What is ROI?: Jedi Return on investment methods for more profit

What is ROI?: Jedi Return on investment methods for more profit: by Jason Li 2013 ©

Are you a leader in your business... or a director?

Do you want to direct your business to more profits?...

Better conversion rates from marketing communication campaigns such as advertising, web site revamps, brochures, rebranding or email campaigns?...

Then here are some nifty ways to gain a better return on investment from your marketing communications spend.

How to calculate return on investment (ROI)

Why delay, let’s go through how to calculate return on investment

(return-capital)/capital) x 100%        = rate of return

(£110 - £100)/ (£100) x 100%        = 10%

So now you know what return on investment (ROI) is, so how you can use it to improve your business?

Rate of Return

Everytime you do something in your business, do you know the expected and actual rates of return?

Let’s say you do a promotion such as a 100 leaflets that are door dropped in your local area... what numbers are you expecting convert into sales, what numbers did you really get, how did you get to these estimates in the first place?

When you spend £2,000 on a website revamp, what rates of return are you expecting? Sure, the web site really looks great. Most web designers truly are fantastic visual artists. But I’m asking you as the boss and leader the hard question... what rate of return were you expecting from your £2,000 investment?

If you employ sales people, again you will have expected rates of return?

Add up all your sales efforts and marketing communication campaigns costs over the year and be truthful, what rates of return are you expecting?

Do your sales and marketing campaigns improve your turnover; improve profit margins and overall profit?

If the rates of return are low, like 500 cold calls to an order, even though you are certain you are targeting the correct target market, could it possibly be because the previous investment in developing your service and product was more than a year ago; so it means your offer is gradually not creating enough value for your target market TODAY?

When was the last time you added more value? How did it affect your rates of return after you improved the offer? If you can’t think of how to fine tune your product and service offer, have a look at the Goose Bump Effect ebook preview.

In fact NO... read on... you don’t deserve a free preview. You still believe that it’s not the product or service or your total offer that needs to improve. In fact, you want to spend more money on branding because it makes your ego feeeeeel guuud. So carry on reading.

Customer’s rate of return

So now you understand your own rate of return measurements.

In fact... it is almost certain you never purchased anything without trying to really estimate what you got in return.

So if you bought 1000 sales leads data for £100, you expected after all your expenses possibly £500 profit.

If you buy a nicer car, you want the hot guys/girls on the pavement to squint to see you through the window as you pull up at the lights. (Now that’s ROI because you want to be noticed by fit ones; yeah.)

And that way, my friend, is pretty much how your customers are thinking.

Your customers are trying to work out their rate of return from your product and service. (How many lovely people they can attract.)

Yes, you want the sale, more customers, more conversions, more revenue and more profit.

Yes, the customer knows you are keen for them to sign the papers, type in their card details, or send a purchase order... don’t you think they’ve ever been sold to in their life before?

But if you want better conversion rates, more money, more profit, less wastage of leads, to reduce the number of prospective customers who sign with competitors, and reduce the number of interested prospects with money to spend walking away and looking at other products and services to improve their business and lives... now is your chance.

“What sold well last year or yesterday might not sell as well tomorrow or next year.”

Look here dude. Either you keep your head in the sand, spend more on advertising, buying more lead data to give your demoralised and commission famished sales staff; get more stress, get more wrinkles, watch friends and family do better... Or, make that change to help your clients enjoy a product or service that is obviously of even better value than before.

Did these clients get a good enough rate of return on investment?

Marks and Spencer

I co-created a World Cup football board game as a freelancer that sold in over 200 Marks and Spencer stores. This included the research and game design to ensure it was in line with the demand of the market.

M & S wanted an exclusive football product to attract customers to their retail stores only.

On the Ball sold 10,000 copies in year one and was a top five selling product.

Competitors included: The Apprentice, Deal or No Deal, The Price is Right and Countdown.

No money was spent on TV advertising to promote the game, you could only know about it if you noticed it in the store. I had to rely on the methods in The Goose Bump Effect ebook to ensure that it hit the spot in terms of what buyers are looking to pay for as it sat amongst many big brand name board games.

My game only had one shot of being: noticed, picked up, the pictures and copy on the back read by the prospective customer... then it was either a) put back on the shelf or b) put in the basket. That my friend is the sales cycle. Anything else is delaying that decision of a or b.

Some AIDA magic:   A attention I interest D desire A Action

Boom!

It was positioned as a family game (a big point of difference – again explained in the ebook how to get this dead on to match what the market is demanding) and packed with unique humour and action cards for players to physically carry out fun tasks – no other board game around really offered much in the way like this at the time.

KashFlow

KashFlow was already a leading online accounting software to the small business sector.

Within 3-4 years about 300 accountants were recommending KashFlow to their client base after a launch of an accountant’s portal.

But sales growth had dropped off, whole sales teams would come and go, with new teams built from scratch.

I carried out some research to provide a 2^nd opinion.

To give you a picture, the main competitors included the giant Sage, Xero, Free Agent/Iris, QuickBooks and more.

Leading up to the year before I joined, KashFlow had won awards as a leading accountancy software, but had just missed out recently.

It was fairly obvious to see why.

The first thing is that other software houses upgraded their software much more quickly in the last year or two. The meaningful differences and value gap when compare to competitors was shrinking.

Secondly, when a prospect went on either software provider’s website, you see the same USP’s: easy-to-use, 30 day free trial, monthly payments, real-time... and so on.

How can any consumer choose?

So I developed a marketing plan based on adding value to blow other software houses out of the water. The plan was based on not just doing your accounts quicker, but tasks quicker too.

In case you’re asking, no I’m no technical guy, and was only a facilitator on this one. None of the integrations or upgrades were my direct idea... mainly because I don’t know the tech market.

I verbalised the philosophy that the software can follow as a theme to add value and differentiate.

The upgrades included MailChimp integrations for sending email campaigns from the same database, integration with DropBox, and click a link from the invoice facility to send your customers to your bank so they can pay directly online without you having to chase customers for taking card details. These examples would help the user enjoy more productivity through software automation of tasks. These were clearly outlined to prospective users as a USP for busy entrepreneurs.

Finally, a change to waive the fee charged to accountants for the portal brought about another 300 accountants to start recommending the software to clients within 3-6 months of taking away the fees. It only took five of the accountant’s clients to subscribe to cover the accountant fee. Given the fact that some accountants have several hundred clients, in the long run this would get over the hurdle of accountants worrying about the upfront fee. Once accountants had a client on board, the feedback was almost always good. So this got over a major deal breaker as most accountants would not pay a fee to recommend a software... so taking away this fee worked really well, especially as almost every decent accountancy practice has more than five clients.

Boomerang Couriers

One day as a marketing strategy business advisor I was sent by the enterprise agency to see a lad in Preston who had a courier business, based on volume discounting for pallet collections.

He was struggling, and he was desperate for help as a new business.

After analysis of the competitor landscape verses his business offer we found a very popular post office offer that he could improve on in both how he provided the service and price.

Now he could go on to spend money on advertising such as leaflets and within 6 weeks he had two new part-time staff on shifts handling enquiries and collections.

The ROI on Sales and Promotional Spend when getting marketing strategy right

So the importance of strategic demand marketing is starting to make sense now, huh?

Here’s a story:

Imagine if you just decided to spend thousands on a new brand concept complete with new logo, new company colours with an ingenious new brand concept.

Then your design consultants revamp your website... costing another thousand pounds (potentially).

And so your SEO, keywords and social media are now built around your new brand concept.

Yes, you’ll get some new site visitors, because new brings in adventure seeking types (a segment who constantly look for new).

Some may even buy your product because it hits the spot. Many won’t.

So you spend copious amounts of money on sales staff, telesales, field sales, sales managers and trainers. No-one has a clear cut answer why one month is great and another is not so good.

Can you imagine how much money, anguish and time is wasted in generating revenue using this method?

Compare this to a friend of mine who makes bespoke products. He follows new trends and adjusts to meet demand. Effort and costs are minimal: success and conversion rates are high.

Now picture this story of a tool supplier to artists:

This supplier could argue that because artists want to draw and use different colours, then their biros would meet their needs.

Does that read wrong to you?

(OK, the business will get lucky occasionally and sell a set or biros to complement his pencils or water colour paint pots.)

Yet many businesses operate this way.

That’s why thousands of prospects in your market reject you.

What if the product was adjusted to suit prospects demands more closely?

What would your ROI from sales staff and website conversion or SEO be now?

I’ll leave that to you.

Only you can say if it’s better to be in line with what prospective customers are seriously demanding to purchase.

(Or carry on improving and changing everything else from your desk layouts, to staff, to the type of carrier bags used at exhibition stands, to what the brand stands for... everything but the main product which the customer is paying for.)

The importance of Product ROI

Let’s say your product gets an ROI of 20%.

You spend £100,000 a year on business costs. The service elements to your product/package are also included; such as techies/developers or if you are lawyers then the law team.

And you earn £100,000 annually.

So without any promotional costs added, the product itself gets an ROI of 20%, let’s say from referrals.

So you earn £120,000 annually.

Now you want to promote your business to increase revenue. So you hire SEO, website developers, leaflet and print ad consultants, plus spend on newspaper ad space etc.

If your product is not aligned with demand, it is possible your total ROI on your product will now reduced.

Why?

Total costs go up; cash flow, profit margin and ROI for your product will drop down to almost negligible.

So if you spend £20,000 on promotion, then total costs would be £120,000.

But your additional revenue was only £10,000.

After the adding the additional costs, let’s compare with the increased revenue, say £130,000.

Then your ROI is now just 8.333%

So if you have a tactic of spending more on promotional costs and advertising to bring in more revenue, then this is going to become more inefficient for the business.

 

Can you think of businesses that suffered results like this? Businesses like Woolworths comes to mind.

On the flip side, if your product is what your target market is seriously demanding to buy, then any new promotion to prospects who were not aware of your exceedingly good product will likely buy.

Therefore, your ROI will be higher that the scenario before.

Ultimately

ROI is all about ROI on sales conversion for your product or service.

 

ROI is all about ROI for every product or service in terms of how it has been created to meet demand. If you make it and they don’t buy it, you have no return on your investment.

If you build houses and you get no sale from a viewing... Forget blaming the brochures, the lifestyle pictures and the reps uniform. Why does the HOUSE not meet demand?

No one here set up a business to virtually invest most of their money and time as an ad agency business managing art work and signing off Illustrator files.

No one here originally set up a business in order to go onto spend most of their time thinking about branding rather than filling that gap they saw in the market.

And definitely no one here from a trade started a business because they fancied becoming a cold caller and rejection-proof sales person.

So why neglect the real reason anyone is buying from you?

Are prospective customer’s sales objections about you or really about what your business can offer in terms of value?

If you truly want greater ROI, make sure you concentrate more effort on what you have to offer.

If you care for your target market and offer them exceptional value and differentiate the right way, and the prospective customer knows they will get exceptional ROI, your conversion rates have a better chance of improving.

Final words:

Please share this article if you have a friend who you might think a strategic demand marketing approach could help them.

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Experiential Marketing: Brand Experience for Brand Awareness

Experiential Marketing: Brand Experience for Brand Awareness: by Jason Li 2013 ©

Ever had a brand experience that was awesome?...

So good you HAD to tell a friend?... (like your first school yard kiss)

And it created a lasting feel good memory?... (like when you won something)

That’s why experiential marketing is a great way to convert prospective customers and gain referrals. (Just one marketing differentiation tactic and value creation method in the practical ebook guide The Goose Bump Effect)

Let’s kick off with a case study that highlights this straight away to prove this.

Experiential Marketing Case study: Lego Lego has been around for ages. I used to love Lego. When I was a kid I was inspired by battery motored vehicles I could build as seen on the television adverts. In fact, I was a dab hand at it – after 90 days of trying. The funny thing is, if you just ask me to build a quick card pyramid - I can’t be bothered these days; I’ve no energy, or patience. Sometimes the TV runs and if the programme is not terrible, I’ll let it run... yes I’m a LAZY GIT! But bring out the Lego, and I’m ready for the challenge. Lego is just a special brand experience. You can even visit Lego Land and get really inspired.   Each Lego set can be recreated by any visitor who is willing to have a go. It just takes seeing and liking one Lego set for a prospect to get ‘that urge’ to want to ‘have a go’ at recreating a master piece... and then BAM... before they know it they are at the Lego shop, box under the arm, and debit card flicking out to the smiley person on the till – as cool as the Fonz – a knowingly fleeced Fonz! That’s another sale, with no objection handling, no hard selling, or multiple questions or having to wince everytime that person you like on the phone is calling you. (I’ve been there on a call back with people in the past life, and you know you and them are wasting each other’s time, even though they are interested and talk to you... otherwise they would buy from me already.) PITCHED AND CLOSED in one smooth Lego Land marketing and sales environment. Thank you. And just when you are getting good at Lego, Average Joe or Josephine make that incredible Lego set as seen in the newspapers, and it gets ‘those urges’ going again.

Experiencial Marketing Brand Engagement is Selling

Ever been in a sales process when you are just about to close a prospect? (Or they tell you they are ready to buy?)

If you get lucky, a prospect starts to waffle about how they like your product and other ways they can use it, and of course their objections and why that’s not a problem because it does such a thing to make it worthwhile.

Of course, when you are selling, you have to go through this one prospect at a time. It’s pretty time consuming to go from an initial cold contact, questioning and education, and the rest of the sales process with the many twists and turns of involving other directors and more.

If you are paying for ten telesales, or ten retail sales advisors or ten field sales consultants with cars, then logically your business is closing and hearing the same set of objections from ten prospects at a time, over-and-over again. And that’s a lot of time and cost when you add it all up together.

(So park this time and cost problem as we go through this article.)

Part of selling is building a relationship. If they like you then they are comfortable disclosing company or personal details to your questions. Most sales people are likeable with clients and ask decent questions, and so can build good rapport. (Or else the sales person has to pay for expensive lunches and steep discounts to keep prospects engaged.)

But at the end of the day, what if after all this, the prospect just does not like the product or service your business offers and buys from another business offering a similar but better value package, or think your business is not focussed enough on creating value for the prospect, today or a year down the road?

This is where brand engagement and relationship advertising allows you to showcase your product, service, and company, and is one great way to differentiate your business from competitors.

A lot of people don’t like being sold to. I know sales people that make other telesales cold callers lives hell where I’ve worked when a call comes in, or when I’m shopping with them they give the shop assistant a curt: “I’m fine, I’m just browsing.” (So you’re not the only sales person who hates fob offs themselves, but angrily tells a cold caller to go away with abusive language that’s just short of psychologically stripping someone down, and you won’t help Mr Cold Caller in anyway. Yes, you’ve witnessed it too. And cruelly laughed your head off at that particular time. Wink.)

Experiential Marketing Case study: Nissan Nissan is not the number one selling car in the UK. In fact they’re not in the top three either, but they are gaining popularity. I’ve seen a steady rise on the roads in Nissan owners, and it’s not by accident. Here’s one of the ways Nissan used a brand marketing method to get prospective car owners to try owning a Nissan. In the 02 Arena, which has over 7 million visitors a year and one of the highest footfalls in the UK, there is a Nissan experience centre. The O2 is the world’s number one venue for live music events.  Where better to engage an audience where people are open to new happy experiences where they can create facebook posts for friends so they can ‘like’ away. What’s driving Nissan (Marketing Week) – article opens in a new window.

In a relaxed branded experiential environment, sales people can build rapport, educate, persuade, educate some more, and have decent conversations where there is no pressure and give real value.

People who are at your branded marketing events will have set aside plenty of time to spend there and are willing to disclose all their needs, wants, objections, problems and why they are there.

You see, when selling, if you can get the objections, then your answers are really information to help them justify in making a buying decision... provided you provide the right information.

At your branded marketing experiential event, the prospect can see you are very good and likeable, and as they have relaxed their guard, are more willing to disclose and tell, listen and make a vision of how your product and service can fit well in their life.

And as what you have done to the brand is likeable, they know other decision makers will concur too.

And of course, as you know the target market very well, your company, product and service offer will be extremely strong and very compelling to a prospect that makes an effort to spend time on your site.

Experiential Marketing Case study: Top Shop Do you remember when Kate Moss launched her own designs for Top Shop? She posed in the windows as a model as tourists and the fashion world got a buzz at such a unique event. It worked a treat. The ‘Supermodel in the window’ really differentiated Top Shop from other clothes shops in London. Why is this important? Top Shop don’t claim to offer high end expensive clothing, but the event was memorable and allowed the public to see Top Shop as a leading fashion shop for the general public. Top Shop became a destination for fashionable girls where the target market required affordable clothing. (The ebook has a section on Marketing Strategy and research techniques to test if new products and innovations have a chance of being accepted by your target market).

Experiential Marketig Builds Brand Loyalty

If you are good at understanding your target market and your product/service offer is genuinely the best in the market, you will have more interested people than you think.

Sales guru Nicholas Read calls this latent needs – a similar idea to market research.

If you introduce your brand in the right way you make it a pleasure for prospects to engage and interact with your product. (Making your product a pleasure is a key secret to success – see the ebook Marketing Strategy section.)

In fact, a great experience has in many studies transformed dull boring brands into life. People learn by doing and experience. (Engaging the sense better than your competitors is another secret – see the ebook Differentiation section.)

This will shift attitudes, beliefs and allow prospects to match yours with their long-term held values. Most importantly the prospect will agree with your offer, which is key in getting a prospect on your side as they move through a sales cycle and convert themselves into becoming a customer.

Referrals

Ultimately, a happy prospect will tell others about their enjoyable experience.

In this day and age of social media, this form of word-of-mouth allows you to gain free advertising and broad awareness.

Experiential brand marketing allows prospects to align with the way you want them to see your brand positioning.

And so you can expect facebook likes and Tweets galore if you’ve done your homework correctly and provided an added value experience.

Experiential Marketing Case study: Northumberlandia In the UK there are 1000s of places to go for a walk. Many of the walks are pretty similar so it’s not worth it most of the time to bother travelling to a destination many miles away. But if you want a walk that attracts thousands of people from around the country then you need to create something of great value and is absolutely worth doing to compensate for the travel time. Northumberlandia is just that walk that hits the spot. At Northumberlandia, you are walking over a lady’s body. When you stand on the head you get a great view of the body and can see all the people winding their way around to the head. The 19 hectare public park on Cheviot Hill has been shaped so that you can have a great unique experience which you cannot get anywhere else in the UK. You can try a number of walks, or surf the net for a similar walk, but if you want a walk like this then you have no choice but to go to Northumberlandia. As written on the website: ‘Northumberlandia is a unique piece of public art set in a 46 acre community park with free public access and 4 miles of footpaths on and around the landform.’ It is a project that has been researched and deliberately created to offer a very different walk. Would this entice you to walk Northumberlandia if you liked to go on walks? Would you refer others to this without any resistance or much objection? http://www.northumberlandia.com/ - The Lady of the North. The Land Trust 7 Birchwood One Dewhurst Road Birchwood Warrington WA3 7GB

Bonus: 

How not to engage your prospects. Never, ever do these promotions.

1. A Gangnam style dance to promote a funeral parlour in the town centre.
2. Shock machines to prove heart attack tablets are quick at easing pain.
3. Provide a complement of nasty viruses to promote computer anti-virus software.
4. Create a dangerous assault course to prove pets will do anything to try to get to your pet food.

Further reading:

How to increase profit by creating value

Why London Bridge is England’s worst tourist attraction

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Brand Beckham (How David Beckham’s Brand is successful)

Brand Beckham (How David Beckham’s Brand is successful): by Jason Li 2012 ©

These days we all love brand Beckham...

Whether you’re based in USA, England or China...

But why is Beckham a global icon when there are millions of sports people?...

And how does Beckham appeal to such a wide audience?...

(How does he keep his hair in place all the time?)

David Beckham Brand in development

As a football fan, in the early days I only saw Beckham as a Manchester United player who was the best crosser of the ball in the world.

(I’m not a Man Utd fan, but I do enjoy watching them play attacking football.)

One of the main features of a wide midfield player or winger is to have great acceleration and dribbling skills, plus a cross at the end of it. If you’ve ever watched Man Utd play, all their wide players had exceptional pace from Best, Giggs, Kanchelskis to Cristiano Ronaldo.

But Beckham; he had no pace, cannot dribble, cannot beat a man. In fact, he’s useless at this. You could watch him for 90 minutes and still be waiting for him to break into a sprint.

So did the ruthless football manager guru Sir Alex Ferguson play Beckham because he wanted to play with ten men (Liverpool had given up winning league titles recently – only joking, it’s just a matter of getting the best out of Stuart Downing right?).

No.

What you have in Beckham is a player who is average at running with the ball, but over average for a wide player in terms of accuracy when distributing the ball. Beckham was the best person in the world at curling the ball from the wide right position into the path of a striker to nod one in. Put it this way, if a Hobbit was marked by Alessandro Nesta the great AC Milan centre back, Beckham could cross the ball in from 30 yards into the space between defender and Keeper and make the Hobbit look like he out jumped Nesta. Yep, that’s pretty good.

So why run and cross, when you can simply just... cross the ball from where you’re stood?

Witness the balls Beckham put in the box in the Champions League on route to winning it against Inter Milan and Juventus in 1998- 1999.

The second differentiator from other football players are his free kicks. David Beckham became the most famous free kick taker in the world. He consistently bent the ball around the wall.

So in football circles, he became known as exceptional at the delivery of the ball.

Victoria Beckham

So David Beckham went on to meet Victoria, get married and have babies... we all know this story.

We also know Victoria and advisors helped him develop his brand, and get sponsorship deals.

At the time of meeting, Beckham was one of the pin-up boys in the English league, Victoria a worldwide known singer for the Spice Girls.

If you remember the early chat shows, David was a nervous wreck on the shows and Victoria did all the talking. When he spoke, it was a bit of a quiet mumble and she took over the difficult questions.

But hey, slowly but surely non-football fans got to get to know the shy David Beckham who had no opinion while Victoria was his spokes person.

David Beckham is Golden Balls

And then David went from shy to an under wear model.

The first time I learnt about these shots in the Daily Mail, as a football fan, I didn’t really take much notice. I thought it was just a nice way for him to earn a bit more money on the side and learn a new trade... why not?

But then everyone was talking about the pictures... so I had to sneak a look. Come on guys, how many of you sneaked a look too?

I’m not talking in a sexual way (nothing wrong with it if he turns you on), but out of curiosity. And before you say it, just reading this may make you think otherwise, I promise you it’s not. And all these defensive arguments do not mean anything either.

In fact I have to declare, I saw a TV show where the ladies were really quizzing the pictures and if some parts were photo shopped. Of course I had a good look... who didn’t?

But you know what... I don’t think any man in the world who is heterosexual did not for the first time have a proper look at another man. And it was both unnerving and acceptable because it was everyone’s acceptable football icon... David Beckham, not Beckham the model... even though it was a model shoot for underwear.

(Now I can wipe my brow after thinking of those nervy moments because I was looking at another man’s CROTCH.)

David Beckham & Diego Simeone

Football has a lot of controversial moments. I would say the sending off of David Beckham against Argentina in the 1998 World Cup for a foul on Diego Simeone will be one I will remember.

It’s not just because he got sent off. It’s because he got sent off for something that was absolutely rubbish and ruined England’s chances of going through. Beckham got sent off for the most delicate petulant trip. So minor it was almost not a foul. I think it went down as the most frustrating foul in England’s history!

Did you see it? Can you remember either shouting at the screen, or been curled up and sucking in your stomach in silence, arms folded as your teeth clenched and eyes fixed on the screen? Or looking across the room and amidst all the shouting  there was one fellow who was emotionless and staring at the screen with big eye balls...  that was the one that made you remember the moment. Ooooh it hurt. And that team... Seaman, Shearer, Owen, Tony Adams, Paul Ince, Paul Scholes... and so on.

From hero to zero in one second.

David Beckham Marketing

But you know what... that’s what made Brand Beckham even stronger. As much as we talk about and like a good role model... the world needs a bad guy.

At that time, Beckham was it. Then to play the game, he shaved his golden locks off, and WENT SKINHEAD.

Beckham lost a few sponsors and was on parole.

But hey... the bad moody looking boy in rehab appeals to a lot of people.

Nobody is perfect, and over time people did forgive. Those that made mistakes or liked the bad boy got to know Beckham and gave millions of people around the world a new role model.

David Beckham England Captain

Being the England captain and that free kick against Greece to book a World Cup place was the tonic. Having given the Argentineans an advantage in the 2008 World Cup, now he was the hero as the outstanding player who scores the winner in the final qualifying game to take England to the next World Cup.

Rehab sealed.

David Beckham the ambassador for English Sport

Now Beckham has ambassadorial roles such as a role in the Olympics 2012, meeting Nelson Mandela and David Beckham academy.

These days David Beckham is a polished English export who represents what is good for the country.

Brand Halo

But remember this; first and foremost Beckham won trophies as a football player. Doing what he did, he was absolutely the best at putting the ball on a plate for strikers.

As a take away, Beckham initially became a brand built on his ability to fulfil expectations as a footballer in almost every game he played. If he could not, then he would never have played for Manchester United over so many seasons and games

The brand has evolved over many years, from the haircuts to his personality which is now stronger as an ambassador and spokes person who everyone listens to.

Mum and dads like him as a clean role model, girls who like a bad boy like him, and people who want to identify with a person who makes mistakes in the general public will learn from his recovery to the straight and narrow. In fact, even if you hate David Beckham... it means you will secretly grow to forgive and love David Beckham. It’s complex. It’s Beckham the master psychologist.

If Beckham initially started investing his focus on his image and brand first, then there’s no way he could have been an exceptional footballer.

As you can see, you can be an exceptional brand and differentiated based on how good you are without focusing from the start on trying to artificially create a brand identity. So focus on marketing strategy, be known as being the best at what you do for your target market first, and the brand will develop a halo afterwards.

If you’re not the best at satisfying customers, then worrying about your brand image and changing your logos is very unlikely to solve your long-term problems. As one football coach said to me whilst we were watching some new players on trial: “You can’t polish a turd!”

Further Reading:

Charlie Sheen sex tweets: Why you must appeal to psychological control

MacDonald’s Hidden Hypnotic Brand Marketing Tactics Revealed (and its copy able!)

Brand Beckham: Where next for pioneer David? (Opens BBC website)
Brand Beckham: Will the LA Galaxy exit change Becks' sponsorship appeal? (Opens Marketing Magazine website)
Romeo Beckham to appear in Burberry ads (Opens Marketing Magazine website)
David Beckham suspicious full bulge shooting ad with Guy Ritchie for H&M Bodywear brand underwear (Opens Daily Mail website)

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Apple or Stephen Hawking or Harvard University: Which is the most intelligent brand?

Apple or Stephen Hawking or Harvard University:  Which is the most intelligent brand?: by Jason Li 2012 ©

A bit of fun....

Which brand is the best representation of intelligence?...

Where humankind can say this is how clever we are?

Contenders

I thought of Garry Kasparov as a definite contender – the man is a chess genius and it’s pretty much impossible for any human to beat him. But then, the only thing that can spoil his credentials, if you can spoil his credentials, is to say that chess people play for hours-on-end every day going over the same situations and practice moves. I know how practice can improve your performance from playing football as we used to practice free kick routines sometimes to mix things up, and even those who were not the brightest seem to look like they did something clever.

However, this definitely does not detract from Kasparov as a proven chess genius over a very long period of time as he has beaten other dedicated professionals fair and square.

Sir David Attenborough is possibly the world’s most famous natural history film-maker. Whether it involves plants, global warming or prehistoric dinosaurs... Sir David Attenborough can tell you the facts. Every programme he presents is absolutely fascinating.

However, his brand is based on learning facts and regurgitating natural history facts in the most interesting way. As much as I love and admire his work and style, a memory expert could well copy Sir David Attenborough and provide a credible imitation. Again, this is not to take away from his deserved super brand status in this subjective question. Sir David Attenborough is an excellent and close contender too (beating millions of other worthy intelligent brands).

The top three intelligent brands

Many people judge success based on money and funny enough – success. Apple is therefore the most successful product brand in the world. At the time of writing, Apple was the company with the largest capitalisation in the world. The business world is occupied by very motivated, dedicated, clever, educated, smart and ambitious people in the world. Apple is ahead of all competitors at the moment and so must be in the top three.

Smart people go to university as a norm. You do get exceptions, but in general, if you’re smart you go to university. HarvardUniversity is well known around the world as a destination where many of the world’s smartest people go to take in more information in their specialists interests.

Most of us are aware Harvard University had two mega successful commercial students – Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates. Even though they left before completing their degrees, they still choose Harvard which means there will be other students like them at the university.

Stephen Hawkins is world renown as a leading physicist at Cambridge University. Cambridge University itself is pretty much on par with Harvard, just not as glamorous. Hawkins has to be in the running as he develops new theories which mathematicians and physicists are playing catch up to understand. To develop new ideas explaining the universe and put your reputation on the block as other physicists test your ideas for holes (pardon the pun) is both brave and smart if the world has to wait for you to provide a theory to advance everyone else’s knowledge.

My vote

People at Harvard University can replicate what Apple do, and likewise those at Apple could easily create a university like Harvard.

I believe if Stephen Hawking learnt to programme, he would have the capacity to programme software or design products at Apple, and of course lecture at Harvard. If Stephen Hawking dedicated to chess he would definitely beat some of the top pros.

However, I’m not sure if there are more than only a handful of the people at Harvard University or Apple who have the original thinking in science and mathematics on the same level as Stephen Hawking. There will be brilliant specialists in design, art, science subjects and mathematics. However, Stephen Hawking is advanced in all these and more. Original thinkers who can explain black holes and quantum gravity in the universe only come along once in a generation.

For me Stephen Hawking is the most intelligent brand in the world.

(Stephen Hawking wins £1.8 million Fundamental Physics Prize - December 2012)
Daily Mail article, Universe Today article.

Maybe a mathematician will work out a formula to work out which is the most intelligent brand one day.

Do you agree? Ask this one question to someone you know as it will be fun to find out what people think. How did they arrive at their chosen intelligent brand?

If you liked this article, you will really make my day if you forward it on. J

 

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MacDonald’s Hidden Hypnotic Brand Marketing Tactics Revealed (and its copy able!)

McDonald’s Hidden Hypnotic Brand Marketing Tactics Revealed (and its copy able!): by Jason Li 2012 ©

They may not be the tastiest burgers in the world (or brand marketing)...

In fact, they don’t even try to convince you they are tasty or quality...

But when it comes to Hidden Hypnotic Brand Marketing Tactics, this strategy helps them be the most in demand in the burger industry...

Here are some reasons why you may love McDonald’s restaurants and love their marketing.

Unconscious Love and McDonald's Hidden Hypnotic Brand Marketing Tactics

Here’s the scenario:

You’re driving around, it’s about lunch time and you weren’t even thinking about food - yet. Then you see the M sign and BAM, you spin the wheel as your arms dangerously cross over and screech into the driveway entrance of McDonald’s, no need to spin the car around to go back- this time. Relief... you’ve successfully avoided having to do a U-turn or a lap of the whole block; and how intensely does your gut want to make you feel rewarded when you chomp that first bite of your burger or slurp your milkshake – it’s pure chemical now!

Get tranced by McDonald's Hidden Hypnotic Brand Marketing Tactics

Let’s take this a step back and see how all this happened.

What do most people do when they eat something really yummy. They say “mmmm!”

When you saw the road sign from a distance, you saw:

M – mmmm

Why is it so high? It gives you enough time to go “mmm,” and time to decide whether to pull in or not.

Also notice on the products, M is spelt the same on the burger packaging on the menu and on the packaging – see the packaging for fries. You are hypnotised into thinking mmm. What a genius idea. As possibly the only business that explicitly openly carries out the suggested marketing techniques used, McDonald’s continually captures people susceptible to hypnotic brand marketing tactics.

McDonald’s Hidden Hypnotic Brand Marketing Tactics Marketing Mix – using a mix of power of suggestion tactics

Here is a different way that McDonald’s marketing mix has been developed.

Green colours in the restaurant – makes you think of freshness. Remember, McDonald’s main operation is a kitchen that uses a lot of cooking oil. So green and pictures of freshness makes you forget this.

Happy times for kids – if you lock in kids early before they have the will power to control addictions, you are likely to have a customer for life. People always want to be happy and going to McDonald’s will be etched into children’s minds as a great place to get a quick happiness hit. People love nostalgia and going to a safe place where wonderful memories are held forever.

Kids taught it is a treat to eat at McDonald’s. That’s why kids have great memories of birthday parties there –  it is a good place to go. If parents and grown-ups say it is good, who’s to argue.

Eco – toilet, washbasin, recycled packages, and paper bags – you’ll feel a reward for eating there. Eating there makes you feel like you’re contributing to the world by saving the environment.

Heavy large doors at the entrance – similar to banks to get your trust straight away.  As soon as you walk in you feel like you’ve entered a reputable and trustworthy institution.

The counter is at the back and most well lit area – like walking up to an alter.

You see all the people eating before you go to the back so feel it’s OK to eat a burger, fries and milkshake because everyone else is doing it. There’s nothing like joining a group to feel like you belong. Remember, at the end of the day, you are eating a fried burger, fried fries and possibly a sugary milkshake. The guilt is vastly reduced in the company of others.

The toilet is always at the furthest point - so you might go in not intending to buy; but you will feel guilty or primed to buy once you have seen everyone eating.

Once you touch that heavy door, see fellow eaters approving it’s okay to eat a burger, tell yourself it’s a treat and you deserve to feel happy... once you reach the alter (counter) you are primed to buy.

Even if you just intend to sneak to the toilet, not everyone can resist the emotions pulling you to the burger counter when you come out.

McDonald's Hidden Hypnotic Brand Marketing Tactics & Suggestive Selling

I hope this article does give you something to do when you’re next sat in MacDonald’s. Possibly more people will go to McDonald’s after reading this.

As for me, I’m a big McDonald’s fan. For all the opposing publicity and news, I believe McDonald’s is on balance better for us than not in our world.

I visit every few weeks and when I take my place at the altar it’s with absolute joy. Maybe it’s the McDonald’s marketing sending my juices into overdrive, but “I’m Lovin’ It” anyhow.

Found this interesting. Did you just know there was something different about McDonald's marketing that you could not put your finger on... that they secretly did something which gave them an advantage? Well now you know.

Spread the word and show this article to someone to see what they think. Can businesses use hypnotic suggestive marketing tactics?


Further Reading:

'Anchoring Sales Technique’: Sales Pricing Strategy for more Upselling (secretly used by Gucci and Apple)'

AIDA Marketing Model: Sex Sells The Test

McDonald's Marketing Strategy & Marketing Campaigns (Opens Marketing Week website)
5 Lessons to learn from McDonald's marketing (Opens Marketing Nerd website)
McDonald's Children's Marketing Global Guidelines (Opens aboutMcDonald's website)
Why McDonald's Bare-Bones Marketing Approach Works (Opens Marketing Week website)

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