Internet Marketing and Digital Media Strategy Sydney Australia

Be unique - mass marketing is for mass producers and audiences.

Following are a few quick thoughts on brand engagement.

1. Understand the audience - the who/ what, when, where, how much and why?
2. Insure clients understand that in this digital media and communications age, online social media customers are now firmly at the power centre of the buying Universe - empower your audience with knowledge and tools - be open. For example, who are your "influencers (experts, role models etc), sneezers (people who advocate) and flamers (people who critic) and how do you connect? What channels are they in?
3. That Brands/ Services need to provide a unique sales proposition and create a compelling story/ experience that engage and resonates with their audience(s) - both in short term attraction and longer term relationships. This can be online, offline or a combination of the two "inline". 
4. Create desire and value viewer attention - develop and create short, high quality, very creative advertising and marketing collateral that viewers trust to share, interact (comments, likes, blogs) etc, purchase and recommend.
5. In summary much of the advertising and marketing principles we've all learnt are still the same  - the only difference now is scalability (niche), the technology, the heavily fragmented, flattened non value layers of middlemen and the integration and importance of customer service and experience into our brand engagement programs.

I love the new Walkabout  Tourism Australia Ads - it comes a long way from the old Hoges 1984 "Shrimp on the Bar-bie" and the "where the bloody hell are ya" campaigns (see playlist) - not that there is anything wrong with the classic standard shots of our beautiful beaches, outback sunsets, Sydney Harbour and kangaroos.

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This campaign is strong on the emotional tie-ins; the busy lives we live and the need to take a break and find our true selves again, to focus on who we are and what we truly enjoy - not so much an escape but a reawakening.

The production quality is second to none - good on yah Baz and Bruce! (sorry- great Aussie blokes names there brother!)

Interestingly this could just easily watch this in a wide screen cinema as on the TV or via the web.  In just a day Youtube is up to  15,000 plays.

We will be watching to see how this flows through not only the gates at the airport but the overall Australian level of service we provide. As we have said before, the business battleground for the future is increasingly going to be around creativity, innovation, customer engagement/ customacy.

Some of the Campaign facts

CAMPAIGN FACTS

• The Australian writer, producer and director Baz Luhrmann, and his Bazmark production team, have produced a special destination campaign for Tourism Australia.
• The two campaign cinema/TV spots were conceived by Baz Luhrmann and his team and directed by Bruce Hunt, four-time Director of the Year in Australia for his commercial work. They were produced by Bazmark in association with award winning commercials Production company Revolver.
• The two spots feature an all Australian cast and were shot on location in north Western Australia and on sound stages at Fox Studios Australia in Sydney. As an extension to the Bazmark TV/cinema campaign, print and online ads were produced by DDB Worldwide. There are eleven different print versions – shot in every state and territory.
• The campaign will run in all Tourism Australia’s major markets around the world from October 2008 until mid 2009.
• It is a special campaign that’s being made to take advantage of a special opportunity and to address the difficult times that tourism faces globally.
• Tourism Australia’s objective from this campaign is that it will ensure Australia reaches its forecast growth rate of 3.2 per cent in international arrivals in 2009 and halts the predicated decline in domestic travel within Australia.
• The campaign was conceived by Luhrmann to be completely stand-alone however Tourism Australia has also entered into a promotional partnership with Twentieth Century Fox to leverage Baz Luhrmann’s new epic film Australia, starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman.
• Combined, these two projects represent the bulk, but not the whole, of Tourism Australia’s marketing for 2008/09.
• Tourism Australia is investing around $40 million in the ad campaign and around $10 million on promotional opportunities around the movie.
• Tourism Australia will develop a more long-term campaign for release in mid to late 2009. This will be developed by its agency DDB Worldwide.

For the record it's going gang busters - she's achieved 2/3rds of her annual sales target in less than a month of selling - she's happy, her boss is stoked and the big UK boss who was out on a visit yesterday was also very impressed. Ahhh nothing better for a business than a happy customer!

Driving back to the office I gave this a bit more thought and one of the important elements to the rapid success was the existing relationships she, her company and products already has with her clients.  One of the most important factors  "trust" had already been established - her clients were already spending money with her (and her competitors) and the new service was innovative and captured her customer's attention.  Her customers want to be first to market - the important WIIFM (What's In It For Me).

"I go in, present, if they are not interested or desensitised to the message they're not going to buy (straight away), I plant the seed, we move on. Interested customers are in straight away, they get it, price is not the major consideration - they want to innovate and create".

As most sales people know this is totally different scenario then selling a commodity product or service with the pressure to make the mass numbers.  It's about moving beyond price and looking to inform and inspire your customers.

The example lends itself to some work I've been doing on Product Lifecycle Management; Business/ Innovation Diffusion Theory and Online marketing strategy development for the new CLIVE service we are providing.

A quick snapshot of some theory

Product Lifecycle

With any new product you got through the initial introduction; growth; maturity and decline.

Business Diffusion and innovations theory

This is the customer product adoption curve and some ballpark distribution

* Innovators - venturesome, educated, multiple info sources; (2%) < we are here
* Early adopters - social leaders, popular, educated; (9%)
* Early majority - deliberate, many informal social contacts; (40%)
* Late majority - skeptical, traditional, lower socio-economic status; (40%)
* Laggards - neighbours and friends are main info sources, fear of debt. (9%)

and

Online Marketing Strategy

The new media marketing view of the world (as opposed to old mass media view) the focus is given on identifying and influencing the earliest product life cycle adopters - "the innovators" and giving them the product experience and tools to tell other customers.

Mass media is focused on the 80% of Early and Late Majority Adopters on the consumer product adoption curve.

So, the focus is on identifying innovative customers.   The rest will roll from there.

The Four Types of Money

Back in the office I was speaking with a sales prospect from a local business seminar we sponsored last week - a local accountant I know and he talked about the four kinds of money

1. Your money being spent on you.
2. Your money and spent on someone else.
3. Someone else's money being spent on you.
4. Someone else's money being spent on someone else.

I began to wonder how this matrix can be applied to selling, particularly our services online advertising and strategic marketing targeting - from Participants to the Decensitised customers?

This leads into buying behaviour - we'll look at that a bit later.  

The challenge for Business and Product Managers

Where does you product or service fit in the Product LifeCycle?
How do you increase sales?