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Elements of Relevance The tables are turned on Hub editor Tim Manners, who isn’t asking the questions this time. Instead, four of the 50 top marketers Tim features in his new book, Relevance: Making Stuff That Matters (on sale today!), ask him about what it takes to be relevant in marketing today. Asking the questions are Stephen Berkov of Edmunds.com; Lisa Baird, formerly of the National Football League; Dee Mc Laughlin of Virgin Megastores, and John Gilbert of TJX Companies. -- Stephen Berkov: Is Wall Street destroying brand relevance? Tim Manners: Yes, because Wall Street places undue pressure on short-term profits, which can lead directly to irrelevance. Let’s take Starbucks as an example. Wall Street pressured Starbucks to expand more quickly than it should have. The result was that Starbucks built stores where nobody wanted or needed them, where they were irrelevant. Now they’ve got to close 600 stores. It was a similar situation with Krispy Kreme a couple of years ago. The good news is, both of these brands are inherently strong brands, and if they get back to what made them great in the first place, they’ll be just fine. I’d also point out that Costco has somehow managed to ignore Wall Street pressures and stick with its long-range view. They’ve done very well with that approach. Berkov: Why have advertising agencies become so risk-averse? I think ad agencies, in general, are themselves teetering on the brink of irrelevance. I’m not sure it’s because they’re risk-averse so much as it is that they are in a business — advertising — that is itself becoming irrelevant. There needs to be less focus on the advertising and more on the relevance of the products and services themselves. When that happens, the marketing takes care of itself. So, I see a smaller role for advertising and therefore ad agencies in the years ahead. Lisa Baird: What is the most surprising insight from the interviews and the book? The most surprising thing to me is how many examples there are of brands that have succeeded by re-discovering their relevance. There are more than 80 examples of relevant brands and what made them so in the book. It’s surprising, and insightful, because marketing so often gets a bad rap for manipulating people into buying things they don’t want or need. That’s the exact opposite of relevance, because relevance is all about helping people solve problems and live happier lives. Baird: What advice would you give to young marketers starting to plan their career path today? My best advice is to focus on understanding people as people, not as demographic profiles. I dedicated the first chapter in the book, (which you can download for free at www.timmanners.com) to this topic because I think it’s so central to relevance in marketing today. We tend to put people in boxes, which is not only insulting to them, but also gives short shrift to our brands. We talk about marketing to kids, to women, or to multicultural, when in fact there are far more similarities than differences between these demographic groups. The biggest similarities are that we all want to be understood, we all want to be helped, and we all want to be respected. I also think young people ought to look beyond marketing or advertising as a career and think in terms of sales and retail. I think sales is on the rise and may well come to dominate marketing in the years ahead. Retail is also the only place where sales and marketing happen simultaneously. Retail is an exciting place to be, and way underdeveloped relative to its potential. Baird: What kinds of industries are doing the most innovative marketing? I think most of the innovation today is happening at retail. My favorite examples would be Costco and Trader Joe’s, for all of the obvious reasons. I also write a bit about Stew Leonard’s, which is a fabulously innovative grocery store. What amazes me is that no one has tried to copy Stew Leonard’s in a big way. One of the many things that makes Stew Leonard’s so innovative is that it only carries something like 800 items, compared to tens of thousands at the typical supermarket. They took the time to figure out which products were most relevant to their shoppers and got rid of everything else. As a result, their profits per square foot completely eclipse those of traditional supermarkets. I’d also argue that the greatest innovation from Apple is not its operating system or its iPod, but its Apple stores. We forget that analysts trashed the idea when Apple first announced those stores all those years ago. They thought Apple was going to succeed only in alienating its retailers. They didn’t understand that Apple viewed retail as a medium for marketing. There’s a huge clue there for anyone who is really paying attention. Dee Mc Laughlin: How can marketers stay relevant to the environmentally-conscious consumer while avoiding “green fatigue”? A little creativity would help, and so would a greater commitment to what it actually means to be “green.” The fatigue happens because too many marketers see “green” as just another advertising slogan instead of a way of life. The same is true of “organic.” These claims are irrelevant to most people because they see it as nothing more than “marketing.” This goes back to a central theme of the book, which is that marketers should invest less in their advertising and more in creating products or services that are relevant to begin with. For example, I came across a really interesting piece about Toyota recently, about how they are also in the home-building business in Japan. What’s interesting is that they match their home designs to their car designs, so they have a “Lexus” model and “Prius” model. The “Prius” home puts extra emphasis on sustainable design, including an electrical system that charges the car during off-peak hours to save on electricity, and that doubles as an electrical backup in case of blackouts. I think it’s a great example of demonstrating a commitment to a “green” lifestyle beyond just another ad campaign. John Gilbert: Is salience the new relevance? It’s funny you should ask that question. I was just talking to a good friend of mine, Chris Maher, who used the word “salience” three times within about 30 minutes. The third time he said it, I asked him what he meant by it, and he gave a one-word answer: “Relevance.” So, you may be onto something there, John. I actually got the idea for this book because I heard the word “relevance” so many times from so many marketing people. The irony in that is that the overwhelming majority of what happens in marketing is not relevant to most people most of the time. Salience is really important. But I’d argue that “relevance” is more salient to marketers, because where salience is generally used in the context of a debate or discussion, relevance is more often used in the context of an experience. But I will keep my ear out for marketers using the “S” word and maybe there’s a book in that, too. n -- Tim Manners is editor of The Hub, Cool News of the Day and author of Relevance: Making Stuff That Matters (Portfolio). He is also president of David X Manners Company, a thought-leadership content development and communications company. --
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