Blog posts tagged target audience

Is Your Brand Old Hat?

Recently I was lucky enough to spend some time with a voluntary worker for Oxfam. He was a fascinating chap and gave me some really valuable input into how the charity sector works. One of the major challenges Oxfam has faced recently is the perception of it being old fashioned. The brand was seen to represent something the charity didn’t, and this was a major problem.

Oxfam’s solution was to identify ways to appeal to a younger audience and in 2006 it launched OxJam, a UK-wide series of music festivals. Every year local Oxfam branches team up with schools and universities in their area to organise the events, hunt for musicians and discover interesting venues. The results are impressive; not only has the charity used OxJam to raise awareness and money, but it’s also an effective way of recruiting the next generation of supporters.

This got me thinking about brand perception with traditional businesses. Now unless you are led by your demographic — SAGA springs to mind — being perceived as old fashioned could be a major problem.

There has been a lot of discussion regarding retaining customers and servicing their requirements, however the risk is your business grows old with your existing customers at the expense of the all-important new blood. Honda is another great example. During research in the 90s it discovered the average customer was over 50. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it was counter to the Honda marketing strategy.

As business owners, it’s important we understand how our brand is being perceived against the markets we are targeting.

Are you unintentionally growing old?

Ben Dyer is director of product development for Actinic

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Pulling Your Exhibition Budget? You may just be pulling your best chance of attaining cost effective ROI!

OK, so we are in the midst of a recession, times are hard and it certainly isn’t pleasant out there. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel! We are finding that some of our clients are bucking the trend and experiencing some of the most successful shows than ever before.

Although some companies have pulled out of exhibitions as they believe them to be an unnecessary expense or  not a profitable exercise, (says to me that they have the wrong stand, the wrong staff or the wrong strategy), companies who are exhibiting are finding that the competition on the show floor is far less fierce and the fact that (generally) footfall at exhibitions has remained constant, this means that they have a far greater lions share when it comes to the all important visitors and target audience.

Another interesting piece of research we have conducted amongst our client base is that the quality of show visitor has increased during these hard times. This can be explained by the fact that staff numbers amongst some companies have dwindled leaving the figure heads to pick up the workload. Therefore, long gone are the days of PAs and researchers being sent to the exhibition to gather information and rack up a rather impressive bar tab, instead it’s the decision maker’s turn to hit the key shows and events, make a qualified decision and attract as little expense as possible during the process.

At Thinking Clear we live, sleep and breathe exhibitions and it’s such a shame that sometimes the first budget to fall is the exhibition spend.  These decisions to slash the budgets are made, typically, without any real understanding as to how to get the best results form a show campaign. We see exhibitors on mobile phones, eating snacks or discussing where to head for the evening on stand… or worse… the dreaded salesman who simply will not let the visitor leave until they know every ounce of product information and has given the names of their first pet, first music record and first kiss! Get the key information required to follow up, don’t bombard them, and get them off the stand so you can bring a new prospect on… is what we say!

Just remember, you can have the most eye catching, awe inspiring stand at the show, but if your staff aren’t properly trained and your objectives not clear then how can you expect to attain a return on investment?! I’ll take a wild guess that some of you may be thinking… ‘How have we managed to get any leads in the past?! And if we have, then blimey, imagine how many we could get if we knew what we were doing!!’

Over the coming months I will be blogging many ways to ensure your future show is a huge success and if you’ve got a budget meeting coming up then please feel free to drop me a line, I’ll give you a few statistics you can draw all over the boardroom walls!

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