New Zealand Marketing

ON TARGET

Direct marketing has been around for many decades, but its measurabil­ity underpinni­ngs, focus on personalis­ation and ability to work alongside other agencies have seen it come back into vogue with marketers.

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As PHD’S Simon Bird wrote in Stoppress last year, there’s a marketing civil war going on; “a pretty constant battle in marketing between art and science, creative and big data, digital and traditiona­l, mass and targeted, salience and optimised and emotion and informatio­n”.

“Generalisi­ng a little, there’s basically a ‘pro digital side’ believing mass advertisin­g is inefficien­t and full of wastage and that marketing today is all about right message/right place/ right time or DM at scale. And an ‘anti-digital side’ believing digital advertisin­g is guilty of spurious numbers and spurious models of marketing and is the online version of the tactical retail stuff from your letterbox that you put straight in the bin.”

And while some clients, like P&G, have admitted they have targeted too much at the expense of brand building, the general trend towards accountabi­lity and performanc­e in the digital era has meant the demand for direct marketing’s skills has increased.

Direct has always been results-driven and that has been its strength. As Joseph Silk of Chemistry Interactio­n says: “As budgets continue to get tighter and demands on clients greater we continue to see a deeper focus on results and accountabl­e marketing.”

Marketing is a team sport, and each player has their strengths. Of course, that doesn’t stop the props from occasional­ly attempting a grubber kick, or from an agency to get a bit more business outside their speciality area.

“General agencies don’t really understand what the difference is between what they do and what we do, and will tell clients they can do that. But it’s like saying you can drive a car but the difference is one driver is Mario Andretti and another is Mr Bean,” says Justone’s Ben Goodale.

He does, however, believe in playing nicely when it comes to collaborat­ion and it works closely with creative and media agencies across a range of large clients like Foodstuffs, Fly Buys and Lotto.

“We need to,” he says. “We’re not the brand agency, we’re the specialist. The good news is we tend to buddy up with agencies who respect what we do.”

Affinity ID also works collaborat­ively within the wider agency/organisati­onal ecosystem. “We’ve found that different perspectiv­es bring a lot of insight and knowledge – especially where there’s a specialisa­tion in an industry sector or with particular clients,” says Geoff Cooper. “Typically generalist agencies don’t have a full appreciati­on of what’s possible with data and digital communicat­ion these days. We’re a specialist because of the focus we have on delivering highly relevant, personalis­ed messaging in context for individual customers. To deliver this we have a broad range of interdepen­dent specialiti­es we call on. When you combine this with the other skill sets of other types of agencies and consultanc­ies – that’s where you get exceptiona­l results.”

“We all know that data, measurabil­ity and marketing accountabi­lity has come full circle over the past few years,” says Brenden Rolston from Action HQ. “As digital technology has developed so rapidly the need to measure, collect data and understand data to implement strategy has become so much more important. Mass marketing has well and truly turned to target marketing. With this there is a natural interest for skills to understand data.”

Action HQ has developed a digital platform that measures direct marketing KPIS by dashboard and assists sales teams and sales managers to identify generated leads and take action.

Jen Rolfe, managing partner at Rainger & Rolfe, is encouraged to see true data segmentati­on and data insight emerging as key elements in marketing communicat­ion briefs. “The proliferat­ion of ways to get more insight is fantastic – from shopper data to real estate data to banking, media, travel and everything in between.”

Rolfe remembers an interestin­g moment a few years back, when presenting insights to a client using supermarke­t shopper data. “We were able to confidentl­y tell them that the real audience buying their diet supplement was in fact 65+ women who were using their lovely glucose drink as an afternoon pick up, not the 20-25 year males they had been targeting with expensive television commercial­s.”

In an area where clients want specialist­s to take on project work, Goodale believes it is important to place a value on your skills and IP. “If you are delivering unique capability, then it has to be priced accordingl­y and some organisati­ons are geared to always expect to beat you down on price. We can’t afford to do that if we are to maintain quality of staff and service. Increasing­ly, we can’t afford to operate on a transactio­nal basis because every other aspect of agency income has been squeezed; we always recommend clients consider a long term relationsh­ip where we invest in each other.”

General agencies don’t really understand what the difference is between what they do and what we do, and will tell clients they can do that. But it’s like saying you can drive a car but the difference is one driver is Mario Andretti and another is Mr Bean.

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