Corina’s Concerns Be lowly wise, think only what concerns thee and thy being.– John Milton, Paradise Lost

As my Twitter followers know, I’ve been reading hundreds of resumes lately, since I’m recruiting for a marketing specialist position in my department. Based on this recent experience, here’s my rant about things that I never want to read or see in a marketing CV again:

1. “I think I can do a good job in marketing (or PR) because I am sociable/communicative and I like people”. I see this in 9 out of 10 resumes and it puzzles me that people who are supposed to be good at crafting messages can be so ingenuous when it comes to selling themselves to a potential employer. Simply liking something or somebody is no guarantee of your fitness for the profession (or knowledge thereof). I adore dogs and cats, but you don’t want to have me tend to your sick pet, as I’d have no idea how to help them. You’re better off with a vet.

2. “I’m attentive to detail” followed by a glaring typo. No, you’re not. And if you’re not paying attention to details in a CV, which is prepared in advance, and can be proofread, and adjusted, what will you do when sending a press release or editing a brochure under time pressure? All of us make mistakes, but it’s best if you’re not contradicting your own assertions quite so obviously and so early in the selection process.

3. Bad grammar. This is valid in general, regardless of the language, but a special place is reserved for bad grammar and inappropriate word usage in English, coupled with a self-assessment of “advanced” under English, in the Language skills section.

What gives away your real level? Incorrect verb tenses, particularly in the past tense (sended instead of sent, etc.), mixing up adverbs and adjectives (I work professional instead of I work professionally or My work is professional, and similar), and anglicized Romanian words.

There are many more “peeves”, but these are my top three. Candidates, beware

Posted under Careerwise

Two things converged to create this post: a weekend course in “Managing Intangible Assets” and the ongoing debate about rate-card equivalency at www.strategic.ro (that I’ll read only after I write this post, to keep my ideas untainted by those of others).

The one thing that most intangibles (whether they are human capital, brand, or reputation) have in common is the difficulty in measurement (and, not incidentally, valuation). And since the end product is difficult to measure, the organizational functions used to generate these, similarly struggle with determining their own ROI. But because measurement and metrics are the mantras of the modern management milieu (hey, this is a fun involuntary alliteration), various metrics must be created, some recording transactions, some based on surveys or evaluations, and some based on benchmarking.

PR is in a particularly precarious position (yet another involuntary alliteration) because most of its activity is related to generating and managing intangibles (trust, reputation, goodwill). In times of crisis, these apparently “fuzzy”, hard-to-monetize activities are most threatened by budget cuts or redundancies.

The defense is measurement, and one of the metrics PR uses for that purpose is the ad value equivalency, or AVE. It is applied to the print, TV or radio editorial coverage, whose value is estimated using a combination of the costs of purchasing advertising of a similar size, positioning or length.

It has some positive aspects:

- compares PR output with a type of cost that is intelligible upper management
- it’s valuable when doing comparative analysis with your competition, because instead of comparing different outlets and different sizes of coverage, you compare the overall value of their and your earned news

But here are the negatives:

- the impact of news and stories is demonstrably higher than that of paid advertising (hence the rise of the advertorial)
- dilution or distortion of the message occurs in PR, while advertising guarantees the accuracy, because it does not change your message for publication purposes
- the rate card is used to estimate the value of the PR coverage, while in real circumstances advertisers would seldom pay rate-card values. Thus it appears that PR grants higher values, whereas in fact, it does not.
- AVEs treat all media equally, regardless of the prominence and credibility of one outlet over another (for Romanians, think being disussed on OTV, rather than ProTV), and also regardless of the preference of your audience (you may get high AVE values, but on publications that your target group doesn’t read).
- There is no repetition. The impact of advertising is amplified by frequency and spread, and indeed that is part of how a media plan is designed. For earned news, even syndicated, there is no frequency amplification. Using a measurement designed for a tool that builds explicit awareness over a limited time, for a tool that generates implicit trust on the long-term is confusing, rather than helpful.
- there’s no measure for lack of coverage, meaning problems that aren’t exposed, difficulties that aren’t covered, in other words, what the PR has managed to keep out of the press for the good of the company.

I don’t think AVEs are thoroughly wrong. When you balance PR investment with advertising investments, there is the need for a tool that allows you to decide or allocate between the two. But advertisers themselves don’t measure solely the cost of inserting an ad, but instead the sales resulting from it, the leads, the comments etc. so PR needs to find a measurement that treats earned editorial coverage similarly.  And yes, they can borrow some of these metrics from marketing.

Now I’m going to read the debate on Strategic, and see if others agree with me. I suggest you do the same

Posted under PRealities

Briefly put, there are two main schools of thought in terms of managing a company in times of recession: survivalism and forethought.

Survivalism means steering the company through the recession with a steel hand on costs, and a focus on keeping the company afloat despite the economic troubles.

Forethought entails management with a post-recession goal in mind. The company assumes survival and focuses on keeping the level of resources and assets (mostly intangible) constant throughout the recession, so it can leverage its superior position at the end of the downturn.

With respect to marketing, the survivalist company will retrench: cut marketing budgets (and staff), refocus what little money remains from branding campaigns to purchase incentive campaigns, price promotions, and other tactics that impact the bottom line more directly and immediately. Survivalists switch to predominantly push, vs. pull strategies and hope to weather the storm with as little investment in marketing as possible. (Even to the point of none)

Foretought recognizes the value of the brand, understands that once out of a customer’s evoked set of products or brands, reentry is amazingly hard, and that without maintaining it, the efforts invested in the past will be largely eclipsed, because the brand equity will erode and at the end of the recession, the brand will be in a weak competitive position.

At a first glance, the second strategy seems more intelligent, and indeed, many marketing thinkers (e.g. Laura Ries) recommended it. However, the survivalists also have a point: what if at the end of the recession, you still have brand recognition, but no company, or no people to deliver on the values of the brand?

The key, then, is to strike a balance. And that’s where the real work of the marketer begins.

Posted under Marketing vibes

If you’re in marketing or PR, chances are you’ll be working with at least one agency, at least once. Heck, it’s part of the job description. Whether that agency is providing you with creative services, media buying, event or PR services, there are 5 things a good agency should do for you. If they don’t, ask them to. And if they still don’t, change them. I can recommend a few

1. Insight

Your agency should provide you with insight. By default, they’ve had more exposure to the ins and outs of their specific field, and they should be able to guide you. For example, I was recently organizing an event to open a new premise, and it was my agency that guided me on start times (I was thinking of a different hour, which was Bucharest-appropriate, but not necessarily appropriate in that particular city.) They advised me on press gifts (what is customary there, what would be best received) and the timing of the food service. This is not rocket science, it’s just insight into how people act (and react) in specific circumstances. But it can make or break an event.

2. Competence

A good rule of thumb is that your agency should know more than you. If it doesn’t, you’re in for a rough time. For example, you can’t become a marketer without knowing at least the basics of media buying, understanding some measurement, and some terms. Your agency should be way beyond that. The merest junior should know more about all of these things than you, or your whole department combined. You are trusting your brand, and a whole lot of money to your media agency, and you’re relinquishing a lot of control over the audience for your message. They’d better be competent to handle it, from the strategic to the execution. They should be able to see flaws, if the campaign is not gelling correctly, they should be able to balance frequency and visibility for your messages, and they should be able to see what you want, rather than what you ask for. This leads me to the next must:

3. Creative execution

Few marketers or communicators are excellent in any one, let alone all, the skills needed to conduct good marketing activities. Sometimes, you have vision, but you have no idea how that vision can be executed. This is what your agency should do for you: take that vision, and turn it into actionable material. If your vision is for quirkiness and unconventional media, the agency should translate that into fact. They should scout unusual opportunities, create some new ones, integrate them and deliver on your vision creatively. If you come up with a concept for a design, your agency should be able to deliver a design that embodies your message, and incorporates your requirements without compromising their creativity and design knowledge (which is, or should be, as per point 2, superior to yours).

4. Reach

It’s not difficult to explain this one, although it has a double meaning. Your agency should be able to tap into a pool of contacts, suppliers, media outlets, journalist etc. that is much wider and more diverse than yours. In addition to its wider reach, your agency should be able to actually reach the people you need: contact them, and get them to act or to respond in ways you cannot.

5. Strategy

If needed, they should be able to strategize on your behalf. If that is not needed, that they should understand your strategic imperatives, and make sure that their part of the campaign, event or project, is in alignment with those objectives you set forth. The biggest fault of an agency is being an island, where all it needs to do is respond straightforwardly to client requests. If you communicate your strategy, your strategic concerns, and your strategic constraints to the agency, it should be able to work to accomplish them.

I am fortunate that all the agencies I work with meet these 5 requirements. And how could they not, when they employ this caliber of people.

Posted under Marketing vibes

The other day I read an article in the local press in which one-screen, traditional cinemas were deploring the loss of 40% of their viewers due to the opening of a new multiplex

Tucked at the end was the sentence “Small investors are hopeful that viewers will return to their cinemas, due to the price sensitivity of Romanians.” Underlying this assumption is an erroneous view of price sensitivity that I cannot refrain from commenting upon.

Assuming that human beings are rational, we can make the statement that price differences, all other things being equal, will have an influence on purchase. Thus if store A and store B are right next to each other, and store A sells at price a<b, while store B sells at price b, the customers will prefer store A.

But ceteris paribus seldom holds true. Billa and Cora are the same distance from my home, and Cora has better prices, but I still shop at Billa. The product selection is closer to what I want, I prefer their store layout, and I once bought stuff at Cora and their bags broke. This trivial example shows that there are other factors that influence choice:

Place – not only in the sense of location, but also physical space, layout etc.
Product – in the sense of the product itself, but also in terms of diversity, alternatives
Image – the image that the product and company project in the mind of the customer, an image that the company can manipulate through Promotion

In other words, the other 3 Ps of marketing.

Finally, there is the 5th P: the Person. My assumption of rational behavior was only for argument’s sake, but all marketers know that people behave both rationally and emotionally. The associations they make with a product or brand, their habits, the value they derive from its use, all influence their decision to purchase or use a service.

Living in the price sensitivity bubble blinds a company to all these influences. And it’s a surefire road to losing out in front of its competitors.

So burst the bubble. Price alone will not reconquer customers you’ve already lost, especially when your price was lower already when you lost them.

Posted under Random opinion