Blue Skies
Tuesday, 1 December 2009 - Munich, Germany
Presentation Summary
In this presentation at the Marketing & Innovation Forum in Munich this week, Kevin Roberts has 10 transforming ideas for business including the participation economy, the unreasonable power of creativity, Lovemarks as the future beyond brands, and revolution inside the store.
…. Unreasonable Power of Creativity
Every great brand starts with a dream. If you stand for nothing, you’ll fall for everything.
In the storm of 2001, Fortune’s CEO of the Decade Steve Jobs knew what he stood for. He launched iTunes, Mac OS X, Apple retail and the first iPod.
Procter & Gamble describes this as being “Purpose-inspired and Benefit-driven”.
The formula for winning has changed. I’m going to share the secrets to success through some key ideas.
IDEA #1 ENTER THE NEW MASS MARKET
Mass Marketing has regenerated, thanks to the web. Welcome to the Participation Economy.
The Participation Economy is about sharing access, taking part, play, fun, teamwork, togetherness, optimism, popularity, and equality.
| FROM ATTENTION | TO PARTICIPATION |
| Inform | Inspire |
| One-to-many | Many-to-many |
| Distraction | Interaction |
| Return on Investment | Return on Involvement |
| Market | Movement |
It’s not about putting the customer at the heart of everything we do. It’s about putting ourselves at the heart of everything the customer does.
We must ask: “how can I put myself at the heart of the customer?” How can I shift the game by changing the fan experience?
- Google maps has put mapping in the hands of the people. A 26-year old Pakistani in Glasgow has made 41,000 contributions to Map Maker!!
- For his 360 tour Bono put his band in the center of the stadium. With a 360˚ audience, U2 was able to get 20% more tickets.
- T-Mobile got 15 million views on YouTube.
IDEA #2 REFRAME VALUE
In the new frugality, marketing has been reset. 50% of consumers are spending less. Consumers are reframing their choice set, yet price is just a factor.
A recent US survey found 60% of women confess to buying something on a whim over the last year. On their most recent impulse, the average price was $108, and 18% said I “had to have it.”
Price is what companies put on the tag. Value is what lifts her new world, the switch to priceless.
Reframe around joy in new consumer lifestyles, or consumers will phase you out – fast.
Priceless value can be a jump shift.
- Private jet company Flexjet reframed its private jets from a luxury item to a valuable business tool, from status-orientated cost center to common sense transport investment.
- P&G invited consumers to compare Tide Total Care with the costs of dry cleaning.
Priceless value is about being surprisingly obvious.
- Netflix delivered DVDs to the door rather than making customers come to them.
IDEA #3 HEAD FOR THE JUNGLE
The game changer is the unreasonable power of ideas, and big ideas come from true insights.
If you want to understand how a tiger hunts, don’t go to the zoo…go to the jungle. We call this Xploring.
Explore her inner feelings, and find a revelation. Get an astonishing disclosure of truth.
What are some things we have learned? Youth: creative. Women: every day matters. Luxury: first times matter…
Don’t let the metric monsters form focus groups or stomp on your ideas. The only questions to ask:
- Do you want to see it again?
- Do you want to share it?
- Do you want to get involved?
IDEA #4 LET EMOTION RIP
In these unpredictable times, our most powerful feelings are off the charts. More than ever, people are acting emotionally – and why wouldn’t they?
Human beings are 80% emotional, 20% rational. As consumers move their lives into a new space, your job is to enter it, to reframe around a true feeling.
Novartis reframed the huge problem of lower back or neck pain around “the Joy of Movement.” Reason leads to conclusions. Emotion leads to action.
IDEA #5 CREATE LOVEMARKS
Power is with the people, not with the makers, movers or marketers of stuff.
Command and control has given way to unleash and inspire. Brands are dead. They’ve been commodified. Welcome to the future. Welcome to Lovemarks:
- Brands are owned by management, marketers and stockholders. Lovemarks are owned by the people who love them. Remember New Coke?
- Brands are built on Respect. Lovemarks are created out of Respect and Love.
- Brands build Loyalty for a Reason. Lovemarks inspire Loyalty Beyond Reason. Beyond price, attribute, benefit. Loyalty Beyond Recession.
- Great Brands were Irreplaceable. Lovemarks are Irresistible. For your brands ask: are you Irreplaceable? Or are you Irresistible?
IDEA #6 USE THE LOVE / RESPECT AXIS
The Love / Respect Axis is a fast, intuitive reality check:
- Low Respect. Low Love. Raw materials, raw experiences, raw pollution…. US Airlines.
- High Love. Low Respect. The creative zone of “NEW”, “NOW” and “GONE”. Some fads like text messaging leap to Lovemarks: Most don’t.
- High Respect. Low love. “e-r” words: faster, bigger… cheaper. Here’s where most investment has gone over the past 50 years, where brands battle. It’s where sustainability has raised the respect bar, but not the roof.
- High Love and High Respect. Lovemarks – authentic and bringing joy to people’s lives.
IDEA #7 EXPLORE THE THREE SECRETS
Brands deliver performance, reputation and trust. Lovemarks inspire mystery, sensuality and intimacy.
- Mystery – Taps into Dreams, Past / Present / Future, Icons and Symbols, Great Stories.
- Sensuality – Connect all five senses.
Apple stores take in around $4,000 in revenue per square foot of retail space. At Saks, $700. - Intimacy – Empathy, commitment and passion.
Tylenol’s advice for a headache? Take a glass of water, wait 20 minutes and if you still have one then take Tylenol.
IDEA #8 DELIVER SIGHT, SOUND AND MOTION
Whoever said “TV is dead” forgot to tell everyone else. Last year 82 million people in 66 countries watched the medical drama House.
CRIB can’t get enough TV. In 2001 less than a third of Indian households had TV. Now half do.
TV delivery platforms have exploded over the web.
Digital, High Def, DVR, mobile Wi-Fi… they’ll only make TV more irresistible in an age of super – screenery, an age of sisomo for screenagers.
Consumers are live, wired, and connected, and they won’t be marketed at. Marketing will dissolve. Creative, planning and account departments will disappear. Hot hubs will pump sisomo for sharing.
Give your audiences emotion, pace, interactivity, live programming, compelling story, shared experience, on-demand, on screen on time. SISOMO is you pumping participation.
IDEA #9 WIN WITH SHOPPERS
Sisomo is the next big connect in the store. The mobile phone will drive shopper marketing, from scanning barcodes and getting product reviews through to intimate passionate relevance.
Your job is to restructure to real time, to think in terms of audience and ideas not consumers and commercials, to intuitively navigate the relationship between online and in store.
Focus on improving shoppers’ lives and looking at the entire connecting experience from beginning to end.
It’s about delivering ideas that P&G calls “store back”. If it doesn’t work at the store, it’s a miss.
Shopping is a trillion dollar global event. Win through:
- Experience
- Convenience and Control
- Interactivity
- Partnership
- Priceless Value.
The next shopper revolution will not be Green, but TRUE BLUE. It will accommodate economic, social, environmental and cultural touch points.
The heart of True Blue is to inspire people to make the best choices for themselves and for the planet.
- Green demands: “What’s to be done?” True Blue asks: “What can I do?”
- Green is about Limits. True Blue is about Possibilities.
- Green is about Obligations. True Blue is about Opportunity.
- Green is about the Planet. True Blue is about the People who live on it.
Great brands are all over this – because it will be big.
Saatchi & Saatchi S, our True Blue agency, has a program called DOT, do one thing, then one more thing, then another.
To be on this curve, inspire everyone in your own company to take sustainability seriously and to DOT.
IDEA #10 MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE FOR EVERYONE
Jack Welch says the role of business is to create shareholder wealth. Peter Drucker says it’s to create and maintain a customer. Both right. But incomplete. The role of business is to make the world a better place for everyone.
Business is the big game, and the “big fix” starts with business. The motivation can be principled and it can be pragmatic, and the big guys get it:
Wal-mart is setting standards for its supply chain by labeling the carbon impacts of its 100,000 suppliers.
Toyota has reframed driving around breathing clean air, around recycling sunshine.
The choice is be a leader, or just another follower.
WIND UP
It all starts with a dream. Martin Luther King did not say “I have a mission statement”.
From there:
- Put yourself at the heart of the customer
- Reframe with emotion
- Ooze Mystery, Sensuality and Intimacy
- Sizzle with Sight, Sound and Motion
- … and be priceless.
Build brands that inspire people and the people will inspire you back – with a Lovemark.
