New chapter, new decade, same rules

New decade, a new marketing philosophy and new adventure for me! The time has come for me to say goodbye to Danone at the end of December. Looking back at the decade and my own professional journey over the last ten years I’ve had the honour to work at some amazing companies and with some amazing people, far too many to mention in this little post but you all know who you are! Everywhere I’ve been I’ve learnt so much from procurement and trading to brand building, media planning and strategy and of course personal leadership and cultural behaviours and beliefs. So, as this decade draws to an end and a I close a chapter of my own I had a little think about a common theme across my entire career which is the unicorn question I get asked on a weekly basis: How much money should I invest in marketing and where?

In the last few months I’ve looked back and thought about the constant discussion which goes on within large corporations around their marketing investment at large and their media investment specifically. What is the right level of investment and the right mix of channels? There’s a plethora of tools and systems you can use to do this and every agency has their own, but here’s my own very basic starting point if you have no data or econometric modelling to go by in order to decide your investment. 

First step, particularly if you’re in FMCG chances are your consumers are not 100% loyal to your brand which means a rather heavy marketing investment to ensure consumers are both aware and favour your brand is probably warranted for. In general, 10% over sales is the starting point for most major FMCGs, but this is just a rule of thumb. Once you’ve secured this money you naturally still have a lot of work to be done on your consumer segmentation as communication to everyone with eyes and ears may not be the most efficient approach. I recently came across a small one person start up in the B2B market and although their marketing investment is relatively tiny, without realising it they had ended up broadly spending 10% of their overall turnover on marketing.

Secondly if we got this far how much is the production vs. working media is relevant? My rule of thumb is you should land on somewhere around 80/20, that’s 80% working media which these days absolutely include influencers and e-com search for instance. The simple premise here, as many people argue it should be a more even split because there are more channels to produce content for etc., is that the working part is ensuring consumers actually see your brand, and if no one even sees your brand…can you then say you’re having a proper impact? Of course, 80/20 is an incredibly broad stroke, but perhaps start from the point, whatever communication I produce can I ensure sufficient level of relevant people see this?

Lastly, it’s all about the long and the short of it. I can only say Les Binet and Peter Field put it better than anyone else did with their IPA research “The Long and The Short of it” when they prove for instance the success of a brand like Dove. If you don’t want to read Binet and Fields work then just check out Mark Ritson’s Effie video with the same case. In short Binet/Field argue that it should be 60% brand communication vs. 40% performance, and on top of that they make many more very valuable observations in their research, so just read it! The line of 60/40 split is never exact, given hopefully a brands communication is so amazing the lines blur. Execution plays a huge role here naturally, and if you can only master a couple of different channels because of time constraint and perhaps access to talent in your team then go for this! I would also consider the longevity of using one channel, as we all know, starting a twitter handle is a couple of minutes of work, making it impactful probably a couple of years.

As we are aware many of the decisions are led by data and measurement and also personal beliefs, organisational realities and many other factors but above concepts in my experience is minimally a starting point to build out brand plans if you are truly starting from scratch so even before you start figuring out in detail your requirements of social vs. search or e-com data acquisition just start with above fundamental concept. The on top of this comes amazing creative work, fantastic teams that make marketing strategies come to life and the right technology and measurement to make it come to life.

In the new year I want to share this experience and knowledge with brands and companies out there, and as such my new adventure in 2020 will be to start up a new business together with a partner – one of the best in the business. We will help brand in planning, buying, operations and measurement but most importantly of all to bring the passion and excellence back in the media craft. If you want to hear more send me a DM as it’ll be an exciting journey.

With this little note I’m checking out for this year and heading off for some sun and beach time and New Year’s celebrations and looking forward to seeing everyone in the new year for new and exciting adventures!