By Darren Gilbert
Morning stories
Focusing on stories and how they drive marketing results,
Cohen made it simple: “You should never underestimate the power of a great story. After all, we buy the story not the product.”
Of course, finding a unique story is the challenge. At the same time, the story that you tell needs to be both authentic and captivating. It needs to drive action and engage with your audience. How can you tell if you’re on the right story? It’s when your customers start telling you story for you, because you’ve given them an experience worth talking about.
Sid Peimer, executive director of the Cape Chamber of Commerce, followed Cohen to present on why your marketing strategies fail. According to Peimer, the main reason for your failure is essentially down to the fact that your customers don’t behave the way that you think. To businesses, their choices may seem unpredictable and illogical. Irrational even. However, from their perspective, their decisions are all sensible.
Cohen jumped in before the next talk to host an ‘Audience Introduction’ session in which a handful of audience members had the chance to stand up and tell their stories.
Mid-morning strategy and branding
Tea was followed by
Jarrod Eckstein, MD of Unit 5 at The Creative Council, who gave a sobering talk about strategy. Your strategy is not your wish list, he pointed out. Instead, it’s the core DNA of what you do. At the same time, hope is not a strategy. You could hope to make more sales or gain more awareness. But it’s not a strategy. It’s rather about finding ways to get somewhere and knowing how to get there
It’s also easy to copy everyone else’s strategy. However, as Eckstein pointed out, your strategy should never be comparable to anyone else’s. If it is, you’re losing an opportunity to stand out. And if you want customers to interact with you, you need to be different. You need to grab their attention and make people fall in love with your brand. It’s not easy. It’s also not impossible. Just be, and think, different.
Doug de Villiers, group CEO of Interbrand Africa, presented the last talk before lunch. His presentation focused on making the business case for brand change, honing in on the four ages of branding. From Age of Value to the Age of Identity, to the Age of experience and finally to the Age of ‘Meconomy’, brands need to constantly reinvent themselves to remain relevant.
This doesn’t mean that brands don’t fail. They do. The reason for failure is more about not listening to customers while refusing to recognise a changing market. As for who will survive? According to De Villiers, it will be those that recognise and leverage the brand as a business tool.
Afternoon delight
Charlie Stewart, CEO of Rogerwilco, kicked off what Cohen labelled the graveyard shift – the session after lunch. It was anything but boring though, with Stewart focusing on Business-to-Business Marketing. Essentially, Stewart set about showing the crowd how you could move prospects from ‘I’m interested’ to ‘where do I sign’. And it all starts with content marketing.
To create such content, marketers need to run through the B2B buying cycle, answering questions and providing content in response. The buying cycle includes identifying needs, setting criteria, and doing specific research before evaluating and testing, as well as negotiating and buying.
As for what content to create, Stewart pointed out that it needs to be authentic and believable. This type of content not only builds trust with your audience but also leads them to buy.
Rebecca Cronje, director of Cultivate Communications, broke the steady stream of male speakers when she stepped up on stage to talk next. Her topic was around the relevance of PR today.
In a world where traditional media is taking a hammering, there are questions around the relevance of PR. Do people read anymore? Do they engage with newspapers and magazines? The ABCs’ latest figures show that perhaps not. However, this doesn’t mean PR has lost its relevance. After all, as Cronje pointed out, PR isn’t intrinsically connected to the fate of traditional media.
People still read, watch and listen. They just do it differently, she said. Instead of a newspaper, it might be online or via a mobile app. And this, believes Cronje, creates more opportunities for those in PR. For example, online used to be print’s poor cousin, said Cronje. Using Business Day as an example, she compared an article. In print, the paper has a readership of 25 000. So the article could arguably be viewed so many times. With the opportunity to spread the article online and via social media, their reach far exceeds that.
“We are living a hybrid world,” said Cronje. “It’s not one or the other. Our channels may have changed, but our approach remains the same.”
Andrew Hall, MD of hero advertising, closed Day 1 with a look at the mechanics behind customer engagement. Understanding that when it comes to the last speaker of the day at any conference, people are tired, he decided to keep it light and fun.
Using a number of case studies to back up what he was saying, Hall focused on surprising and delighting customers. “You’ll be surprised that people are blown away by unexpected things.” Old Mutual did this at the 2 Oceans Marathon, using virtual reality and giving runners the experience of running alongside Bruce Fordyce while also getting tips.
“There is always the opportunity to build meaningful relationships with your customers,” said Hall. It’s just up to you as a brand to do that.