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A new kind of marketing

Zero-sum marketing

An attractive proposition

Everybody wins . . .

. . . except marketers

Reviews Right Side Up Alan Mitchell HarperCollins Business, 2001; hardback; 340pp; £19.99; ISBN 0 00 257152 8 In this book Alan Mitchell sounds the death knell of producer-driven marketing as we know it and announces the coming of a new kind of marketing, unabashedly on the side of the consumer. He spares no one in his funeral oration Ð not the great manufacturers and their products, nor the global brands we have learnt to worship, least of all the big advertisers and their marketing lackeys who, he claims, are engaged in a conspiracy of gulling and bullying. As power slips from producers into the hands of consumers they will be served by a new breed of consumer agents seeking out perfect knowledge of the market on their behalf, as and when required. Henceforth bias will be banished, rational decisions rule, and grati®cation derive from getting objective value for time and money. Just in case you think someone is having you on, let me make two things clear: Alan Mitchell is serious Ð not just out to shock and sell books. And, whether he intends it or not, he is making a political statement. The early chapters explain why old marketing is doomed, rehearsing familiar arguments about the awakening of the consumer, about muscle ¯exing based on demographic, technological and behavioural change. Here are a few chapter subheads to give you the ¯avour: `How marketing started adding more cost than value'; `Why ``emotional value added'', relationship and permission marketing are dead ends'; `Why traditional brands are the ultimate in seller-centric narcissism'. You get the drift. What is new is not the analysis but the undisguised imputation that old marketing is adversarial, zero sum. The corporate gain is the consumer's loss. And the equation is coldly engineered for pro®t. Mitchell's central proposition is simple and attractive. Consumers do a lot of hard work before consuming. They contribute time, effort, attention and information about themselves without reward as they sweat down to the shops and agonise about choice. In future they will be relieved of much of this unpaid labour by the consumer agent, who will seek out the best deal on their behalf having been entrusted with intimate knowledge of their real desires and ambitions, and will be able to manage that knowledge by clever use of IT not previously available. In this consumer utopia there are new roles for everybody: for the consumer as the ®rst link in the demand chain (rather than the last link in the supply chain); for the agent as aggregator and vendor of consumer information; for the supplier as `order ®ller' rather than speculative producer; and for marketers as wall¯owers. Except for these latter, everybody is a winner: the customer is relieved of hassle and may even get paid for giving information about what he `really' wants; the agent cracks the whip in this new three-ring circus and takes a cut from both

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Reviews

A revolution . . .

. . . but is it real?

The classical price mechanism

The nature of grati®cation

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sides; while the producer is supplied with ready-made customers for predetermined quantities of customised goods or services, and is thus relieved of inventory cost, stock risks, advertising expense and all the other ills of the imperfect market. These imperfections occupy much of the author's argument. He sees the present system as loaded against the customer. Advertising is designed to mislead, brands create an unsustainable illusion, stockholding and distribution are unscienti®c and wasteful: the mechanism is horribly skewed to the advantage of producers instead of being geared to the grati®cation of the customer. The solution is to turn the picture right side up, into what Mitchell calls a win-win situation, where all the money wasted on ill-targeted advertising, irrational brand spin, wrong stock in the wrong place at the wrong time, is shared among the devoted consumer agent and his clients, and which allows even producers to bene®t by reducing their risk and cutting costs. Mitchell gets engagingly excited about the changes he sees coming: right side up is not another step in the boring progression of segmentation, targeting, database marketing, direct selling, customer relationship management, one-to-one fancy footwork, permission marketing, etc Ð it is a revolution. Like so many revolutionaries before him, he gets intoxicated by his own eloquence, and becomes detached from reality. The coping stone in the arch of his argument is the assertion that at the point where money is exchanged for goods or services, there is an imbalance in favour of the producer/vendor. All his other misapprehensions about the nature of grati®cation, the function of brands, the consumer's contribution, the thrust of free enterprise and the price mechanism as the regulator of marginal satisfactions support his view of the consumer as victim. Let us look at this alleged imbalance ®rst. It is tantamount to Mitchell saying that the price mechanism does not work. He claims that prices are geared to the producer's costs and desire for pro®t, and uncoupled from `real' costs and `real' value, whatever they are. This is how, once right side is up, great savings will free funds for paying the agent and still leave enough to defray the consumer's buying costs. The thought that any decision to pay or not to pay a given price already includes the customer's own assessment of the worth of his attention, shoe leather, parking problems and parents' contribution to his education is too `classicaleconomics' for the author. Clearly he is uncertain about the nature of grati®cation, sometimes conceding its irrational components, sometimes talking about `objective values' as an attainable standard. He does not seem to realise how much trouble he stores up for the agency concept by his ambivalence. If he allows that the customer may sometimes act emotionally rather than rationally, may actually wish to pay `the higher price', may demand `not Japanese', may want to buy `outrage', aggregation goes out of the window, leaving the agent to represent groups of one. If he wants the agent to have clout with the supplier, out of the window goes individuation except of the crudest sort. There is an unresolved

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Reviews

A hybrid route?

What happened to creativity?

incompatibility between the necessary economics of scale and the predicated intimacy of the agent-customer relationship. No wonder then that the author's examples of budding agency businesses do not impress. He mentions HomePro.com and RUsure.com, among others. But these kinds of helplines, shopping services and universal aunts hardly represent the leading edge of a revolution. Book clubs, buyers' co-ops of every kind, have a long history, and recent recruits like lastminute.com have not ¯ourished. Mitchell is on ®rmer ground when he foresees big manufacturers diversifying into selling `complete solutions' in addition to discrete services. He provides a neat example of how Ford might go about it. The hybrid route is a more likely scenario than that of consumer agents providing complete wish ful®lment and problem solving. The ultimate weakness of the consumer-led economy is, of course, that it is inherently uncreative. How could consumers band together to demand the invention of the wheel? How can an agent ask for anything that is not already there? It requires an entrepreneur to invent, to innovate, to take risks. To democratise the market is to stultify it. Read Mitchell to get thinking about new directions, but do not follow his signposts. Victor Ross FIDM

Designing Web Usability: The practice of simplicity Jakob Nielson New Riders Publishing (Pearson Education), 2000; 420pp; softback £34.99; ISBN 156205 810X

Leading authority

First of two vols

The quality of this book can be described in one word Ð `superb'. Of course Dr Nielson is well known in this area. His previous book, Usability Engineering, has become a hand tool for website designers and architects. He is one of the world's leading authorities on Web usability and this book does not disappoint. Designing Web Usability looks set to become a standard reference as well. The book is meant to be used as a reference guide for those involved in designing websites. It focuses exclusively on Web usability. However, such is the readability and practicality of the book that it will appeal to a far wider and non-technical audience. This includes those who have commissioned websites to be built and who do not know a thing about design, as well as people who have more than a passing interest in websites and want to know more about proven standards of excellence. The book is the ®rst of two volumes on the subject of Web usability. The intent eventually is to attack the problem of usable Web design from two angles Ð the `what' of good websites and the `how'. The `what' is tackled in this book and discusses what is known about the properties of easy-to-use websites. In the author's words `Relish simplicity, and focus on the users' goals rather than glitzy design'. It is an engaging read,

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A pleasure to read

Down-to-earth experience

Clear, authoritative, compelling, convincing

surprisingly free of unnecessary `techno speak'. The second volume is to follow. The thrust of this book is to explain how the customers' needs can be placed at the centre of Web strategy. The book is designed to be used in a very real way. It is evangelical in its tone, not in a religiously overbearing way, but by the use of reasoned arguments and illustration. Dr Nielson states that 90 per cent of all websites do not use very simple principles to make them more usable and effective. The book sets outs these principles. Part of the title of the book is `the practice of simplicity'. Dr Nielson obviously practises what he preaches. Not only is the subject matter intelligently and engagingly tackled in everyday English; the design of the book itself makes reading a pleasure. For instance, the text occupies a single column that takes up just twothirds of the space on every page. This allows the judicious use of white space and makes reading far easier. His points in prose are amply demonstrated throughout by full-colour reproductions of actual website pages. These are positioned in such a way as to work with the copy, rather than against it. The colour scheme used is bold but pleasing. So ten out of ten for layout and presentation. It is to the author's credit that this proposition is carried through in such an authoritative way. Good and bad examples of usability are provided, and conclusions are given on the basis of research rather than opinion. Copy and examples interweave one with another, logic with art in a way that provokes thought and aids learning. The subject matter is covered in nine chapters and every one stands by itself. The book discusses page, content, site and intranet design in separate chapters. Accessibility for users with disabilities, serving a global audience and future predictions are also covered. This provides a logical sequential read that is backed up by comprehensive crossreferencing. Appropriately, the author has provided a website for updates and corrections. What also differentiates this book is its down-to-earth approach based on experience, practice and what works rather than theoretical models and research. Tips and advice are provided throughout in boxes. For example, Dr Nielson advises marketers with overseas customers to conduct on-thespot user tests of Web pages with those customers. He explains that user tests can be an intense experience, and jet lag will have to be allowed for and equipment and software examined thoroughly before the test. A good tip and one that is no doubt often overlooked. This book is essential reading for all Web designers and those who have an interest in this subject. It is clear, authoritative, compelling and convincing. If you are designing a website, it leaves you with a taste of `yes Ð that sounds right Ð I must do this' and forces you to re-evaluate the work you have done. For others interested in the subject, it provides a universal benchmark for excellence in Web design principles. Well done, Dr Nielson. Sean Larrangton-White MIDM

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Reviews

The Business of Persuasion Stuart McKibbin Oak Tree Press, Dublin, 2000; £16.95; Softback; 229pp ISBN 18607 61755

A copywriter's manual

Concise . . .

The cheapest way to gain competitive advantage is to use words more persuasively. You agree? So why do the websites I visit and the mailings I receive contain copy that creaks like Dracula's front door? Solid bene®ts are left as lifeless features. Decent incentives are devalued by dull descriptions. Insincerity rules. There is no excuse. Anyone with a good command of English can learn how to write `direct response' copy. All you need is the interest to keep studying others' efforts, a good ®ling system and this most helpful new book by Stuart McKibbin. In his years as head of copy at Reader's Digest, the author taught many ordinary mortals to write persuasive promotional copy. I hope this book will allow to him to teach many more. God knows, good writers are in short supply. The Business of Persuasion is wonderfully concise. In little more than 200 pages, we ®rst master principles, then learn how to write for direct mail, press, brochures, the Internet, radio, TV and telemarketing. We discover how to add value to sweepstakes, free gifts and other incentives. We ®nd out how to handle complaints and keep the customers coming back. We are introduced to the arts of fundraising, B2B selling and even political persuasion. By page 29 McKibbin has let us in on the secret of persuading readers to buy. He expresses it as an equation: benefits ˆ value price

. . . and persuasive

He likes to teach by example. Almost every point is illustrated by examples, ranging from headlines to several paragraphs of body copy. Here is how to add value to your latest free gift (shortened for this review) under the headline `One more good reason for subscribing': `There are some possessions Ð a handful only of elite artifacts . . . that add a small frisson of pleasure to even the most commonplace everyday action. Unquestionably numbered among them is a Mont Blanc pen . . . . . . Uncap the sleek and luxurious black barrel to reveal a purposeful, torpedo-shaped gold-plated nib Ð precision engineered to glide ®rmly, ¯uently across the page. Relish the well-judged weight and perfect balance of the pen Ð the manner in which it responds compliantly to the lightest grip. No make of pen has a better claim to being, if not mightier than the sword, one of the most often-handled, benevolent instruments of power. The signing of an important document Ð be it a treaty or a

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Reviews contract Ð calls for a pen of appropriate stature . . . a writing instrument that brings to the occasion a somewhat greater dignity and presence than a well-chewed ball point or battered ®bre tip! Such an occasion so often prompts the choice of a Mont Blanc Ð a pen whose familiar summit emblem can be seen at many a political and commercial summit meeting. Supplied in a slim and elegant case with a plush base and silk-lined lid, the Mont Blanc Classic is a pen made for the pockets of power. We are giving one free with each new subscription.' To hell with the subscription. Just send me the pen. Graeme McCorkell FIDM

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