication and training fun and interactive, gaming can help transform organisations into far more engaged and productive places, Raftopoulos said.