Havas helia’s Ben Matthews reflects on what parenting — and the ensuing lack of sleep — has taught him about marketing.
As a planner, I often find myself applying things I’ve learned from outside the business to challenges faced by my clients and my agency. And, being a father of a little boy and girl, one thing that has never been far from my mind is sleep. Or rather, the lack of it.
When our first was really young, my wife and I bought countless books to try and find the magic formula that would guarantee a good night’s sleep for all the family. We’re through the worst of it now (we have new battles). But I have been reflecting on what I learned from those early sleep-fighting stages.
1. Be proactive
The concept of proactive parenting basically means that whatever you do, make sure to do it on purpose. Don’t just react — you make bad decisions when you do so and simply get trapped in a cycle of short-term solutions. This often leads to disappointing marginal returns over time. In our case as parents, that would mean no sleep for ages.
To be properly proactive, both parents need to be on the same page and trust each other. The 5am screaming fit is so much easier to deal with if you both know that your strategy is part of a bigger picture that you have both agreed on.
I think agencies and clients need to work together in exactly the same way. A partnership based on trust means that both client and agency can be confident that they are working towards a greater aim. So whenever outside pressure occurs, such as a short-term sales objective, both parties are confident that they can either push back and stay the course or make sure that the short-term change doesn’t undermine the bigger picture.
One example is Tesco. They’ve come under flak recently, but back in the early 2010s they were in a very strong position. Rather than buckling with the stresses of the 2008 financial crisis and joining the short-term thinking that defined a lot of marketing at the time, they stayed the course with their strategy for Clubcard and customer communications. A clear vision and commitment across the business about what Clubcard represented enabled them to stay ahead.
As an aside, I’m currently reading about Confucius who advocated responding deliberately, which is kind of similar. Or it’s just a way of me dropping in to this piece that I read about Confucius. You decide.
2. Only solve problems that are actually problems
This is the sole piece of advice that I have ever given to new parents. Fundamentally, it means that you — and not anyone else — have to decide what constitutes a problem. If you are okay with your kids sleeping in your bed with you, don’t let the world tell you that it’s a problem that needs solving. And on the flipside, once you’ve decided that something is a problem, then take steps to solve it.
The analogy with marketing is simple. If you have a retention problem, align yourselves around solving it. If your business is all about acquisition and year one value, don’t let the world sway you with truisms like ‘It’s cheaper to retain than acquire.’ For your client or your business, that simply may not be true.
In marketing, it’s all too tempting to default to standard responses to standard problems. Yet you have to invest time and effort to uncover the real underlying issues.
3. Kids don’t know you have ‘ticked the box’…
… neither do your customers
If you have identified a problem, you have to be brutally honest about what it will take to solve it. If all you do is tick the box and deliver what you always do but just a little differently, don’t expect it to get solved anytime soon.
Back home, my wife and I are currently working on a solution to the problem that our kids won’t stay in bed past 5am. Our first attempt was buying special alarm clocks. Box ticked, but not problem solved. The kids simply ignored the clocks. So now we have a morning sticker chart, and the kids earn a sticker every day that they stay in bed until the sun comes up on their special clock. We have a little ritual every morning where they congratulate themselves on staying in bed — and after 10 stickers we get a family reward. In a nutshell, we’ve ended up with a ‘stay in bed’ loyalty programme for our children. The head of my department tells me that the scheme will need to be reversed when they become teenagers, but right now we are enjoying our 6.20am(!) lie-ins.
Tick box marketing undermines the credibility of our industry because it creates a huge disconnect between the problem we have identified and our perceived ability as marketers to solve it. To take just one example, if you’ve identified a challenge with on-boarding new customers to a membership programme, invest in the scoping and development of a full on-boarding plan. Don’t brief a welcome email and pat yourself on the back for ticking the on-boarding box.
Or if you have identified that your communications are not personalised or relevant enough, please, please, please don’t pull in the weather API and say, ‘It’s raining, buy our products.’ At Havas, we have a mantra that clients love: relevancy squared = generosity halved. Basically, if you deliver something that is timely and matches a consumer’s wants or needs, you don’t have to discount as heavily. The problem is that most clients are very taken with the second half of the equation, but not so keen on delivering relevancy squared. Relevancy is really hard — you will not achieve it by making tiny tweaks and saying you are being more relevant.
As marketers, we are principally problem solvers. It’s what makes our jobs interesting. So let’s make sure that is what we are doing. Do things by design, identify and agree on real problems — and then actually solve them. Then we can all sleep easy.
Ben Matthews
Principal Planner, Havas helia
If you’d like to discuss any creative ideas or campaigns with the team, call us on 01285 644744 or email us at enquiries@havasheliacirencester.com
