e-Acheteur

The year has just started and some folks are really blundering their way through marketing-city. It almost looks like the only resolutions for 2006 were budget cuts, or people are perhaps still a bit intoxicated of the New Year celebrations. So what have I seen:

Carlsberg – Chinese new year TV-ad:
Two sisters are decorating their house for Chinese New Year, slow pace, in an educational way, all about luck and prosperity and doing it right. It appears to be another commercial from the national-campaign-lusty Singapore government, but eventually the crux comes around the corner: the fridge opens. What’s in there is Carlsberg beer and then the door opens with friends to help them to finish the booze.
So what went wrong: because of the slow pace is looks like a cheap $25 commercial. The fridge is a nice surprise in the commercial, but I expected to see some sort of cheap Chinese brand beer in the fridge, not Carlsberg. Oh and then the compulsory element of friends that come and visit. It was “squeezed in”, but doesn’t “blend in”, obviously a must-have dictated from the HQ…

Courts – Budget TV Ad:
It starts with “Court appologizes for the fact that this ad looks like at $25 ad”. Well, appologies not accepted, end of story. Man, I’ve seen lame commercials from Courts, especially the ones with Jamie Yeo as a newscaster, but this beats everything. They should seriously kick their TV-ad agencies’ butt to get to work (or maybe they should mess less with their work, so that they can be more creative).

Budget terminal – Branding of the LCC-terminal:
CAAS has started branding their new terminal, but have come up with the lamest name they could probably find (even after a contest about the name). Budget terminal sounds so el-cheapo and I really can’t imagine that there was really nothing better in the contest-entries than that. And even if you don’t want to call it e.g. “Sky blue terminal” or “Go go terminal”, it might have even been better to just brand it as “high-value terminal” or perhaps even “Changi terminal 3″ rather that something negative like “the Budget terminal”. Oh, and if you happen to go there, please take your umbrella, because I’m not sure if the builders of the “budget terminal” had the funds to build a roof over it…

Appologies not accepted!

What always amazes me is how marketing consultants extrapolate their own behavior to the rest of the world. I was reading a story in Marketing Magazine in which Simon Bond (Proximity Singapore) explained that if your TV-ads were enticing enough, they’ll get seen, TIVO or no TIVO. This was based on the fact that there was once in his TIVO-enabled home, he found family members watching a commercial over an over again. Although I doubt the authenticity of the story (I mean: who would do that?), I certainly don’t think that you can project something that happened in one household (sample size = 1) could be projected over all people’s behavior. If you’re in the middle of a show, would you really care going through a commercial, even several times?

If I look at my own behaviour (I don’t have a Tivo, but do have a PVR), I don’t look at TV commercials at all. My PVR is so advanced that I don’t even have to fast forward through it anymore, it automatically removes the commercials at recording time. Even if I wanted to see the commercials, it’s too bad, because they’re not even recorded (if you want to know what I use, it’s comskip, which works very effectively in Singapore).

If you’d ask my opinion (without projecting my personal situation to the rest of the world), the marketing industry should be moving to other media instead of TV media. Instead of sticking to the conventional and pumping even more funds into it (because the ads need to be more enticing, more creative), try to be more creative in media choice. The world is changing quite drastically and people don’t seem to rely on just one media at a time anymore. Often they’re watching TV and browsing the web at the same time, or reading a magazine and listing to podcasts at the same time (and this is based on stats, not my personal behavior). This changing environment opens great opportunities, with great challenges that require a lot new kind of creativity in media-planning. These are going to be exciting times!

Don’t get me wrong, there are things that do bother me, but this is not bothering me at all. It’s just that I took note of it and thought it was remarkable.

This is about actors, presenters and singers that appear on TV from time to time. Mediacorp was revering to them as artists. That’s okay I though, it’s a small country and you have to look at your economy of scale and stuff, that’s why you don’t make a distinction between them, you just call them all artists. In a tiny country like Singapore, you’ll probably have to because, people need to be able to take-over eachothers role. Hey, the newsreader is sick, come let’s get that guy from Pua Chu Kang, I think he speaks English too. As the folks in this business say: the show must go on.

However, what I noticed recently is that these guys are not called artists at all. The union of presenters, actors and singers probably said that they’re worth much more and can’t just genericly be called artist. To make it sound more expensive they have followed the artist with an ‘e’, so that it’s now artiste. I saw this recently when I was reading something about Mediacorp, in which this was spelled out. Now, the Oxford dictionary says that there’s indeed such a word, but that in English the most common form to use is actually just artist.

So why do they want to call it artiste (with an ‘e’). There’s two possible reasons. The first reason could be that they’re trying to make it sound mediterranian. Check that word out in the French, Spanish or Italian dictionary. It probably exists in them all, and does contain the compulsory ‘e’. In Singapore, French or Italian goes together with words like luxury, as in a dinner prepared by the French chef, or the Italian Da Vinci furniture. Mediacorp could be trying to express that their artistes are luxury goods, and should be compared to Louis Vutton bags. But then: why do they look so cheap?

Another reason could be that they’re trying to make them all females. In my native language and also a lot of other western-European languages a job is made ‘female’ by just adding the ‘e’. Given the fact that most of the folks at Mediacop seem to be female (whether they’re genetically a lad or a lass), this could be a very good reason. I find it unlikely that in a conservative country like Singapore, Mediacorp would really openly do this though.

If it were up to me, I’d just keep it to the first reason: Mediacorp folks are supposed to be luxury items. So, I’ve decided that I’m going to print new business cards and follow their branding example. E-Marketer sounds cheap and in a western context almost like e-spammer. From now on, it’s going to be e-Acheteur!

Consumers love brands because they offer an extra value

Revenue/Cost model

The 3 C’s (Company, Customers, Competition)

The 4 Ps’ (Product, Price, Promotion, Place)

Porter’s 5 forces model

The Five Forces model of Porter is an Outside-in business unit strategy tool that is used to make an analysis of the attractiveness (value) of an industry structure. The Competitive Forces analysis is made by the identification of 5 fundamental competitive forces:

1. Entry of competitors. How easy or difficult is it for new entrants to start competing, which barriers do exist.
2. Threat of substitutes. How easy can a product or service be substituted, especially made cheaper.
3. Bargaining power of buyers. How strong is the position of buyers. Can they work together in ordering large volumes.
4. Bargaining power of suppliers. How strong is the position of sellers. Do many potential suppliers exist or only few potential suppliers, monopoly?
5. Rivalry among the existing players. Does a strong competition between the existing players exist? Is one player very dominant or are all equal in strength and size.

Sometimes a sixth competitive force is added:

6. Government.