Made in Ireland and based in Cork, Human+Kind skincare has recently launched a welcome addition to its line of all natural skincare products, a fabulous all natural multipurpose body oil which is easily absorbed and highly beneficial for the skin. I’ve been using it for the past few days and it really is a gem of a product, particularly coming out of these winter months when skin has been moisture deprived.

It’s a great next step for Human+Kind on its upward trajectory and is an indicator of how quickly this company has grown since we helped launch the brand in Dubai in May 2011. Demand for the all natural range is increasing at pace and Human+Kind is now distributed across Europe, Asia and the middle East with many new and innovative products in the pipeline for 2012/2013.

It’s very welcome news for the team here at ThinkTank who combined research and strategy with powerful branding to effectively create, communicate and deliver the Human+Kind brand into the marketplace on behalf of the brand owners, the all Dutch team of Rene Van Willigen and Jeroen Proos.

Very early on ThinkTank recognised the unique value in the idea behind the product – multipurpose skincare that is 100% natural. While multipurpose products in skincare are not news, 100% natural multipurpose products with high levels of incredibly effective and proven active  ingredients are very new to the marketplace and this is where Human+Kind spotted a gap.

It was up to ThinkTank to evaluate the opportunity through rigorous research and then use the insights generated from the research to inform strategy development (market positioning, market segmentation & targeting, customer value proposition) and the development of the Human+kind brand which is a key tool for the owners to communicate the value inherent in the products to the marketplace.

It’s a great time to be an all natural skincare brand as natural and organic skincare is on an incredible upward growth curve with more and more consumers becoming highly chemical aware and demanding of their product choices so that they can minimise any potentially negative impact on their health while maximising performance and wellness benefits. In addition, women are increasingly looking to skincare products that deliver maximum performance benefits but in half the time and half the perceived number of products required for their daily skincare regime.

Global players like P+G and L’Oréal are solving these specific skincare problems with the recent smash hit launches of their multipurpose BB (Blemish Balm) creams which cut down considerably the number of products a woman needs in her arsenal, however, Human+Kind goes one better in that it solves an important problem for consumers in a way that the skincare giants are not – it tackles the chemical issue by being 100% natural and reduces the need for multiple products while delivering extremely powerful antiageing benefits and therapeutic benefits over time.

Jeroen Proos, the co-founder of Human+Kind has commented that “Evaluating the opportunity, or “sanity testing” it through research has to be the first port of call for any entrepreneur or start-up, then, once you are comfortable that there is a market, determining where and how to position the product in that market relative to the competition in order to own a territory for your brand and differentiate, how to use the brand both on and offline as a key tool to create brand awareness, relevance, preference and ultimately purchase are the key steps that any brand that has aspirations to become a player on a global stage in a crowded marketplace has to undertake in order to be successful.”

Finally, the packaging that ThinkTank developed for Human+Kind has already won recognition, Human+Kind has recently featured on RTE’s highly popular Nationwide programme and on TV3’s Expose, winning plaudits from influential bloggers like Kirstie McDermott of Beaut.ie and a legion of influential beauty bloggers in the Netherlands. Looks like Human+Kind is only at the start of a very exciting and rewarding  journey.

Marketing journalist Siobhán O’Connell, wrote an interesting article in the Irish Times Media & Marketing section recently where she posed the question “Does Musgrave’s takeover afford the opportunity to reinvent or kill the Superquinn brand?” ThinkTank was kindly asked to comment and our thoughts together with the diverse views of other branding and marketing experts can be viewed here in the Irish Times article.

Superquinn’s excellence in the past was due to the extraordinary vision of Fergal Quinn. He understood brand innately and  knew that every world beating brand is underpinned by a strong customer value proposition. He set about identifying the important problems that needed to be solved for Irish grocery shoppers, exceeding their expectations constantly through a culture of innovation, relentlessly placing the customer at the core of the organisation and in so doing building a hugely successful brand.

The Supequinn  takeover now makes Musgrave the largest retail group in the country with a 27.8 per cent market share (with Tesco at 27.6 per cent). Musgrave now have an opportunity to reposition Superquinn and redefine what the brand stands for in a new and different way. The question is where will the Superquinn brand fit relative to the competition and indeed relative to Musgrave’s own brands?  How will Musgrave carve out a unique position and what will the new Superquinn brand stand for going forward and even more interesting how will competitors respond?

A brand or reputation is the most valuable asset owned by any organization. There is a growing awareness in Ireland that brands have a financial value beyond the bricks & mortar of physical stores. As savvy marketers Musgrave were aware that  a brand like Superquinn has a  tremendous financial value because it has created value or brand equity in the hearts and minds of loyal customers over a period of time. In the retail sector each brand reflects and plays a specific role in the market. Musgrave’s acquisition not only allows it to  tap into the existing goodwill surrounding the Superquinn brand but also enables it to use its different brands in different market segments to counter competitors and gain overall market share.

There is no doubt that the unique position that Superquinn owned in the minds of the Irish public in the nineties and early noughties, as an innovator in all aspects of the grocery shopping experience has been eroded by new market entrants or incumbents who have successfully negated Superquinn’s advantage and then gone one better. The Irish public over the boom years has also been exposed to multiple retail concepts at home and abroad and much higher levels of service so the bar has been considerably raised.

Superquinn’s position is now under threat as it has moved over time to the centre, driven by the recession to compete on price, when in the past customers were happy to pay that bit extra because they recognised the service and experiential difference. Now this has been diluted and Superquinn is in the equivalent of strategy’s “no man’s land” – stuck in the middle – neither superior on price like Aldi/Lidl or superior on experience/service (like Donnybrook Fair or the better Marks and Spencer stores). This shows how marketers need to be in touch with not only the needs of their customers but their relative position in the market as well as the trends that are shaping the future market. At the end of the day if you don’t understand and define what your brand means your competitors certainly will.

For far too long supermarkets have been set up into categories and not customer experiences and in many cases bore the consumer into submission. Hopefully with the consolidation of the market and the ‘supermarket wars’ hotting up, consumers will get greater choice and value and retailers will move away from product, price and point of sale – to create more innovative and interesting shopping experiences for Irish customers.

Developed by Dublin based Chemistry advertising the campaign promotes the Examiner’s “Special Investigations” supplement that  tackles several of Ireland’s socially taboo subjects -including alcoholism, mental illness, clerical abuse, human trafficking, suicide and pornography.

Apart from some great art direction and creative crafting,what’s really powerful and progressive  is that these billboards are driving and shaping a social cause. By engaging in a conversation against the backdrop of an Irish social context, they  communicate their message in dramatic and emotionally jarring way.

Love them or hate them, they are lifting the veil of secrecy and questioning some serious societal issues that are impacting the fabric of Irish society. Although it’s not exactly uplifting stuff, the campaign is highly relevant to the product and makes a strong statement about the Examiner’s unique brand of investigative journalism.  Controversial by design, the campaign will certainly stimulate debate around the issues and create significant buzz for the Examiner brand.

At ThinkTank, we would like to see more brands taking a risk by developing conceptually driven campaigns because this is what consumers really connect with. Good or bad advertising costs exactly the same and it’s positive to see a local brand investing in a higher level creative solution. It is also good to see a client allowing an advertising agency to do what they do best and steering clear of the  large logo and web site phenomena that often destroys the communication and erodes brand value. Advertising should be evocative and NOT functional and this campaign certainly moves away from the bland and boring into new creative territory. At the end of the day advertising is about getting  people thinking and talking….while at the same time buying more newspapers! We’d love to hear your thoughts and comments.

Credits

The Irish Examiner campaign was developed at Chemistry Dublin, by creative director Mike Garner, art director Nicole Sykes, copywriter Anne Fleming, illustrator P.J Lynch, account manager Kerrie Sweeney

At ThinkTank we were encouraged to read Alf Smiddy’s recent Blog post entitled - It’s all about your Brand - which also appeared in innovative financial services firm, Quintas’ spring newsletter.

As a former MD and Chairman of Beamish & Crawford Plc, for over twelve years  and current chairman and director on a number of Boards, Alf has a tremendous depth of experience  in both the financial and branding arenas.  This combination of skills is particularly unique and it’s inspiring to hear one of Cork’s most respected business leaders recognising the importance and value of brands.

In an insightful and thought -provoking post he outlines why in our tumultuous economic landscape, business as usual has become irrelevant and how companies need to to “inspire and mobilise people around a common purpose.” He goes onto explain,“I firmly believe that it’s through innovation, the re-invention of existing brands, and the creation of new brands that will create the climate for business success going forward.”

Branding in Ireland is a relatively new and often misunderstood business discipline so it’s uplifting to read  that branding should play a leading role in Ireland’s economic recovery and re-invention. After all branding is strategic tool that can be used by both big and small businesses alike, to not only to grow margins, awareness and loyalty but also to fundamentally change the way people think, feel and behave.

In the article, Alf  goes onto discuss the interesting concept of Brand Damage and how many of Ireland’s most trusted and respected institutions have lost Brand Value and trust with the Irish public. This lack of trust means that companies will have to work that much harder to regain brand equity and credibility with their customers.

“Over the last two years many companies, of all sizes and across all sectors, have often unwittingly damaged their brands. We have seen a huge amount of brand damage, and even destruction taking place before our eyes during this time. It is very clear that some of the big Irish Brands in both the private and public sectors are in serious difficulty, including household brand names like FÁS, the HSE, the Irish Banks, Irish property companies, and even some of the big political brand names. I would even put Brand Ireland Plc Inc into the mix. Trust and confidence in these brands have been seriously eroded.”

In many respects Ireland’s massive economic boom and subsequent growth masked many underlying  fundamental business problems. With 15 years of successive economic growth most companies didn’t really have to think about their business models or invest in branding and innovation.

Now that the tide has gone out many businesses have been left exposed and are faced with the challenge of having to go back to really understanding what made them successful in the first place, re-envisioning their futures and really understanding their value propositions, in a resource constrained and recessionary market environment.

“It has been survival mode for the vast majority of Irish companies over recent years, and ‘discretionary’ spend like marketing investment has been significantly reduced and often eliminated. This can only continue for so long. Owners and managers will need to find more time in 2011 to seriously review all aspects of their brands (positioning, pricing, promotion and markets), and also the strength of their customer relationships through those brands.  As the economy turns, and hopefully we’ll see this in 2011, companies will need to play catch up, and begin to repair and restore the health of their brands, and to re-create a trusting relationship with their customers.  This will require a highly focused approach and a new mindset which puts brands centre-stage, and a business model which recognizes the absolute necessity for properly targeted marketing investment.”

It is no accident that some of the most successful companies in the world invest heavily in building their brands. That’s because they know that there is a proven correlation between investing in brands and increases in profit margins, operating earnings, stock returns and market capitalization.

One of the biggest challenges with branding is where do you start and beyond the theory how do you practically go about building a brand.

With so much noise in the local arena about PR, design, social media and tactical marketing, clients are often confused about where to begin. With this in mind ThinkTank sat down to map out  5 key things things Irish companies can do to practically build their brands. We hope that this gives you an insight into what’s required to build really strong brands.

1. Top Management needs to view brands as assets

In many respects branding is too important to be left the marketing department. No longer is branding a subset of marketing to be managed as a communication problem. Your brand is the public face of your business strategy, both reflecting and enabling it internally with staff and externally with customers. For this reason company owners or senior management needs to take ownership of the brand and invest in it – just as you would invest in people and other assets that can generate a return. Strong brands always start internally and an internal understanding of how branding works is probably more important than understanding your customers.

This means that brand strategy needs to be developed in tandem with your business strategy, both need to be clear on vision, value proposition, target market and investment. Top management can use the brand as a catalyst to excite, recruit and retain employees while at the same time building trust, likeability and loyalty with external customers. This process begins by distilling what’s truly excellent about your organization and then developing a story around it that offers directional and aspirational qualities going forward.

2. Brands need to be differentiated not just designed

Branding is far more than just image and awareness. So many companies get misled changing the surface elements e.g signage, logos and then wonder why people don’t really connect with and respond to the brand. In today’s hyper-competitive market place most brands are failing to differentiate. In a 2007 research report, management consultancy Bain & Company, highlighted the fact that 80% of CEOs think their brands are differentiated but only 8% of customers agree. This shows a huge disconnect between operational decisions that are being made on the marketing front Vs how  consumers are  responding in the real world. So companies can chose to either be a commodity and compete on price or become a brand and compete on value and innovation.  A competitor cannot copy your brand and it becomes increasingly difficult for them to compete against you if  the innovation is branded and becomes established over time. Customers have choices, so in order to build defendable differentiation you need to be able to understand the relative market positioning of your brand so that you can determine where and how your brand is positioned in the competitive context.

4. Think brand relevance and not brand preference

We’re constantly amazed at how many large Irish companies are obsessed by what their competitors are doing and stuck in constant “my brand is better than your brand” jockeying for position. This type of brand preference competition involves constant incremental product enhancements to improve attractiveness, price discounting, trying to sway customers with “New and improved’ and a constant plethora of promotions and PR aimed at short term wins. The reality is that this approach is self sabotaging and is a slippery slope towards discounting where your product ends up becoming a pure commodity.

By contrast Brand Relevance requires companies to bring transformational innovation to an existing category through creative disruption. This starts with sensing changes in market dynamics, understanding trends and what’s really going on in customers’ lives. It means putting the customer at the forefront of the your business strategy and being willing to invest in research to enable you to extract insights so that you can develop foresight about ‘white space’ and innovation opportunities that exist. By investing in imagination and innovation instead of process repetition and efficiency -you will start to unlock opportunities that could enable you to develop a whole new lucrative market category or segment that will end up making your competitors irrelevant.

5. Become obsessed with spreading the idea behind your brand

Brands don’t exist in a vacuum so the “Big idea” or over-arching concept behind your brand needs to be effectively propagated into the market place so that you can reach a critical mass of the right type of customers. Brands that are relevant and resonate with customers and that are build around a distinct and compelling advantage are far more likely to gain traction and response in the market place than brands that are bland and boring. The cost of the investment required to build awareness around brands that have sound fundamentals is significantly cheaper than brands that have no meaningful difference. In this phase it’s very important to understand how to reach your target audience and key influencers in a synchronized way that maximizes word of mouth communication. This is far more than functionally setting up a Facebook page, designing a print ad or starting a Blog. It’s about developing a heightened understanding and sensitivity about the market, trying to build genuine human connections by treating customers as real people and building a platform for the brand that exponentially spreads your message and turns brand advocates into brand disciples.

In closing, there seems to be an increasing openness by business to investigate how they can use branding principles and there are several green shoots appearing  in the local market. Many future thinking companies are starting to realise that there is an interdependence between business and brands that can no longer be ignored.

In 21st Century marketing the customer needs to be at the heart of your business system and effective marketers will need to be able to demonstrate how they can work across disciplines in a way that delivers real growth and returns to the business. Marketers will need to shift from a 4P approach to a multi-disciplinary, strategic  mind-set that gives them an equal seat at the boardroom table and demonstrates their abilities to use imagination and ideas to build brands that result in a strategic pay off for the company and create value for customers.

All quotes in this post are in italics and are attributed to a post that appeared in the Quintas Blog www.quintas.ie and subsequent newsletter that was written by Alf Smiddy. The Beamish photograph was taken by William Murphy and appeared on Flickr. Please add your thoughts, comments and questions on branding below.

When it comes to innovation we often focus on the sexy part – coming up with the ideas! In this insightful Harvard Business Review video Vijay Govindarajan, Tuck School of Business professor, talks about why innovation is so hard to implement and what you can do about it. Innovation is all about commercializing creativity and Vijay explains why companies need to forget about the past if they want to create the future. In his new book The Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Execution Challenge with Chris Trimble – he explains  how companies need to build separate innovation  teams that a are separate from the operating engine of the business. This is important if you want to let go off organizational baggage and introduce new skills and fresh perspectives. You can follow Vijay on Twitter right HERE!

Good design is good business. Yet it’s amazing how few good business people recognize and understand the commercial value of good design.

Think about how every day poorly designed products and services add complexity instead of simplicity to our lives. The tortuously convoluted language used by the financial services industry, the non-intuitive features on electronic gadgets that most of us will never fathom, big call centres that tell you what they can’t do instead of what they can, antiquated recruitment practices that tick boxes instead of identifying talent and newspaper layouts that are cluttered with ads all fighting for attention like kids on a sugar rush! The universe may contain intelligent design but many products and services certainly do not!

The thing about great design is that we know it when we see it. The trouble is, we see way too little of it. Often the word design conjures up ideas of logos or web site but Design Thinking is essentially the ability to combine empathy, creativity and rationality to develop solutions based around a user’s needs. It can be applied to anything including businesses, brands, buildings, cities and even countries. Unlike analytical thinking, Design Thinking is a creative process based around the “building up” of ideas. There are no judgments early on in design thinking – and this eliminates fear of failure and encourages maximum participation and outside the box thinking.

To be successful Design Thinking must permeate the entire organization—and shape all of its interactions with all its constituents. Design Thinking is figuring out how do we create more value? How do we design better products? How do we build a better working environment that motivates our staff? How do we improve on our customer experiences? How do we make more money and create a more sustainable planet?

Design Thinking is a social and economic imperative. It has the power to change, enhance and enable the lives of its users and like The Beatles and The Beetle – can even change the world. As a discipline, design is seriously under appreciated and under leveraged in most organisations. Historically managers viewed design as a soft skill – an artistic endeavour that ‘creative types’ dipped into whenever they needed to jazz up a product or improve a graphic design. This is short sighted and self limiting thinking, given the fact that how a company presents itself externally is a manifestation of its internal thinking. At ThinkTank we believe that design thinking is far more than your company’s visual identity. It should be viewed instead as a fundamental business discipline that can create fanatical customers and fat, healthy margins – while at the same time being sustainable and socially responsible.

In an Irish context design seems to be considered a luxury, rather than a fundamental and it’s often challenging to convince clients that good design should be viewed as an investment and not a cost. In our industry a shift is occurring where the creative skills used to develop branding campaigns are now being applied to develop new products by partnering within company’s that have become constrained by their own thinking. The 2009 Forfás report on “Skills in Creativity Design and Innovation,” makes the point that “creativity and design are key drivers of innovation, which is in turn a key driver of productivity growth”. Beyond the feel good story of Ireland being a Smart Economy we need to focus more on the how part of innovation: developing the skills and principles of human-centred design, instead of getting caught up in all the talk about innovation.  After all it’s the creative horse that will ultimately need to pull Ireland’s innovation cart on the road to recovery.

A well designed product is always the most powerful brand building marketing and sales tool. Smart companies understand how to bake their marketing right into the design of the product from the get go. Good design is ultimately a business weapon as it drives value all the way down to the end user. Buying anything is emotional, and great design connects and allures those emotions to our fullest realization.

Slowly big companies are waking up to the power of bringing creativity in house and using design as a premium differentiator. Several global brands have appointed creative Design Thinkers to board level positions in an effort to drive creativity from the inside out. Coke recently appointed leading designer David Butler to oversee an enterprise wide design overhaul across its 450 brands and Nike’s new CEO Mark Parker, is an ex- sports shoe designer who brings heaps of design DNA and a knack for tapping into the thinking of both athletes and artists.

Good design is by nature innovative but also profitable. It starts with observation because it’s the only way to illuminate the subtle nuances about how people actually get things done (or don’t get things done) Observations can unlock deep insights that lead to powerful new ideas which can be experimented with and later prototyped.  The latest EU research adds fuel to the argument. The document “Design as a Driver of User-Centred Innovation” (2009) notes: “The results are compelling: companies that invest in design tend to be more innovative, more profitable and grow faster than those who do not.” By ‘building to think’ instead of ‘thinking about what to build,’ an organisation can dramatically accelerate its pace of innovation and create new profit opportunities.

So in a world ruled by sameness let’s revisit legendary designer Dieter Ram’s top 10 principles for good design:

1. Good design is innovative
2. Good design makes a product useful
3. Good design is aesthetic
4. Good design makes a product understandable
5. Good design is unobtrusive
6. Good design is honest
7. Good design is long lasting
8. Good design is thorough, down to the last detail
9. Good design is environmentally friendly
10. Good design is as little design as possible

Photo courtesy of the Lewis Glucksman Gallery - a Cork based cultural and educational institution that promotes the research, creation and exploration of the visual arts.

“Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of 2010, understand profitability.  If I could offer you only one tip for the future profitability would be it”…..but more from Baz Luhrmann later…….

As a marketing lecturer, the second most common question I get asked (next to, “what is coming up on the exam”?) is “How am I ever going to get a job in marketing?”. Worse than this, in the students where the glass seems perpetually half empty, the statement “I am never going to get a job in marketing” reverberates every year as the academic term is coming to a close.  Now, what is interesting is that this sentiment appears to transcend gender, age and academic achievements, and was heard as loudly during the “Celtic Tiger” era as it is now in our economic recession.  Essentially, no marketing student seems to think they are going to get a job in marketing.  For a marketing lecturer who has spent years working with these students this is a disheartening sentiment to constantly hear, but more than that, it is a frustrating one.  Why is it that these bright, intelligent, articulate students, these Generation Y students who are constantly being told that they are the chosen ones, the future, the ones who are connected; why is it that these students think they won’t get a job in marketing?

How can this disconnect exist? How can these students not realise that they are “it”.  They are the future marketers.  They are the wired generation, the avid consumers, they understand brands, they are constantly ‘plugged in’ and they know more about social media usage in Ireland than most Irish companies do.  In fact, recent research has shown that there is a significant gap between Irish consumers and Irish enterprises in terms of social media usage, with companies struggling to catch up with consumers.  The research identified that this gap exists more so due to a lack of knowledge on the part of the companies rather than a lack of desire to use digital media. These marketing students have that knowledge that companies need; they just don’t seem to realize this.  Perhaps it is our fault, perhaps as lecturers, we are too concerned with theory delivery and ensuring that our students get good results, rather than focusing on the practical knowledge and skills they require to make the transition from student to marketer.  Perhaps we need to move away from the old guard of Kotler and company and instead teach marketing from the perspective of Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg.  And while there might be merit in this argument, I am not so convinced that this alone is the answer. I believe the students have the skills and the knowledge to make the transition from student to marketer; they just need to leverage and improve on those skills to find their way in a constantly changing global landscape. We need to merge the old with the new.

So just how do we do that?  How is marketing changing and what do students need to know and have to do to “get that job” in marketing.  Well marketing now exists in a network era, where all the rules have changed and all the company stakeholders are talking to each other and to the company in ways unimaginable only a few years ago.  We have moved from a time of monologue to constant dialogue.  We are moving into a new world where there is increased recognition of marketing’s role and position at the boardroom table. Marketing intelligence must be gathered continuously through ongoing data collection and research activities to provide insights for company decision making.   The rapid pace of change in globalization, computerization, management hierarchies, corporate responsibility etc.  have created a situation where high-quality marketing intelligence is essential for long and short term decision making.   Such market knowledge gives an organization the opportunity to lead the direction of industry development and compete for market position and market share.

Marketing therefore is no longer only about 4P strategies, communications programmes and action plans; it is no longer a silo activity but rather it is becoming the core of the company that is brand and innovation driven.  Marketing should focus not only on “what is” the existing solution(s) to customers’ problems, but also on “what isn’t” – those new ideas, products, processes and methods which provide innovative breakthroughs to satisfy needs.  These conditions require our marketers to have finely tuned creative and conceptual skills as well as the ability to process information and make informed judgments.  Innovation succeeds in so far as customers’ needs are satisfied, and who understands and is closest to the customer better than the marketer?  Where once we taught students to identify customers’ needs so as to develop marketing strategies, we now need to show students how understanding those customers’ needs and gaining such customer insight drives innovation in a company.  That innovation drives business growth and profitability, positioning marketing firmly at the board room table. Students have the skills required to identify and understand customers’ needs, they now need to leverage that ability to take those customer insights and turn them into the drivers of business growth and profitability.  Students need to be confident about the future of marketing.  They need to develop a vision about the organization’s markets and the possible future direction of change.  They need to understand how they can “get that job” by thinking about marketing in a “visionary” way, by leveraging their technology skills and becoming better communicators.

A recent Oftcom report (18^th August 2010) found that adults aged between 16 and 24 spend six hours and 35 minutes a day on the phone, laptop, radio or television. But by multitasking – effectively using two or more devices at once – the survey found that young adults were able to squeeze the equivalent of nine hours 32 minutes worth of consumption into that time.  Students – you may not realize it, but all that time spent “plugged in” is doing more for you than increasing your online profile; it is equipping you with the technology and communication skills that many companies so badly need.  Your proliferation in collaborative writing, web logs, video content sharing, consumer opinion platforms and podcasting might be just what that company needs to link with customers.  While some companies are only getting to grips with Web 2.0 you are probably already speculating about what ‘Web 3.0’ and beyond holds for internet users.  This begs the question of how these new applications will affect those that are currently in vogue, and ultimately how it will shape and reshape online media.  The dynamism of web innovation is perhaps beyond prediction; however, it continues to be driven by social interaction between networks of individuals of which you are an important player.

So back to Baz Luhrmann, and while he might have been advocating for sunscreen, I am advocating for profitability.  Understand profitability.  Marketing student groans are loudly heard in the classroom when anything remotely related to figures and profitability comes up; it is almost as if figures are solely for the accountants and not for the marketers.  Big mistake. As a marketer you will only succeed if you understand what drives profitability, if you understand how marketing drives business growth and if you understand the business impact of your marketing decisions.  For marketing to be the core of the company, marketing must drive the company, it must have the ideas to grow the company and it must remain competitive in a world of hyper competition.  Students, you need to view customers as assets that impact on shareholder value and you need to line internal systems up with customer value imperatives.  You must move beyond looking at customers as needs to be satisfied and move to regarding them as central to company success and profitability.  You must consider the impact of every decision that you make in the knowledge that the company is driven by those decisions.

So yes, “Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth, but trust me on the profitabililty”.

Written by Rose Leahy, Marketing lecturer at Cork Institute of Technology  and a collaborator with ThinkTank – a Strategic Marketing, Branding and Innovation Consultancy based in Cork, Ireland www.think-tank.ie

Hello. My name is Anna and I am a Millennial. I am part of the largest generation yet to exist. We populate Facebook and YouTube. We are social and always connected. We are armed with laptops, iPods and smart phones. We are Generation Y, or indeed Generation Y Not.

The Millennials are the “wired” generation and we don’t know how to be any other way. We’re a new breed of consumers and unfortunately most businesses are not prepared for us.  Businesses need to get to know the Millennials if they want to be relevant and successful in the future. Our global annual spending power exceeds $250 billion and we also influence another $50 million in purchases. Our generation has bigger potential purchasing power than the Baby Boomers and is set to supplant them as the most powerful economic force on planet earth.

So let me introduce you to the Millennials..

Generation Y or the Millennials is a name used to describe a generation born between 1977-1994. We are a demographic tsunami that is redefining the social, cultural and the business worlds. Internationally there are 78 million of us and at least 800,000 in Ireland. The largest and most prominent members of this group were born in the late 80’s and early 90’s.The Gen Y’s that are just over 20 years old are the ones to watch out for. They are starting to enter the workforce and will inherit the spending power of the Baby Boomers who are getting ready for retirement.

Gartner has referred to Gen Ys as “digital natives” because technology is part of our identity and most of us learned how to use computers at about the same time that we learned to read. The Millennials are social, peer-oriented, confident and empowered. We are “plugged in” 24/7, can source all the necessary information about your product in a matter of seconds and we will make sure to share it with our friends via Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, texting, blogging or instant messaging. Our generation is very good at multitasking so don’t be surprised if we use the above-mentioned media all at the same time. We expect instant gratification, instant access and for us being put “on hold” when it comes to interacting with your business is just not cool. The trick with the Millennials is that we can either “make or break” your product socially in less than 48 hours. We care about authentic brands and products and instantly know when we are being “sold to”. Just how prepared and willing is your business to interact with us?  When will you start adapting your business strategy to embrace the Millennials? Why not wait and see what your competitors will be doing? The answer is simple: First Mover Advantage. In such a small and economically challenged consumer market as the Irish one, you can’t afford to waste such an opportunity. You can’t afford not to market to the largest and potentially most influential segment of the market. Gen Y has a growing purchasing power and they love to spend, but only on cool, stylish and authentic products. Think of the iPod and the entire family of the Apple products. Apple doesn’t even need to invest in advertising, instead they concentrate on “keeping it real” with the Gen Y’s and constantly deliver innovative and slick products. The Gen Y’s create a viral buzz around them through texting, commenting, updating, sharing and blogging. If you think about it, any company of any size can avail of such a loyal following of Gen Y’s.

All you need to do is listen and interact with them in an honest and open way and they will show you their gratitude through spreading the word about you among their networks. Curiously, the influence of the Millennial generation extends beyond their cohort. Networking and Web 2.0 were driven by this group which in turn influenced other generations to adopt them too.

So why aren’t the old marketing tricks working for us? We are not better and not worse than the other generations, we are just Different. We come digitally enhanced. Peer recommendation and word-of-mouth are more important to this generation than the other traditional factors such as brand and corporate reputation. Every successful business needs to learn how to infiltrate into the ranks and speak the language of the Gen Y’s. 90% of them trust peer recommendations and only 14% trust advertisements. Here is another shocking statistic: If Facebook were a country, it would be the fourth largest in the world; 96% of the Millennials has joined a social network. Doesn’t this sound like a marketing gold mine? Shockingly most Irish businesses don’t see it that way. According to a Pan-European study conducted for Xerox a few years ago 40% of Irish companies have no plans to allow customers to purchase products or services online, 59% of firms said that they have no plans to provide online forums for customers to discuss their products and 52% said that they were not planning to monitor customer conversations on other websites.

In reality you can’t afford not to pay attention to the Millennials. Based on a bit of research and talking amongst other Millennials I’ve outlined a couple of key pointers to help you understand what makes us tick. They’ll help you create  loyal and long-lasting relationship with the Gen Y consumers.

1. Speak our language – In order to be able to connect with the Millennials you need to learn how to speak our language and discover what defines our lives. There is only one way to get a real insight into our community and that is to mix with us and actually talk to us. The only thing you will be spending is your time but I can guarantee that you will be surprised by how much inspiration and information you can gather from such a simple exercise.

2. Start engaging- The Gen Y’s are a new breed of consumers that can only be redefined as “producers”. We love to be constantly engaged with our favorite brands. We love to create, share, reinvent and rate so why not let us be your business “consultants”.  Challenge us to come up with a creative name for your new product or to take interesting and cool photos involving your products. Offer a prize for the winner and the Millennials will start engaging with your business.

3. Pay attention to branding – Most Millennials are very brand conscious. Not surprising for a generation that has grown up in the age of branding and has been the target of marketing messages since birth. Millennials love cool and authentic products and designs. Nobody likes a boring product, especially us. Invent a story and wrap it around your product and brand. Help us emotionally connect with your brand by telling a story that is genuine and is based on your reality and your passion.

4. Social animals – Gen Y’s are social and peer-oriented. We don’t listen to what the media has to say, we listen to our friends. I can’t stress enough how important it is for your business to have a Social Media presence. Let your business become a resident in the world populated by Gen Y’s. There are already more than 1.2 million Irish Facebook users and the numbers are growing. More people use FB than read most Irish dailies. It doesn’t cost anything to create a custom FB Fan Page for your business. Of course it will take time and effort to master this media but I can promise you that the Millennials like nothing more than being “friends” with their favorite brand on Facebook. It gives you limitless possibilities to get to know your customers and acquire new ones and receive up to date feedback on your product.

5. Make it personal – Two words worth remembering when dealing with the Millennials are: Customisation & Personalisation. We love having a choice when it comes to the design of the product. It can be as simple as choosing whether to receive updates via SMS or e-mail. Look at the example of how Lily O’Brien got creative with her chocolates. On their website they offer to frame your special photo on a box of selected chocolates. For me that’s one delicious offer!

6. Go green – As Millennials we love environmentally friendly products and companies. We are Green and we want you to be Green as well. According to recent research conducted by Maritz, 46% of the Gen Y’s interviewed said that they would pay more for environmentally friendly services and products.

7. Create experiences – Gen Y is an “experience” culture. We don’t want to be told how great your product is, we want to experience it. We love contests, prizes, give-aways, street promotions, social events and the more the better. Such experiences will give them us motive to create a buzz around your product and spread the word to our friends.

Businesses will have to fundamentally change their strategies in order to be embrace and attract the Millennials. This process can be both daunting and challenging for many businesses but as all optimistic Millennials – we like to view it from a different perspective. This is your chance to be creative and fresh. It’s an opportunity to build a loyal following of Millennials and grow together with them.

Written by Anna Sablovscaia – University College Cork Commerce Student and Marketing Intern at ThinkTank