This year’s conference Marketing Management, which was held on 5th May 2010, attracted around 150 attendants to the Prague hotel Grand Majestic Plaza. They came to share ideas and experience on how it is possible not only to “survive” on the current market, but also to grow, if only the marketers have enough courage. But as the moderator of the first session, Zdeněk Strnad, ushered in the beginning the courage sometimes directly correlates with their wages so the well-paid managers in hard times try more just to survive and hold down, which means not to take even the least measure of risk. As the first speaker Ondřej Tomas from GfK Czech appealed to the conscience of all present attendants when he introduced results of the research mapping opinions of Czech marketing experts on level of knowledge of ”their” consumers and level of courage to address them with innovative tools and communication forms.
Do marketers know their consumers?
Most of them is confident they do. In connection with this another data from the research sounded very unbelievable, saying that two thirds of marketers consider themselves “fit” into their target group and three quarters of them consider their friends a the proper sample for examining the consumer behavior. The most frequent source of information necessary for exercising their profession is internet and its research engines in general. For conference organizers there was very interesting information that half of marketing experts – research respondents – listed informal meetings, social meetings, sport events and mainly expert conferences and seminars as a great source of information for their work.
David Williams, Global Customer Intelligence Practice SAS, on the other hand warned that in the today’s dynamic information era the customers approach changes very quickly and is influenced by many things so it is necessary not only to verify their potential and values again and again but mainly to address them with relevant way which is the most efficient for the current time and respective purpose. More than three quarters of customers would like to be able to influence the manner they will be addressed. Only the right customers strategy can help to invest less and gain more.
Importance of consumer trends knowledge was confirmed also by presentation of Alexander von Maillot from Nestlé CZ/SK. He showed how their company decided to respond on growing popularity of special coffee drinks with milk which led to an idea to satisfy this demand by design attractive home automats for capsules, DolceGusto. It was shown that even in the time of crisis the premium product can score – success of these home automats was 40 percent greater than expected and all conference participants were surprised by information that in Slovakia there were 70 times more, converted to number of inhabitants, automats sold than in USA.
How is it with courage in using new communication tools?
Even though majority of marketers (92%) declares to be friends of innovations in communication channels, in fact only one third of them have some experience with such tools. Majority of them thinks it is more difficult to put new ideas into practice than using groovy methods and for this there is also a frequent answer that the company is lacking experts able to use the new media.
Abroad expert Christophe Cauvy presented the role of social media in company and brand communication, with reference to many good and bad examples of usage, from McCann Digital EMEA, in a speech called “Re-inventing marketing communicating”. In his presentation with a topic overlapping to PR he pointed at a crucial importance of current public opinion influencers – internet bloggers – and he listed also other examples of creative communication using network experiences sharing.
A great refreshment for the participants was the case study of Zoozoos introduced by its author, Kavita Nair from Vodafone Essar India, as a splendid example of idea that worked through all communication channels and fulfilled its purpose also thanks to massive usage of social networks Facebook and YouTube. Many attendants straightforwardly envied Kavita the extent of freedom she had while creating and approving this advertising concept. The success was possible mainly thanks to courage, innovativeness and diligence of Kavita and the whole implementation team that managed the almost impossible – to prepare 30 half-minute advertisement spots from the world of ZooZoos characters within two months. Through them they communicated offer of mobile operator Vodafone during live broadcastings of Indian national cricket league and it was so funny and attractive that the advertisement became even more demanded content of the broadcasting than the cricket itself. People tensely expected new advertisement stories and discussed them on social networks. Even more, thanks to universal white characters and friendly playfulness and humor of stories this campaign has a potential for easy and successful applicability in all regions worldwide … anyway, in Czech conference hall its wittiness resonated very efficiently and loudly.
Within the case studies from home basin the presentation of Roman Bláha, marketing Director of Poštovní spořitelna, was accepted very well. Participants appreciated not only the fact that conference has introduced something brand new (the campaign was introduced to the market by this presentation) but also the way of practical assumption of the campaign idea “to give simplicity a new dimension” and to offer a banking product to really great masses.
Responsibility and sustainability as a communication tool
Beside social networks a great space of the conference was given to the topics of sustainability. From the view of producer this topic was started by Roman Šiser, Products and Packaging Innovation Director for Sparkling Beverages of the Coca-Cola Company, who introduced a fully recyclable bottle of the future made of sugar cane. Eva Willams then spoke about a need of targeting communication on growing share of responsible customers. On examples of Tesco Stores CR/SR company she documented how it is possible to connect social responsible behavior with sales support.
Another view of sustainability conception was given by Petra Mašínová, Corporate Communication Director of New World Resources / OKD, when she described how the company NWR communicates not only its environmental responsibility but also the fact they are trying to do something more than the environmental law requires. The attending marketers highly appreciated her funny and interesting presentation and inspiration from the completely different market.
How brands live in the communication era
The most interesting and most opened part of the conference was the afternoon panel discussions where participants discussed opportunities and threats of communication in era of dialogue. How to live in the world where all information is immediately available and quickly spreadable, how can brands work with Facebook which resembles a pub where people are just speaking, but often about them… panelists agreed Facebook cannot be understood just as some other media (“we will post it on Facebook”) or a mantra, something self-salvable. It is necessary to realize Facebook is just a mirror of what the company does, no matter if correctly or wrong. It is a pub living its own life, but it is possible to look into it and gain valuable information about oneself from there. You cannot build community around your brand on Facebook, but if this community exists it is possible to offer the brand using social networks. If someone does not have so interesting brand to be discussed positively in a pub, he can try to find another platform, which is interesting and can be used to discuss this brand indirectly. At the end all attendants agreed it is not possible to buy customers on social networks by anything else than by listening to them and trying to respect their wishes by the brands.
For more information see www.marketingmanagement.cz (barbora.krasna@blueevents.eu)