The Tokyo Olympics are upon us. Controversial. Debated. Not wanted by the great majority of Japanese according to most polls. The over-arching debate has been, of course, will it be worthwhile. A classic case of the intersection of people, brands, and media. So being a BIBLIOSEXUAL I thought it appropriate to dig in to how the Games would affect the image of Japan and especially its brands. So, Part 1: I did a deep dive into the view a few key SE Asia countries and the rest of the world had of Japanese Brands before the Games. Then in a month I will revisit and see if there is much change. To begin, Japanese Brands are still doing fine. Download PDF below to read full article:
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Our ongoing series of Lead Talks has only reinforced our belief that, as 2020 has highlighted how fragile we are, the tone and style of communication should be more compassionate, more humane and also more relevant. People are refocusing on very personal and human needs like health, hygiene, relationships and care, so the tone of communication should be complementary and also reflect a more human touch.
Read More At: https://ibtbd.net/perks-of-storytelling For more click here: @marketingfuturesbd
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All I wanted was a T-shirt souvenir but alas there was none. It was the end of another wonderful trip to Dhaka. The meetings had been good, the presentations I had done had gone well, the hospitality as generous as it always is in Bangladesh, I had seen a lot of old friends and made many new ones. As any frequent traveler does I left for the airport with plenty of time to spare, “just in case”, and inevitably ended up getting there early with time to kill. Rather than go to a lounge or café I decided to shop. My son had his birthday coming up and he loves wearing and collecting t-shirts. It sounds like a simple enough thing. I wandered around all the shops, looked at some cheap shoes, a few decorative pieces, less than spectacular duty-free shops, and various stores selling clothes. All I wanted was an XXL (my son is a big man now) T-shirt with some interesting Bangladesh design or logo on it. NONE!! A country that makes 80% of its exports from garments, that is the second-largest garment industry in the world. But no good looking, easy- to find, a stylish T-shirt souvenir at the airport. It got me thinking. Read More at: http://ibtbd.net/where-is-the-t-shirt/ Age. Experience. Lot’s of stories. You get to a point in life when these three inevitably mean people start asking for advice. Maybe for the wrong reasons, maybe just to be nice, maybe because they are desperate for advice. I am sure any of you who have reached a certain birthday or level of professional standing will have been asked for “magic elixir’s”. Someone comes up to you after you have given a presentation or chaired a meeting or been part of a brainstorming session and … “wow that was interesting, how did you get started in this” or “how do you know that?” or “I am just starting out, what books do you suggest I read?” or something similar.
Maybe it is because I spent the first decade of my working life as a librarian, or because I have been talking about the idea behind the word and decided to call my consultancy Bibliosexual but that last question pops up a lot. Or probably it is just that people like to have bibliographies of books they can say they have read when they are asked the same question. Whatever the reason, I have indeed been asked many times for suggested books to read. And inevitably who ever asks gets a couple of surprises. Because my reading has been eclectic and catholic and random. The ideas that have helped form the basis of my knowledge of marketing, market research, insights development, and strategy planning come less from textbooks and more from reading that has allowed me to (maybe) see the world in a broader way. Read More At: https://www.researchworld.com/framing-thinking-6-books-that-made-a-difference/ This is Sweathead with Mark Pollard (@markpollard), a podcast where we discuss strategy and ideas - what these things are, how to get good at them, and how to earn money from being good at them.
Listen Here:https://anchor.fm/sweathead-with-mark-pollard/episodes/Getting-Beyond-Stereotypes---Dave-McCaughan--CSO-e3jf20 Is it me or does the passing of big seasonal celebrations bring both disappointment and relief? I love the festivities, the food and mood, but don’t really want it to go on all the time.
A bit like the advertising of the season. It has become part of Christmas, Ramadan and Chinese New Year to look forward to what brands can do. But I am sure we don’t really want that all the time. Like the season itself they are too full of emotion, formality and an expectation to be great all the time. Now I know many readers of Mumbrella like to heckle the paucity of originality in CNY advertising. Every year, we hear: “Where is the John Lewis of Asia?” Read More At:www.mumbrella.asia/2019/02/the-verdict-on-the-chinese-new-year-ads-of-2019-why-is-fun-such-a-rare-commodity Marketing Futures is an initiative of Ideamax Creatives limited. It is a platform which is all about shaping marketing success for Bangladesh businesses by bringing the global best practice to the market through workshops and seminars that provide real experiences, real exercises, real advice from globally experienced practitioners.
Not just speeches … real interaction, real participation, real learning! Marketing Futures is an initiative to shape marketers for tomorrow to face the challenges that we cannot comprehend today. This will be done by bringing in international expertise, experience, and examples of today and tomorrows marketing communications to smart marketers in Bangladesh. Focused on marketing communication and it’s adoption of technologies, digital tools, integrated planning, and storytelling, Marketing Futures is the platform providing leading-edge training programs, workshops, seminars, brand consultancy and social learning. Recently, it organised Research Futures, a workshop event for marketers. ICE Business Times was a partner THE ALLEGORY OF MAKING COMMERCE MAGIC Could you detail the emergence of storytelling and the connections it makes? Well, storytelling is nothing new of course. It is literally as old as recorded history and way beyond that. Storytelling in business has been used in all civilisations. Of course, as with most modern marketing techniques, the versions of storytelling we use in marketing really took off in the European Renaissance. That is when we saw the massive use of the times best storytellers commercially hired to tell stories on behalf of businessmen and political leaders. Most of the great artists of the time were hired to create stories that influenced audiences about the power, influence, strength of those sponsors. Read More At: http://ibtbd.net/market-metrics-making-changing-future-business-business/ LESSON 6: PICK TACTICS THAT WILL BRING ALIVE YOUR STRATEGY, DON’T PICK TACTICS BECAUSE MAGAZINES LIKE THIS ONE ARE TALKING ABOUT THEM A LOT.
For example, using a celebrity, or influencers, or KOLs (key opinion leaders) are all tactics. Variations of the same idea. You want to use the importance of individuals to bring attention to your offer. Regardless of strategy one of these tactics may play a role : Celebrity … using really famous faces and names gets quick awareness. It’s the tactic of “attraction”. It can be used to help bring all kinds of strategies alive. It can be used in all kinds of mediums. Often you hear criticism like “yeah, but it is lazy thinking and uncreative”. Often true. Using the most famous celebrity you can afford is just dumb. Finding a celebrity that reflects what your brand stands for and can add understanding of brand values while getting attention is great. Go look at Nespresso and George Clooney, a beautiful example of a brand character being projected through a globally recognized face. Most commonly and effectively used in strategies like “Look at me” or “We have a distinct style”. Influencers … using people who have gained influence with your key audience. We get confused by thinking “influencer” is a product of the “social media” age. Not true. Using influencers is as old as marketing ( 1,000 of years ). But what is easier now is tactically finding different influencers for each of your current and potential audiences. Again don’t think “let’s pay this one influencer a lot and we can get her half million followers”. Think “who are our different audiences, which influencers are right to talk to each audience, how can that influencer add value to our strategy?”. It is a niche tactic or series of niche tactics best used when you want to bring alive a strategy like “we get you and your interests”. Read more at: http://ibtbd.net/lesson-6/ A look into Thailand's brand in the context of its South East Asia neighbours. Thailand is a brand. Like all brands, Thailand exists in a competitive world. Thai business people doing business internally or for export, foreign companies exploring or trying to break into the Thailand market — all must consider what the competition is doing and where their target market stands against those competitors.
In order to help a range of clients prioritise what matters about the Thailand brand, Ai.agency undertook a new look at the country in the context of its South East Asia neighbours. To undertake the research we applied Significance Systems’ Significance Suite — online products which perform real-time research. These tools search the whole of the internet around the chosen subject area, analyse all relevant content, then apply quantitative narrative analysis to identify and understand the key narratives driving engagement with that subject. Or in other words: Significance Suite provides access to a bias-free machine expert, which reads everything relevant to a subject and then can tell us what really matters. We used the platform to look at Thailand in comparison with Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia. The following is a short summary of some of the results with links to fuller reports. Read More at: greenbookblog.org/2018/02/19/country-brands-the-narratives-which-drive-brand-thailand-and-its-competitors/ Asia ad land veteran and now start-up boss Dave McCaughan laments the lack of spark and insight in the recent spate of campaigns celebrating arguably Singapore's biggest holiday We live by and for special events. Life is mostly humdrum. Gathering together makes us happy. Family moments are special moments. Chinese New Year is a time for family (replace and fill in with Christmas, Ramadan, Diwali, or your own preferred annual cultural celebration). You have all seen the brief. You have all seen ‘insights’ that in all honesty are not. They just repeat what we know. Hallmark figured out the right schmaltz that would sell cards around ‘special days’ because they are ‘special days’. Coke managed to capture the essence of Christmas by using an easy to understand symbolic image. Big holidays linked to tradition really mean family, and maybe friends, coming together. That one time of the year when we can have some certainty, comfort and care with those closest to us.
So what is a brand to do? You want to be a part of the celebration. You want to ‘connect’ with the people. You want to be seen as nice guys. Respectful of the cultural importance of a special occasion but also a part of it. And brands have been doing it for a long time. Now there are so many well-made campaigns that say: ‘We understand and share in your moment and maybe we can make it a little better’. The trope might have been started in early 20th century Christmas celebrations, but in my 20-plus years in Asia, it has now come to be applied to all major holidays. CNY is no different. And it works. Sort of Read More at: https://www.mumbrella.asia/2018/02/the-verdict-on-singapores-cny-ads-nice-gentle-and-completely-forgettable Lessons Learned is a series from Marketing Futures where Co-Chairman Dave McCaughan shares some of his experience from three decades leading the marketing communications for major international brands across Asia. No matter how good you are there is always something market research will teach you
First, let’s be clear: You should NOT do market research yourself. Remember lesson no 1 in this series (the September issue) “You are NOT normal”. The worst mistake marketers make is believing “well I know” because they think they have experience. I have met and worked with and for hundreds of senior marketers, business people and agency executives from some of the world’s best companies and the number one consistency I have learned is that they all knew less about the people they wanted to become their consumers or customers than they thought. The number two consistency was that the really successful one loved and spent a lot of time understanding market research. And while I applaud managers who go out and spend the time personally interviewing, discussing with and observing their potential consumer they have a natural bias to read in to ever encounter what they think is right. Read more at: http://greenbookblog.org/2018/01/29/lessons-learned-no-4-dont-assume-get-a-professional-to-ask/ Ghengis Khan, rich lamb stew, incredibly cheap cashmere sweaters. Go on, what else comes to mind of when you think of Mongolia? How about a truly professional and interesting market research conference. Well last week in Ulan Baatar that is what we got.
The APRC (Asia Pacific Research Committee) brings together 12 MR industry bodies from 11 Asia Pacific countries and last week near 350 marketers and researchers, including over 60 from all parts of Asia and beyond gathered in UB for it’s annual conference. In it’s brief history of a little over a decade one of the defining features of the APRC is it’s organising top level international speakers at events held in important, but often over looked locations for conferences like this. Places like Xian, Auckland and now Mongolia’s capital. Read more at:http://www.greenbookblog.org/2017/10/20/mongolian-adventures/ GreenBook, the premier platform for thought leadership and business connections in the marketing insights industry, is proud to announce that Dave McCaughan has been appointed to the role of Strategic Advisor, Asia Pac. In this role Dave will function in several important ways: as an ambassador for all GreenBook initiatives in the Asia Pacific region, as Chairman of the IIeX Asia Pac event, as a Regional Commenter for the GRIT report and as a member of the Global Advisory Council helping to define GreenBook’s evolving offerings for the global industry.
Lukas Pospichal, Managing Director of GreenBook, commented “Dave is a legend in the industry and one of the most influential thought leaders in the Asia Pacific region. There is no one better to help offer guidance on how GreenBook can best serve this all-important market and serve as an emissary as we develop the relationships needed to effectively help the industry grow there.” Dave joins Ray Poynter as Strategic Advisor- Europe and Rafael Cespedes as Strategic Advisor – LatAm in similar roles and a growing list of Advisory Council members and global partners who work with GreenBook on bringing their leading platform to the world. Working closely with Leonard Murphy, Executive Editor of GreenBook this team is helping to redefine the industry for the 21st century. Dave commented “I have been friends and collaborators with the GreenBook team for several years now and believe the platform they have built is an important part of the insights industry is Asia Pac. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to play a more substantive role to help bring their vision to life here and on a global basis.” Dave will be making his debut in his new role at the upcoming APRC conference and is already hard at work on working with the advisory council for the IIeX Asia Pac conference in Bangkok, Thailand in December. Read more at: http://www.greenbookblog.org/2017/09/24/dave-mccaughan-joins-greenbook-as-strategic-advisor-asia-pac/ Nearly a million people soaking themselves in ice cold water and sharing the video. Over $100 million raised. A global craze. A new phrase that enters the language. All the makings of a global case study.
The Ice Bucket Challenge was THE most talked about social phenomenon of 2014. Oh, I should have said “The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge”. Because like so many great 'cause' campaigns, sometimes the activity becomes more memorable than the reason. The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge was a tremendous success but would have been so much better if it meant a long-term major change in the state of ALS patients. Well today, 21 June, is ALS Day, and a chance to rethink and refocus for those of us interested in helping to end ALS. With my partners at Significance Systems we undertook a simple piece of research using their artificial intelligence platform to look at what the was happening with the narratives around ALS, The Ice Bucket Challenge and The End ALS movement in Japan. The platform searches and reads all the content around the subject, defines the strongest content around the most important narratives, ranks those narratives and also measures the likely emotional response from the content. We asked the platform to report on those three narratives in Japan (in Japanese) and in the English-speaking world. You can access the report here. Read more at: http://www.campaignasia.com/article/ice-bucket-memories-time-for-another-challenge/437464 Marketing Futures is an initiative formed to shape the marketers of tomorrow. The concept aims to bringing in international expertise, experience and examples of today and tomorrow’s marketing communications to smart marketers in Bangladesh. Focusing on marketing communications and its adoption of technologies, digital tools and integrated planning and storytelling, Marketing Futures has set out to become a platform which will provide training, workshops, seminars, brand consultancy and social learnings in Bangladesh.
The platform will be headed by Co-Founder and Chairman, Dave McCaughan; with Partners, Zulfiqar Ahmed, Muneer Ahmed, Taslim Ahmed and Co-Founder and Partner, Faiyaz Ahmed. ICE Business Times caught up with the two Co-Founders of Marketing Futures to hear about their vision for future marketers of Bangladesh. Link to full Article: ibtbd.net/changing-the-way-marketing-moves-forward/ Date: Thursday, June 1, 2017
Time: 12:00 - 14:00 Venue: Tokyo American Club, Manhattan I & II Speakers: Jesper Koll, CEO, WisdomTree, Dave McCaughan, Chief Storyteller, Bibliosexual, William Hall, President, IPSOS Healthcare Japan, and Patrick Newell, Founder, Tokyo International School Hosting Committee: Food and Agriculture Committee, Independent Business Committee & Special Events Committee Member Fee: ¥3,900 Guest Fee: ¥7,300 Meal: Plated Lunch Registration/Cancellation Deadline: Monday, May 29, 12:00 Event Overview: Back by Popular Demand: Now You Know Your… J-K-Ls (?) - A Wide-Ranging Panel Commentary with Jesper Koll, Dave McCaughan, and Bill Hall. Moderated by Patrick Newell. Announcing the fourth installment of this very popular panel event where some of Japan’s most seasoned experts comment on a wide range of topics guided by letters of the alphabet, this time J, K, and L. Economics, health, culture, & education are just a few of the areas to be covered in this crossfire short-answer format. The earlier ABC, DEF, and GHI events sold out quickly and garnered overwhelmingly positive feedback. Make sure to register early. Don’t miss this chance to hear the latest thoughts from Japan experts! For More Info : http://www.accj.or.jp/accj-events/back-by-popular-demand-now-you-know-your-j-k-ls?lang=en Your big client pitch is tomorrow. You've spent weeks conducting research to develop the perfect strategy.
Tomorrow is your big day. All eyes will be on you to close this whale of an account. How will you ensure that you wow your audience and get them to say “yes” to what you're pitching? Well, if you really want to create a presentation that will be edged in their minds and put you miles ahead of the competition, then keep reading as two-time TEDxTokyo speaker and storyteller at Bibliosexual, Dave McCaughan, shares how to rock your next pitch and land that big account. Focus on that one tweet What’s the one message you want your audience to remember? That one idea or phrase you want them talking about after you leave the room. Throughout your presentation, focus on delivering that one key message. McCaughan explains, “You have 10 minutes. Be focused. The best tip I had was ‘what is the single line you want people to tweet?’ Don’t be greedy, just get that one memorable moment.” Will a stunning visual or chart help you achieve that? McCaughan says, “It has to be something you say not a chart because all eyes are on you, not the charts, not anything else. Charts should only be used as a backdrop: all pictures and at most bold headline. Do not ask your audience to read.” What’s great about all TEDx speeches and pitches as a whole is a compelling story. Play a role McCaughan says, “Great storytelling is about three things. First, the audience can not take their eyes off you so make sure you have the ticks, facial and body actions you want to use down to keep them engaged. The right movement of your eyes, the right half grin, the right twist of the body makes for part of your story. McCaughan explains, “Remember that space is important too. At TEDx events you are not allowed to roam the stage, you have a very limited small circle you can move in. This is liberating because it forces you to really think ahead about how you will use space, rhythm and movement to emphasize your tale.” “Next, your tone of voice means knowing who you are playing. i.e. what role are you on stage: the sage, the professor, the jokester, the enlightened. Pick a role and play it,” says McCaughan. I love this tip so much that I'd encourage you all to try it in your next presentation. Make it interactive and ask your audience to play the role of the seller and you the role of their customer. Make it fun and you will ultimately make it memorable. Finally, McCaughan stresses the importance of breathing: “practice how you breath, how it sounds. Keep it quiet. It will help you not panic and not sound panicky.” Did you find these presentation tips helpful? Is there anything you do to rock your pitches? Tell me about it in the comments section and you just could be featured in my next piece. Original Link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/joeescobedo/2017/03/30/how-to-rock-your-next-pitch-like-a-tedx-speaker/#40065a111fa0 |
As an ex-librarian Dave loves to leave references for further reading. Here are a selection of articles and posts you might find of interest.
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