The Nation : Monday February 15th, 2010
Valentine's Day and Chinese New Year celebrations have just passed by. Somehow or other, this year our economic outlook has started to stabilise relative to the fear in 2009.Things are looking up and the momentum is swinging towards the plus sign, but growth remains elusive.
Since January, most businesses seemed to echo sighs of relief. The marketing and marketing communications media industries, both traditional and non-traditional, have been buzzing with campaign after campaign.
We should not be any worse off than in the Tom Yum Kung period or the recession of 2009.
I am merely saying from my hot seat that, "things will get better this year even though it does not necessary mean it's going to be great".
Like at many other companies, I will continue to trim off the excess fat, but I will at the same time invest more in people, tools and services well in advance to make sure that the return on these investments will bring more value to clients and the company.
Coming out of recession with a new mindset is a necessity for all leaders - whether politicians or businessmen, or us as consumers.
The fact remains that growth remains elusive, the sky is still cloudy and the new norm is here for us to deal with in a period of economic uncertainty. We absolutely need to redefine our goals, our services, our brands' value to our consumers and our customers.
The god of recession did not spare anyone, as I said once, but we can learn a lot yet again from 2009's experiences.
We learn how to grab the chance to become more valuable as a company to our clients, who were at times desperately looking for help in rethinking their business and marketing strategy in order to give consumers good reasons to spend during the economic downturn. Even during the upturns as well, because of competitive market forces and the fast shifting of our consumers' insight, their media viewing and their social behavior.
Evidence is clear and proven again in basic relationship marketing that many brands that were consistently giving innovative value and benefits and relevance hype, emerged on top and managed to grow while their industry showed a drop in growth and consumption.
The bottom line in marketing your way out of recession boils down to honing your brand relationship with consumers.
The economic environmnet has helped us frame a new direction to stay head of chenges in consumer behavior. They also were affected and posibly reframed their choices of brands, products and services.
Consumers in the post-recession era may become even more demanding and digital and cable-minded and depend a lot on search engines to "google" for choices of brands and "tweet" their brand choices or brand rejections to the world. The holistic marketing model may as well include the options of "Plan A, for good times" and "Plan B, for bad times", to be well equipped for any economic or financial uncertainty.
Emerging from recession is the amazing Thailand media landscape, like cable services with hundreds of channels, more than 600 radio stations and the rapid growth of social-network marketing both online and via satellite and cable.
The next generation of media and search engines will facilitate more expectations and more choices. The convergence of tecknology of new media services will became more vital to marketing communities. The launched of the iPad and the app store in the Android system did not reflect only technology or gadgets. They are indicative of conversational media that no marketers or brands can afford to ignore despite the questions regarding measurement in terms of return on investment.
At the other end of the amazing social network through satellite and cable in our country, if you recall "Pa Cheng", the old Thai lady who primitively brewed magic potions or medicinal home remedies that cured (perception) the desperate group of people and lured them as her loyal customrs, or the Pa Cheng network via cable and workd of mouth in the traditional fashion.
The influx of cable gave Pa Cheng the chance to have her own TV programme - yes, the old lady was a one-woman show - not like Oprah Winfrey, but good enough to draw many hopeful people in the lower socio-economic stratum to buy and most of all believe in her non-branded magic potion, which was made from god knows what !
Both social networking, like Twitter, Facebook, and these cable services, and freedom are creating an impact on our marketing communications world both above and under the ground. The technology is changing dramatically and the general population is becoming more IT-literate, multi-tasking and multimensional.
The impact is big on the consumer behavior of all socio-economic classes in our country. The question is, how many more will there be like Pa Cheng, or Poo Dang - the fertiliser network - and how many more like Steve Jobs, Facebook and tweet me please?
My focus this year will be devoted to bringing backroom digital talents into front line and limelight alongside the marketing strategist and marcom solutions.
We now have the ideas, we have the media, we have the technology and we have the information. What's left is the how and what is the hook to capture our elusive consumers,
Living and working is extraordinary, don't miss it.
Kiiti Chambundabongse
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