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.

Wednesday, 15 December 2010

Baby Hockley

After the longest birth in history (it took 19 years according to Craig Hockley), at 10PM Monday night baby Hugh James Hockley came into this world.

Like all clickDM babies, little Hugh was given his first bath, an iPad and a facebook page.

On behalf of THE DM GROUP, congratulations to Craig and his wife Susanne.

We look forward to seeing the future of digital marketing.

Friday, 3 December 2010

We’ll party rain, hail or shine

Melbourne sure knows how to put on a good weather display and yesterday was no different with THE DM GROUP encountering four seasons in one day for our Christmas party.

 It was not looking promising leaving the city for the Elwood Croquet Club but sure enough by the time everyone arrived the sun had come out and provided nearly 3 hours of perfect weather to play a few “friendly” games of croquet. Craig Hockley and Jesse Steinfort emerged as favourites with competitive egos to match.

We then ate a delicious gourmet BBQ lunch and opened Kris Kringle presents from the safe confines of the marquee as the heavens opened up with a torrential downpour of epic proportions.

By the time dessert and tea were served, the sun was out again so we could get in a few final matches.

Naturally we kicked on for a “few” drinks at the Windsor Castle and this is where the details become sketchy but by all accounts and judging by the subdued mood today a fun day and night was had by all!

Thursday, 30 September 2010

The hidden side of everything

Suicide bombers should buy life insurance. Revered sumo wrestlers engage in match fixing. Great doctors have higher mortality rates than mediocre ones.

On first glance, these facts don’t make much sense. The data behind these statements however, tells a very different story.  Freakonomics and the sequel Superfreakonomics do an amazing job of explaining how, sometimes, counterintuitive thinking is the best kind of thinking.

At THE DM GROUP, we think the most exciting part of our job is to find the strongest market insight we can for our clients, and then do our best to exploit that insight throughout all of our communications.

After reading both books, Craig Hockley, Stephen Flewell-Smith and Brandon Clark each have another way of understanding the challenges facing our clients and a real thirst for understanding why things happen the way they do. They may well ask more questions and chase down more data but in doing so, aim to deliver much more exciting insights to base your strategy on.

Give them a call to talk about uncovering the hidden side of your marketing efforts or, if like them, you’re just looking forward to the Superfreakonomics movie and just want someone to take you!

Wednesday, 29 September 2010

Take him back!

Recently digital planning director Craig Hockley has moved into the Account Service area, away from the scary dark hole we call clickDM.

But Craig found out the hard way that you dont mess with office manager Georgia Rudin, who is now his closest neighbor.

While taping very important boxes to be sent to very important places, Craig asked if Georgia could “tape quieter”.

The comment was not appreciated.

So naturally Georgia taped him to the chair and wheeled him back to where he came from.

Needless to say, Craig now chooses his words carefully.