TCG Conference: Kinney Zalesne (microtrends)

Notes from the TCG Opening Plenary Session: Kinney Zalesne, co-author, microtrends: the small forces behind tomorrow's big changes: hear about some of the emerging communities whose tastes and lifestyles are shaping our future.

Microtrends are the small forces behind tomorrow's big changes. 25 years ago, the market depended on megatrends for change. Megatrends were universal forces that swept through and affected everyone (such as changes in technology). Today there is such an exploration of choice that microtrends (small forces--maybe less than 1% of the total population) can cause major trends in the marketplace.

Old Economy -- "The Ford Economy": one size fits all. The Ford Company were the masters at inventing and designing one black car that could be manufactured 1 million times and could serve the needs of a large number of people and this satisfied the consumer demand.

New Economy -- "The Starbucks Economy": highly tailored to your personal desires; one can get almost anything they want, the way they want it; think about all the different combinations of coffee drinks that you can order at Starbucks.

People are changing things in their lives that only a couple of decades ago was thought to be unchangeable:
1. Cosmetic surgery is now a $12 billion industry in the U.S. because we now have a large number of choices we can make in regards to how we look. Some of the largest growing segments for cosmetic surgery is teenagers and men.
2. We can now pick our gender. Beyond sex reassignment surgery, a growing number of people find the traditional categories of male and female too constraining (they call themselves unisexuals). 100 corporations and 75 universities have banned discrimination on gender identity, and unisex bathrooms are popping up all over the place.

In all areas of our lives, there is an increasing amount of choice. We can no longer wait for megatrends, we must now focus on microtrends.

Microtrends Contradict:
- We have more affluent couples now than ever, but they were staying in the workforce longer
- We have more scientific knowledge than ever before, but there are 2 to 3 religions created in the world each day.

Microtrend Mindset:
- We must be comfortable holding inconsistent ideas in our heads at the same time (trends are going in every direction at a fast pace)
- We must respect the true breadth and complexity of human beings.

Microtrend Examples:
1. Long Attention Spanners
-growing group of people who want more information not less
-will listen as long as you engage them
-1/2 million Americans run marathons (they want to complete a long journey)
-Foreign Affairs Magazine has increased its subscribers by 13%
-Best-selling novels are on average 100 pages longer than they were 10 years ago

2. Young Knitters
-Teens and 20 something knitters grew from 3 million to over 6 million between 2002 and 2004
-They want old fashioned entertainment in a high technology world

3. Non-profiteers
-non-profit sector is growing far faster than the for profit or public sectors
-more than 12 million people make their living in the non-profit sector
-these folks are social entrepreneurs and people on a mission
-for profits are looking at the non-profit sector for how to attract employees

4. Southpaws Unbound
-1 in 6 people are left-handed
-more businesses are making products for left-handed people
-parents used to worry about their left-handed children and they wanted their kids to conform to society so they could fit in (and thereby taught them to use their right hands). Now parents celebrate their children's individuality.

The microtrend world is fragmenting more around issues, which is putting more pressure to find the values that bring us together--what makes us human? The arts explore these issues.

Web Channel Marketing and Advertising Survey

I have just arrived in Denver for the National Performing Arts Convention and the TCG Conference. I will be blogging from both conventions, and I can't wait for the official kick off later today.

On my way from DC to Denver, I reread the results from a survey that Arena Stage participated in a couple of months ago, and found a couple of surprising things that I figured I would share with you.

Bil Schroeder, Director of Marketing & Communications, at South Coast Repertory commissioned Klear Sky to study marketing and advertising practices at some of the larger regional theaters in the nation. Participating organizations included South Coast Rep, Center Theatre Group, Huntington Theatre Company, La Jolla Playhouse, Arena Stage, Steppenwolf Theatre, Seattle Rep, Goodman Theatre, Actors Theater of Louisville, Yale Rep, and several others.

Below are some results that I found to be interesting:

1. The average numbers of e-mail sent per month by survey participants was 6.3, but on the high end, one organization on average sends 13 emails per month. We can only assume with so many e-mail campaigns sent per month that this organization uses highly segmented and targeted campaigns.

2. There was one question on the survey that was misinterpreted by most of the respondents. The question was: "What is the average number of online impressions you have per month." I answered for Arena Stage, and I went back into our online impression reports from the past three months from every place online that we advertise. On average, we had 3,145,182 online impressions every month. Arena Stage had by far the most, with the average being 1.6 million of impressions. However, one organization reported only having 13,000 online impressions. Online advertising is relatively new, and this misinterpretation shows me that we aren't all on the same page on how to measure the impact of online advertising.

3. "Single ticket direct mail advertising has stayed the same or increase for 80% of the respondents. This remains a strong channel for advertising even with the rise of online and email advertising." I found this surprising because our direct mail campaigns at Arena Stage have decreased mostly because we are finding much higher ROIs on other types of campaigns, especially with the cost of the stamp constantly going higher and printing/delivery costs skyrocketing because of the fuel crisis.

4. Only 40% of respondents reported spending less on newspaper advertising over the past three years, which I found shocking. The state of the newspaper nationally is abysmal. Most newspapers are bleeding subscribers, and raising rates on advertising, so in essence we are paying more for less. However, it seems that less than half of the companies have reduced their expenditures which suggests that some folks like to stick with the tried-and-true techniques even as they become less and less effective.

5. Out of all the respondents, the organization that had the oldest website had their last redesign in February 2003. Most of the organizations have had a major redesign since December 2006. A note from Klear Sky says "websites that are older than three years run the risk of feeling dated and old." I always thought that the life span of a website was around four years, but now it looks like it is three years or less.

6. In 2004, I started speaking at conferences about using social networking platforms to promote arts organizations. At that time, most people didn't know what MySpace was. In this survey, 87% of the respondents reported to using MySpace and Facebook to promote their organizations.

Thank you to Klear Sky and South Coast Rep for publishing the information from this incredibly helpful survey.

Time Flies!

So, it's Tuesday already. I am officially a day behind in blogging, but you already knew that. I have been racking my brain to come up with another clever blog idea. A nugget of wisdom hidden in some random, run of the mill day. But it's been quiet here. I need to enlist your help.

We have been racking our brains to come up with a way to make our corner of the blogosphere a little more interactive, more engaging and more exciting. Yup, I just admitted that I think I am boring you.

So, here's what I want to know...WHAT DO YOU WANT TO KNOW! I can give you stories of real-life experiences that apply to us as marketing executives and help you understand why it's important. However, if it isn't relevant to you, why bother?

I am asking you for your ideas. Hot topics you would like some perspective on. Insight on a challenge you are facing. Or maybe you do want to hear me/us ramble about a relevant experience we've had. Regardless, we want to hear from you. Submit a comment to this posting with your ideas and we will help you out.

Make it a great week!
Jenna

The Create Your Own Phenomenon

Arena Stage is in the middle of a rebranding campaign in preparation for the opening of the Mead Center in 2010. The first part of the rebranding campaign is finished, and we now have a new brand platform.

The new brand platform embraces the fact that our audience's purchasing behaviors are very different then they were ten years ago when our last brand refreshment occurred and this was a little alarming for some of the Arena Stage staff.

Thanks to the amazing work of Danny Newman, many marketing professionals have been trained since day one that the goal of any cultural institution is to design a complete season that can be packaged and sold as one product -- a complete cultural sampling if you will. Arena Stage operated under this belief for a long time, and only recently started selling subscription packages that didn't contain the entire season.

We now recognize that although our full season subscribers are incredibly important and valuable to us, our acquisition campaigns rely almost fully on our mini-packages. Even up until last year, our subscription brochure primarily pitched full season subscriptions. This year, full season subscriptions are only mentioned once--on the order page. Instead, when a customer opens our subscription brochure, on the inside front cover in large text, they see the following line: "Pick the shows that are the most exciting and meaningful to you!"

We aren't the only industry to notice this trend. In fact, customization is one of the hottest trends on the market today. Check out the following examples:

Capital One: Create Your Own Credit Card
Alltel: My Circle
Burger King: Have It Your Way
Scion: Build Your Own Car

However, even some of the most inventive and cutting-edge companies don't seem to be grasping this concept. Consider Apple's launch of the iPhone. The iPhone was supposed to be one of the hottest developments in cell phone technology, but they made the critical mistake of trying to force people to use AT&T as a wireless carrier by signing an exclusive deal with them. Then in walks George Hotz, a 17-year-old that dealt Apple and AT&T a lesson in marketing to millenials. He and four collaborators spent their summer devising a plan to unlocked the iPhone so that it can be used with any wireless carrier, and then posted the plan on the world wide web. He gained instant fame for teaching a world-wide leader in technology that they can no longer dictate to the customer, and that the customer now is in the position of dictating to them.

Why does someone have to tell us not to lie?

Several months ago I had the pleasure of listening to Ben Cameron speak at the National Arts Marketing Conference in Miami. If you haven't had the opportunity to listen to Ben speak, jump at the chance if you get it. One of the points he made was that potential audiences no longer believe the fake hype that marketers use when designing their advertising campaigns for productions. Seriously--if you listen to some of us, every show that we promote is going to be a life altering event. There are some of us that make promises that we cannot deliver, and our potential audiences are seeing through these promises.

Arena Stage is in the middle of a rebranding campaign, and I have been clear that we need to stick to brand promises that we know that we can deliver. If you are doing consistently good work, then it will speak for itself. We need to be mindful to not "over promise."

So I found an article on Playbill today that I found fascinating. British authorities have now made it illegal to pull a couple of words out of context from a review in an attempt to deliberately mislead consumers. We have all been tempted after unfavorable reviews to use a reviewer's words against them, but once again we would be lying to our customers. The times have changed. Information flows too quickly for us to falsely spin or hype a show that doesn't merit it. Be strong. Don't give into temptation. Or else you will pay for it later (literally if you live in Great Britain).

CAVE People

If you have been living in a CAVE you don’t know who Hanna Montana is, how she’s related to Miley Cyrus and what the Disney Channel has to do with all of it. You probably haven’t opened a checking account online, read a blog, or landed a HUGE account without taking the new client golfing.

I was talking with a colleague the other day and he was filling me in on the incredible marketing conference his company hosted for the eleventh consecutive year. The final session of the conference featured a presentation by Brian Grubb of the Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center. In his presentation, Mr. Grubb introduced the CAVE people, and in my humble opinion (I was going to write IMHO until it occurred to me that I have a job because not everyone understands that yet) these are the most dangerous group of people. CAVE people are to us marketers what Lord Voldemort is to Harry Potter, Kryptonite is to Superman and Jessica Simpson is to the Dallas Cowboys.

Are you wondering what a CAVE person is and why the letters are in all caps? C.A.V.E. people are those people who are Consistently Against Virtually Everything. Do you know any? Think harder. I have never stepped foot in a bank that didn’t employ at least one CAVE dweller. So how do you overcome that? Simple. Here are three ways to help the dark dweller overcome their fear of the light:

1. Get him/her involved. If you have a marketing team in place (the kind that consists of leaders from each department) make him/her the leader of the team. Help them develop ideas, implement a few of them and make sure that he/she is recognized PUBLICALLY for their outstanding participation and idea generation.

2. Try to understand why they hate the world. Do they subscribe to the theory of “if it isn’t broken, don’t try and fix it?” Or perhaps they have been around the block a time or two and believe there is no other way to do things. Try to learn what makes them tick and why they don’t want to try new things.

3. Embrace those things you cannot change, rise above, and move forward. Sometimes gently carving your path rather than blazing the trail will lay the footwork for others to follow your lead. Accept differing opinions—never dismiss them.

As you find creative ways to deal with your CAVE people, remember that while they may be against everything, they probably stand for something. Learn more about their passion and try to appreciate it…it will probably provide great insight into their negativity. You know, mutual respect while working with others goes a long way in many different aspects of the day-to-day work.

Here's to seeing the light!
Jenna

Another American Idol Blog?

So what does the mot popular television show in recent history have in common with banking…A LOT! I am going to make some generalizations that are backed up by fact.The objective of American Idol is to find the next Top-40 superstar that can rival Beyonce, Matchbox 20 and Miley Cyrus. I am not sure about you, but my baby boomer parents wouldn’t know who Miley Cyrus was even if I called her Hanna Montana (OK, bad example…they haven’t been hiding under a rock for the past year, but you get the point.). It is safe to assume that the target audience for American Idol are teens, tweens, gen Y and maybe a few young Xers.
Demographically speaking, American Idol is drawing viewers significantly outside their target audience. The Neilson Television Ratings were released a couple of weeks ago and here’s we’ve learned…

According to The Nielsen Company, 29% of the audience (audiences average more than 30 million viewers each week) is between the ages of 35 and 49. This is the single largest group of viewers.

How does this relate to banking, you ask? I’ll make this easy…just because you INTENDED to appeal to a specific audience doesn’t mean that you won’t experience GREAT success with a different group incidentally. American Idol is setting viewership records left and right. Hopefully the executives at the record labels are learning to be prepared to cut records that reflect the buying behaviors (or listening behaviors) of those who cast their votes for the next Idol…keeping in mind that that they are not necessarily those you intended on appealing to.
What I am trying to say is that if you have an amazing promotion that is aimed to get lots of stable, reliable deposits (probably from those that have been in the workforce for 10-15 years), be prepared to attract smart Generation Y kiddos who have a good college job and want to open an interest bearing checking account. They are a smart, savvy and very thrifty group those GenYers!

So maybe it’s a bit of a stretch…but it’s important that you think about it. They may not be your target market but they are your inevitable market. As bankers, we need to think differently about the way we do things. What we did 10 years ago that attracted the savvy generation X will not work for this new group. Their expectations are higher, their reliance on technology to accomplish most tasks is unprecedented and they have grown up in a world where it is easy to jump a fence if the grass is greener on the other side.

I suggest your start watering your lawn.

Happy Monday!
Jenna