PLANNING - Getting ready for 2023
With a world seemingly on fire, platform outrage and tails wagging the dog the industry world over, it is time to refocus, consider facts, what's in our control and persevere as we head into new year.
Firstly, thanks for starting to read this. After last month’s departure from standard Front of Mind to delve into the subject of mental health (including my own) and the importance of it for better work in our discipline, I am glad you stuck around to check out this month’s thoughts which aim to recentre things (both for you and for I) as we return to the fulcrum of this newsletter; revisiting some marketing fundamentals to ensure marketing keeps your brand Front of Mind. So thanks for that.
I have been remote working in South Africa following a destination wedding. As an officiant there was some serious planning involved, which I believe of course adds further weight to planning tips too...! That said, I am writing this a little bit later than planned as I had to plan writing at certain times as they have something here called ‘load shedding’ where they shut down electricity for hours at a time to preserve the grid and its increasing demand. A known obstacle to overcome and built into my work accordingly. Well that’s the narrative anyway…
However back to it. We are closing in on 2023, a new year of hopefully pandemic free movement and trade, however one that is tightening its belts ready for a recession.
The following pointers are not a playbook of how to plan your marketing, or not, as the monthly shares over time should garner you with more ways of thinking and building blocks; the purpose of this is more to curate and share a handful of useful resources that I have used myself from the very top of the game to consider right now and make better decisions.
ANNUAL PLANNING - THE HEADLINE AND THE POINT
A good plan will be grounded in an assortment of factors, such as overall business goals and intended outcomes (invariably sales growth or share of voice), marketing budgets (note the use of the word marketing, not just advertising spend through media), performance last year, channel analysis, the addressable market and finance/procurement’s understanding of the role of marketing to business contribution.
The absolute north star to bear in mind here, marketing is there to provide a commercial function to help a brand or organisation grow, by driving awareness (mental availability is used in some circles), driving purchases from those ready to buy now, and to ensure you are Front of Mind to the other 95% + who could buy but are not yet ready. It is a typical plan’s job to reach all potential buyers, not just those ready to buy now.
The big challenge of course this year, and the key factor listed above, is the financial element, with recession announced and expected to run through to 2024 at least, purse strings will tighten and with it a sharper approach required for marketing planning. However do NOT conflate sharper approach and tightened strings with just doing performance advertising and low cost ‘ROAS/ROI’ activity. Do it, and convert the demand ruthlessly, but ensure your plan isn’t to merely grab the low hanging fruit but fail to grow new fruit in the orchard, thus making your long term sustainable growth harder.
There are more planning cycles, frameworks and screenshots in my download folders over the years than I’ve had hot dinners, but the thinking and approaches essentially distil into a few key areas, and the first stage is jotting these 5 questions down on a bit of paper and really honestly appraise where the hell you are :
WHERE ARE WE?
Be real about where you are - and indeed not. Understand the progress and gap.
WHY ARE WE THERE?
Was it lack of product investment, Ad investment? Media? Difficult section but essential to appraise honestly to move forward.
WHERE COULD WE BE?
What is the addressable market? What is our capacity? Do we want to? Can we?
HOW COULD WE GET THERE?
The Plan/Schematic/Message/Actions to fill this gap.
ARE WE GETTING THERE?
Oftentimes is is more No than Yes, but be honest with expectations.
Ok over to some wider considerations that will help answer this year’s fundamental questions…
PREDICTABILITY OF PERFORMANCE
A consortium of media agencies along with Thinkbox and Gain Theory commissioned a study on the variance of performance and return based on proper measurement of 52 brands across 14 categories and 3 agencies. Of course, the skeptical eye tells me of course Thinkbox will promote the reliability of visual broadcast channels, but even then you cannot help but spot the wild variance by contrast of channels such as Paid Social, which can either fly or bomb. There are attribution questions I have, but it should act as a warning for sure.
SO WHAT? Let this be a caution to not just ‘whack the money into social’ as a short term answer, it really necessarily isn’t. This also reaffirms ATL channels (especially BVOD) as a great brand-building companion to this with relatively consistent outputs. Being armed with performance and risk data of each channels is key for the ultimate sell-in and budget sign-off to the financial powers that be.
IMPORTANT : THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM - THE RECESSION
There are varying schools of thought as well as evidenced databanks on the importance of maintaining spend through a recession, because as others go dark, your relative share of voice inevitably goes up. All good in theory and obvious when you think about it, but we are not all P&G and we have to be in the real world and sometimes a reduction is the only option. Then what?
This is not only a consideration for the businesses/advertisers, but sometimes the customers too and the optics of advertising profligacy amongst a cost-of-living crisis.
According to the Catalyst, the Charted Institute of Marketing’s quarterly magazine:
Research from Zappi found that 85% of consumers think brands should cut down on marketing spend to help with the cost-of-living crisis - the assumption being that reduced organisational costs will lower prices, or stop them rising.
Sadly this also accompanies other quotes in column re Deliveroo and Cazoo cutting brand spend in favour of performance, and Purplebricks CEO blaming £42m loss on lack of marketing effectiveness, not the forum to investigate this, but a purview of how the bigger brands are thinking right now.
SO WHAT? - Ideally, marketing spend should remain where possible, but most consumers are not atoned to the difference between marketing and advertising, nor care for semantic arguments. They mean reduced digital OOH inventory, not the 4Ps. I know this and so do you. But if the product is customer friendly, and your comms does a good job of delivering a message and creative which is empathetic and genuine (and perhaps show understanding of situation and offers temporary perks to overcome the recession, for example), media spend is no problem. Just make sure the WHAT you are saying is on point, and consistent with your brand, that is 101.
PERENNIAL EVIDENCE - A DECADE OF BRAND PERFORMANCE
It is a report I have come to enjoy the last couple of years and this year’s Brand Footprint 2022 by Kantar has come in particularly hot for me; because it’s the 10th anniversary they share some real solid insights on brands’ performance and category growth over a 10 year period, which shows consistency and tackles the anomalies of the more recent years. The findings that I deemed the most interesting and relevant:
55 BRANDS IN OUR MINDS - The limited brand repertoire. Shoppers typically defer to 55 brands, this has been consistent YoY give or take 1 or 2 brands.
SO WHAT? This matters as humans only have so much space on their ‘mental server’ so to truly grow your share and therefore sales, you will need to proof your brand and compete with a typical incumbent.SENSIBLE GROWTH - On the subject of growth and competing, 0.5% penetration point growth a year is a deduced target for small brands, up to 1.5% for established large ones. Also only 2 of the top 50 brands have grown EVERY year of the last 10 years, so obstacles should not only be anticipated, but expected, it is the response that matters.
SO WHAT? When setting your KPIs for success, including the overall business goals, these need to be tempered in reality.BIGGER POPULATION, BIGGER SPENDING - However more people are on earth, spending more money than ever. Yes this is a reflection of demographic and economic change a whole, but there are considerations…
SO WHAT? Your addressable market is probably larger than ever, and with the current rates of inflation your pricing should likely be accordant with that.NEW BUYERS - Growth is achieved by finding more shoppers. Again that is seemingly obvious, but driving loyalty/LTV is oftentimes the parlance of the marketeer when the focus should be to grow their penetration and pick up new buyers.
SO WHAT? ensure you focus on new buyers, even light buyers and do not overly obsess on existing customers.
There is loads more here but the above headlines are an important consideration.
ECO & SUSTAINABILITY - TREAD CAREFULLY AND AT RIGHT TIME
We are coming off the back of the most ‘purpose-driven’ and ‘sustainability’ of years I can recall, but thankfully a lot of the virtue signalling and green-creds-washing is being seen through and people just want to get the the point of what it is that is being sold to them. Yes if your product has sustainable credentials that is good and should be promoted, but the after-the fact pivot is not going to cut it in a world that sees through the bullshit. Check this out by Kantar (again sorry) and the recent Mercedes-Benz gaffe that they are now distancing themselves from.
SO WHAT? The thing to consider here is the cost-of-living-crisis and recession, people’s minds in the main will turn to, despite what the survey results may say - price and survival. Typically, sustainable product development is a big investment and often up fronts larger costs to invariably pass on to the consumers. I am not saying don’t do it, jut merely schedule it a little further down the line until we get through this. and please, if you do not have sustainability credentials, don’t pretend otherwise and stay out of the conversation, you will get found out.
SETTING KPIs & MEASURING SUCCESS
The most important part of it all; how effective is all this spend on marketing? PHD Global’s excellent strategist
is a treat and I recommend you subscribe and go through the archive. This month he is on L (Lateral thinking I think) but last month popped up with the all import K for KPIs, and has distilled excellent considerations across the board from business outcomes through to ad campaign level. A hard recommend from me (and check out his sexy framework here!)...
SO WHAT? - apart from asking you to read his KPI letter it and definitely subscribe, it is important to always bear in mind the relationship between the KPIs you set for your plan, and its expectation for the business. Media KPIs should map to Marketing KPIs, which should in turn map to the Business KPIs.
For example, if market share is the business goal, marketing should be looking to improve Share Of Voice, therefore Media KPIs need to be Reach or Awareness. A simple example but that’s the point and be diligent, ruthless and reductive with that, especially platforms that try to beguile you with an irrelevant KPI to muddy the water e.g. Click Through Rate on YouTube
THE BEST OF THE REST
MAXIMISING YOUR EARNT AND OWNED MEDIA - worthy of increased consideration. In econometrics people talk about maximising most efficient channels before moving on to the next one (especially on Direct Response) well with headwinds it makes sense to ensure your own work, from Socials and SEO to Email Marketing (CRM) and App Messaging are maximised. The IPA have just released a great report on this with some interesting stats and thoughts to take forward.
MEDIA TRENDS FOR 2023- I always try to read Dentsu’s excellently delivered Media Trends. This 2023 one is prefaced with Change & Opportunity, a clear indication that the obstacles we face may command a new thinking frame. Content (and how it is consumed and where), Commerce (the new platforms and the fight against cookie deprecation) and Community (the evolving nature of fandoms and communities etc) are the 3 key areas and very much worth a download and further consideration.
ECOMMERCE OUTLOOK - If in this space you will know how tough it is, and big strategic decisions have to be made beyond mere marketing. But Check out some trends for 2023 here in The Drum, but TLDR - inflation = lower consumer spending.
TRY NOT* TO OVERLY TARGET AND SEGMENT - the excellent fellow marketing consultant and writer
wrote about this in his co-authored post Anti-Personalization - The Best Ad for One, is the best ad for all. The notable thing here is segmenting only really works if there is a clear differential between audiences or products, so don’t overly do it for the sake of it. Like I wrote earlier, target the buyers for now and the future, so I guess let them segment themselves and use the data to guide you. We are entering Darwinian times, be super clear with the messaging (as other studies prove, the more you try to get the ad to do the lower the recall). Of course on a performance/demand conversion perspective get things over the line and use tools to segment within reason, but for wider marketing piece, sharpen that knife and be consistent.FINAL THOUGHT
This is where I would usually try to summarise in a paragraph the aforementioned stuff, but it is pretty comprehensive and varied, so I won’t. But going back to the beginning… Think where you are, what the blocks are (more than most right now), and how to overcome them. We are entering a year of tightened purse strings, and although there are strategies to counter this and sharpen up, now is a more important time than ever to stay true to planning fundamentals, deliver what you know, but be conscious of the evidence and the headwinds. I have also gathered the resources and article below for you to check out/pillage if any of the above writing has given you food for thought for 2023.
Wish you the best of luck, and here to explore with you and help you if you so wish.
SA
INDEX : Resources collected from above for you to go and conquer/get inspired by for 2023.
AtoZ of Media Planning - Matt Prentis’ newsletter
Dentsu - Media Trends 2023 - Download
The Drum - Mercedes distances itself from environmental ads as it’s called out for greenwashing
The IPA Owned Channels - The Next Frontier of Marketing Effectiveness
Kantar - Who Cares? Who Does? Report on inflation vs Green
Kantar - Brand Footprint 2022 -
The Media Leader - Media channels offer widely variable returns. Here's how
Samuel Brealey’s Newsletter
Thinkbox - Media Mix Navigator Tool
*In original email I had wild typo/word miss that I have since corrected. I wanted to say Try NOT to overly target and Segment. Original said Try to (without the NOT). obviously changes things and is a grave error. Sorry Readers, and sorry Sam :)
PS. I hope you are getting a semblance of value out of this. If so, and you think any other marketeer or business owner would, feel free to share/forward this to them and encourage them to subscribe. Also, follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter or my company page. Thanks