Right mix the key to success

By SIMON HENDERY

The traditional podium was replaced by a cocktail bar at the annual Marketing Today conference, which began in Auckland yesterday.

Speakers flanked by barstools gave their addresses from behind a wall of spirits bottles and glassware.

No, marketing isn't such a dull topic delegates needed to start drinking first thing in the morning.

The props were an extension of the conference theme - that successful marketing involves mixing and shaking the industry's many disciplines, including direct marketing, public relations, market research and brand advertising.

Business commentator Rod Oram thought the two soda water dispensers on top of the bar he was standing behind also served a second purpose - as a handy defence to fend off interjectors.

"This is obviously designed to deal with some questions I'm not so keen on," he quipped.

Oram said New Zealand marketers needed to be pioneers, taking New Zealand's original, creative and collaborative way of doing business to the rest of the world.

Direct Marketing Association chief executive Keith Norris said technology had changed greatly since the first marketing conference 11 years ago, and so had the challenges faced by marketers.

Since 1993 the number of staff employed by marketing agencies had fallen significantly. At the same time new technologies and other factors such as the jump in the number of radio stations and television channels meant the number of outlets for the marketer's message had increased.

To cope, the industry needed to be smarter, and that meant getting its mix of marketing tools right, he said.

Norris said everyone in an organisation believed they were good at marketing and marketers did not rate highly.

To change that perception the industry had to focus more on measuring its success, so it could prove its worth.

US direct marketing guru Jon Roska turned the focus from cocktails to ducks and chickens.

Roska, the chief executive of one of the US's largest independent direct agencies, Roska Direct, has grown his own brand with the help of a presentation he has given around the world on why direct marketers (who he calls ducks) and brand marketers (chickens) can't work together.

"They're both birds, they just approach life a bit differently," he said yesterday.

His answer is "fusion marketing" in which direct marketing becomes about delivering a strong brand - and generating an order from the customer it targets.

* The Marketing Today conference concludes today. The annual Marketing Magazine Marketing Awards function will be held in Auckland tonight.