Press Coverage
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Marketing Mindsets
When it comes to coming up with new ideas and products, we know that New
Zealanders are great innovators but are we applying the same “can-do”
spirit to our marketing efforts overseas?
The bad news is we are not doing this enough.
So believes US-based Andy Lark, expatriate New Zealander, leading US marketing
expert and founder of GNOK (Global Network of Kiwis), who still gets frustrated
by how a number of New Zealand companies are solely focusing their marketing
efforts on attending overseas trade shows.
While visiting New Zealand recently, the Sun Microsystems vice-president of
global communications and marketing came across many Kiwi companies doing
this.
The problem is, he says, trade shows can be a waste of money and companies
are going there “in the vain hope that some guy is going to walk by their
booth in the back hall of a large trade show and try to start business with
them”.
The good news is it has never been easier for our small companies to foot
it with US giants.
We can learn from innovative branders like Red Bull who, he says, built
their global profile with an advertising budget of just $100,000. He says
the company’s phenomenal success would have left the marketers at Coca-Cola,
with a $1 billion budget, scratching their heads.
Another model for New Zealand companies to follow is google.com, the world’s
largest search engine. “Ever seen a google ad?..ever been touched by
a Google marketing campaign?”
Andy Lark asked an audience at a SmartNet Workshop presentation in Auckland
on May 29. “Of course not, Google is basically one guy and 2,500 Linux
servers at $240 a piece”, further proof that it doesn’t take a lot
of money to compete. “What they did was build the largest community of
websites in the world.”
This new breed of marketers has paved the way for a fundamental shift in marketing
direction that is happening now. The key lesson for New Zealand companies
is that most great technology brands are no longer built on traditional advertising,
PR or big direct mail campaigns. They are built more simply on engaging with
the customer and this can be done cheaply and efficiently via the World Wide
Web. And you can do it before the product goes to market, thereby getting
valuable feedback from potential customers.
He says even big companies are changing tack, including Sun Microsystems.
“We’re spending less on marketing because we are getting cleverer…
and we are adopting strategies that have been applied by people like Google
and Red Bull.
“So actually building and understanding the marketing ecosystem that’s
around the customer is becoming more important than marketing to your customer.”
The new style of marketing provides exciting opportunities for innovative
New Zealand companies because scale is no longer an advantage. “What
we have in New Zealand is a tremendous place of talent… the last big
garage in the world… a series of garages building great technology.”
The same characteristics that make Kiwis great innovators - their flexibility, their ability to adapt due to a lack of resources and their speed in getting products and services to market - can now be put to use in small-scale innovative marketing strategies.