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Wednesday, September 30, 2009

How to market Noynoy Aquino for President in 2010


MarketingRx for October 2-09

Marketing "Noynoy for President"? - part 1

By Dr Ned Roberto & Ardy Roberto


Q:  We work for an NGO advocating for change and for Noynoy in the coming 2010 election.  We read your column some 2 or 3 months ago saying that voters have a low involvement regard for the coming election and this is why the top 5 or 6 presidentiables have very close voting percentages.  To be frank, we disagreed and still do with your analysis and didn’t like at all what you predicted.  We were like the group who asked you the question in that column.  But we are different in that we believe many of the concepts about changing public behavior we found in your social marketing book. 

You wrote that column before the Noynoy phenomenon.  But now without the kind of Villar’s extra heavy ad campaign and without the other candidates’ shameless advertorial plugs, we’ve all seen how out of nowhere Noynoy grabbed the lead in the presidential race with an unbelievable 49% votes.  Surely, you can no longer say voters still have a low involvement regard for the coming election.  So what does your social marketing have to say now about our voters, our presidentiables that include Noynoy, and who will win in the coming election?


A:  You wrote an excellent brief note.  Thank you for your endorsement of the senior MR-er’s social marketing book.  Next, we’d like to go directly and respond to your questions

First, do voters no longer have a low involvement regard for the coming election? 

There are at least two important things to consider here.  The first of these is Noynoy’s 49% share of votes.  We probably can say that for those 49%, the low involvement attitude has been left probably in favor of the high at least for the present.  But as you probably still remember from your statistics, the flip side of that 49%  is the 51% who were not touched by Noynoy or by what happened to his Mom, Cory Aquino.  So the most we can say about the 49% statistic is that the playing field is now probably even between the low versus the high involvement voters.

This conclusion holds IF the 49% ratio represents a trend data.  But it is not a trend data.  It’s a single data point as of the date of that scientific and credible survey that did the reading.  To validly conclude about its voter behavior implication with regard to the likelihood of Noynoy’s winning the coming election, we need to see at least two more successive data points.  If that 49% is more or less maintained in the next two surveys, then it becomes reasonable to conclude that there’s a trend in favor of half the voter population sticking to Noynoy.  If, on the other hand, the next two surveys show an increase for each of these 2 surveys, then the trend is for the 49% to even increase further.  That will make Noynoy a stronger presidential candidate on the verge of becoming a dominant leading candidate.  Finally, if in the next 2 surveys, the 49% declines, then that 49% was no trend.  It was an “outlier” statistics representing a “surprise” or what author Nassim Taleb refers to as a “Black Swan” phenomenon that would, just as quickly as it appeared would just disappear or level off about the norm.

In all these 3 likelihoods, what’s of strategic significance is to understand the social force or forces underlying that 49%.  What made 49% of voters to suddenly want Noynoy for their president this coming election?  Without such an explanation, anyone’s intrepretation and recommendation are just as good as any other.         

That’s one social marketing answer to your question on who will win the coming election.  If we transform the question to relate specifically to Noynoy, we therefore ask: 


“Will Noynoy win the election?”  


Or translating the question to refer to your advocacy stand and resoluteness, the question becomes: “What will it take for Noynoy to win the election?”

The ideal would be for Noynoy to hold on to the 49% and if there should be a decline in this voting ratio, to arrest the decline to the lowest level of 30% or 34%.   Recall that Fidel Ramos won at a 24% share of votes.  That’s our benchline in this portion of the analysis.  Now, come May 2010, the final share of votes for any candidate will be determined first by the voters’ final voting decision and behavior.  But the other half in a candidate’s final share of votes is his or his party’s political machinery.  That other big factor is what we do not and cannot have from the survey. 

The political machinery includes, especially for the incumbent partyits capability and experience with a “hello-Garci” maneuver or many others of this type of vote hijacking.  Presumably, a 10% lead (i.e., 34% versus 24%) would represent too numerous a number of voters to hide under a “dagdag-bawas” (vote adding-vote deducting) manipulation.  So Noynoy can gain a decisive win with a low 34% or a high 49% SOV that he now commands.

Just how can your NGO and allies make this happen? Since we are out of space, we'll answer that question next Friday! 
Thanks for your questions. Keep sending them to drnedmarketingrx@gmail.com or marketingrx@pldtdsl.net or text us at 0918-3386412. God bless! 




MarketingRx for October 9-09

Marketing "Noynoy for President"? - conclusion

By Dr Ned Roberto & Ardy Roberto

Here's a repeat of the question posed last week by an NGO advocating for change and "marketing" Noynoy for President in 2010. They ask:



Q:  We read your column some 2 or 3 months ago saying that voters have a low involvement regard for the coming election and this is why the top 5 or 6 presidentiables have very close voting percentages.  To be frank, we disagreed and still do with your analysis and didn’t like at all what you predicted....
(But) you wrote that column before the Noynoy phenomenon.  But now without the kind of Villar’s extra heavy ad campaign and without the other candidates’ shameless advertorial plugs, we’ve all seen how out of nowhere Noynoy grabbed the lead in the presidential race with an unbelievable 49% votes.  Surely, you can no longer say voters still have a low involvement regard for the coming election.  So what does your social marketing have to say now about our voters, our presidentiables that include Noynoy, and who will win in the coming election?


Here's the continuation and conclusion to our answer from last Friday. (For those who missed it, visit our blog at marketingrx.org)


Word of Mouth and stickiness
First, find out the social force or forces underlying Noynoy's 49% share of votes (SOV).  That reason or reasons make up the raw materials for crafting Noynoy’s campaign message.  Then, that message has to be spread and, more importantly, kept at top-of-mind  consciousness among the voter population.  How to effectively accomplish this is found today in the growing word-of-mouth (WoM) marketing literature.

WoM marketing shows that the spread of a message can be multiplied by its “conversation value.”   That’s the quality of a message that makes it to its audience “buzzable” or, if you will, “Boy-Abunda-ble.”  Its initial recipientwill like to talk to others about the message

If talking about your message takes only one or two rounds, its spread and top-of-mind character will be short-lived.  It needs another pass-on quality.  That’s the quality of “stickiness” according to Malcolm Gladwell in his best seller book, The Tipping Point.  Message stickiness, comes from the appropriate and timely use of message source and message context. 

When a message source is a celebrity or a respected figure of authority, the message source gives the message an enhanced stickiness.  It is stickiness that gets the message to be passed on more than 2 or more rounds. 

The powerful message context, according to Gladwell, is controversy.  But using controversy is a double-edged sword because it has positive as well as negative consequences.

Controversy
Conversation value and stickiness find its ultimate and ingenious application in Mel Gibson’s pre-selling of the movie, “The Passion of the Christ.”  Gibson did the following.  First, he spread the news that the Jewish communities were “mad at me because they said the movie made them look bad; it’s anti-semitic, they said.”  He then got emails to circulate in the Christian communities defending the movie.  Next, he somehow was able to get Entertainment Weekly to name the movie “the most controversial film of all times.”  This was followed by a movie review from the foremost movie critic Robert Ebert saying“The full 10 minutes of flogging makes this the most violent film I have ever seen. … No level-minded parent should ever allow children to see this movie.”  That practically assured an eager children’s crowd for the movie.  Through all of these, the movie-going public talked about the movie and the media continued to do so as well.

So how did Gibson sustain the conversation value and stickiness of his WoM campaign for his movie?  He created a serial WoM “campaign” of sorts whose changing but unrelenting conversation value and stickiness held movie fans in suspended anticipation until the movie’s release and they all lined up to see it.  That’s the kind of WoM campaign that Noynoy requires for keeping his 49% SOV or for making sure its decline would stop at 34%.  His campaign message must have conversation value and stickness.  Then that message must be reformulated repeatedly and played in a serial schedule until election time.

We close by saying something about the social marketing model we applied above for shaping and directing voter behavior.  Among other things, the model versatility.  It can work for any other presidentiables.  An appropriate WoM campaign can be developed for the #2, #3 or even the #4 candidate aimed at matching and then excelling Noynoy’s SOV.  It’s a matter of having the necessary voter response and behavior data.  

Thanks for your questions. Keep sending them to drnedmarketingrx@gmail.com or marketingrx@pldtdsl.net or text us at 0918-3386412. God bless! Our writer's fees for this and last week goes to Operation Blessing's medical mission for Typhoon Ondoy victims. Please support relief efforts for the victims of Typhoon Ondoy. God bless!  God bless!

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

the missing link - part 2 of Are Loyal Customers Really Profitable

Thanks to Tara who called my attention about the missing part 2 of our column. Here it is. Click on the link and it will take you to Inquirer.net

Are loyal customers really profitable?


The debate rages on


After declaring to our readers the past two weeks that "Loyal customers are not your most profitable customers" we have received quite 
a typhoon of responses to our "contrarian" statement. 

Some were in disbelief (thank you to one reader, Paolo, who sent a terrific argument) while some came out of the closet to declare that it does cost too much to maintain "loyal customers". A few were clarifying or asking for clarification. Even one of the authors of the book, Loyalty Myths, Tim Keiningham wrote to us (we asked permission from him to reprint his letter and article on customer loyalty myths as well, which we hope to publish.)

We don't have space to publish all the responses that we received, but we will start with one from Dickie Soriano, from BCD Pinpoint. Disclosure:   Dickie is a friend, no, actually a very loyal friend. But he does have the credentials and not just the relationship with us--that's why we're printing his letter first. (Dickie is in the customer loyalty game as a business. His agency is into CRM -- Customer Relationship Management--and is one of the pioneers and largest in Asia.)

So here's Dickie's response to our invitation in our last column to share your thoughts on the issue.

Hi Dr Ned and Ardy

I read your column here in Vietnam and since I had some time I
decided to respond to your challenge of getting your readers to
contribute to the discussion.

Being a fan of your column, and having been a guest in several of your
events, I am relieved to have read  the question: 
Are loyal customers really profitable? 

I say ‘relieved’ because there is an unfortunate
tendency amongst some  entrepreneurs and businesses  to simplify the
business of customer loyalty, reduce it to a program that offers
discounts to everyone, and then proclaim that, voila’ they have a
customer loyalty program just like everyone else.

There is, I believe, an unfortunate tendency amongst us to apply only
the most visible remedies to a problem, regardless of their actual
effects. Just look at the number of  signs  telling us to be ‘careful
when driving because accidents take place here’  or the irritating
tendency to put humps on roads – when the real problem to solve is
that no one bothers to enforce – or even teach – driving discipline.

What is customer loyalty really?
So let’s start with some definitions: loyalty is the act of someone
sticking by you, regardless of your actual traits or behaviour. It is
probably when you are at your most abrasive – when most people will
talk badly of you and shun you – that you find out who amongst your
friends are truly loyal, and who were just there for the ride. I would
argue that in the same manner, when your brand is at its lowest point
– perhaps because one of your products had a defect, or a new
competitor came in with a much better value proposition – that you
find out just how important loyal customers are.

If you attracted ‘loyal’ customers through a run-of-the-mill discount
program, are you truly developing loyalty to the brand? Or are you
encouraging deal shopping? (My wife, practical person that she is, has
a wallet full of ‘loyalty  cards’ that grant her all manner of points
and discounts – an irony that never ceases to escape my attention,
given that I am in the business of helping clients develop loyalty to
their brands).

Some customers are worth losing...
So the answer to the question – are loyal customers really profitable?
– will have to depend on context and definition. If  by loyal
customers you simply mean card-carrying people in a database, earning
points and discounts, I would argue that a number of them may not be
profitable.  Some may, in fact, be worth losing as they cost you too
much – the most obvious example of this was when customers would
badger either Globe or Smart for a new phone, even if their phone
bills were not commensurate to such a privilege.

At the end of the day...
Or here’s a more recent example. I am writing to you from Ho Chi Minh,
and yesterday I was witness to what I consider a great customer
loyalty program. I was brought around the city by the brand manager of
Vietnam’s largest paint company. We stopped by one housing
development, and she showed me how their field agents would go around
looking for houses that were being built, befriend the home owner and
the contractor, get data on the estimated square meters of surface
area that would have to be painted, and enter the data into a
web-based database. So far, those would be today’s textbook
approaches.

What blew me away was when the home-owner commended one of the field
agents, who, she said, even went to the extent of driving for her, and
running errands for her. All in the name of selling her paint! Now,
there is no doubt in my mind that this home-owner is now a loyal
customer – but it will likely be at least 4 years before she will be
in a frame of mind to re-paint her home. What was the cost of
engendering her loyalty, against the revenue the paint company would
generate from her?

The best way to find out if loyal customers are profitable, is,
unfortunately, the hardest way. 
  Fortunately, it is also the best way
to make your company profitable: force the discipline of critical
thought on the organization. Go beyond applying obvious remedies of
discount cards, and develop a truly brand-true, strategic program
aimed not just at developing customer loyalty, but of developing
profitable customer relationships 
- Dickie Soriano, Founder, BCD Pinpoint, BCDPinpoint.com

Thanks for sharing this with us Dickie! 
Keep your questions and comments coming.  Send them to us at MarketingRx@pldtDSL.net ordrnedmarketingrx@gmail.com text us at 0918-3386412. God bless!

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Are loyal customers really profitable?

Click the title to read one of the most controversial columns that we've had so far...