18%: Proportion of TV advertising campaigns generating positive ROI – Deutsche Bank study reported in the Economist, ‘Future of advertising’
54 cents: Average return in sales for every $1 spent on advertising – Clancy and Stone, ‘Don’t blame the metrics’
256%: The increase in TV advertising costs (CPM) in the past decade – figures reported in Garfield, R (2005) ‘Chaos scenario’, Ad Age, 13 April
84%: Proportion of B2B marketing campaigns resulting in falling sales – Clancy and Stone, ‘Don’t blame the metrics’
100%: The increase needed in advertising spend to add 1-2% in sales – UCLA study findings reported in Clancy and Stone, ‘Don’t blame the metrics’
14% Proportion of people who trust advertising information – Annual Gallup poll on professional honesty and trustworthiness, figure cited in Ries, A. and Ries, L. (2002) The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR. New York: HarperCollins
90%: Proportion of people who can skip TV ads who do skip TV ads – MPG Study 2004 reported in Carton, S. (2004) ‘Advertising is more than just TV commercials’ ClickZ, 18 October
80% Market share of video recorders with ad skipping technology in 2008 – Jupiter Research (2004) forecasts reported in Carton, ‘More than just TV commercials
95%: The failure rate for new product introductions – ACNeilsen BASES and Ernst & Young study reported in Clancy and Stone, ‘Don’t blame the metrics’
When I read these figures on http://brainsonfire.com/blog/ I remembered that I bumped into these figures already in the beginning of 2006. Connected Marketing http://www.connectedmarketing.org/book/index.html was one of the first books I read on my way of changing our whole marketing approach. The process is still ongoing. It hit me just like a thunder and encouraged me to do what I had already in mind for quite some time.
The book is edited by Justin Kirby and Paul Marsden, and it includes a foreword by Emanuel Rosen. Through a wide range of solutions and case studies from the coalface, presented by 17 opinion-leading academics, consultants and practitioners from around the world, Connected Marketing demystifies viral, buzz and word of mouth marketing. It also demonstrates that managing successful connected marketing activity is possible through an organized series of decisions and approaches – it’s not a hit-or-miss quest for that one groundbreaking idea.
Especially small businesses like www.biestmilch.com is one, should seriously consider the, let’s say, intimate way to connect with people beyond their reach. The years passed proved that biestmilch needs sensitive and authentic communication. If one does a decent reliable job in this respect, I think one can connect with a lot of people, still a niche but a solid base to start out from. Whether one day a virus is going to spread into the mass market, I think, nobody can predict it. Probabilities do, of course, apply, but remain vague at the end for the indiviual business.
Concerning our business with biestmilch, I know only one thing: Up to now nobody world-wide really succeeded to build a market for this extremely wonderful and efficacious substance. Many went bankrupt, after having been carried away by a hype of unrealistic visions and timelines. Why?
Have they all been too impatient, didn’t they understand the narrative of their own product or didn’t they know how to tell it? Or didn’t they tell it long enough? Or was it simply a question of money? Perhaps a little bit of everything?
Regardless, I think biestmilch is the product/substance for a word of mouth approach, a story-telling approach with scientific and an emotional leads, sensitive things need a sensitive a approach, and a lot of patience…to build up confidence. Biestmilch is definitely such a weird thing.
