More with less is business as usual

“Doing more with less” has become today’s busi­ness mantra. It’s not a mat­ter of bat­ten­ing down the hatch­es to get through the lat­est reces­sion; in our volatile and unpre­dictable world, smarter work­ing now has to be “busi­ness as usu­al”.

In real­i­ty, of course, doing more with less is a fal­la­cy. The result would be to spread finan­cial and human resources so thin­ly as to be counter-pro­duc­tive. What’s required instead is ruth­less focus on those things where you can real­ly make a dif­fer­ence – and, for mar­keters, the cus­tomer and the core brand idea have to be at the heart of this strat­e­gy.

“Focus and sin­gu­lar­i­ty about what you are and what the cus­tomer wants makes it a lot eas­i­er to pri­ori­tise and be effec­tive,” says Aman­da Macken­zie, chief mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions offi­cer at insur­ance giant Avi­va.

And there is an impor­tant dis­tinc­tion to be made between effi­cien­cy and effec­tive­ness, says Les Binet, Euro­pean direc­tor at DDB Matrix, a con­sul­tan­cy that mea­sures the impact of mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions on busi­ness results.

Effi­cien­cy leads to dimin­ish­ing returns and effec­tive­ness max­imis­es prof­its

“Con­sid­er two alter­na­tive mar­ket­ing plans,” says Mr Binet. “Under Plan A you spend £10 mil­lion and make £100 mil­lion prof­it, giv­ing you an effi­cien­cy ratio, or return on invest­ment, of 10:1. Under Plan B you spend £1 mil­lion and gen­er­ate £20 mil­lion prof­it, giv­ing you an effi­cien­cy ratio of 20:1. If you were pur­su­ing the effi­cien­cy approach, you would go for Plan B, despite the high­er prof­its gen­er­at­ed by Plan A.”

Thus, effi­cien­cy leads to dimin­ish­ing returns, says Mr Binet. “Effec­tive­ness – max­imis­ing prof­its – is far more impor­tant.”

So how does a cash-strapped mar­ket­ing direc­tor max­imise prof­its? It boils down to qual­i­ty and cre­ative think­ing.

“You can’t under­es­ti­mate the sanc­ti­ty of a great idea,” says Tim Pile, chief exec­u­tive of mar­ket­ing agency Cogent Elliott. Paul Wal­ton, co-founder of mar­ket­ing agency The Val­ue Engi­neers, agrees. “You also have to find new ways and places to com­mu­ni­cate your idea. You have to out-think rather than out-spend the com­pe­ti­tion,” he says.

Social media has an impor­tant role to play in aug­ment­ing tra­di­tion­al mar­ket­ing and cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions, but rely­ing on it exclu­sive­ly as a sort of panacea for reach­ing your tar­get audi­ence at low cost is a dan­ger­ous strat­e­gy, warns Mr Binet. Nev­er­the­less, some brands do use it in ways that appear to be high­ly effec­tive, because they have a care­ful­ly thought through approach.

US domes­tic blender com­pa­ny Blendtec, for exam­ple, has been cat­a­pult­ed to fame and for­tune through an orig­i­nal viral mar­ket­ing cam­paign – “Will It Blend?” – fea­tur­ing its chief exec­u­tive Tom Dick­son. Mr Dick­son demon­strates the supe­ri­or­i­ty of the blend­ing tech­nol­o­gy by putting items, includ­ing a skele­ton, an iPhone and a car, into his blender. Over the past five years there have been around 200 mil­lion views on YouTube and sales have increased 700 per cent.

Oth­er com­pa­nies get too bogged down in bureau­cra­cy. Mr Binet says: “Some clients are so para­noid about not wast­ing mon­ey on poor adver­tis­ing that they waste vast amounts on process­es and research. They test ads and strate­gise to the nth degree, and pro­duce noth­ing that affects their sales. On both the client and agency side, peo­ple with intu­ition, who can spot good cre­ative work and get to an answer quick­ly, are worth their weight in gold.”

Invest­ing in the best peo­ple and the best ideas may be expen­sive, but can increase the effec­tive­ness and effi­cien­cy of mar­ket­ing, he con­cludes.

Some brands have nev­er had much mon­ey to splash around. Divine, the Fair­trade choco­late com­pa­ny that is 45 per cent owned by cocoa farm­ers, has only 17 employ­ees and a mar­ket­ing bud­get in “the low hun­dreds of thou­sands”, accord­ing to com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor Char­lotte Borg­er. But it punch­es above its weight thanks to a com­bi­na­tion of close-to-con­sumer activ­i­ty and the assid­u­ous telling of its sto­ry.

“We did print adver­tis­ing for a time, but could nev­er afford to buy media on a scale that made it worth­while,” says Ms Borg­er. It now focus­es on col­lab­o­ra­tion with big brands. Divine was the offi­cial choco­late bar at last year’s Glas­ton­bury Fes­ti­val, for exam­ple, and O2 recent­ly used a bespoke Divine choco­late bar to reward 450,000 of its cus­tomers.

“These sorts of activ­i­ties give us extra­or­di­nary reach,” says Ms Borg­er, adding that Divine is also exper­i­ment­ing with social media. “We are a social brand, so social media is a good fit and it also allows us to tell what is quite a com­pli­cat­ed sto­ry.”

At First Direct, the online and tele­phone bank­ing ser­vice, neces­si­ty has always been the moth­er of inven­tion. “We make our bud­gets work hard for us, and we’re also very ideas-dri­ven, inno­v­a­tive and cre­ative,” says Natal­ie Cowen, head of brand and com­mu­ni­ca­tions. To this end, it works in col­lab­o­ra­tive part­ner­ships with its agen­cies, most of whom are long-stand­ing.

“Because they know us well, they ‘get’ the brand, which means we can short-cir­cuit things. But we also have to make sure that we inspire them to come up with fresh ideas,” says Ms Cowen.