Tuesday, 15 March 2011

The new reality – it’s a conversation age

I feel special. I’ve spent my working life in direct marketing, digital marketing and advertising during a time of enormous change in the communications industry.  

If we compare the media landscape today with 40 years ago you get a real sense of the proportion of that change– my mother bought the brands her mother bought (or those friends recommended) and perhaps those she saw on TV and in the newspapers. It was an easy media buy – only one, maybe two commercial channels.

Today there are probably a dozen channels that come together through your mobile phone alone. It’s a constant challenge to be able to coordinate and manage all these channels to most effectively deliver value for our clients marketing $.

And key to all this change is the customer. They have always been the target but today they control the terms of their relationship with brands – our world is now customer centric.– we are in the conversation age and if we don’t listen to our customers we’ll lose them. So when we are creating our media plan, it has to take account of the customers preferences. It’s no longer good enough to just throw a couple of million dollars at a TV schedule that broadly reaches the audience.

At THE DM GROUP we work in many areas of communications and as a full service agency we take it as being our responsibility to keep our clients at the forefront of the new thinking in media. So, I was fascinated therefore to read about the work BIG Research has been doing with Martin P Block and Don E Schultz in defining consumer use of media – by media generation.

This is an ongoing (twice yearly) and evolving research study that informs agencies, clients and media strategists about media use by customers, grouping them into media generations. It’s about how audiences use different media, how many they use, in what combinations, at what time of day.

THE DM GROUP is also working hard to evolve communication strategies for our clients that gives us the best opportunity possible to engage their customers, so we too go out of our way to understand what your customers are reading and responding to. If you’d like to know more, why not give us a call.

Tuesday, 28 September 2010

Jack’s Story

The 2010 ADMA awards have picked their finalists this year as the event returns to Melbourne for awards night on November 26.

So who’s Jack?

And what does this have to do about a story?

Well, one of those finalists in the Effectiveness Not-for-profit category  is Melbourne Citymission’s winter tax appeal…

or Jack’s Story.

A highly effective direct mail campaign which aimed to encourage Melburnians to help change the lives of real Melburnians in need.

And with such great response, we can look forward to something…

Happy Jack :-)

Friday, 20 August 2010

Everybody’s a critic…

…but not everyone’s a judge.

Which makes YMCA Victoria senior marketing communications specialist Fiona Steer and THE DM GROUP creative strategist Stephen Flewell-Smith a little special.

Why?

Because they’ve both been peer-appointed as Effectiveness Judges for the 2010 ADMA Awards.

And effectiveness is ultimately what advertising’s about, right?

BIG RESULTS.

The big idea is just one of the methods we use to achieve them.

We know it’s an opinion some of our more creative advertising colleagues are sure to criticise.

But at the end of the day, the bean counters and the public even – like those helped by the YMCA – will judge differently.

And so do we.

Wednesday, 28 July 2010

Trophies Are Forever

Congratulations to HOSTPLUS for capturing two new trophies at this year’s AFSA awards ceremony held in Melbourne on Friday.

HOSTPLUS was awarded Excellence in Communication for their TFN Campaign and also a finalist with the One Super Pledge Campaign in the same category.

Both integrated campaigns were created and executed by trademarkDM and clickDM.

But, the award we and HOSTPLUS are most pleased about is the AFSA Super Innovator of the Year for The Pledge campaign.

It came as a super surprise since we had not entered this category but were given the title at the judges’ discretion.

Thursday, 24 June 2010

Is that your final answer Scott?

This week, Barefoot Investor Scott Pape unveiled his latest super presentation for HOSTPLUS members – Who Wants To Be A Superannuation Millionaire.

Scott’s presentation is part of the HOSTPLUS financial literacy program and focuses on simple strategies to help members make the most of their super.

trademarkDM’s Brandon Clark, Andy Harrison, Craig Hockley and new arrival Frank Franzese were invited to be part of the studio audience.

Our super team were happy to report they got the answers right (mostly) and didn’t even have to use any of their lifelines.

To find out more about being a superannuation millionaire, click here