Bruce Everiss
Bruce introduced himself by telling us his interpretation of Marketing – ‘lots of communication with lots of people’. Dismissing PowerPoint in order to give an ‘interactive’ presentation with a Flipchart, he listed the factors he feels are important to our perception of what constitutes a Brand. Our Marketing culture and attitude being informed in a variety of ways:
Brand – An example being the Ford – Focus - RS, three valuable brands in their own right which taken together deliver a fourth – the particular car model.
Name – Guttural consonants and alliteration are often employed as in Google and Coca Cola.
Visual – Typeface, colour and logo are often established and in the past have stayed the same for many years; nowadays changes are made after only a few months.
Tag Line – Examples of companies or products whose tag lines we remember being British Airways, Audi, Nike, Tesco, Orange and Avis.
All of the above reinforce Brand Values i.e. differentiate from competitors.
It’s also important to reach the right markets. For the Games Industry, Market Research suggested that production was best aimed at twelve year olds; however the industry itself believed that the market to reach was twenty seven year old males. With the release and huge success of ‘Grand Theft Auto’ (a U.K. Games Industry product), the industry’s view has prevailed and the game has subsequently been widely imitated.
Bruce warned against narrow views of Marketing, citing Popular TV’s belief that it is all about spending money and the views of theorists and bodies such as the Chartered Institute of Marketing that products sell themselves. Manipulating mass consciousness does succeed, for example Apple has many best known brands although these products are not necessarily the best in their field. Whereas Google are only known for their single search engine product regardless of their attempts to launch additional products.
Creativity is the key as far as Bruce is concerned, in terms of Marketing it’s a valuable ingredient when put to the test by someone like Richard Branson who is rightly recognised first and foremost as an effective Marketeer. It all adds up to a form of ‘Controlled Communication’ that can be just as usefully employed to engage with, for example, suppliers, clients and employees as it can in the conventional sense of stimulating ‘Sales’. There are lots of ways to communicate with lots of people, exhibitions, events, leaflets and direct mail to name a few.
In the games industry, piracy has sometimes meant that companies have had to reduce the price of a game in order to compete. The result is that sales improve initially but revenue does not cover costs. In Bruce’s experience, he found he was able to stimulate sales by then increasing the price but offering games for a short limited period at the old price to distributors. The effect was that distributors placed much larger orders, a strategy that increased market share to 27% at one of the companies where he worked.
Returning to his theme of creativity, Bruce emphasised the value of ‘Guerrilla’ marketing campaigns and the importance of using video. We all remember the impact of the ‘Tango’ Ads and the notoriety they achieved and a present day example of the power of video would be the BBC Formula 1 website. If a picture tells a story then the popularity of platforms like YouTube suggests that video tells trillions of stories!
Bruce’s recommendation is to constantly measure and test the effectiveness of any marketing spend. Finding out what people want via feedback is most important. Once again, Apple is an example of a company that achieves success by understanding their market by employing focus groups and using the internet to learn more about their customers. Such tools are available to all of us as a means to exploit markets to the full. Others would be word of mouth and referrals, advertising, price, packaging, quality and public relations – all of these can be used to strengthen a campaign. PR is now one of the cheapest methods, applied to the internet it can cost next to nothing.
At Codemasters, Bruce initiated the practice of issuing press releases simultaneously around the world, reaching tens of millions of people at any one time and thereby ensuring maximum publicity with genuine stories. Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter add to the methods that can be used to spread the word, with so many links to so many websites and therefore so many people receiving your marketing message.
Visual imagery is of prime importance where the internet is concerned, we all acknowledge the impact of Channel 4’s logo and now our expectation is to see all logos as animation. Another ‘Hot Tip’ that Bruce offered was the use of Newsletters, anyone who sends one will end up with an ever increasing database of people.
A lively Question and Answer session followed Bruce’s stimulating presentation; we were all thoroughly enthused and ready to conquer the world with our reinvigorated individual marketing strategies.
Our thanks must go to Bruce for sharing his expertise with us and for sparing his time to be this month’s keynote speaker. We hope he enjoyed his visit to Creative Networks as much we appreciated his views on marketing our creative industry.
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