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October 2000
Marketing SIG Newsletter
We thought monthly e-mails containing marketing/PR book reviews, article
summaries, and upcoming conferences and seminars would help you keep
up with the latest trends and happenings without tons of reading. Since
everyone belongs to different organizations and reads and subscribes
to different books and journals, please submit your own reviews and
briefs so we have a wider diversity than just the books and magazines
I read. Let me know what you think! Lynette
CONTENTS
* Review of Radical Marketing Chris Sigurdson, Purdue University
* Integrated Communications: What Does It Mean?
* Christina's New Song: What A Journalist Wants
* Exemplary Marketing/PR Programs
* Upcoming Events ___________________________________________________________________
Radical Marketing Sam Hill and Glenn Rifkin
HarperBusiness Book, 1999
A book review by Chris Sigurdson
Let's start by quoting what our colleague Karen Bolluyt of Iowa State
tells her Extension clients about marketing: "We'll help you put your
best foot forward, but it's still your foot."
Or Philip Kotler, author of Marketing Management, as quoted in Radical
Marketing: "Authentic marketing…is the art of identifying and understanding
customer needs and creating solutions that deliver satisfaction to the
customers, profits to the producers and benefits for the stakeholders.
Market innovation is gained … through product innovation, product quality
and customer service. If these are absent, no amount of advertising,
sales promotion, or salesmanship can compensate."
Coca-Cola and Pepsi spent about a zillion dollars per year to make
sure you recognized their name. Harley-Davidson spent zero, yet they're
almost as well known. In fact, Harley's customers identify with Harley-Davidson
so much many have the winged logo permanently etched on their butt.
Not too much different from the people who have our colleges' names
on their shirts and rear-windows and cherish a relationship for decades,
demonstrated by development dollars and uninterrupted attendance at
homecoming football games. And we have customers who send money and
return for football games.
There's a lesson here. That we can be close enough to our customers,
or understand their needs well enough, that we may not need massive
advertising budgets, slick national ads or big agencies to market our
programs or our institutions. That there may be other ways.
That's the point of Radical Marketing by Sam Hill and Glenn Rifkin.
These are the people who have created marketing campaigns that strike
a resonant chord with their customers, that enjoy the same success as
traditional marketers but with fewer resources.
He lists Harley-Davidson, Iams Pet Food, the company behind Sam Adams
beer and the Grateful Dead as examples. It's a great understanding of
their customers and their needs that makes each company great. Madonna
and Oprah relate to their fan base in a similar way, sustaining the
connections with their existing fans and building new bases of support
with each re-invention or innovation.
The three keys to radical marketing are strong visceral ties to the
target audience, a focus on growth and expansion instead of profit,
and resource constraints that placed premiums on creativity instead
of money. The techniques include rigid brand identity and customer loyalty
programs, but quality trumped quantity.
While reading the book for the specific case studies would be instructional,
my purpose here may be served by listing a selection of the Rules of
Radical Marketing. I doubt that they are new to anyone, but it may be
useful to see them in one place.
1) The CEO Must Own the Marketing Function. Take this two ways: it's
everybody's job to market, and you can't just assign it to the marketing
group.
3) Get Out of the Head Office and Face-to-Face with the People Who
Matter Most – the Customers. There's a crude saying about marketing
and sales. One you can do by yourself, the other takes communicating
with another person. For radical marketers, customer proximity and direct
research is essential.
4) Use Market Research Cautiously. Supplement to good customer contact,
sure. Substitute, no. We could talk to our target audiences anytime
we want, but we don't. Do we?
6) Love and Respect Your Customers. Treat them like people, not numbers.
Even a national brand has a core group of consumers that buy most of
the product.
7) Create a Community of Customers. Make it popular, make membership
known. Anyone who doubts we can do this hasn't considered 4-H.
10) Be True to the Brand. Fixate on quality. Produce for the long haul.
No short cuts.
Hill and Rifkin says radical marketers turn more to metaphor than marketing.
When Anheuser-Busch targeted Sam Adams, the CEO watched the entire Star
Wars trilogy for insight into a small brand rebelling against the larger.
The lesson: a return to humility and the basic tenets that made them
successful in the first place would help Sam Adams prevail again.
And if you're in the bar at 6 p.m. Wednesday, October 25 at the Ramada
Plaza-O'Hare in Chicago, I'll buy you one. ___________________________________________________________________
Integrated Communications: What Does It Mean?
In the Oct. 2, 2000 issue of PR Week, Pam Lepley, vice president of
PR at Siddall, Matus and Coughter in Richmond, Va., gives her take on
integrated communications: "Integrated communications implies that the
most effective tools of the trade are blended together in a customized,
creative and strategic way to produce a holistic communications package
that maximizes efficiency and results. A truly integrated communications
program delivers more impact at a fraction of the cost than a traditional
ad campaign...All the specialties converge in a truly integrated approach
– from planning a communications program through execution to the final
measurement of success." ___________________________________________________________________
Christina's New Song: What A Journalist Wants
Through its 11th annual media survey, Bennett and Company (a Florida-based
PR and marketing agency) found the following:
* 92 percent of print journalists said they receive story package ideas
combining news releases and photos/graphics and 82 percent said they
use these packages.
* 47 percent of print journalists said they like to receive a news
release with an accompanying Web site URL to download photos.
* 38 percent of print, online and broadcast journalists said they prefer
receiving tips via e-mail.
* 68 percent of respondents said the are online both at home and in
the office – just three years, ago only 25 percent indicated they were
online at both places.
The findings, which appeared in the July 2000 issue of Public Relations
Tactics, a monthly publication of the Public Relations Society of America,
did not say how many journalists responded and whether the survey included
both state and national media. ___________________________________________________________________
Exemplary Marketing/PR Programs
Need some ideas for marketing your program, product, or organization?
You may want to search the Silver Anvil Resource Center at http://www.silveranvil.org.
The site contains abstracts of the winning entries of PRSA's national
awards program since 1968. The entries don't contain images of the printed
publications, but do include the company/agency that created the communication
program if you'd like to contact them for more information. ___________________________________________________________________
Upcoming Events
October
Public Relations World Congress
Chicago, IL Oct. 22 - 24
Sponsored by the Public Relations Society of America (http://www.congress2000chi.org)
News Media Relations Gathering
Rosemont, IL
Oct. 26 - 27
Sponsored by ACE (http://www.agcom.purdue.edu/AgCom/news/ace/index.html)
Leading Change With Employee Communication
Dallas, TX
Oct. 26 - 27
Sponsored by Ragan Communications (http://www.ragan.com)
Internet Marketing
Chicago, IL
Oct. 31
Sponsored by the International Association of Business Communicators
(http://www.iabc.com/events)
November
Writing for the Wired World
Cleveland, OH
Nov. 3
Sponsored by the International Association of Business Communicators
(http://www.iabc.com/events)
Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education
Baltimore, MD
Nov. 5 - 8
Sponsored by the American Marketing Association (http://www.ama.org/events)
Advanced School of Marketing Research
University of Georgia Nov. 12 - 17
Sponsored by the American Marketing Association (http://www.ama.org/events)
Designing a Marketing Communications Program
Washington, DC
Nov. 13
Sponsored by the Public Relations Society of America (http://www.prsa.org/pd)
Annual Conference for Chief Publications Professionals
San Diego, CA
Nov. 15 - 17
Sponsored by CASE (http://www.case.org/training)
Marketing Workshop/Presentation Proposals for ACE Conference
Due Nov. 15
December
Internet Marketing
San Francisco, CA
Dec. 1
Sponsored by the International Association of Business Communicators
(http://www.iabc.com/events)
April
Campaign Communications That Work
Nashville, TN
April 5 - 6, 2001
Sponsored by CASE (http://www.case.org/training)
Institute for Integrated Marketing
New Orleans, LA
April 23 - 25, 2001
Sponsored by CASE (http://www.case.org/training)
July
ACE/NETC Meeting
July 28 - Aug. 1
Toronto
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