Hotel Marketing Association Blog

Bidding on rivals brand names – ethical or not?

Pam Carvell, Marketing Consultant — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 10:54:20 +0000

Am I alone in totally disagreeing with Google’s policy of allowing companies to bid on competitors brand names? As a professional marketer I have a problem with this. To me it’s almost marketing piracy. And as a consumer I am now getting increasingly annoyed that when I google something very specific , most of the first page is now taken up with competitors, whose products I am not interested in. Similarly I often get listings of companies who don’t actually represent the hotel I want to book or sell the product I want to buy. So, as a consumer Google doesn’t meet my needs as it used to. Perhpas consumer pressure will eventually change things? Or perhaps Google’s competitors will take a more ethical stance, so that we increasingly bing things rather than google them?

New Virgin Atlantic identity

Pam Carvell, Marketing Consultant — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:39:25 +0000

I’ve only seen a photo of the new Virgin planes livery, but I have to say that it looks somewhat non-descript. It’s just a clean modern typeface: not very eye-catching and nothing to make it stand out. The brand is now positioning itself as the future of air travel, after spending a lot of money on retro-style TV ads. Where’s the strategy? Clearly the agencies are making a lot of money out of all of this, but I’m not yet convinced. Just as I never was by BA’s disastrous tail-designs rebranding a a few years ago. There are a lot of very funky-looking planes out there now and I know that the plane livery is not the nunber one driver when choosing an airline, but brand identity has always been a very important part of Virgin. I bet they have a rethink – and then another PR opportunity as they relaunch?

Beware the hashtags ##

Pam Carvell, Marketing Consultant — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 09:28:35 +0000

You learn something new every day. It took us Brits years to work out what a hash key is #. Now it’s being used in front of the word ‘fail’ on social media sites to register criticism of a brand or product. Evidently it started on Twitter as disgruntled Apple users took to sharing their experiences with the descriptor ’#fail’ but is now becoming more widely used. Yet something else for us marketers to keep an eye on.

What’s in a job title?

Pam Carvell, Marketing Consultant — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 11:21:21 +0000

There are some strange job titles around, but I think I’ve just seen the craziest and it comes from an ad agency. Lorna Hawtin of TBWA Manchester is Disruption Director. I can’t begin to imagine what she actually does. And who came up with the title? Human Resources??? She must go down a storm at social gatherings when she announces she is a Disruption Director. Mind you I can think of organisations that seem to be full of disruption directors. Perhaps that’s the problem with English football? Too many disruption directors in the FA and at club level – perhpas I’ve hit on something here!

Where are you in the social-media charts?

Pam Carvell, Marketing Consultant — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 07:21:05 +0000

Recent research by Marketing magazine has shown that the fashion retailers are the best at social media marketing, if you look at the number of followers they have. Burberry are top with 1 million Facebook fans, 22,140 Twitter followers and 1682 YouTube subscribers. Top-shop has over 500,000 Facebook fans and Asos just over 250,000. Fans and followers don’t necessarily convert to purchasers, but recent research by Verdict shows that 50% of consumers read customer reviews when shopping online.

I quickly checked a few major hotel chains and found that Hilton have 47,000 Facebook fans, Best Western just over 20,000, Holiday Inn a measly 1,300, Premier Inn 1600 & Malmaison 1 person!!!! This suggests that hotel companies don’t have professional social media strategies. The hotel industry has never been at the cutting edge of marketing, but surely they have had plenty of time to wake up to the reality of social media and the relationship you can then have with your customers?

Promoted Tweets

Pam Carvell, Marketing Consultant — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 14:36:31 +0000

Advertising on Twitter is finally here, in the form of ‘promoted tweets’ which are displayed at the top of rankings when people enter a search term into Twitter – a bit like sponsored links on Google. I guess marketers are always looking for new places to place ads - the back of toilet doors at motorway service stations and the restraining bar on a ski chairlift are 2 media that someone obviously went to great lengths to negotiate! Will Facebook be next to include a search facility and then sponsored results? A promoted tweet is still limited to 140 characters, so advertisers will have to be very clever. And be very careful that anything they say isn’t then outweighed by negative comments from users. Yet another interesting new challenge for the marketer of today.

The use of Celebrities in advertising – Marco & Matthews?

Pam Carvell, Marketing Consultant — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 14:50:25 +0000

I thought the number one rule of using celebrities to promote your brand is to ensure that there is synergy between the values of brand and celebrity alike, as well as similarities in the personality of both. So, Premier Inn and Lenny Henry I can just about convince myself is a good match, but Marco Pierre White and Bernard Matthews? White must just be doing it for the money, surely? And Bernard Matthews are just jumping on the celebrity chef bandwagon years after everyone else. Couldn’t they have come up with something more innovative? How will an association with White drive sales? Does your average buyer of reconstituted turkey really care about a celebrity endorsement? If so, a footballer might have been more appropriate, because at least we would believe that they really do eat the bootiful meat!

Wearing football shirts to work during the World Cup!

Pam Carvell, Marketing Consultant — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 14:26:16 +0000

Now I’m a huge fan of football (Coventry City season ticket holder, I’ll have you know!) but I’ve never been keen on nylon football shirts in garish colours. And I recently read about a marketing campaign, that I don’t really understand. The Nationwide Building Society is supporting a campaign by homeless charity Shelter (who the HMA also raised money for at our last Christmas lunch). The campaign encourages consumers to wear their favourite football strip to work during the World Cup. Who came up with that crazy idea? And am I missing something? The World Cup is on for 4 weeks -so pretty smelly strips at the end of each week I fear! And, we Brits are not always the best-dressed, but football shirts to work takes us to new depths. What’s in this for Nationwide and Shelter? I don’t know. I hope it isn’t just companies jumping on the World Cup bandwagon in a pretty tastless way

What we can learn from Zappos!

Pam Carvell, Marketing Consultant — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 14:16:57 +0000

Web-based footwear retailer Zappos may now be owned by Amazon, but it has an amzing reputation for its customer service and now turns over more than$1billion. It’s 10 core values start with ‘Create WOW through service’. But do you know what I really like? After new employees have completed their initial training they are offered $2,000 to resign. This is to ensure that noone works for the company for purely mercenary reasons. Now I’d love to see a hotel chain try that – or would they risk bankruptcy??? It’s a bold test of how much people really want to work for you. Come on Premier Inn, give it a go!

Social Media must be part of your marketing strategy

Pam Carvell, Marketing Consultant — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 10:03:39 +0000

Some new research from InSites Consulting has shown that social media now reaches 77% of the online population and sites such as Twitter and Facebook are used by 28.3 million people in the UK. I also heard recently that worldwide Facebook has 400m active users monthly, 100m of whom are accessing it via their mobiles. Any company can build a fan page FOC. Coca Cola have 300m fans worldwide!

Ignore social media at your peril, but don’t make the mistake that some big brands have of trying to dictate to cosumers through these channels. It’s about being helpful and honest and engaging with your fans.