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1959 was the year The Marketing Society was founded and the birth of modern marketing. Today, The Marketing Society is the most influential network of senior marketers dedicated to championing marketing in the UK. Fifty Golden Brands is our exploration of the changing role of brands since our foundation.

Water, water everywhere – it was the ultimate brand accolade. Perrier was persuading consumers to buy a product they could get for free from their tap. The notion of buying a bottle of water to drink like a Coca-Cola or glass of wine was a brand-new concept.

Soon, Perrier, the sparkling French mineral water, was a status symbol. Alongside the Filofax, it was an essential badge for an emerging tribe of British consumers, the Yuppies. It was advertised as the champagne of mineral water, in newspapers like The Daily Mail, at a time when Frenchness was a desirable thing to the rising middle classes.

Italian provenance and an operatic gondolier singing O Sole Mio were selling Cornetto ice-cream from Wall’s to great success. “Just one cornetto, Give it to me, Delicious ice-cream from Italy, Vanilla and strawberry dream, Give me Cornetto, From Wall’s Ice cream!” The award-winning campaign ran for a decade and was resuscitated again in 2006.

Krona margarine, the first UK brand that looked and tasted like butter, was recognised for its successful launch. Kelloggs launched a new breakfast cereal called Crunchy Nut Cornflakes. And the delivery of news changed forever with a new channel called CNN.

Meanwhile, two new revolutionary toys were taking the UK by storm. The Rubix Cube won toy of the year as adults and children alike scrabbled to get their hands on the puzzle cube. Popular solutions included peeling off the coloured stickers and breaking the cube open with a screwdriver.

Then there was Pacman, the electronic game featuring four ghosts chasing an eating Pacman around a maze. It led to a plethora of Pacman merchandise from T-shirts to lunch boxes.

Brand Value – $351m

Brand Value – Methodology

Books: Midnight’s Children by Salmon Rushdie

Events: Iran Iraq war; John Lennon shot; Reagan beats Carter to US presidency; Mugabe to lead independent Zimbabwe

Films: Fame; Flash Gordon; The Shining

Music: St Winifred’s School Choir love their grandmas

Joss Davidge, Business Director of brand experience agency BEcause, is always on the look out for marketing ideas that get people talking.  This week he looks at recent experiential activity from IKEA.

IKEA appears to execute its marketing strategy with almost text book attention to detail and a keen eye on what consumers want or expect from the brand.  This includes its carefully controlled in-store experience, the yellow and blue branding, ever popular quirky television commercials and highly engaging experiential activity.

IKEA: Paris Metro home

IKEA constructed an apartment space in a Paris Metro station that was completely kitted out with goods from the store.  To distance the experience from walking around your local IKEA store some bright spark had the idea of allowing people to actually live in the apartment.  Fans of the IKEA Facebook page could win the chance to live in apartment for 6 days, their antics being watched by passing commuters through large windows.  The main idea was to show Parisians that you could comfortably house five people in just 54m² of space; if you do it the IKEA way. This is not the first time I have seen this kind of activity, but nonetheless it is a fantastic idea and has clearly made quite an impact.

IKEA: Sleepover

Apparently it takes us, on average, less than five minutes to choose a new mattress.  A bit of a prod and a tentative moment spent perched on the edge is all we need to decide.  IKEA was spurred on to stage this sleepover event by the lack of time we spend choosing a mattress and a Facebook fan page called “I wanna have a sleepover in IKEA” (that has secured nearly 100,000 likes). IKEA opened its doors for 100 competition winners to have a sleepover in the Lakeside store late last year. Winners were given some cocoa on arrival and, whist sporting pyjamas and slippers, located a bed of their choice to cosy up in for the night.  IKEA provided some entertainment, gave out goody bags, had sleep therapists on-hand, supplied massages and even had a reality-TV star read the winners a bedtime story! This one-off event certainly got people talking and is sure to have IKEA customers across the world keen to spend a night at their local store.

Read more BEcause blog posts. Visit their website, and tweet @becausexm.

In a low-lit room within Shoreditch House, our latest Digital Leadership Dinner played host to a captivating discussion where John Kearon, Founder and Chief Juicer of BrainJuicer got emotional about marketing.

We think much less than we think we think. There’s a new understanding of how we really make decisions, coming out of Behavioural Economics and it’s rewriting the way we thought marketing worked.  It seems our higher order powers of mental deliberation which we rightly praise and prize, turn out NOT to be our Oval office of decision making but more our press office of post-rationalisations.  In short, the vast majority of people on the vast majority of occasions make decisions emotionally and instinctively and marketing needs to drop its belief that rational messaging is an equal player in the secret sauce of successful brands and get much more emotional about marketing.

However interesting that sounds, I promise it’s even more interesting when you start to explore the detail of this new science. But a word of warning: though each brilliant, counter-intuitive example startles and illuminates, if you don’t have a map by which to navigate and connect things, you can quickly lose yourself in a forest of examples.

So here’s a simple way to explore this exhilarating new world of behavioural understanding (thanks to LBi for the metaphor). Think of it like the London Underground map but with three zones; Psychological, Social and then Environmental.  In each zone there are distinct stations representing the different but related heuristics. And all routes pass through the three zones to the same ultimate destination of a consumer decision.

Zone 1 is Psychological, through which all decisions must pass. There are many heuristics to learn here but the most important is System 1 and System 2 thinking which describes the two mental processes we use to make decisions. System 1 is the instinctive, intuitive and emotional part. Fast to react, automatic, associative, effortless and learns gradually over time. System 2 is the cognitive, analytical, clever part. Slow, effortful and deliberate and learns in insightful leaps. The rub for marketing is these systems are far from equal. The impressive, cognitive System 2 would be the equivalent of 50 bits of computing power versus System 1’s instinctive, emotional 11 million bits of power.  It turns out, our capacity for System 2 thinking is very limited and we make the vast majority of decisions using intuition and emotion. The long version is beautifully set out by its inventor, Daniel Kahneman in, ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ and we have Kevin Duncan to thank for a terrific 1-page summary. One major marketing implication is that advertising does not work as we thought. The most commercially successful advertising doesn’t work by punching you with a fist of a brand proposition, wrapped in a velvet glove of emotion. Instead the most successful adverts have almost no discernable rational message but seduce you with pure emotion which becomes part of the brand. This explains the success of campaigns like the John Lewis’s Christmas advert, Cadbury Gorilla, Compare the Meercats.com and Stella Artois’ Jean de Florette campaign, all of which failed traditional pre-testing methods.

Zone 2 is Social. As social animals, one of the things we do best is copy. The cult of individualism in the West has made copying a dirty word and something that gets you into trouble at school or as a journalist. Yet, copying is a brilliant evolutionary strategy that with occasional variation enables us to spread good ideas and work successfully in unison. We copy much more than we think and certainly more than we care to admit. Everything from iPod’s white ear buds, to Amazon’s rankings and ‘people who bought this, also bought this’, to Mexican waves and regrettable fads and fashions like the success of Crocs which surely prove we largely copy blindly?  The long version of this is compellingly set out By Mark Earls and his professorial co-writers in, ‘I’ll Have What She’s Having’ and again the short version kindly provided by Kevin Duncan’s 1-page summary.

Zone 3 is Environmental. This is the science of choice architecture, where the way things are presented or framed can have big effects on behaviour. These ideas have been popularised by Richard Thaler in his book Nudge and enthusiastically embraced by the government through their No. 10 Nudge unit, given the potential for encouraging the population to make better decisions to improve health, wealth and happiness. This includes everything from the life giving effect of making organ donation an opt-out rather than an opt-in option, the slimming effect of smaller portion sizes and the opposite of course in the case of ‘Super-Size-Me’, through to the off-licence that tripled sales of French wine by playing French music. Little nudges can have big effects.

With the Psychological, Social and Environmental map in your head, I hope you enjoy delving deeper into this fascinating subject, through books like Predictably Irrational and the Upside of Irrationality, industry thought leaders like Rory Sutherland, sites like the Farnham Street blog and if you’ll forgive me, our own BrainJuicer papers.

John Kearon is founder and Chief Juicer of market research agency, BrainJuicer Group PLC www.brainjuicer.com

During 2011, Steve Henry and Alex Gulland set themselves the task of exploring the controversial and complex subject of The Future of Advertising. The pair interviewed a wide range of high profile opinion formers, within the industry, who were asked their views regarding the future for advertising in general.

Rory Sutherland questions how in a future ideas economy we can not only put a value on ideas but also create worthwhile incentives for professionals to continue to generate new and innovative concepts.

Future interviews include  Siobhann Freegard, Managing Director and Founder Netmums, Peter Fisk, International Author and Business Speaker, Glyn (remove second N) Britton Strategy Director, Albion London, Stephen Armstrong Media Journalist, George Bryant Founding Partner, The Brooklyn Brothers, Keith Moor, Director of Brand and Communications Santander Plc, Alex Batchelor, Chief Operating Officer BrainJuicer, Gav Thompson, Head of Brand Strategy O2, Amanda MacKenzie Chief Marketing and Communication Director Aviva Plc, Mark Thompson New Olympics Director and International Director The Royal Mail Ltd

Steve Henry, advertising creative and Alex Gulland, Contented Brands, filmed those in the know talking about the future of advertising. Watch videos from Peter Fisk, Alex Batchelor, Amanda MacKenzie and Rory Sutherland on our blog soon.

Keep an eye on our blog every Friday for these exclusive videos.

This week we meet Paul Wilson, CMO Sunguard.

What’s your golden rule?

‘If it’s controversial, do it on the phone.’

And, whilst living in Switzerland for the last five years – ‘never eat yellow snow.’

Who has been your biggest influence?

My parents; they taught me about the ubiquitous vulnerability of people, the need for compassion, generosity and kindness.

What is your most hated business expression?

‘We should leverage…’, it can usually be replaced by the shorter, more humble, non-jargon word – ‘use’.

What’s the smartest business idea you’ve ever had?

Monetising changes in the workflow of the equity trading industry resulting from the EU’s Markets in Financial Instruments Directive.

Which leaders do you admire most and why?

Noah, because he managed to keep a limited company afloat whilst the rest of the world went into liquidation.

James Lovelock, for pioneering the Gaia hypothesis in the face of ridicule from the scientific establishment.

Joseph Stiglitz, for countering hegemonic free market fundamentalists.

Muhammad Yunus, Founder of Grameen Bank, for transforming more lives than almost anyone.

What’s your favourite word?

Convivial

Tell us a secret

Your secret is safe with me – I’m really good at forgetting many things.

We’re looking to profile all our members here, so please do email Will to get involved if we haven’t yet been in touch.

In an extract from Marketing Excellence 2, Bupa Group’s brand director and former judge at The Marketing Society’s Awards for Excellence, Fiona McAnena discusses customer insight.

An insight is never an end in itself. An insight is only an insight if you are able to do something with it.

At Bupa we define an insight as ‘an enlightening discovery of people’s underlying needs and motivations that our business can address to create customer value and competitive advantage’.

There are a number of key words in there. Insight has to be enlightening. It has to discover underlying needs.  And it has to be something we can address. Too often people come along and say they have so much ‘insight’. But what they have is so much information. You have to keep digging to get real insights. It won’t be those which seem powerful and game changing to you. It will be those which resonate emotionally with the customer.

Containing 34 award winning case studies, from some of the most successful brands of current times, Marketing Excellence 2 is available form here or as an ebook from a variety of retailers including ibookstore. Marketing Society members can benefit from a 22% discount if they log in to the members area.

As part of our partnership with Marketing magazine we spark debate amongst senior members of The Marketing Society. On this occasion, we ask should cosmetic surgery clinics use standard marketing techniques?

No
Sally Ann Stanley
Group marketing director, Highland Spring

Any clinical intervention requires people to be managed as patients, not general consumers.

It is distasteful and potentially trivialising and exploitative to de-ploy general marketing methods, often to women who may temporarily be more receptive than usual to aggressive communications.

I would far rather see cosmetic surgery considered through the route of medical consultation and expert clinical advice. People will be more fully and expertly advised and more likely to be directed toward the appropriate outcomes.

Price will always be a consideration, but not at any cost. Surely, the skill and reputation of the medical team and the quality of their work is the priority, not a bargain price.

Maybe
Robert Prevezer
Executive chairman, The Communications Agency

Assuming that cosmetic surgery companies are appropriately registered and regulated, they should be allowed to use conventional marketing techniques to drive business – within reason.

Advertising their services and using relevant communication channels to reach their target audience and encourage purchase seems perfectly acceptable.

How far they should be allowed to incentivise business is another question entirely.

As with any other type of medical procedure, it would seem to be unethical (if not irresponsible) to actively incentivise people to receive treatment. How a ‘two-for-one’ offer can work, one can only imagine.

No
Jemima Bird
Marketing director, Tragus

The decision to undergo cosmetic surgery is a personal choice, not to be undertaken lightly. There are reasons of vanity as well as reconstruction, equal in their weighting to the individuals. In this context, promoting cosmetic surgery in the same way as a two-for-one on detergent feels intrinsically wrong. 

All surgery carries risk and if we normalise it, we are in danger of hiding this fact. Consumers believe what they ‘read on the tin’; I don’t think, in this instance, that we should consider the body a ‘tin’.

‘Buy one get one free’ on breast surgery may have gallows humour to it, but in this instance regulation is right. The doctor used to say a cigarette a day was good for your health; look where that landed us.

Yes
Carl Ratcliff
Executive planning director, Elvis Communications

We tend to get squeamish and/or moral at the mention of cosmetic surgery in spite of its increasingly mainstream status. Yet we need to park our conservatism and accept that this is a category experiencing austerity like any other.

It’s not illegal; like all businesses, it seeks incremental revenues. And, while the notion of a procedure BOGOF may feel closer to some-thing from a Philip K Dick novel than we’d like, our sensitivities need to roll with the punches.

Read more Marketing Society forum posts. The Marketing Society Forum is exclusive to members of The Marketing Society. Find out more about the benefits of joining The Marketing Society’s exclusive network and how you can contribute to our forum.

This week’s Challenger Project by Adam Morgan discusses where the opportunities for Challengers to amplify their point of difference by making something hitherto invisible, visible are.

Our latest publication. Where are the opportunities for Challengers to amplify their point of difference by making something hitherto invisible, visible?

Click below to read online (not compatible with ipads) or download a copy here.

1. Download the app
2. Select eatbigfish
3. Point your phone’s camera at the image on page 20
4. See the story come to life.