Marketing to older demographics is a disgrace to the profession

If you think this is how to appeal to mature consumers, you need to grow up.
 A lot.

By Neil Patrick


Many marketers view older demographics with scarcely disguised distain and patronise them with naive assumptions about who they are and how they live their lives.  The over 40's are a high value and discriminating (in a positive sense) target market, yet brands and marketers regularly fumble their marketing to them. Why?

At the time of the 2011 Census, the median age for the population of England and Wales was 39 years. 27% was aged 40 to 59 years, and 22% was aged 60 years and over. In other words, almost half (49%) of the UK population is aged 40 or over.

Not only that, all the data tells us that people aged 40 plus have greater wealth and disposable income than younger people. The over forties are the most valuable age demographic in the UK today.

No business with any sense would want to alienate its highest potential market segment. So how can such an illogical situation be explained?

I think the explanation is actually very simple. It’s because people in marketing and advertising are generally under 40 themselves. They see the world through a lens which reflects their own likes and dislikes. They simply cannot empathise with those who are older than they are.

Empathy is the cousin of understanding. And without understanding, communication is always going to be difficult.

In their defence, I was no different. When I was 16, anyone over 30 was really old. When I was 30, a 60 year old seemed positively geriatric.

But ageist hiring begets ageist marketing, so the origins are not so much the fault of marketing teams themselves, but rather those who decide who is on those teams.

It’s unconscious bias at its worst. It results in stereotyping and discrimination – something which the young are especially keen to call out - but only it seems when it’s about gender, sexuality or ethnicity.

Brands which either appeal only to the young and/or alienate the mature are setting themselves up as hostages to fortune if they choose to stake everything on the fast-changing and transitory loyalties of the young.

It just doesn’t make commercial sense to target only young people when older demographics are higher spending and less fickle. Chuck Shroeder, a former director at ad giant DDB and now 71 said:

“Advertisers assume that the “old” people of today are some monolithic group of codgers who don’t know anything. Product managers are all young and they don’t want advice from people who could be their grandparents. They have the same attitude I had when I was 30, largely based on hubris and youthful lack of experience. They don’t grasp that they could sell more product if they actually talked to the people who have the money.”

Asked to give examples of ageist ads, he said:

“I nominate the Esurance commercial with the elderly lady who is bragging to her friends that she saves time by posting her vacation photos on her “wall” rather than mailing them. We see her living room wall with pictures stuck on it. Funny eh? It implies that we old folks know nothing about Facebook, even though Facebook has more users over 50 than under.”

Last week I observed a brand in action which would convince any young marketer to rethink their entire preconception of older demographics. But guess what, there were no young people there to witness this live case study of brand loyalty in action.

This is a brand which has endured 50 years of highs and lows, drug and alcohol traumas, fickle fashion changes and more.

I went to see hard rock band UFO play a sold out concert in Cardiff. This band was founded in 1969 and it has been touring constantly ever since. Founder and vocalist Phil Mogg will be 71 this year. The concert hall was packed with men almost none of whom were less than 40 years old. And whilst they didn’t have a mosh pit, they were jumping and singing along just like any audience of on-trend hipsters. This was no chamber music or smooth jazz. It was a loud and sweaty rock spectacular:

This was brand loyalty by the over 40s in plain sight. This tour is sold out nationwide. It’s the very real, cash-till ringing manifestation of 50 years of customer loyalty and spending. And a wake up call to everyone in marketing who thinks older men spend their time and money on gardening and golf. Or hula hooping...

Wake up and smell the coffee kids.

P.S. I learned with great sadness that a few days after this gig, Paul Raymond, seen above on keyboards passed away unexpectedly following a heart attack. As a more or less permanent member of UFO, he will be greatly missed. My condolences go to his friends and family.

The real implications of GDPR for marketing

By Neil Patrick


GDPR isn’t over; it has only just begun. GDPR may lighten your mailbox of spam, but it also has huge repercussions for business that no-one is talking about...

Yes I know. Data protection regulation is a dull topic. But I'm writing about it anyway in this post, because GDPR has some profound and far reaching consequences for everyone.

For the last few months, just about every post about GDPR has been about what businesses need to do satisfy this new set of data protection regulations. And the enormous fines that can be levied upon those who fail to comply.

As the deadline approached, we all had our mailboxes filled with emails desperately begging us to give consent to receive communications from firms we bought things from possibly years ago, or maybe never. Some even from firms that we never knew had retained our email address for their own use.

I am not unhappy about GDPR. It kills the abuse of email for a start. It will force businesses to take a hard look at their marketing, which has been a race to the bottom for far too long. Why would I or anyone else who bought a wheel barrow, tennis racket or dining table want to get emails about more wheel barrows or tennis rackets or dining tables every week for the rest of our lives?

This sort of marketing might get a few takers, but it alienates many more. So most people have ignored these last ditch pleas. The result will inevitably be that our mailboxes will revert to a more modest overloading especially if you are in Europe.

Finally on 25 May, the regulations came into force. There are big repercussions for business and this post outlines some of them. It will change digital marketing activities for the better I hope. It will force brands to invest more sensibly in building real customer relationships. It will also deliver even more power into to a handful of huge global digital businesses.

First it will decimate a huge business sector which almost no-one has heard of

Behind the scenes, GDPR has caused the decimation of a huge industry sector which almost no-one knows about.

The sector is called ad-tech. LUMAscape has made it their business to map this vast and sprawling network of firms who have built their businesses to provide personalised data to those who want to sell us stuff online. And it looks like this (or rather it used to):

Ad-tech businesses mushroomed because the internet’s default business model is advertising. Advertising works on the principle that targeting specific ads at the right people is more cost effective than randomly advertising to everyone. And because our internet browsing data in aggregate is so much richer and more detailed than any other form of data, the people in ad-tech anticipated there was huge money to be made by delivering the data and tools to assist this targeting.

And at first they were right; VC investment and revenues poured into these firms until 2011, since when it has declined. It is absolutely no co-incidence that it was 2012 when the EU announced that GDPR was coming:

The whole ad-tech sector was predicated upon one massively flawed assumption. The ad industry thought that consumers would welcome ‘relevant’ and targeted ads. They forgot or at least ignored that hardly anyone actually likes advertising. We just hate targeted advertising a little less than we hate untargeted advertising.

But pre-GDPR, this dislike of advertising was not enough to stop the exponential growth of the sector. Which ironically gave rise to another high growth sector – ad-blocking software.

Some ad-tech companies have pulled out of Europe altogether. All have effectively had their oxygen of data cut off because post-GDPR, they require positive consent from us to hold and process our data. And almost no-one in their right mind will knowingly grant this consent. According to independent research by PageFair, only around 3% of people give this willingly and many of these are not eager customers, they are competitors, regulators and other snoopers. Suddenly around 97% of firms ‘prospects’ are reduced to zero or as close as makes no difference.

Without active consent, the value of an email address is zero

The targeting data created by ad-tech firms brought about a transformation that no-one liked. Coupled to an email address, this became gold dust in online marketing. Combined with the ability to send emails to millions of people and almost free, the floodgates were opened. It didn’t matter if only 1 in 10,000 people actually took up an offer, because the costs of communicating it were almost zero; it created a free for all and our mailboxes groaned under the strain. Email open and click rates have unsurprisingly been in free fall for years.

This was because many businesses adopted more or less the same flawed model in approaching online marketing. Email addresses appended to other data were key to this. It’s what marketers call the ‘top of the funnel’. This metaphorical funnel has personal data tipped into the top. And prime amongst this data is the email address. This was the data that would enable a business to send us emails to buy more of their stuff. And opting out of retailers’ email lists wouldn’t solve the problem if even one retailer was unscrupulous enough to pass on our details to someone else. Everyone knows this but no-one likes it.

GDPR will change this (at least amongst companies that care about acting within the law). They will be forced to completely rethink how they market themselves online.


Why GDPR will fill Google, Amazon and Facebook’s pockets 

These changes will confer even greater power to the tech giants such as Amazon, Google and Facebook. These firms have secured their positions because they have an entirely legitimate reason and our consent to hold our personal data. And because targeted ads are not their primary form of ad revenue. Just look at Amazon's share price surge post the advent of GDPR:

The collapse of the ad-tech sector will create growth at least initially in other forms of online advertising, less emails and less targeted advertising. It will also I suspect lead to less scrupulous firms adopting devious tactics to secure consent to receive emails. The model for this is that at every step of engaging with a business online, we will be faced with craftily hidden email consents. This is in breach of GDPR which prohibits ‘implied consent’, but it won’t stop some people trying to work around it.

An unintended consequence of GDPR is that it has ensured the recovery of Facebook’s share price is complete. A combination of the weakness of the governmental interrogations from the US and EU and the impact of GDPR has enabled Zuckerberg to make a full recovery from the Cambridge Analytica crisis:

This is the unforeseen consequence of GDPR. It has comprehensively disarmed some enfant terribles of the advertising world only to confer more power to a handful of giant tech firms and those who for whatever reason will flaunt the rules.

I still think GDPR is actually good news for business

Most businesses are sitting back now breathing a big sigh of relief that they have completed their GDPR compliance project. Thank god that’s done. But it’s not. It’s not even started really, because now the challenge is how to grow businesses online in a post-GDPR world, where suddenly they have consent to email just a tiny fraction of the people they used to.

Businesses need now to take a hard look at their online strategies. The lazy marketers’ fall back of emailing thousands of people with offers is finally dead. Now it’s time to get back to real marketing and figuring out how to make your customers really love you online.

Why people are a better brand investment than machines

Today, TSB's 'local bank for local people' claims are looking like a sham.
Photo credit: Gnesener1900

...especially if you are a bank.

A crisis is the one thing which is guaranteed to expose the reality of a brand versus the contrived and manicured fantasy which is used to promote it.

By Neil Patrick

TSB’s chief executive, Paul Pester admitted this week, ‘we are on our knees’, following a failed server migration of 1.3 billion customer records. This has gone disastrously wrong leaving hundreds of thousands of customers unable to pay their bills. Worse, some customers have been able to log into other customer's accounts, see their data and even make payments with other people's money.

The bank's employees have been working day and night to try and help customers solve the resulting problems like paying for their rent and utilities. But as the week came to a close, and despite a team of IBM 'experts' being parachuted in as an elite shock force to assist, the problems were still not completely solved.

Business customers have faced consequential losses such as non-payment of suppliers and non-delivery of goods. TSB staff have been so stressed and frustrated in their efforts to help customers that some have collapsed in tears, saying it's the worst experience of their working lives.

This situation is more than embarrassing and stressful for everyone involved. It demolishes the carefully constructed brand that TSB has been investing in, positioning the bank as one which places people at heart of everything it believes in:



TSB's regulator, the FCA, is now investigating the issue and the Information Commissioner says she wants to know more about potential data breaches. The Government has asked for assurances and wants answers to its questions to TSB. Even when the IT problems are solved, the pain will not be over for TSB.

This sorry tale will eventually become a footnote I am sure, but today, right now, it is fraying nerves and spreading havoc in TSB's customers’ lives. And it seems inevitable that many customers will leave the bank at their first opportunity after this crisis is resolved. For TSB, this disaster looks likely to cost them much more than the £100m of savings the migration originally promised.

Meanwhile in China, the world’s first robot-only bank branch has just opened. This is heralded as an exciting step towards a modern, tech enabled future; a homo-sapien free environment, cleansed of the inconsistencies and inefficiencies which are allegedly the hallmark of humans.

The irony here is that it is the people at TSB branches that are keeping the bank from sinking when faulty technology has dragged the whole edifice almost into ruin.

Banking and IT have an old and awkward relationship.  Banking IT systems are not like apps where glitches can be smoothed out over time. They demand 100% reliability and complete accuracy from the get go 100% of the time. Anything less is a big problem. Building or significantly changing any banking platform is a high risk and demanding challenge.

As we've seen with TSB, government and regulators are today emboldened, swift and merciless when it comes to punishing banks for errors and misdemeanors. After years of a light-touch attitude, post 2008, the climate has changed and banks are today probably the most closely regulated and scrutinized business sector in the UK.

Thirty years ago, banks were early adopters of what we now call data harvesting. This was decades before Facebook managed to finally wake the world to the importance of data security and privacy. Sure, we had Data Protection legislation and regulators. And banks were generally compliant with their data protection obligations. Regulatory enforcements were few and the public’s greatest annoyances were telephone sales calls and junk mail.

But this customer irritation at some of the earliest (ab)uses of technology by banks ought to have provided early warning that a very human-based relationship demanding and rewarding trust was unlikely to be entirely substitutable by anonymous automation. In fact, I’d argue that trust is the number one most essential requirement for a customer’s relationship with their bank.

Yet, this fundamental truth seems to have been ignored in the relentless drive for ever lower costs. The endless push for greater speed, and cheaper services seems to have trumped every other aspect. Especially trust.

In areas such as marketing and loan application processing, banks were some of the first businesses in the world to decide that IT could make faster, more accurate, more consistent and cheaper decisions than their human employees. This led to the steady removal of middle managers and the downgrading of staff until a bank branch was staffed by people who had little more skill than supermarket checkout operators (and similar pay and conditions too).

Now these last remaining humans in bank branches are facing imminent extinction as they too are replaced by robots which don’t go on holiday or demand pay increases (or any pay at all for that matter).

Meanwhile, banks (always some of the most unpopular and complained about businesses), are shutting branches, removing staff, and turning everything digital. This cost cutting is justified in the name of customer convenience and modernisation. And to cement the argument, every senior bank spokesperson will tell us that this is what most of their customers want.

But most is not all. And the duality where banks are simultaneously some of the least-loved businesses while moving ever closer to completely people-free service, is not a recipe to build any sort of customer love and affection.

There is and has been for decades, a space in the market for a bank which recognises that customer service delivered by people to people is an untapped and growing market. TSB recognised this and decided this was their opportunity to command a unique market position. Unfortunately, they forgot that occupying this position demands not just that you proclaim it, but also that you live by it.

Most people require relatively little from their bank. Strong security. Error free payment processing. Good and caring advice. Easy access. Fast and painless resolution of problems. It is hard to see how a combination of branch closures, increased automation and demoralised, low paid staff help deliver these things.

And 'adding value' (sic) by dubious marketing adds insult to injury. Hardly anyone really cares about an extra 0.1% of interest, or free travel insurance, or fancy TV advertising. They do care about being well looked after.

Banking for most people is service they cannot live without. And whilst I don’t think banks can or should be backwards looking, there is a stronger argument than ever for a bank which truly understands they are in a people business. And that investing in people might just be a safer bet than investing in their replacement by machines.

What non-marketers should know about the state of marketing today…

By Neil Patrick


There’s a whole generation of marketing folk faking it...

This post is about the state of marketing in the 21st century. This is something I care deeply about because marketing has been my career for my whole adult life.

To be frank, I am concerned about the condition of my profession. Mark Schaefer, one of my favourite marketing gurus, cited the subtitle of this post in his excellent Grow blog late last year:

"Every CMO I talk to tells me they can’t find the right people to fill marketing jobs. And yet, I have a lot of friends having trouble finding a job. The disconnect is in the skills gap.

Keith Weed, the CMO of Unilever, claimed in an interview that there is an entire generation of marketers who are “faking it” and called for an overhaul of the marketing function.

Marketing titans like P&G acknowledge that their biggest brands are struggling to find relevance and, over the last few years, fired thousands of marketing professionals who aren’t keeping up.

The truth is, the marketing jobs are out there but CMOs can’t find the RIGHT skill sets they need to fill them and this is creating a true employment crisis."

I am sad to say that I agree. Marketing has always been a profession which is misunderstood by those outside it. But worse, today, it's now also a conundrum to some people within it.

The reasons are complex, but one of the main drivers is the pace of change brought about by the transition to a digital economy. This change is so rapid and profound for marketing that whole new skill sets are required. And few marketers are keeping up.

I am fortunate to know a great many senior and excellent marketing people. But even these folk, despite their impressive resumes are struggling to keep up with the pace of transformation.

I also know or know of others who at best are fudging it and at worst being downright deceitful about how they can help their employers and clients achieve their goals.

You’ve probably heard the idea, star of a thousand social media memes, that we should 'fake it until we make it’. Sadly this idea seems to have taken hold amongst some marketing people.

According to the very brief Wiki page, ‘fake it until you make it’…

“…is an English aphorism which suggests that by imitating confidence, competence, and an optimistic mindset, a person can realize those qualities in their real life. It echoes the underlying principles of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) as a means to enable a change in one's behavior.

In the 1920s, Alfred Adler, a disciple of Sigmund Freud, developed a therapeutic technique that he called "acting as if". This strategy gave his clients an opportunity to practice alternatives to dysfunctional behaviors. Adler's method is still used today and is often described as "role play". 

So the origins of this idea are highly specific; it’s a cognitive therapy for people with mental illness. Which is a very different thing to ubiquitous career best practice.

No. Just No. (Sorry Steven)

And if you are a marketing professional or aspire to be one, I'd venture that such a mindset is downright dangerous for you, your business and the reputation of your profession.

The trouble is that some people have got much better at faking it than they are at delivering the goods. And in an age where change is so rapid, the people who hire marketing people unless they are marketers themselves are easily misled by the all the jargon and persuasive patter.

If you hire or engage with marketing people, but are not one yourself, here’s my top 10 things I think you should know:

1: Successful digital marketing doesn't hinge on search engine optimisation (SEO). 

Because ranking high on Google does nothing to increase customers’ love for your brand, product or service. It’s just good housekeeping. No more no less.

2: Unless you’re an online retailer, selling things from your website is not the be all and end all.

It is people's obsession with turning their online presence directly into £s which distorts and corrupts their vision about how their online presence should be designed. And it leads to pop-ups, sign ups, redirects and other irritations which alienate the very people we want to love us.

For many products and services, the only time people will visit your website is to check you out. As often as not, those people will not be potential customers, they will be real competitors. For some businesses, a traditional website is actually a handicap. And the best website in the world is not going to help you unless people find something there to make them love you.

3: Social media enables you to build a tribe of loyal supportive followers. 

It can. But only if you have a strategy which gives your prospective customers something they want to engage with. And which integrates your social media with the rest of your business. Social media is not a digital advertising platform, despite Twitter and Facebook telling us that advertising with them will turbocharge our business. (Hint: they have their own agenda…).

4. An effective social media presence for your product or service must differentiate you.

It is pure folly to look at who has the most YouTube subscribers, or Twitter followers or Facebook likes and copy them. Because the chances are, they are not your role model and don’t know what they are doing either. 'Me too' might be the latest trendy hashtag, but as a marketing strategy, it's a non-starter.

5. Young people who have spent the whole of their (brief) adult lives using social media are not automatically experts on using it for marketing.

They are just familiar with the platforms as a user. This is not without some value, but it is limited. It’s like appointing someone as a car designer just because they know how to drive.

6. Marketing and advertising agencies are hideously expensive.

There’s a reason big agencies have plush offices and slick sales people. And it’s not because they are experts at what they do. It's because they are experts at extracting money from clients who should know better. This industry 'norm' evolved in an age when big TV and press campaigns and media commissions made a fortune for agencies as well as media owners via opaque cartels. They continue to do this because when their marketing clients are under-skilled, they can still be bamboozled.

7. There's a whole new wave of online influencers that are potentially more valuable to you than Kim Kardashian (probably)

If you look at YouTube, only three of the top 500 most subscribed channels are brands (Time Warner, Disney and Sony Music). The other 497 are people with little or no marketing budget, no big teams of advisors and little in the way of help. What they do have is passion, persistence and a love for what they do. They are in marketing speak, ‘authentic’. This authenticity and focus means they are accruing ever more power and influence. And they are the people who will make or break your brand online.

8. Marketing, Advertising, Social Media and and Sales are not the same thing.

Business owners often conflate these. In essence, marketing is how you create preference for your brand versus your competitors. Advertising is how you build awareness and interest in your products. Social media is how you connect with and build relationships with the people that matter to you. Sales is how you monetise that interest. Mixing these up creates truly horrible outcomes.

9. There are no shortcuts to building a world-beating brand. 

It takes consistent effort, month in month out. And if you are unclear about how what you do is different from your competitors, and cannot articulate that difference in an engaging way, you will have a hard time using digital (or any other media) to grow your business.

10. The digital age requires a transformation in marketing thinking way beyond anything that has gone before.

And this is why so many marketing professionals are struggling to keep up. It demands that the very ideas of how businesses grow are completely reinvented. There is very little from the traditional tactical marketing toolkit, which has currency today.

I’d urge every business owner to ask themselves this about their marketing: “Why and how will we make people love us online?” Answer that question successfully, and you will be better placed than most to get to the forefront of the digital marketing revolution.

Oh and keep your fake antennae in a state of permanent alertness…

Finally if your marketing person or people are doing a fabulous job for you, I'll be happy to hear about it in the comments. They do exist and deserve the attention we reserve for endangered species...

Snake oil decoded

By Neil Patrick

This could be pointing to a cliff edge...

All the time I go onto social media at the moment, I am assailed by ads that say: ‘Follow my fool proof plan to riches’, ‘Turn your passion to profit’, ‘Hack your way to success’, and any number of similar sales pitches.

I don’t know about you, but it’s clear to me they all use the same formula. Some of it is obvious, some of it is subtle. But I detest all of it because of one critical aspect:

They entice people who are often desperate and extract money from them without any obligation to deliver success for their clients.

Don’t get me wrong. I am passionate about entrepreneurship and business start-ups. We need more people succeeding in their entrepreneurial efforts and I spend a lot of time helping people do this.

I have no problem with XYZ Megacorp paying Tony Robbins or whoever many thousands of dollars to speak at their events. Or with people who genuinely help others to get better at whatever they do.

I do a lot of coaching myself. But there’s a key difference from what the snake oil salesmen do:

I do not resort to a one size fits all, silver bullet solution.

Every piece of coaching and consulting I do is unique to each client. If I think a client will not or cannot benefit from my involvement, I tell them and try to introduce them to someone else I know and trust who can help.

I’d rather make no sale than take money for something that will not work for that client.

The snake oil men and women take a different view however:

They want your money more than they want your success.

I despair every time I am presented with one of these programmes. Because these books, DVDs, coaching programmes and seminars are cynically selling false hope in the full knowledge that only a few buyers will ultimately benefit.

Yet usually, these packages are not scams. Many contain good advice – once you get through all the padding. And there’s A LOT of padding.

So I thought I’d decode their methods so you can see them for what they really are. Because I have spent my whole career in business and specifically marketing, I think I can see through these people better than most.

And I’ll admit that I have spent a lot of my own money to buy these things, not because I believed they would be of great value to me, but because my curiosity to see them from the inside proved too strong to resist.

They all use similar devices and once you know what they are, you are much better equipped to avoid being duped. So to help you see through the polished and persuasive pitches, here’s a quick summary of what to look out for. 

They are their own proof

This is not a reason to buy anything from anyone...

They ‘prove’ their method works by describing and showing pictures of how wealthy, happy and successful they have become. Look at me! This could be you…IF you buy this now. So be prepared for lots of pictures of expensive cars and houses, big bank statements and pictures of palm trees, white sand and blue skies. 

They use free enticements

They bait the trap with a free offer. This is a device to snare your personal details so they can upsell.

The way to secure thousands of prospects is to give away something for free. Except it’s not really free. You must give them your email address and quite possibly a lot more personal information. This might be sold on, but more typically is used to fill your mailbox forever with more offers and sales messages. To minimize the chance that you unsubscribe, these emails will typically ‘give’ you ‘incredibly valuable information’.

 
They imply scarcity when there is none

This is a common trick. ‘Last few places remaining – don’t miss out’. I cannot keep this offer open longer than the next 24 hours. Etc. This is another ruse which implies that it’s popular so it must be good. And we are at risk of missing out if we don’t buy now. Poppycock. Ignore the offer, and another one will arrive within a few days for sure. 

They all have a rags to riches story to tell

This is another device used to convince us that if they were once struggling and are now millionaires, then their brilliant ‘secret’ recipe must work. They used to be ordinary just like us, until they ‘discovered’ this amazing secret to fabulous wealth. If they can do it, anyone can.

They all use upsell

The freebie is a loss leader. Give away 1,000 books, DVDs or whatever and then harangue the hell out of the takers with more offers at massively inflated prices. Taking the freebie says to them, you are interested. And once they have their claws in you, they won’t let go. They all seek to amass huge mailing lists so they can grow their marketing machines. 

The fake offer

This is how the upsell works. First, the prices quoted as ‘normal’ are no such thing. ‘Normally this would cost $2,500. But for a limited time, you can have it for 'just' $499'.

‘And I’ll also provide you with all these amazing extras absolutely free.’

If you were a retailer, you’d have to meet very strict rules before you could make an offer like this. But online direct selling of services has no such rules to satisfy. Your ‘normal price’ is whatever you want it to be; you don’t fool me. 

The money back guarantee

This is another trick. If you sell 100 items at $499, you have just made $49,900 gross revenue. Maybe half the people that bought it didn’t like it very much. But only a few of these will actually ever get around to asking for their money back. It’s human nature. We can be quick to buy, but slow to ask for our money back, especially if the process is made unnecessarily lengthy and complex. So I refund 10 people let’s say. My revenue is reduced to ‘just’ $44,910, and I’ve refunded everyone who asked. My conscience is clear and my bank balance is still looking sweet. 

The universal solution

We are all prone to believe in experts. That because if someone else is doing well and we are not, we believe that if we copy them, we’ll do well too.

This is faulty logic because we are all unique. What works for one person is quite possibly a disaster for someone else. The real secret to our success lies inside each of us. By striving to become the best version of us we can possibly be, not a pale imitation of someone else.

Nonetheless, all these people are experts. They are experts at extracting cash from others for things which cost them very little. 

The excuse

This is the get out of jail free card. It runs like this. If you didn’t succeed, that’s because you didn’t do everything I told you. It’s a circular argument which serves snake oil vendors well, because it transfers the responsibility for our success from them to us.

If I hire you to do something for me, I will hold you accountable for delivering what you promise. Yet snake oil salesmen accept no such responsibility.

The really clever trick by the snake oil vendors is that because we are the only ones who can make this happen, they are completely off the hook. They take our money but have absolutely no accountability for our success.

If you want to create your own business, good for you. Work at it. Get the best advice you can from people who understand your business sector and are not peddling snake oil. Figure out how you can do something better, faster or cheaper than others in your marketplace. Recognize your uniqueness and build on it.

Just don’t pay for someone else’s magic formula. The only guarantee from that is that they will get richer and you won’t.

The trouble with business awards

By Neil Patrick

Right now we are in the grip of the annual business awards season. Everywhere we turn, someone is announcing they have won this award or that award. If you are one, I congratulate you. Sincerely.

There is no better feeling than seeing our work recognized and appreciated by others.

I’ve picked up a few awards in my time. And been a judge too. So this post isn’t sour grapes from someone who feels hard done by. It’s just that I have some niggling worries about the true motives, purpose and value of awards.

A spate of award announcements on social media made me think about whether these things really matter very much and even why they exist at all.

1. Awards are a clever business model

The real raison d’etre of most awards isn’t to encourage excellence and recognise success, although all awards can claim with impunity that this is their purpose. The sad truth is that awards exist primarily to increase the profile and coffers of the organisers (any benefits to winners are secondary to this goal). Awards have become a business in their own right.

In the UK alone today there are over 3,000 business award events every year. This is a booming industry. And with categories increasing at each award event, it's getting ever easier to win one of them.

If we assume an average of just 20 awards per event, that's at least 60,000 awards being made each year.

Business isn’t generally very glamorous. And awards exploit this reality by providing a bit of glitter and razzmatazz for people whose daily work experience is often rather grey and routine.

It’s a really clever way too to extract money from businesses year after year. Here’s the menu and ticket prices for an award I chose at random this morning:

A VIP (sic) table for 12 costs £519 a head. If you’re a cheapskate and you are taking just four guests, it’s £695 each. Small beer to a big business. A no-go zone for a small one. Mind you, that price includes half a bottle of wine per person, (which they are going to need to get through the three hour round of envelope opening, applauding, handshaking and grinning at photographers).

Granted this event is being held at a top London hotel. It’s not a cheap venue. But I could host 12 of my friends at the same hotel for a private dinner function for just £95 each, according to the hotel’s own website.

Now for the clever bit; if I invite you to a business dinner at these prices, the chances are you’ll decline. If I invite you to a business dinner AND I tell you you have been nominated for an award, the chances are much higher you’ll accept. I will sell a LOT more seats and make a LOT more money in the process.

And no doubt, you’ll want to bring some of your friends/clients/colleagues to share your moment of glory.

2. Awards encourage complacency

Awards themselves cost almost nothing to produce. Yet who wouldn’t like to win such a glittering prize? It makes us feel great. That’s human nature. But it can also blind us. It can become self-vindicating. And by extension, an inducement to keep on doing the same thing. Whether that’s good, bad or indifferent. It potentially acts as a blockage to critical judgements about our future.

3. Awards are usually relative not absolute

As the awards circuit has grown and grown, so it becomes more and more niche. We end up with ever more awards for ever more ‘specialized’ areas. First we take a geographic region, like a country or state. Then we apply a sector filter. By these means, in every category, the competition is diminished to a handful of candidates, especially if you demand that entrants provide an exhaustive submission describing why they deserve to win.

If the candidates list is still a bit long, we can always overlay another category like small, medium and large. Through this process, we narrow the contenders down to such a small field that most people have a more or less evens chance of winning something. So the majority of people go home feeling great, with a glittery trophy/plaque/certificate, eager to tell the world next morning on social media about this great news. And by having runners up, we can even encourage those who didn’t win to enter again next year.

4. And the winner is…

Then we have the selection process. These can vary a lot. Sometimes there’s an ‘expert’ panel of judges. Sometimes, it’s judged on some superficial business data. Whatever the process though, we have the same situation. The judges’ decision is final. It’s not transparent (even if the judging criteria are made public) or democratic. 

Rarely is there any sort of benchmark or quality bar applied. If it was, there would be years in which no-one made the grade and no-one won an award. Except that never ever happens. Someone HAS to win each category.

5. Awards don’t really change anything

Awards are great. We can put a cool logo on our website. Frame the certificate on the office wall. Post pictures of us grinning on stage, trophy in hand. It’s all a ruse though.

In reality it means nothing at all. It’s just ego massage.

An award doesn’t make us better. In fact it risks deluding us that we are better than we actually are.

If you want proof, and you have won an award recently, just answer this question honestly. “What did you do differently as a result?” Because if you didn’t do anything apart from brag about it, the experience did nothing to improve your business. In fact it probably risked making you a little more complacent.

And if you want even more proof, please tell me about an award you know of which satisfies these criteria:

1. It has no gala dinner.
2. Its judges’ assessments are transparent and/or made public
3. It has just a handful of categories which are not tiny niches.

That’s the rub. Awards are no more than a way to spend our money to make us feel good. They don’t make our business any worse. But they probably don’t make it any better either.

There's really no contest when everyone's a winner.

A recruiter’s views on the 2014 job market

By Neil Patrick

If you’ve ever wondered what recruiters really think about job candidates and the evolving job market, you’re not alone. So last week I set out to find some answers. And here they are!

One of the great things about this blog is how it helps me get to speak to experts all over the world about their specialist insights into the world of jobs and careers. And recruiters are a very important group. But recruiters are very busy people. So their perspective is valuable but hard to come by.

Last week I was especially pleased to interview Laura Warnes, the Managing Director of a brand new specialist marketing recruitment agency, Proudfrog.

I wanted to get her insights into how the digital revolution is reshaping marketing jobs and what trends she is seeing. Even if you are not in marketing, it’s clear that technology is a key driver in the evolution of the jobs market and because tech is moving so fast, skill requirements are changing fast too!

A lot of great insights emerged from this interview and I’m pleased to share them here.

Proudfrog

NP: In what ways have marketing job descriptions changed in the last 5-10 years?
LW: That’s a huge gap to speak about – 10 years ago we didn’t even have apps! I’ll go with the last five years. Multichannel, Big Data, and a bigger focus on consumption/ analytics have all become more widely used in JDs since the late noughties. There is more focus on the customer journey and UX (User experience – Ed.) over simple promotion and making a sale. There is also often now a requirement for global reach.

NP: What are the most in-demand marketing skills right now?
LW: Digital, creative, content, analytics, UX and CMS (Content/customer management systems – Ed.) seem to feature everywhere.

NP: Are marketing pay rates rising or falling in real terms?
LW: In real terms, it is on par with the average rise across all sectors.

NP: Do you see any skewing between gender, age and race profiles in marketing hires?
LW: Only in terms of pay in my experience. Female hires at entry/ graduate level in general secure higher salaries, but as the roles become more senior it is reported that the gap becomes wider, with men earning around 17k more than women as Marketing Director. There is a growing trend for hiring graduates in to positions which in the past would have required a “second jobber” as well and an overall more accepting attitude of youngsters in responsible roles.

NP: If so why do you think this is happening?
LW: In regard to the younger hires, I believe the value of millennials when it comes to technical aptitude for social media etc. is recognised more as these skills play a bigger part in Marketing and the ability to pick up new skills fast is important in an age where new technologies are introduced almost daily. Regards the gender pay gap, at Director level, women have often needed to take a pay cut to re-enter the work place after maternity leave and haven’t yet caught up. This is probably true of all sectors and not unique to marketing.

NP: What’s better for a marketing person’s resume/CV, a big brand name, or a small fast growth business?
LW: It depends entirely on the hiring manager and company culture! It is very difficult to achieve, but a well-rounded exposure to both environments will generally give you the best advantage. A theme which has emerged over the past few years is a dislike for applicants who have been in the same role for too long, or stayed within one industry sector through two or three roles – unless you wish to stay in the sector in which case this will be an advantage. I remember a time when anything less than five years in a role made an applicant appear “flaky”, now if you haven’t moved on to something bigger, better, or different after a couple of years then my clients are asking me why you aren’t driven or hungry for something new.

NP: What’s the most common error made by applicants for marketing roles?
LW: Not detailing your technical skills. If you’ve used it – put it on your CV and let us know about it! A dynamic personal statement is also crucial. We expect marketing professionals to be more tech savvy and more creative than others so a dry Times New Roman two pager isn’t going to cut it. Your CV is your personal marketing tool and demonstrates the value that you place on presentation, branding, content and technology.

NP: What are most marketing people looking for in their next employer?
LW: Learning, variety, a collaborative environment, flexible working, and the opportunity to use creative skills.

NP: Do you think recruitment firms serve clients and candidates equally well?
LW: A recruiter’s fees will always be paid by the client, and with this in mind they will usually be viewed as the true customer over and above the candidate. Many recruiters treat the candidate relationship as lesser and, on a basic level, that is understandable. However, for two reasons it is very important to treat candidates with respect and professionalism in the same way we treat clients: One, it is the ethical thing to do, we should treat others as we would wish to be treated and as professionals we should enjoy passing on our time and expertise to those who can benefit. And two, from a business perspective these candidates are our “tribe”. Good marketeers hang out with other good marketeers and as such we want them out there telling their peers how great we are! I have enjoyed many occasions where a former candidate becomes a client, or recommends me to a hiring manager even when I didn’t actually place them myself, simply because I treated them with kindness during an often daunting time in their life. 

NP: What are the main tools used by Proudfrog to search for suitable candidates?
LW: In the main, traditional job boards will always play a big part in sourcing candidates, and here at Proudfrog we put most of them through their paces day and night! However, it is also important to be constantly networking with passive candidates who aren’t active in the market for everyone to see. The real value for our clients is in the relationships we have built through dedicated networking and intelligent market mapping using social media, physical market presence, and research.

NP: How does Proudfrog think and act differently from other recruiters?
LW: Everyone at Proudfrog without exception is incredibly excited by what we are achieving. Being a start-up business we have a lot to prove and have no laurels to rest upon. Given the positivity in our market, we were confident to hire big right from the off and at just eight weeks old we are a team of eight, and actively seeking our next intake of trainees. As a lighthouse customer of Proudfrog you will receive the full, undivided attention of our founders but rest assured, if you miss that boat, we have the resources to hire around your needs and would be incredibly quick to do so! We all have big characters, boundless energy and our core team is diverse. At the helm we have 30+ years of the highest calibre of recruitment experience, but amongst us we also have a budding mobile app entrepreneur, a fashion graduate, sportsmen and a holistic therapy evangelist. We think like you do and ask ourselves every day: how can we utilise every technology and personal skill in our armoury in order to do our job as well as we possibly can?

NP: What should marketing professionals do if they would like to be on your radar?
LW: There are many ways to get in touch. There is a contact form on our website for one. We are also contactable via Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. You can email me at laura@proudfrog.com, or – my personal favourite – give us a call today on 0203 0565581.


I’d like to thank Laura for her time and the insights she has shared with me. And I wish Proudfrog every success with their business. Thanks guys!