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« January 2007 | Main | March 2007 » February 28, 2007 Seguro que últimamente habéis leído algo de Wal-Mart. No tenéis más que hacer un google con Wal-Mart para ver la cantidad de artículos que se están escribiendo sobre el mayor retailer del mundo. Lo curioso de los artículos es que son bipolares y casi ninguno neutral: O proclaman un futuro brillante para la cadena, o bien pronostican el principio de su hundimiento. Más que entrar en si Wal-Mart va a seguir triunfando o no, quiero entrar en lo que considero que son aspectos clave que van a determinar en gran medida su futuro a medio y largo plazo. Wal-Mart surgió como un hard discounter, un retailer cuyo principal objetivo es ofrecer los mejores precios en todo lo que sea vendible en una gran superficie. En sus propias palabras “Always low prices. Always”. Y la verdad es que lo han conseguido y siguen creciendo a grandes tasas. Cumplen a la perfección lo que se llama diferenciación por costes y, sin embargo, hay muchos interrogantes sobre su futuro performance. Interrogantes que trataré de esbozar. Continue reading '¿Qué pasa con Wal-Mart?' 
February 25, 2007 Seat, a spanish car manufacturer and brand, was purchased by the Volkswagen Group in 1986 The early years after the purchase were relatively calm, but in the early 90s the real problems showed up as long as it did not comply with the expected sales and turned into red numbers. Reasons for that are many (the purchase of Skoda, general management, lack of resources, unclear brand positioning, etc) but will not be discussed in this blog. Continue reading 'Unprofitable brands within a profitable brand portfolio?'
Outdoor advertising has always been the poor brother of all formats used in a campaign. However with an statistical approach this statement can not be considered true, at least in Spain. Outdoor media coverage happens to be of special importance in urban areas with populations over 50,000 inhabitants, where it gets to 77% for youngsters 14 to 24 years old. Do you think it has to do with the new creativities that are been applied to outdoor ads in substitution of the traditional posters that didn't appear to catch walkers' and drivers' eyes so far? As an example, have a look at the outdoor campaign targeted at MINI owners. In cities such as Chicago and Miami they have installed digital billboards who are able to receive identification messages from the MINI's passing by. As the car is tagged with information about the owner, the billboard is able to recognize the driver and greet him/her with a personalized message.
Another example: the transparent billboards Mustang is using to adevertise its speed cars: constructed from semi-transparent resin, they accurately blur the scene behind them regardless of day, weather, or season giving a sense of speed to the viewer.
What are your companies doing regarding outdoor advertisement? Are they using all the potential of this reborn format? Manuel Angel Alonso Coto
February 22, 2007 Yesterday the Ministry of Health in Spain decided to stop a project of law that would have forbidden any alcohol drink including wine and beer to be advertised. The big winners for this were the wine and beer producers. The big losers, the young people the law was trying to protect. Leaving apart ethical considerations, what is really interesting to me here is how fierce competitors turned into amazing cooperation to protect the industry interests. Where properly organized and recognized, it is usually called LOBBY, and is from my perspective a very powerful Marketing Tool that the companies should not lose out of sight.. Continue reading 'Competitive cooperation'
Como podéis ver en el gráfico inferior recién lanzado por el Centro Enter http://www.enter.es/ con el Web 2.0 nuestro país por fin se empieza a acercar a las medias europeas en el uso de Internet.
Sin embargo el Comercio Electrónico no acaba de despegar. Y somos muchos los que pensamos que en vez de pensar en el comprador como responsable, tenemos que empezar a mirar a la empresa vendedora. Os lo aseguro porque estamos elaborando un estudio del uso de medios de pago en España y cuesta encontrar las empresas que permiten el pago con tarjeta de crédito en nuestro país (menos de una de cada 100 con web). De hecho si observáis este gráfico veréis que la mayor parte de las compras online hechas en España se realizan a empresas de más allá de nuestras formteras.
¿Están empezando las empresas españolas a dejar pasar la oportunidad?
February 21, 2007 La Marca es algo vivo y tremendamente valioso. De hecho, ¡hay muchas compañías cuyo mayor activo es sin duda la propia marca! Por ello es importantísimo que la cuidemos en todo momento sin dejar ningún detalle al azar. Tener una Marca con un alto valor es complicado. Porque de alguna manera es como la reputación: Cuesta muchísimo obtenerla, pero a la primera de cambio puedes echar todo por la borda. Que se lo pregunten a Arthur Andersen... Todo esto se me ha ocurrido al ver dos comunicaciones, una en televisión de MAPFRE y otra promocional de una MUY CONOCIDA MARCA DE LECHE. Que sin duda reflejan dos ejemplos de lo que se debe y no se debe hacer al gestionar la marca. Continue reading '¿Cómo crear valor de marca y no morir en el intento?'
Within our new line of using the blog from time to time to discuss creativities in order to bring us all new ideas for our advertising projects, Gemma Martín -a frequent collaborator of this blog- is proposing us this creativity to discuss...
Have you realized that the old common use of including product prices in printed advertising has become out of date? Only a few companies like IKEA continue doing it... An at least in IKEA case with quite great results... What do you think? Is it better that the potential client establishes a direct contact to find out the price... Or are we missing sales for not including it in our ads? Best regards Manuel Angel Alonso Coto
February 18, 2007 Being able to give more with less is what every single company in the world in looking for. If we are able to do it, we will be able to give a better product, get more satisfied customers and gain higher profits than our competitors. Looks like a theoretical aproach? Not really I would say. Real life shows us many companies striving to do it with more or less success in different areas. In this post I will start with Distribution. When we speak about Distribution giving more for less would be what is usually called Channel Advantage. Channel Advantage is gained when you are able to switch customers to lower-cost channels, with no loss of sales or deterioration in service quality. From my experience how to get the Channel Advantage is actually dictated by trends. People do not have in general a well-defined idea of how to get it and try to emulate what other people do (the smartest ones, what other sectors are doing; the followers, what seems to work for our competitors). Continue reading 'How to attain Channel Advantage?'
February 14, 2007 Right now the 3GSM is taking place in Barcelona. The 3GSM is annual telecom event where new technologies and products are advanced, and the telecom gurus discuss about new trends. Many new technologies and products have been announced. However, ins spite of not being officially invited, one of the key guests have been the I-Phone. Everybody speaks about it! Steve Jobs is a very interesting marketer to me. I recall a conversation I had with one of my colleagues where she pointed out that this man has repeteadly broken many well-known marketing rules. She commented for instance the marketing stategy followed with the i-pod and i-tunes. What you usually do is to sell the hardware very cheap (even under cost) and then make money with the consumables (where you charge a big margin). But Mr Jobs is taking a diiferent apporach and making money both with the i-pod and the i-tunes. Marketing rule broken! Continue reading 'I-Phone: Category killer or niche product?'
Consumer Generated Comment is one of the most important alternatives to traditional advertising that are shaking the industry. Maybe most of consumers have not heard of it till a week ago, but the Doritos ad in the SuperBowl mid-time TV golden minute has been commented worlwide…. The 30 most expensive seconds of international advertising have been used to release content generated by consumers under a contest sponsored by the brand (Doritos, Crash the SuperBowl)… Yahoo Video along with Doritos launched Crash the Super Bowl, a site where consumers could send them homemade Super Bowl commercials, with a chance for the winner to make it to prime time. Doritos selected 5 finalists from all submissions. Then consumers were allowed to determine which ad would be aired during the Super Bowl. All five finalists received $10,000 and a trip to Miami for a private Super Bowl viewing party. They received 1,060 30'' movies and Dale Backus and Wes Phillips finally made it. This is the winning video that was broadcasted at the end: Anyhow, consumer generated media - blogs, discussion boards, review sites, social network sites, etc. - has remained a prevalent subject in marketing industry discussions in the past year. How can marketers use this new medium to their advantage? Should CGC be considered an opportunity to promote the products and be part of our marketing strategy, or is it a threat that needs to be contained? Apple experimented both sides of the coin with its I-pod: CGC helped them to spread their MP3 device around the world but also a video recorded by a user explaining his problems with I-pod recharging forced Apple to modify their batteries installation processes… Consumer Generated Content is created primarily by users themselves—anyone other than professional writers, publishers or journalists, and made available to other consumers via interactive technology applications or TV. CGC is so available in various formats, including text, images, videos, podcasts, and voting/ranking. Is Consumer Generated Media a Threat or an Opportunity? From my point of view there are three ways marketers can use CGM to their benefit. First, use CGM to listen to what consumers are saying. By monitoring reviews and comments about your products/services, you can immediately address any issues and act appropriately. Second, establish interactive relationships with the customer via corporate-sponsored CGC initiatives. And third and most important, utilize the various types and formats of CGM to promote products and services via advertising. Think about it for a moment: happy consumers are willing participants in the "communication" process and will help us to market our products/services for free. It's sublime. It's special. Ignoring it is only half of the mistake we might make; not capitalizing on it is the other half. Think about it some more. Why wouldn't satisfied consumers want to interact, volunteer, participate and create around the brands and campaigns they like? Advertising is a vital part of the connections or bridges (call them touchpoints if you must) between brand and consumer. And up until now, this process was an exclusive club -a marketing autocracy- where marketers controlled the when, where, what and how; the exposure place and time; the medium and the message… We just have to find our most satisfied consumers (our web site is the perfect place) and motivate them with a suitable prize to develop audiovisual content and send it to us… Selecting the best pieces not only will empower our brand but also will allow us to have full rights of use over a material we can broadcast on TVs and/or radios… A material we have got nearly for free (if compared with the costs of an agency spot) and that, no matter its quality is not perfect, happens to be much more reliable for consumers than traditional spots… --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We can read much more about this utmost interesting new way of doing ads in the book “Life After the 30-Second Spot” which is being a best-seller in the States.
February 13, 2007 Hace poco –como regalo de Navidad- una agencia publicitaria me hacía llegar el best-seller que, apoyado en conceptos de e-marketing- está revolucionando la gestión comercial en USA. Se llama “The Long Tail” y más que leerlo, lo he devorado. Aún no se ha editado en español, pero os conmino a acudir a Amazon y leéroslo en inglés… Un enfoque totalmente nuevo de la comercialización y la publicidad en Internet…
Se llama Long Tail a la distribución que mejor explica los gustos de la gente, los éxitos musicales, los libros más leídos o los tops de ventas (los que no están manipulados) pero también los libros prestados en una biblioteca, el fenómeno de los blogs o las palabras más buscadas de Internet. Viene a susituir a la Ley de Pareto sobre las distribuciones 80%-20% que hasta ahora se aplicaba a la gestión comercial: el 80% de los beneficios es generado por el 20% de los productos.... El libro parte de un artículo de su autor -Chris Anderson (uno de los editores de la revista Wired)- también titulado The Long Tail, publicado en Octubre del 2004 y que se convirtió en uno de los documentos sobre Internet más comentados, con 245.000 resultados en Google, un Page Rank de 7/10 y una completa entrada en la Wikipedia. Cuando Internet aún no se había convertido en un canal masivo de venta, muchas distribuciones del tipo Long Tail se estaban camuflando como distribuciones 80-20% al verse forzados los gustos de la gente a concentrarse en unos pocos grupos musicales, productos de consumo y hobbies cuando en realidad los intereses son mucho más variados de lo que se pensaba el mercado. Con Intenet se ha probado la existencia de una economía “de cola larga” como prueban por ejemplo los miles de libros minoritarios que vende Amazon diariamente y que no están disponibles en una librería normal (habría que encargarlos). Hay, por consiguiente, miles de micronichos por explotar (Chris Anderson habla de millones) ahí fuera… Algunas cifras esclarecedoras: Amazon obtiene entre el 25 y 30 % (el 57% según algunos estudios) de sus ingresos de la venta de los libros que no son los habituales superventas. El 20% de las películas en DVD que alquila Netflix son documentales, películas de serie B, para minorías, etc., no las películas populares. Las estadísticas de la compañía Rhapsody, que permite descargar música por suscripción, muestran que un 22% de sus ventas provienen de canciones que no se escuchan en los medios de comunicación normales.
Y eso sólo desde el punto de vista de la comercialización, porque si hablamos de publicidad, los mismos principios de “cola larga” aplican: desde el uso publicitario de esas páginas en las que se venden productos minoritarias para hacer publicidad de nicho hasta el propio Marketing de Buscadores: la clave no está tanto en pujar por las pocas palabras mayoritarias que todo el mundo quiere y que cuestan carísimas, sino en probar con muchísimas (hasta dos o tres mil) para que cada una genere unos pocos clicks (y en consecuencia ventas) a precios ridículos… Y es que la clave con la que hay que quedarse es el subtítulo del libro: “Why the future of business is selling less of more”. Internet ha originado una tienda sin límites espaciales ni geográficos, donde lo que no se vende hoy en el “mundo real” es el gran negocio del “mundo virtual”. Es la irrupción del mercado de los nichos: pequeños y disímiles grupos de clientes, que sumados representan la gran mina de oro del consumo del siglo XXI.
February 11, 2007 When we speak about customer development and retention, building customer loyalty and long-term relationships with our clients, most of us show an skeptical attitude. We all know that acquiring a new customer is 10 to 20 times more expensive than developing and mantaining an existing one, but place most of our efforts in the former and not in the latter. Best. Ignacio Gafo
February 08, 2007 Cuando Google pagó 1650 millones de dólares por YouTube todos nos preguntamos cómo se las iban a arreglar para recuperar la inversión. Parece que ya han encontrado la respuesta: el pasado día 26 durante el Foro Económico Mundial, celebrado en la localidad suiza de Davos, Chad Hurley, el fundador de YouTube, declaró a la BBC (con la que por cierto ya habían llegado a un acuerdo para distribuir parte de su programación a través de Youtube) y a Financial Times que en los próximos dos meses irán progresivamente dando los detalles de un sistema que combinará Adsense y Youtube para recopensar la “creatividad” de los usuarios que suban vídeos a YouTube que generen ingresos publicitarios. Pero, ¿cómo van a hacerlo con éxito? Hasta ahora YouTube no había utilizado este modelo de negocio y muchos consideraban esa la clave de su éxito. El propio Hurley se había opuesto al mismo (que sí utilizaban algunos sitios similares como Revver, Adbrite ó 3’s) diciendo que se oponía al concepto de “comunidad” que ellos querían desarrollar.
Sin embargo con 70 millones de usuarios al mes, Google no puede dejar pasar la oportunidad (para eso lo ha comprado) de sacar rendimiento a YouTube a través de su sistema de publicidad contextual AdSense, para el que el vídeo sólo será otro formato que unir al de los anuncios textuales actuales. Quizás convenga empezar repasando cómo funciona AdSense sin YouTube: cualquiera que tenga un sitio web puede solicitar a Google su ID de AdSense para meter en una o todas de sus páginas un cuadro en el que Google haga aparecer anuncios textuales de anunciantes que publiciten productos/servicios contenidos con la temática y contenidos del site. Para controlar los anuncios, estos superan tres filtros: el primero para eliminar a los competidores del propio site, el segundo contextual y el tercero editorial. Si los visitantes del site pinchan en los anuncios, Google lo controlará a través de Adsense y asignará parte del beneficio al site que alberga el anuncio. El avance de las ganancias se puede controlar a través de reports automáticos de AdSense y se paga a través de tarjeta de crédito. ¿Cómo van a aplicar este sistema a los vídeos de YouTube? A vista de pájaro parece claro: relacionarán los vídeos con una serie de temáticas, les añadirán los anuncios –que en este caso no serán textuales sino de imagen- y controlarán los clicks para pagar a quien haya subido los vídeos. Es al pensar en los detalles cuando surgen las dudas: ¿cómo van a meter la publicidad a los vídeos?, ¿cómo va a vincular los anuncios con las temáticas de los vídeos?, ¿qué pasa si los vídeos tienen copyright? ¿qué porcentaje de los ingresos van a dar a los usuarios?
February 06, 2007 The Wall Street Journal will begin placing ads on its front page, a move that could bring in tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue. The Journal will probably begin offering the space in September. The ad, which can be in color, will probably be square-shaped and run in the bottom right-hand corner. Another option might be a strip ad along the bottom of the page.
Media buyers speculated that the ad could fetch anywhere from $75,000 to somewhere in the low six figures. The journal is offering the space to its largest advertisers. The move could influence other newspapers to also open up their front pages. This decission breaks a century tradition and has been made up in a difficult moment for main newspapers worlwide: everyone is trying to figure out new ways for increasing income and reducing costs in order to fight the advertising strength of digital media. Taking into account Bill Gate's recent opinion about newspapers not exisitng as close as by 2020, do you think that media and agencies should work together to redefine newspapers advertising? Best regards. Manuel Angel Alonso Coto
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