Essential Reading for Marketing & Business Professionals

Friday July 18th 2008

Insights in this issue:
* Recession, what recession?
* Tapping the Power of Social Networking
* GOOGLE "has the best reputation"
* The 5th Annual Privacy & Data Protection UK 2008 Conference

It seems likely that the UK is slipping
into recession - but is this bad news for
you? We look at how you can still make hay
with you marketing budget. Social Networking
is much talked about but little used as a
marketing tool in the UK. The latest US
conference suggests that it can be highly
effective for virtually any product in any
area.
Google is the most admired company
in the US - having knocked Microsoft off this
particular perch. Interestingly two of the
most ethical companies in the US - Johnson &
Johnson and 3M both feature in the top 10.
Perhaps consumers are tiring of companies
that take advantage of our goodwill - an
accusation that can fairly, in our view, be
aimed at Microsoft.

James Pearson - Editor

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Recession, what recession?

Are the doomsayers right? Is there a
recession, will there be one? And what can we
poor marketers do about it? Well we have
produced a guide to a) beating the downturn
if there is one and b) actually profiting
from it.

You may be thinking "how can you beat the
market?" Well actually it is simple. Firstly
there is no such thing as "the market" -
rather there are a near infinite number of
niches and some experience recession - for
example private housebuilding, while others
do not - for example social housing is
absolutely booming.
Consumers too are far from uniform. Yes the
150,000 people made redundant over the last
quarter and anyone who uses oil to heat their
homes are certainly feeling a major pinch.
But those on upper quartile incomes - broadly
anyone earning over £40,000 and over 50 with
no children in full-time education and who
have not moved home for more than five years
or changed jobs for at least ten are feeling
pretty smug. Their disposable income shot up
after the kids moved out, they have loads of
equity in their house despite falling prices
and their jobs are pretty secure because
redundancy is expensive for their employers
and in a recession employers prefer
experience over youth anyway!

We have built a business-to-business and a
business-to-consumer segmentation that are
each designed to specifically identify those
segments in your markets that are
"recession-proof". The two indexes are
already proving themselves in some of the
UK's leading companies and provide a powerful
additional tool for any marketer. To find out
more email tim.beadle@mieurope.eu

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Tapping the Power of Social Networking

Many have been talking about utilising Social
Networing in their marketing mix but few
companies have yet to make much effective use
of it. However that is now starting to
change, especially in the US. At the recent
Supernova conference, organised by Wharton
University, Charlene Li of Forrester Research
highlighted a number of examples of companies
making good use of Social Networking tools -
from the hip and trendy like Mini to the
downright fusty like Ernst & Young. Even
petfoods companies are getting in on the act
as well as the technology savvy such as
Hewlett-Packard.

Part of the reason that Social Networking is
now being taken seriously is that a new class
of person is entering the mass consumer
market. Anyone who completed their education
since 2000 has experienced a collaborative
style of studying where useful information on
the web was shared. Those people are now
applying that to their behaviour as
consumers. As a senior Google executive
pointed out ""the process of information
discovery is changing from a solitary
activity to a communal activity,"

Click here to read the article in full

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GOOGLE "has the best reputation"

The 2007 Harris Interactive Reputation
Quotient survey shows the web search leader
now heads the league of America's most
trusted companies, having moved up from
fourth place in last years' survey.

Microsoft, last years' winner has fallen to
10th, behind Honda which climbed from 14th to
9th. We suspect that the reason for
Microsoft's decline is the poor performance
of Vista. Google, on the other hand can
almost do no wrong at the moment. The issues
of censorship in China have vanished and at
the moment consumers accept that it is not
"being evil"!

The full top ten list is as follows (with
last year's position in parentheses):

1. Google (4)

2. Johnson & Johnson (2)

3. Intel (16)

4. General Mills (6)

5. Kraft Foods (not listed)

6. Berkshire Hathaway (21)

7. 3M (3)

8. Coca-Cola (5)

9. Honda (14)

10. Microsoft (1)

The phone survey of 7,000 consumers, followed
by 20,000 online interviews, asked them to
rate companies' reputations in six
categories: emotional appeal, products and
services, social responsibility, vision and
leadership, workplace environment and
financial performance.

Robert Fronk, senior consultant at Harris
Interactive said: "The positive perception of
how you treat your employees, your
corporate-social-responsibility efforts, and
your products and services and the amount of
media that can generate probably trumps any
adspend they would ever want to make."

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The 5th Annual Privacy & Data Protection UK 2008 Conference

"Data Protection:
CRM, Web 2.0 & Social Networking "
3rd of September 2008 4th of September 2008
The Law Society, London

This year's event is spread over two days -
Day 1 being for the lawyers and compliance
officers with Day 2 being devoted to
marketers. It features a fascinating lineup
of speakers and if past years are anything to
go by, this really is a "must attend"
conference for anyone concerned with managing
CRM, Web 2.0 initiatives and social networking.

There is a discount of £50 for readers of
Insight making the event, at just £300
extremely good value. To download the full
Agenda and booking form, just click on the
link below.

Click here for the full Agenda