Have you noticed that Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate has become certified Fairtrade? No? Neither has the average consumer. Perhaps this is due to the fact that Australian consumers are not quite ready to make ethical choices just yet.

Cadbury Fairtrade Dairy Milk was released in Australia and New Zealand over Easter. This followed a similar move by the company in the UK and Ireland in September of last year.

Daniel Ellis, Corporate Affairs Manager for Cadbury Australia, said that the move to Fairtrade was both a business and an ethical decision.

“We are trying to build our brand and the Fairtrade brand at the same time. We are helping people make ethical choices in the front of their mind” said Ellis.

Cadbury chose not to run an extensive marketing campaign about their new ethical line, preferring to let it spread by word of mouth and the ‘Spread the Joy‘ campaign.

“If we would have gone through a mainstream marketing campaign it would have been seen as a gimmick, we wanted credibility as Fairtrade is credible and we are managing both brands through this,” said Ellis.

Has their “Word of Mouth” idea worked? Are consumers aware of Cadbury’s move to Fairtrade ingredients, and do they care?

In the first episode of The Daily Squeeze, customers outside Coles were asked about their chocolate buying habits.

Anneliese Shortt, Managing Director of the PR firm Polarity, does not think the move will change consumer habits.

“We care when it suits us, people aren’t prepared to compromise,” said Shortt. “If the product changes in price or quality, Cadbury could be at risk of losing customers.”

A recent Choice Magazine study analysing consumer awareness agreed with Shortt, finding “consumers are most concerned about [the] aspects of a product that directly affect them – and that’s performance, quality and price”.

“For the mother with three kids and a job, she wants to be environmentally proactive but without great sacrifices in everyday life,” said Shortt.

Before Cadbury made the switch to Fairtrade they compiled surveys to gauge the public’s awareness of the Fairtrade brand.

Ellis said that only 25% of people in Australia recoginsed the Fairtrade brand, compared to 80% of people in the UK and Ireland.

The Ethical Consumer Guide is attempting to tackle this lack of awareness by compiling a list of products on supermarket shelves that are the most ethical choices.

Producer of the Guide, Nick Ray, said that over the past two years they have sold over 50,000 books and over 2000 iPhone applications.

“There has been a huge growth in the market, but education is still an issue,” said Ray.

Market Juice asked Twitter about their ethical choices at the supermarket.

One interesting finding from the discussion was that every person who responded said they would only purchase free range eggs.

Jacqueline Baptista, Communications Manager at the Australian Egg Corporation Limited, said that in 2009 25.3% of purchased eggs in the supermarket were free range, 64.2% were cage and 7.6% were barn.

“Animal welfare groups perpetuated the message that caged eggs were bad as it was, and still is, an issue that is very emotional,” said Baptista.

She continued, the welfare groups’ educational campaigns worked, that is why the consumer is choosing to buy free range, despite the price difference.

For your business, the advantage of making or switching to an ethical product will be contingent on the market’s knowledge.

“The consumer needs to first be educated on the problems associated with the less ethical product before they are willing to pay extra or compromise on quality for the ethical one,” said Shortt.

However, judging by the UK and Ireland, it may be one day that the Australian public will be knowledgeable enough to make ethical decisions – then, just like Cadbury, it might pay to have been ahead of the game.

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If you are looking for more information on Cadbury’s switch to Fairtrade, visit the websites of Fairtrade or Cadbury Fairtrade.

The following video is the interview with Daniel Ellis from Cadbury Australia. He shared information on what it means for Cadbury to become Fairtrade and what Cadbury is doing to help the cocoa farmers in Ghana.
Daniel Ellis Interview

Emotional, confronting, tear-jerking advertisements may become a popular choice of Australian companies after the success of this UK ad for retailer John Lewis.

According to online marketing site Mumbrella, the UK retailer recently released this advertisement that pushed their sales up by 39.7%.

Will Australian retailers make the same move and is emotional advertising effective or ‘too’ manipulative?

“Advertising is manipulative, that’s how we sell things. We need to manipulate people’s thought patterns and their wants and needs,” MCM entertainment copywriter, Ash Gazal, said.

“So much of what we sell, people have, or they’ve got four versions of it, or they don’t need it. We need to get an emotional response out of them that’s going to make them excited. If you rationally appeal to them it doesn’t really work,” she said.

Ms Gazal explained that when writing advertisements the trick is to create something that resonates with a consumer’s personal emotion or memory.

“We make emotional connections because it’s less work for us. When we build up those warm fuzzy feelings inside and those memories, it’s a very powerful thing, it can be quite subversive but it definitely works,” she said.

Australia is seeing a wave of emotional ads from the TAC , QUIT and Work safe government campaigns. Many of them are confronting and shocking.

“Emotional ads are a good short-term strategy but a bad long-term strategy,” Director of Retail Education services pty ltd, and Monash University lecturer, Andrew Cavanagh, said.

“With the TAC ads, the shock wears off. If every ad they do is an emotional tug, people are going to get tired of it pretty quickly,” he said.

click here to listen to Andrew Cavanagh audio.

Creative Director of Grey Group Australia, Nigel Dawson, has been the writer of the TAC campaigns for 13 years. He explains that the ads are a positive impact on the community.

“People need to be confronted with the realities of what happens in a crash. Confronting them will force them to assess their driving behaviour,” he said.

“The TAC ads have been around for years, and our road tolls are some of the lowest in the world. It isn’t all credit to the ads but they certainly have raised our awareness of dangerous driving,” Mr Dawson said.

Results from a recent survey conducted by Market Juice found that emotional ads did have an impact on viewers.

Participants were asked to view the John Lewis advertisement and the Australian TAC ‘pictures’ advertisements.

When asked if they were emotionally moved by the ads, 70% responded yes. 64% said the TAC ad would influence them to assess their driving behaviour.

42% of participants said the John Lewis ad would not convince them to buy at the store, even if the ad were for an Australian retailer.

According to Andrew Cavanagh, emotive advertisements only work well if the same attitude is reflected in stores.

“The critical thing for retailers when using emotional advertising is that they’ve got to back it up when the customer walks into the store,” he said.

“If they’ve got this wonderfully emotive ad that pulls on the heart-strings and then the customer walks into the store but the salesperson doesn’t care, then consumers are probably going to have a negative perception of the retailer,” he said.

Emotional advertising seems like an effective way to grab consumer’s attention, but the question still remains as to whether it alone is effective in changing behaviour or increasing sales.

What’s your view on the John Lewis and TAC pictures ad?

Twitter, the micro-blogging phenomenon that has swept the world, has changed the perceptions associated with social media by expanding its wings into many areas including marketing. Professionals and Twitterers alike believe the beauty of Twitter is that it provides real-time public information in a casual, conversational manner.

As a business and marketing tool many professionals acknowledge the benefits of social media sites. “One on one communication with customers is ultimately where the appeal lies” Monash University Marketing lecturer, Peter Wagstaff says. He suggests that the ‘higher level of involvement’ that a customer gets from social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook allows greater engagement with the brand and encourages the customer to choose that brand later down the track. A key point in effective use of social mediums is the ability to integrate into the consumer’s world.

“Anything that can fit in with what people are talking about can be marketed within social media” Wagstaff says. “Traditional interruptive marketing does not work in a social medium; you need to be part of the conversation”. Social currency plays a major part in whether social media marketing will have an effect, giving people ‘something of value’ that they can share with others. Wagstaff also says pin pointing ‘opinion leaders’ plays a critical role in spreading ‘the word’ about a product or a brand in the social sphere. “Social media functions well when used in an integrative manner, as part of a TV advertising campaign or with an ad on the side of a tram”. He believes this is the future for social media as a marketing medium, “Communicating the same message in a multitude of ways”.

New, innovative ways of using and marketing yourself with Twitter are constantly being discovered. “I have been told repeatedly by publishers that my books are publishable – but not marketable,” Children’s author, Louise Curtis said. “So I decided to find my own market”- insert Twitter. Curtis said her endeavors to get published had been unsuccessful and she was looking for a way to spread the word about her books. ‘Twitter-tales’ a concept used by Curtis, is still relatively new, but she believes the ‘Twitter-sized’ pieces of story, told in real-time, make an easy reading alternative to the traditional book. “A lot of authors are experimenting with twitter fiction because it’s a different way of telling a story” she said. “I use Twitter to let people have a taste of what my books will be like”.

Curtis believes the trend in authors using social media sites can be attributed to the difficulty in finding a publisher. “Once we get a few rejections we realise getting published is difficult”. Whether her ‘twitter-tales’ are effective is hard to measure. She says ‘In Twitter terms I have 2000 followers [across Twitter and Facebook] and a solid blog following, which is a good beginning”.

“If 10% of the followers bought a book, that’s two hundred books that wouldn’t otherwise have been read – and if they like them and each recommend the book to two others, that’s another 400 people interested” she says. “Books are like McDonald’s – people buy something that’s mediocre rather than taking a risk and buying something that might be wonderful”. Curtis believes a ‘strong web presence’ will be an asset in her search to find a publisher “it helps readers to feel they know a writer, and therefore feel comfortable buying their books”.

Most digital marketing agencies now provide social media development as part of their core services, acknowledging social media as a valid form to market. “Twitter like any social media platform is only as good as the quality of your connected ‘tribe’” said Director of 2 Sticks Digital Marketing, Tim Martin. He says “Promoting a book via social media is fundamentally no different from any organisation or individual promoting any product or service”. “The trick is that there is no easy trick for anybody” he suggests.

Curtis agrees that social media ‘is all about networking’. While professionals are not entirely convinced her ‘Twitter-tales’ method will work in the way she hopes, she claims that ‘it will make a huge difference in the first month of sales’. “That will give me a foot in the door, which is the hardest part”. Twitter has enabled consumers and businesses to connect in a way that was previously not possible.

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Please note: All photos have been used with permission by Mag Nation and the models

By Samantha Gelfand

Marketing expert James Duthie has declared Mag Nation’s Undies Monday a PR success as it grew from social media attention to the mainstream.

Last week, Duthie, from Online Marketing Banter, said that the stunt was excellent, “it was a real creeper of a campaign but successful in the end.”

Undies Monday told customers to enter a Mag Nation store on any Monday in March wearing nothing but their underwear, entitling them to one product up to the value of $50.

Mag Nation initially promoted the campaign through Twitter, Facebook and their blog, until the Herald Sun and Gold 104.3FM made mention of it.

On the final Monday of the campaign, 774 ABC Radio Melbourne, played a live cross from Mag Nation’s Elizabeth Street store to the studio with Richard Stubbs.

Sahil Merchant, owner and founder of the business, said the campaign “went viral.”

“We started by doing lots of social media, then the mentions online grew exponentially until we were approached by the Herald Sun.”

The campaign was the brainchild of Merchant who said “all you need is a creative idea,” and that they are often approached by marketing companies but asks, “why pay people to come up with ideas when we can?”

Duthie said the stunt was a perfect way to tap into a demographic weary of advertising and shows that people are engaging with PR stunts like this which have become the “smarter, more affective way to talk to an audience.”

This campaign was an example of a small business with limited resources using social media to their advantage, said Duthie.

Comments on the Mag Nation blog have been mostly positive, John said that he “truly admires any store that goes out of its way to connect with its customers in a fun and friendly manner.”

Mag Nation is a niche business specialising in sourcing alternative magazines and creating an atmosphere which encourages browsing rather than buying.

Merchant would not say how much free product they gave away but said they always reserved the right to pull the campaign if it would lead to their “ruinification.”

Teresa Sperti, online blogger (of Digital Marketing Lab) and digital marketing expert, argues one of the biggest problems with creating applications is that the focus is only toward iPhone users and not other mobile users. “The iPhone only represents about 200,000 handsets in this [the Australian] market and by targeting only iPhone you are missing a lot more of the available market.”

A spokesperson from Apple disagrees with Ms Sperti, claiming that companies are still choosing Apple over other brands. He says that “The app store has only increased Apple’s popularity”.
He also added, “Apple apps have a unique programming code, and every other company has their own operating system. Companies wouldn’t go to the effort of re-writing their apps programs just for other mobile platforms. If other mobile manufacturers wanted to come together to develop a new app store, they’d have to give up a lot of their own programming secrets to do so.”

Nathan Bailey, associate director of eEducation at Monash, says that using different channels to communicate your message is important when companies want to engage with their consumers. “Applications are a good strategy and technology offers a whole new way of interacting with information”. He also added, “the iPhone offers the possibility of marketing to be distinct and fun, but for long term strategies you would always have to continue investing in an application and keep it engaging. People have short attention spans.”

A survey of 80 iPhone users conducted by Market Juice, revealed that 40% of people downloaded apps primarily for games, but that they also used apps for social networking (such as facebook and twitter) and banking. This graph below shows the most popular app categories as a first choice. Selections were, however, non exclusive and were also interlinked.

Mobile app marketing as a strategy is proving to be useful as a tool for companies that wish to reinforce their brand awareness, but not yet as a primary marketing platform.

Click here to look at iPhone Apple Apps

Business cards definitely have threats; mobile phones can easily hold business information about a company or person, and there are existing applications that scan business information and save them as a contact.  Despite these new technologies constantly entering the market, many business people still claim that personal cards remain the most appealing and cost effective.

Jim Schaefer, director of marketing and communications agency ‘The Schaefer Group‘, believes the business card is a requirement for any business and is still in high demand with clients. “If you go to a company event or a trade event, people expect business cards to be exchanged”. He sees it as a staple in any business portfolio and says “The first thing a client asks for is a logo and a business card”. Improvements made include greater thought put into graphic design, some unique shapes, and multi-fold business cards. Schaefer says “It’s a much more powerful marketing tool that it was 20 years when when it was just your name and address”

Shaun Harrison, owner of ACE printing, agrees with Schaefer, claiming that “They are more in use now than they were 10 years ago”. He believes that reduced cost due to technological improvement is a major factor in increased use of such cards; “A little backyard business can now afford to have cards printed”. Harrison also stated that companies no longer ask for one generic card and that each representative now has their own individual card with personal contact information.

Business people are still in favor of using the business card and still believe that it adds value to a company, helping them to remain personable and recognizable.  The success of online companies such as ‘Moo‘ further highlight the desire for people to have a classy, shiny business card in their inside pockets and within the covers of their leather folders.  Is it therefore right to assume that the business card is destined to die?

If you would like to view a timeline of the business card, click here

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