Adept Research in Kew, Victoria | Consulting agency

Adept Research

Locality: Kew, Victoria

Phone: +61 3 9836 6761

Address: 236/16 Cotham Road 3101 Kew, VIC, Australia

Website: http://www.adeptresearch.com.au/

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24.01.2022 Another day another attack on marketers. The latest casualty is Joe Pollard. By all accounts a very well regarded marketing head at Telstra. One of her industry colleges, Telsyte managing director Foad Fadaghi, summed it up succinctly. Joe Pollard leaving is probably the biggest shock of all, she has a very good reputation as a good leader and a solid understanding of the digital environment. ... So how did this happen? One of the biggest problems marketers face today is not marketing. Yes you read that correctly. It is operations and customer service. Telstra recently experienced some outages which not only disrupted and inconvenienced its customer base on a wide scale, it also severely damaged the brand. Every time this happens people like Joe Pollard and her marketing team have to respond in crisis mode to try and stop the reputational (and financial) bleeding. I’ll bet there some days when Joe thought she was the CMO (chief medical officer) in an emergency ward in a hospital, and not the CMO (chief marketing officer). As we are now in the customer service era, we need to understand that everyone in an organisation has what I will term a marketing support role. So if they stuff up, marketing has to pick up the pieces. This only make the marketing task that much harder. I noticed that Joe’s role will be abolished and so the marketing function at Telstra (such as it now is) will be spread across the entire organisation. Hence my title of: Marketers becoming an endangered species. Here are the obvious risks involved for Telstra: Competing factions within Telstra for marketing resources, leading to breakdowns in communication and teamwork. Confusing and contradictory marketing / branding messages, so a loss of brand equity. The best people will leave, because they can. So all the corporate marketing memory goes out the door. Optus, TPG and Vodafone will love this! They will probably take on some of these people. Telstra’s larger and valuable corporate customers will get nervous, and we all know how that will end. Whether the current Telstra CEO or the new managers he has appointed actually get this is a moot point. Until and unless they re embrace marketing and support it with a better level of operational performance, The Australian Newspaper’s John Durie’s comments today about Telstra shifting the deckchairs on the Titanic will keep on resonating. I think you can see where I am going here. Happily I do not own Telstra shares.

22.01.2022 RESPONDING TO RITSON Some of you will have read the marketing article by Mark Ritson in the media section of yesterday’s Australian Newspaper. Now Mark has written a number of insightful articles on the state of marketing in Australia recently, and yesterday was his best yet. Below is an excerpt from his article that illustrates what the real issue is. ... There is no polite way to say this but most big brands in this country are being run without any proper marketing strategy. Instead, those in charge delight in the latest gimmicks and tactics yet remain unable to articulate their target segments beyond the inane and entirely ridiculous concept of millennials while the positioning for their brands are little more than random straplines. The focus on digital and the latest hot technology has resulted in all too many Australian companies putting the tactical cart in front of the strategic horse. Now being well qualified and experienced marketers, I am sure you would all appreciated Mark’s point here. Do you know what is actually happening with your marketing strategy? Firstly is your strategy up to date? Is it built around having a proactive approach? Or are you stuck in reaction mode always being buffeted by the next marketing or branding issue? Are you still confident in your marketing decisions? Is the market behaving the way you think (or hope) it is? Or have you recently taken on a new marketing role only to discover (to your horror) that there is no marketing strategy in place at all? Now we all know that good information and understanding of your market, both in general terms and for specific target segments, is the most important element in a successful marketing campaign. So ask yourselves, when was the last time you conducted some form of market research to take the pulse and conduct a marketing health check for your business and your brand? From my own experience with a number of clients that I have worked with quite recently, the answer is: probably not for a long time. Is this you? If you are thinking yes, then now is the time to get moving on this. Remember your competition won’t stand still and wait for you! Duncan Buchanan Director of Adept Research. www.adeptresearch.com.au

19.01.2022 Opinion Polls - Myth Versus Reality Now that the federal election is over, the questions about the failure of the opinion polls to predict the final result have started. So lets look at how this all happened. As a background, over recent years the two main polling companies (IPSOS and Newspoll) have for the most part got their predictions pretty spot on. For example, earlier this year the Newspoll very accurately predicted the result of the NSW state election. OK. So what hap...pened this time? Here are my reasons on what happened and why: Australia is becoming increasingly a politically diverse country, so for example, an issue such as the Adani Coal Mine will play out differently in Queensland than it would here in Victoria. The problem is that the main pollsters typically survey the entire country, so unless their sample is large enough, it is possible that the issues such as this one would not have become as obvious as they should have done. In NSW they were only polling in one state on a range of local parties and local issues. So a more homogeneous political population to draw their sample from. Then we get what is called non response error.This occurs when large sections of the population are not, or cannot, be effectively sampled and surveyed. So the representative quality of the sample declines. This has occurred before on recent occasions, think Trump and Brexit. The most likely cause for this problem is the decline in the number of landlines, as these people cannot easily be located. Let alone contacted for a survey. Robo polling doesn’t help either. As you are not talking to real person you can literally say anything you like when you key in your response. We find it harder to lie to people, so if people said one thing to the robo poll and then voted differently, that should not come as a surprise. It appears that the major parties were picking up trends in for example Queensland, that the main pollsters missed. Now this may just be the political parties being wise after the event, but let us take them at their word. So they saw something the main pollsters missed. Incidentally the exit polls were also very wrong as well. Here we bring stratified sampling in to play. This is a sampling method where we drill down into a specific location or strata. For this purpose we can look at individual electorates as strata areas and if these were sampled and surveyed individually, then we get a more detailed picture. As long as the sample was of a reasonable size, so around 500 people, then the chances of accurate polling are very good. So if the major parties did take this approach they would have clearer picture than the mainstream poster who were more focussed on the bigger picture across the nation. Duncan Buchanan is the Director of Adept Research and a Fellow with the Australian Marketing Institute.

11.01.2022 The 21st Century Salesperson No doubt we have all had mixed experiences with sales people. Some have been appalling for all the obvious reasons. But others have... been so good that not only do we go back to that particular store, but we then seek out that same sales person again because we trust them to look after us. That got me thinkingwhy those salespeople? I believe the answer is more than just encountering pleasant and knowledgeable person in front of us in the store. Important as that is. These successful people are also our problem solvers. They quickly get their heads around who we are and what we need. Then they come up with one or more solutions to our problem. So they play the role of a consultant to us. This role can be educational, functional or psychological. Educational Providing the knowledge not just of the products and services available, but also the advice on which product or service choices work best for that potential customer. Functional We all know that nearly all consumer purchases (and some business purchases) are emotionally driven. We don’t just by the product or service these days; we buy a solution to our needs. Those needs may be functional, technical, or experienced based. For example the experience may be spiritual such as walking the Kokoda Track, but the selection of clothing and footwear for such a physically various exercise is an important buying decision. So it is both technical and practical. So if someone went into one of the outdoor specialty shops such as for example, Katmandu, then the walker may be highly dependant on the sales person to help them selection the right footwear. Especially if they have not purchased this type of gear before. Psychological Being able to make the potential buyer emotionally comfortable with their purchase is crucial here. Especially as the person will spend a reasonably large amount of money and if the purchase goes wrong, then experience can be miserable indeed. It is vital to avoid cognitive dissonance here; as we all know how quickly negative word of mouth can spread. Therefore the recruiting and training of what we would consider suitable sales staff is vital. Attitude and people skills really do matter more than ever these days. I say this because if the product is just a transactional commodity such as an airline ticked purchased online, then sales people do not matter at all. But if an experienced travel agent can prepare a good quality holiday package itinerary for you, you may well be prepared to spend more on airfares (than you originally intended) for a better airline and seating package as part of that same itinerary. I still remember back in 2013 when someone in one of my focus groups described sales people as: glorified order takers and basically clueless. That person was buying more and more online, not just for a lower price and the convenience of home delivery, but because of frustration with poor quality sales service. Products and services are splitting into two groups. Those that are basic transactional commodities, and those that deliver an enhanced experience for the customer. If the latter applies to you either as a customer or as a provider, you know what I mean. NEXT WEEK I will talk about clarity and customer insights so as to best understand these types of experienced focused customers and how to anticipate their needs.

11.01.2022 The Role of CEO’s in Marketing A lot has been said recently about how CEO’s impact on the marketing of their companies. This tends to polarise into really supportive of marketing within their companies, by resourcing it properly and supporting the marketing strategy etc.. If you look around the world you see plenty of examples of this. Think Virgin and Sir Richard Branson, among others. As compared to damaging the marketing, by either interfering too much, or by simply starvi...ng marketing of the resources it needs. Recently Mark Ritson wrote in The Australian that marketers who were frustrated with their CEO’s should go elsewhere. I would be cautious about this. I think marketing managers need to look at their situation objectively, and even consult with a trusted outside confidant, before making this type of decision. But I can understand the frustration of some marketers. I can think of one example around 10 years ago when I was doing market research for an Ad Agency, it's client was a middle sized Telco. The telco's marketing team and the agency had me do some focus group research which gave them very clear and credible insights into what to do and why. The the clueless CEO changed everything! The Ad Agency then find fired the client in frustration. You read that correctly. Fortunately the board woke up to all this and subsequently fired the CEO. The replacement arranged for the marketing team to made peace with the agency and they all got back together. Using my research, the original campaign was reinstated with great success. The moral of the story here is that even bad CEO decisions can be fixed, if action is taken quickly. Now for the good news! Fast forward to this year and I found myself working with a client contact and a very astute CEO who really understood marketing. They both trusted my findings and even asked for a small amount of follow up research with me. That research (and the marketing that followed it) are having a positive impact right now. So don’t let a few non marketing CEO’s put us marketers off our game.

09.01.2022 People and customer service. They are the secret to marketing success. I now only use people whenever possible. My faith in technology as the new utopia is fading fast.

04.01.2022 Have The Opinion Polls Recovered Their Credibility? Now that the recent Western Australian state election is all wrapped up, lets revisit the accuracy of opinion polls. The Newspoll for The Australian accurately predicted the result several weeks ago. How come they got this so accurate, when many other opinion polls leading up to elections both here and overseas in recent times got it so wrong. You can go to my Linkedin page to see my previous articles on this subject. https:...//www.linkedin.com//opinion-polls-myth-versus-reali/ I suggest that the main reasons are twofold: That the pollsters have now developed ways to reduce the types of sampling errors that bedevilled their earlier polling attempts. In particular the decline in people using land lines. The most logical candidate here is on line polling. If this is done properly, then the results can be very robust and reliable. As I can confirm from my own professional experience when using this method many times in the past. That there was a strong and palpable tide of political support for the incumbent ALP government in general, and the premier Mark McGowan in particular. So voters could feel comfortable say to the pollsters who they were supporting. In some elections in the past, the voters would often say one thing to the pollsters, but then vote differently on election day. Clearly that did nor happen here. Based on the above the Newspoll can remain confident on its accuracy in state elections (they called the 2019 NSW state election correctly) but might have to be a bit more careful with federal elections, due to the greater level of diversity across the entire country. What do you think? I look forward to your replies and comments.