Clever Marketing Versus The Gossiping Customer

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Bart Simpson was once depicted walking through a shopping mall where every single shop was a branch of Starbucks. George Orwell wrote that if 'Jack the Giant-killer' had been written in the twentieth century it would be entitled 'Giant the Jack-killer'. With his characteristic cold-eyed realism, Orwell had seen how powerful agencies - agencies of the state or corporate agencies - could control the lives of ordinary people and crush dissent. Despite Orwell's observation, or maybe because of it, the human race still has a place in its heart for heroic figures willing to challenge the rich and powerful. I'm thinking of figures like Ralph Nader and Naomi Klein.

Klein has argued that clever marketing people invented the 'global brand' with one aim:- to persuade customers to pay a higher price than is justified by the product or service they will receive.

Klein's first book 'No Logo' explained, in sometimes painful detail, how brands have penetrated the media, the High Street and even schools. When major corporations talk about 'corporate multiculturalism', Klein showed what they really mean: building assets and networks that just multiply the situations in which the consumer will be induced to buy. Klein generated further animus against some big corporations when she demonstrated that they were increasing their profits still further by manufacturing their products in third-world plants at rock bottom wage rates.

Klein also believed that offering their brands online would help global corporations to an even more potent position. 'Liberated from the real-world burdens of stores and product manufacturing,' she wrote, 'these brands are free to soar, less as the disseminators of goods or services than as collective hallucinations.' But there is evidence now that the spread of technology has actually begun to weaken the power of corporations to dictate to consumers.

The Economist Intelligence Unit in 2007 published a report on Customer Engagement (CE), reporting the views of over 300 Chief-Level executives. The key findings of the EIU report are as follows:-

90 percent of the respondents said CE was vital to business growth.

79 percent said customer advocacy was the main benefit of CE.

26 percent said that low CE cost their business up to half its potential sales.

Once upon a time, it seems, clever marketing departments wove their magic for passive recipients. But the proliferation of TV channels, the ubiquitous mobile phone and the spread of social and visual networks has made the world one huge gossiping village. The punters are filled with scepticism. They follow the views of thier fellow customers on Twitter and the like rather than swallow the advertising hype.

Make no mistake; this is a major shift of emphasis in world markets.

It doesn't mean that advertising and PR campaigns are dying. Big brands will still be supported by advertising dollars and marketing campaigns. But increasingly the big prizes will go to the businesses that know how to mobilize their customers as advocates.

Procter & Gamble, that master of 'The Brand', has set up Tremor, a specialist marketing company, under a charismatic leader named Steve Knox. Tremor's charter is to help companies build networks of customer/ advocates. When a savvy business like P & G invests, you get the scent of dedication to a driver of long term profit growth.

So, the big question is - as a kingpin in your company - what will you do to persuade your 'Jacks' to become your advocates for you?

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Tony Lord and David Butler are directors of TripleIC, specialists in the measurement of Custmer Engagement. David Butler has extensive 'C' level experience as a former chairman of Butler Cox plc, a former director of Istel Ltd and a former member of the investment committee of the United Bank of Kuwait. http://www.tripleic.com .