Friday, July 16, 2004

Article for Publication: Back-2-Butchers

Author: Stephen Griffiths, September 2001
Could a brand target me effectively, when the service has a million users?

“Hi Steve – haven’t seen you in 2 days – try the new Steps single – it compliments the 911 album you purchased”.

I like them informing me of my name, especially forename, as it’s less formal, but there’s no chance of me forgetting it. However, if it’s my banking service – that charge for breathing – I demand formality in tone of voice and assurance in operations. They acknowledge they haven’t seen me in 2 days, but who’s counting or cares. I like the offer of listening to new music, but I’ve grown-up a lot in the last 12 months, I mean, at age 16, 911 was cool, but now it’s sooo passé. And as for reminding me of a previous – and now embarrassing – purchase, how crass! They could have offered me a new Minidisk instead of an obvious CD – cross versus up-sell.

Building a screen-based relationship is tenuous and needs considerable thought. What sort of brand do we have? What are our values and strengths? How do we currently connect with people and extend/stretch this? How is this achievable across multiple touchpoints? Fundamentally, customer sensitivities must be respected and guarded, vis-à-vis personal data, transactional assumptions and tone of voice.

My local butcher has a limited number of regular customers, allowing him to remember their names, welcome warmly and appropriate to the situation. My definition of situation is a combination of environment, time of day, customer’s role, etc. This allows the butcher to understand the customers mood state, and whether it would be a good idea to offer related products and/or cooking advice. This is a controlled environment in which spontaneous, customer-centric decisions can be made.

The online world contrasts this, invariably being a volume game. The online mantra to get closer to the customer has been a spurious one involving jargon such as 1-2-1. But, 1-2-1 marketing could be viewed as a Pythonesque absurdist plot, an ideal rigid in objective and patently unattainable. To manage both brand and user expectations, it would be better labelled 1-2-Fewer-with-caveats. Reality dictates marketers get a deeper understanding of content/ad/transactional systems and the inherent complexities and limitations.

As the Internet population increases, so too does the number of user/brand touchpoints. And, inline with this increase, the Internet is braking down into ever-smaller micro groups, demographics continually devising.

Services need to track-and-match a greater number of smaller groups with their offerings. Greater resources are required to match users with transactions – manually and/or with agents. Matching complexity and filtering of higher data output escalates, and times, costs expand. As a volume user base spreads outwards and divides, 1-2-1 effectiveness decreases. Costs are passed to users and retention plans abate.

In defining a marketing/transactional system, asking the appropriate questions – instead of referring to marketer’s case studies and ideals – may prematurely deduce an unprofitable exercise. Capital may be better invested in re-architecting a service interface, provisioning finely tuned content for micro-groups, and delivering service excellence with an uncomplicated system and a more pragmatic strategy.

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