Guru in a Bottle

In a news report filed by the Press Association, a judge in Ireland’s High Court has ordered Google, YouTube and Facebook to remove a defamatory viral video from all their websites across the internet.

In a classic case of ‘David and Goliath’, the Irish judge ruled in favour of a 23 year-old Dublin university student who was wrongly identified as a person that was part of a group that was dodging paying a taxi fare in the early hours of November 2011 in Monkton, south Dublin.

Eoin McKeogh was subjected to what Mr Justice Michael Peart colourfully described as “a miscellany of the most vile, crude, obscene and generally obnoxious comments” across the social media networks.

And the judge wasn’t too impressed either with the fact that Google, YouTube and Facebook had shown total indifference to Eoin McKeogh’s plight when he complained to them that it was a case of mistaken identity and in fact he’d been in Japan at the time and had passport stamps to prove it!

The judge said it had been a “surprise” that Google, YouTube and Facebook hadn’t bothered to assist Eoin McKeogh more willingly and each were given one month to remove the defamatory video and related comments, tags and threads from the internet or face further sanctions. The companies are now consulting technical experts in how to do this and have a couple of weeks to come up with a plan.

An injunction trying to stop newspapers from naming Eoin McKeogh as the man wrongly accused of being in the video failed in early 2012 and the present action was a desperate attempt to force the three internet giants to remove the video from their servers in order to put an end to the outrageous vilification of the student.

Clearly ‘trolls’ had attempted to hide behind the cloak of anonymity afforded to them by using aliases and pet names to post comments and bile about an innocent person. And in this orgy of cowardice they’d been effectively aided and abetted by Google, YouTube and Facebook.

“All manner of nasty and seemingly idle minds got to work on the plaintiff, and as seems to happen with apparent impunity nowadays on social media sites, said whatever thing first came into their vacant, idle and meddlesome heads by posting statements about the plaintiff so vile and abusive that I ought not to repeat them here. It must be borne in mind that most of these people do not know the plaintiff and have never met him. Nevertheless, they felt free to name and brand him as a criminal,” said the judge.

The quick-thinking taxi driver recorded the incident on his mobile phone and uploaded the video to YouTube in the hope of tracking down the culprits. Instead, this sparked a tidal wave of defamatory posts wrongly naming the plaintiff.

To make matters worse, a false Facebook page was created on the back of the video. The judge recognised that Eoin McKeogh had been forced to resort to legal action as all attempts to remove the video on his return from Japan had become futile as it had gone viral.

The judge also expressed concerns about the length of time the case had taken and the undue stress it would have caused as the student was trying to get on with his studies.

The judge accepted that the case could open the floodgates for others offended by videos posted about them on these social media sites but he also criticised the conduct of the defendants for forcing an additional 10 days of hearings and a mountain of paperwork in an attempt to win their argument that they had no responsibility to the Plaintiff for the anxiety that clearly had been caused.

Damages in defamation weren’t going to be enough to compensate the student for the harm that continued to be done to his name and reputation so long as the video and its associated comments were allowed to remain in cyberspace.

“This is splendid stuff from an Irish judge letting rip and what a great example of how social media issues can result in the most hideous litigation. Perhaps the clearest message is that as an ordinary person you mess with YouTube, Google and Facebook at your peril,” observes Mark Warby QC, one of the UK’s leading media and defamation silks.

A full ruling on the level of damages to be awarded by the High Court will be decided at a later date.

Ardi Kolah is author of Essential Law for Marketers (£19.99) published by Kogan Page and available from Amazon. Click the cover to order your copy today!

Back in 1974, little thought was given to the commercial value of the costumes worn by Robert Redford and Mia Farrow in The Great Gatsby. Fast-forward to 2013 and the re-make of Scott Fitzgerald’s epic has its theatrical release on 16 May. Some critics have panned the film as ‘disappointing’. But the same can’t be said of the starring roles played by Prada and Tiffany & Co that steal the show and look set to break their own box office records.

These and other brands are aspirational and the fact that the majority of cinema-goers that see the film won’t want to shell out a small fortune to buy clothes and jewellry inspired by the film is largely irrelevant.

From a marketing perspective, its about maintaining brand value. And we’ve already started to see high end fashion brands like Prada start to launch new lines through the medium of the movies – it makes sense if you think about the exposure and endorsement value Hollywood can give a jacket or skirt.

Product placement isn’t new of course. In fact Chanel signed a contract with Metro Goldwyn Meyer back in the 20s as Sam Goldwyn thought he could increase box-office receipts by showing Paris fashions to an audience hungry for escapism from the Great Depression.

By the 50s, movies started to look like shop fronts full of highly desirable outfits that clung seductively to its leading ladies like Audrey Hepburn, Lauren Bacall and Jane Russell. And fashion designers like Hubert de Givenchy became as important as the Hollywood director Blake Edwards who directed Hepburn in the 1961 classic Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Since then there’s been no end of fashion brands wanting to turn entertainment into a successful marketing tool as consumers move increasingly towards on-demand channels like Netflix or the web to consume content where they can avoid the 30 second ad spot.

The name of the game is now integration of product into movies like The Great Gatsby that help to tell the story and don’t get in the way of the narrative.

To watch the Bloomberg news piece on product placement in The Great Gatsby, starring Leonard DiCaprio and Cary Mulligan, click on the TV

Ardi Kolah is author of High Impact Marketing That Gets Results (£19.99) published by Kogan Page and available on Amazon.

Steely Dan has been reelin' in the years for a long time as the greatest band that ever lived!

It may not be obvious, but the world of rock ‘n’ roll knows a lot more about how to connect with consumers in a powerful way than many multi-national companies with multi-million budgets to match.

And I don’t mean by connecting with consumers through iTunes and the mobile internet, although of course that’s a proven way of reaching music fans. What I want to talk about is about ‘rendering authenticity’ in order to connect with the next generation of consumers and fans.

The term was conceived by James H Gilmore and Joseph Pine, two US academics that at the turn of the 21^st century wrote about how the global economy would move from service to experience. It will be a world in which consumers pay for goods and services that make them feel happy, contented and satisfied.

In other words, helps them find their ‘mojo’.

Abraham Maslow called this a state of ‘self-actualisation’ where our deeper psychological needs are what really count, having successfully satisfied our more physical needs for eating, heating and shelter.

And there’s a very good reason for this.

Consumers today see the world in terms of phoney and real and want something genuine and authentic from someone that reflects their own attitudes, values, beliefs, perceptions and behaviours.

If brand owners come up short, such as a utility company that provides a miserable customer experience when things go wrong, then that makes us unhappy and won’t translate into customer loyalty.

On the other hand, a brand owner that’s into collaborating with us such as allowing us to have our say in the content and delivery of a service will find many more happy customers queuing at its door to be served. It’s one of the reasons why online bank First Direct was so phenomenally successful when it was launched in 1989.

Fast forward to today and we’re living in a world of 24/7 reality TV that isn’t real; where our on-line personas allow us to think we can say anything we like without being held accountable and as a result of spending far too much time on the web we appear to be suffering from some form of split personality and identity crisis.

It’s then no surprise that as consumers we hunger for something else, don’t we?

And that’s authenticity.

For example, there’s something very authentic in hearing a piece of music for the first time as I did when I listened to Bowie’s new album The Next Day which blew me away.

But there’s a dilemma here at the quest for authenticity.

If brand owners try too hard to create authentic experiences they could end up looking fake.

Music legend and successful entrepreneur Carlos Santana has a unique and powerful take on this dilemma as well as a solution for it.

“Collaboration, partnership [and] friendship all take trust and willingness to allow willingness. When I collaborate on a song or on stage, I’m here to complement, not compete. If I’m playing with [Luciano] Pavarotti, Eric Clapton or Juanes [Juan Esteban Aristizábal Vásquez], a true collaboration only works when you complement what the other person is saying and inspire one another to go further. For me onstage and in business, this is essential,” he says.

And he’s applied these principles not only in the recording studio and on tour but also in his other interests that include Casa Noble Tequila and a range of ladies shoes and handbags that carry his trademark.

“With the success of “Supernatural” [1999 platinum selling album] we began looking for new ways to help fuel my families’ philanthropic efforts through The Milagro Foundation. The Carlos by Carlos Santana line of women’s shoes and handbags are born from this seed. I learned very early in life that if the females are happy, then everyone is happy. We get incredible positive feedback through my shoe and handbag lines and in turn we’re able to help educate, feed and give health services to children all over the world. There’s no greater joy for me than to know I’m making a difference in a child’s life.”

What makes Carlos Santana and his various philanthropic activities authentic is that they’re all genuine and stay true to their core values and their heritage; a point that’s discussed at a forthcoming workshop at Henley Business School organised by programme director Helen Gammons that will explore how brand owners can unlock the potential of creativity and innovation in business in much the same way as Carlos Santana and others have done in the music business.

Ardi Kolah is the best-selling author of The Art of Influencing and Selling (£19.99), published by Kogan Page. Click the book to order your copy today!

As the post-war baby boomers start to grow older, we’re facing a paradigm shift in the demographics of the UK. On the whole, marketers have been really slow off the mark to realize the potential of this sizable customer segment. But the good news is that it’s not too late to ride the Third Wave of Marketing!

The over 50s currently account for 80% of the wealth of the UK – some £300 billion and spending by households including someone over the age of 65 is £109 billion. These figures will only get bigger as the shift towards an ageing population gathers pace.

Today there are 10.3m people in the UK aged over 65, by 2020 that figure will be 12.5m and on current projections that will have increased to 16m by 2030.

Within that group, older segments are the fastest growing and by 2050 it is estimated that there will be more than a quarter of a million centenarians in the UK.

But this growth isn’t confined to the UK.

For example, in the US, the number of people over 50 will have tripled by 2030.

Despite this huge opportunity, most brand owners have been too busy chasing younger customer segments to stop and think about the significance that demographic changes are having on their market segment and their business.

They’ve made wide-sweeping assumptions about the brands that over 50s consume and of course they’ve been proven wrong.

New research just published by IAB Europe surveyed the behaviour of 51,700 ‘silver surfers’ across 28 countries.

It found that the over-55s spent 39% more time online in 2012 than was the case in 2004, that 77% of them regularly visited news sites on the web and 43% said that the internet was important to them when deciding where to buy a financial services product, book a flight or holiday (48%) and 23% of those who owned a smartphone would use this to do their shopping online.

So much for the so-called the ‘digital divide’. There doesn’t seem to be much evidence of a ‘divide’ here.

Meet ‘John’ (it’s not his real name). He’s the fine looking fella on the left.

You may think he’s not your “typical” 92-year old as he’s in tip-top shape.

But then ‘John’ is challenging all of us to confront the stereotype image of what we think he should look like at his age, isn’t he?

He says: “I had a crisis at 85. I looked at myself in the mirror one day and saw an old man. I was overweight, my posture was terrible and there was skin hanging off me where muscle used to be. I looked a wreck. So in my late-80s I joined a bodybuilding club. There’s no research into bodybuilding for the over-80s, so it’s been an experiment. With weight lifting and protein shakes my body began to change. It became broader, more V-shaped and my shoulders and biceps became more defined. People began to comment on how much younger I looked and my new muscular frame drew a lot of admiring glances from women.”

Amazing, right? Well, not that amazing really. Why shouldn’t women fancy ‘John’?

‘John’ isn’t the only person in his 90s who feels there’s mileage left on his clock.

He stopped thinking about checking into ‘God’s waiting room’ and got on with enjoying his life and has taken up judo to prevent himself from falling badly and to improve his general health and well-being.

It wouldn’t surprise me if ‘John’ outlived hundreds of men much younger than him but who simply gave up looking after themselves.

It’s a big mistake to make assumptions that people like ‘John’ will think, act and behave in a certain way. That’s crap marketing, isn’t it? So why do we have a blank spot when it comes to the over-55s??

This may seem obvious, but very few people I know would say they feel as old as they are – and I’m sure you may have the same experience within your own circle of family and friends.

And yet somehow all of this seems to be forgotten in a commercial and marketing context when all too often young and old are seen almost as separate species, inhabiting different worlds.

It’s time we realized the ‘third wave of marketing’ has arrived!

And by all accounts, it’s going to be around for a long time to come!

Ardi Kolah is author of High Impact Marketing That Gets Results (£19.99) published by Kogan Page and available from Amazon. Click the book to order your copy today!

There’s a perception in our industry that the risks involved in publishing online, including on social media, are a lot higher than in traditional publishing, such as a national newspaper or gossip magazine, because of the wider and potentially unlimited reach of such content as well as the long-shelf life it will have on the internet.

However, the risks are actually no greater than publication of content that could amount to a breach of privacy or an action in defamation that appears in print as opposed to online.

The UK courts tend to take the view that the internet is simply a medium of communication which itself isn’t that different from traditional media. The key point here is that the law looks at the substance of the publication rather than its form in deciding whether something is actionable or not.

With over 1 billion tweets per week and 53 per cent of the UK population on Facebook, it’s easy to get paranoid about what you can and can’t say on social media that could increase your chances of ending up in court.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is busily preparing some new Guidelines that are expected this summer in the hope they’ll create a clearer picture of what can and can’t be said on social media as it’s still a grey area given the conflicting rights to the extent freedom of speech trumps the right to privacy and vice versa. Currently, CPS Interim Guidelines have been in place since the end of last year.

“Practically, the legal risks apply online as they do offline but they are modest because time has shown legal actions are rarer and awards lower than the news headlines may lead you to believe,” says Jonathan Coad, the UK’s top media lawyer at Lewis Silkin and keynote speaker at the largest gathering of the biggest legal brains on Monday 22 April in Central London.

The subject of defamation and privacy is without doubt a legal minefield that anyone who uses social media in marketing and communications needs to understand and navigate through with great care.

Part of the problem is that we simply don’t give the daily use of social media a second thought.

Using social media is free. It’s instantaneous. It can reach 34 per cent of the world’s seven billion population by clicking SEND. It doesn’t require special media or journalist training. And you don’t need to have been a publisher in your former life to be able to do it.

That said you shouldn’t assume you can behave with impunity. Whether you realise this or not, a whole industry has grown up around you to monitor your online activities and by using automated tools anyone can find out what’s being said about them on any social media network anywhere in the world and take action as necessary if they don’t like what they see.

But this isn’t just a legal issue but it’s also a societal one.

“In the old days, people ran only the slight risk of slander if they indulged in tittle tattle and gossip but it was much more difficult to prove and much less widespread. It certainly wasn’t subject to any form of legal regulation. Today, we live in a world where increasingly most of our social interactions happen online and with a much higher degree of frequency and reach. So the big ethical as well as legal question is the extent to which the law should regulate day to day multi-lateral conversations on social media?, “ reflects Jonathan Coad.

Ardi Kolah is author of Essential Law for Marketers 2^nd edition (£19.99), published by Kogan Page and available from Amazon. Click the cover to order your copy today!

Scales of Justice tip in favour of the PRCA at the Supreme Court

Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA) has just made legal history with a successful appeal to the Supreme Court that could save the UK public relations industry millions in copyright licence fees that may have had to be paid to the Newspaper Licensing Authority (NLA) had the decision gone the other way.

The Supreme Court overturned the judgment of the Court of Appeal made in July 2011 and ruled that anyone should be free to visit a newspaper website without fear of infringing copyright law should they view the article on their computer screen.

The Court of Appeal had ruled that a temporary copy made within and on the screen of a computer when a user clicks on a link to an article shouldn’t be exempt from copyright law protection.

In its 23-page judgment, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected the Court of Appeal ruling and held that prior authorisation wasn’t either required or practical and applied the law as stated in two recent decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) that established broad principles in the interpretation of European copyright laws.

Temporary copies created as part of the technical processes involved in viewing copyright material on a computer are dealt with by Section 28A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 that itself was added to UK law as a result of EU Directive 2001/29/EC that dealt with the harmonization of certain aspects of copyright and related rights.

Those in the PR industry can now breathe a sigh of relief in that they can legitimately make copies of a transient or incidental nature every time they access a news site without fear that they will have to pay a licence fee to the NLA for the privilege.

It’s likely that any legal challenge made against PR practitioners will now have to be put on hold until the CJEU ruling which could take between 12-18 months to come through.

Francis Ingham, Chief Executive of the PRCA said in an email to members: “The PRCA is very proud to have stood up on behalf of the whole PR industry for the last few years. We are delighted that the highest court in the country accepted our argument outright.” He added: “The CJEU is likely to report its decision at some point in 2014. As a precautionary measure, until then we suggest that you continue to pay fees to the NLA – until we hear from the CJEU next year.”

According to lawyers for the PRCA, the decision of the Supreme Court is binding on the lower courts but it’s unusual for the Law Lords to have referred the matter of its judgment to Court of Justice in the Haigh.

In his judgment, Lord Jonathan Sumption explained it was desirable that any decision on the point of accessing such content be referred to the Court of Justice for preliminary ruling “so that the critical point may be resolved in a manner which will apply uniformly across the European Union,” he said.

It’s an interesting legal argument as to whether we have to wait for the CJEU decision before knowing if the Court of Appeal’s view of the law has changed or whether the recent CJEU decisions in the Premier League (2012) and Infopaq II (2012) cases on which the Supreme Court based its judgment now takes precedence over the Court of Appeal decision.

The powerful NLA represents the commercial interests of major British newspapers including the Guardian News and Media, Express Newspapers, Independent Print, MGN and Associated Newspapers and must now consider the Supreme Court ruling a major setback given that everything seemed to be going its way.

The PRCA and Meltwater should be congratulated for having the guts to stick to their guns and to see this through against all the odds. The chances of success in overturning a point of law on the legal interpretation of Section 28A was stacked against them after they lost their appeal and that must have filled the NLA with an even greater sense of confidence in its own arguments.

But how the courts decide such matters isn’t always predictable or certain, which makes litigation the very last option when all other avenues have been exhausted and the parties to the dispute place their future in the hands of the judges.

“I recognise the issue has a transnational dimension and that the application of copyright law to internet use has important implications for many millions of people across the EU making use of what has become a basic technical facility,” said Lord Sumption in his judgment with whom Lord Neuberger, Lord Kerr, Lord Clarke and Lord Carnwath agreed.

So the PRCA was right all along. “A temporary copy created on the screen of a computer simply as a technical necessity to allow the user to read the article shouldn’t be considered unlawful simply because one reads the work on a computer or other device as opposed to print. Temporary copies are made purely as a necessary part of the technological process to enable the user to do the lawful act of reading. In addition, they provide no additional independent economic advantage to the user reading the work and shouldn’t be seen as infringement of copyright law,” adds Francis Ingham.

Leaving aside the legal arguments for and against the narrow interpretation of a highly complex area of intellectual property law, what this case illustrates is the state of the broken relationship between newspapers and the PR industry.

Understandably, the newspaper industry is having to reinvent itself for the digital age and it’s fair to say it’s still struggling to find its feet in the wake of falling newspaper and advertising revenues, although visits to news websites has never been healthier and those in front of the pay wall are clinging on to a view of the world that’s rapidly out of date.

Let’s hope that together we can all look forward to a brighter and more collaborative future for both professions.

Ardi Kolah is the author of Essential Law for Marketers 2^nd edition (£19.99) published by Kogan Page. Click the book to order your copy today!

Women and economic growth is a reality that has played out quietly for centuries.

Whether this reality has taken place in the world’s most advanced economies or those that are beginning to emerge on the world stage, one constant remains – the participation of women in economic activity keeps the world spinning on its axis.

As a result, the influence of women as the world’s most valuable customer segment is causing global brand owners to chase the ‘gender dividend’ in recognition that they are the most dynamic and fastest growing economic force in the world today.

In fact, women globally are a market segment large enough to rival China or India and an economic superpower in their own right, dubbed the ‘Third Billion’ by analysts at Booz & Co.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year, global business leaders agreed that investing in supporting women as customers, employees, leaders, future investors and partners is a key growth strategy for all business sectors given that women are already the most dynamic and fastest-growing economic force in the world today.

For example, in the US women control or influence more than 80 per cent of all purchasing decisions, wielding a purchasing power in excess of $5 trillion and globally they are responsible for $20 trillion in spending, a figure expected to rise to $28 trillion by 2014.

And research by the powerful World Bank has shown that investments in women yield a ‘double dividend’ as women are more likely than men to invest their incomes in their families and communities, driving up GDP and literacy levels and decreasing mortality rates. This double whammy, combined with pure market forces has started to redefine how Wall Street looks at the future prospects of global companies increasing market share in business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C) markets.

Women are redefining markets and creating growth by focusing their spending power on purchases such as food, healthcare, education, clothing, consumer durables and financial services.

And women’s earning power is growing faster than men’s in the developing world, where their earned incomes have increased by 8.1 per cent compared with men’s 5.8 per cent.

Nowhere is this change of focus more apparent than in the sports good sector.

Increasingly, sports brand owners are investing in what has been termed the ‘gender dividend’.

For example, adidas, Under Armour and Nike are all engaged in ramping up their efforts to attract female consumers, building on the popularity of the London 2012 Olympic Games among this audience.

These and many other global brand owners are all making a concerted effort to create engaging content and experiences that are tailored to women from the outset, designed to reach girls in the environment they already inhabit online and provide them with increased opportunities to interact with their sports brands.

This is driving growth within the UK sports marketing and consultancy sector as brand owners like adidas and Nike increasingly use Twitter and other social media sites in order to achieve this level of engagement as well as encouraging women to advise one another in their athletic activities, whether they are part of a sports team or a tribe of friends.

It’s clear that the way in which brand owners in other sectors approach women should also reflect this wider reality.

The switched on global brand owners are finally realising that women represent not just consumers but also shoppers for the rest of the family and consequently represent a far more lucrative segment than males from a volume perspective.

In this context, women are today’s global economic superpower and we better start to get used to it!

Ardi Kolah is the author of High Impact Marketing That Gets Results, published by Kogan Page (£19.99) and available on Amazon. Click the cover of the book to order your copy today!

You have to hand it to the BBC’s public relations department for delivering a wonderful piece of non-news that’s generated so much media coverage this week.

But if you look behind the headlines of this “new” research in the way the BBC classifies its audiences – because let’s face it, how else can the BBC seek to justify the time and expense of this experiment – it’s frankly deeply flawed.

The unique way the BBC is funded means it needs to ensure its programming reflects and enriches the life of the nation and it’s accountable to the licence fee payer in that regard.

And that requires the BBC to have a deep level of detail about its various audiences as it tries to rebuild trust and brand loyalty that’s been so badly damaged in the wake of the Saville affair and other disasters that have beset the organisation over the last year.

But it’s questionable whether this latest vanity project actually helps restore the BBC’s battered image.

Has it really come down to a question of the chavs and the chav nots?

The BBC claims its “new” classification system replaces the three group system – the three group system that was replaced in the 1950s by a five group system of social class (ABCDE) and then in the ‘60s with a six group system (ABC1 C2 DE).

Anyone who’s been involved with marketing planning, direct marketing and segmentation analysis will have a wry smile on their face when they read that claim as they’ve probably heard and seen it all before.

And teaming up with a group of academics doesn’t add a veneer of validity for the basis of the research if the premise is fundamentally flawed. Nor for that matter does a sample size of 160,000 people based on census data or one using transactional and behavioural data from millions of people makes this any more robust.

More to the point, the system encompasses information such as cultural choices that more reflect affordability than class per se.

But that premise is also flawed.

For example, by 2030 PwC predict that UK households will spend more than a quarter of their income on rent or mortgage payments, gas bills and water charges – more than double that in the ‘60s.

Household costs will climb to 25.6 per cent of the average budget in 2030 as house prices are predicted to rise faster than average incomes and utility bills will continue to increase as the cost of shifting to a low carbon economy is passed on to consumers.

This makes the BBC social class classification system meaningless in light of these economic changes that will impact all households.

No doubt this will create a cottage industry in trying to create ever more meaningless “new” social classes to take account of these socio-economic changes.

Outside of the BBC, brand owners are grappling with how to use segmentation analysis to increase loyalty and grow customer share. In some ways this drives marketing and communications strategies and in other ways it reflects the strategy.

For example, an organisation with a goal of rapid growth in emerging markets needs to look at the lifetime value of customers and future sales rather than the short-term goal of maximising cash flow.

What seems to have been overlooked by the BBC is that audiences segment themselves; they don’t slot themselves into predetermined categories and the propositions that appeal to them are those that satisfy their attitudes, values, beliefs, perceptions and behaviours.

Ardi Kolah is author of High Impact Marketing That Gets Results (£19.99), published by Kogan Page and available from Amazon. Click the book to order your copy today!

As London Mayor Boris Johnson puts the finishing touches to his planned week-long tour of the Gulf States next month, he’s also getting briefed on the opportunities for UK sports marketing and consultancy firms to win lucrative contracts in the region.

It’s not just about Boris getting funding for his pet airport project on the Thames estuary but the opportunity for the British economy to benefit by over £13 billion over the next four years that’s the real prize in our grasp.

According to some of the UK’s leading sports marketing and consultancy experts I’ve spoken to recently the forthcoming visit to the Gulf States could help unlock billions of pounds worth of sports infrastructure and consultancy projects for British firms in the region.

A key factor is that Qatar has begun the journey to turn itself into a global ‘sports superpower’ and will host the FIFA World Cup in 2022.

“We see the Middle East as a very important growth market for us, particularly in places like Qatar and Abu Dhabi with clients like Mubadala, the sovereign wealth fund,” explains Andy Westlake, CEO, Fast Track that opened an office in Qatar earlier this month.

Fast Track and other sports marketing and consultancy firms including IMG, Populous Activate, PRISM and 4 Global stand to be the major beneficiaries of new business opportunities created by the global interest stirred up by the phenomenal success of London 2012 Games.

“We’ve got beyond the stage of thinking that brand exposure is the exclusive objective and we’re a lot more focused on return on investment (ROI) and understanding the rights and formulating the right attitude that will deliver the brand’s objectives and that’s mainly through careful strategic activation,” observes Simon Rines, publisher of Sponsorship Today.

It’s never been a better time for the UK sports marketing and consultancy sector to focus on exporting this know-how and capability around the globe in the absence of a major sporting event taking place on British soil until the Commonwealth Games in Scotland in 2014.

“With respect to the FIFA World Cup in 2014, I have two partners in Rio practically working full time for me as there’s so much going on in Brazil at the moment,” observes Simon Cummins, the leading head hunter in the sector and who’s managing partner of Odgers’ thriving global sports practice based in London.

He’s struggling to cope with demand from governments, sports federations, sports rights holders and brand owners in countries including Russia, China, India, Brazil, Turkey and the Middle East that are seeking top flight British expertise as they plan to host major sports events over the next seven years and beyond.

“Emerging governments around the world have bought into the fact that sport is a major catalyst for change at a political level and it’s also a fantastic catalyst for growth in tourism,” he says.

Many sports marketing and consulting firms have traditionally had more UK-based rather than global clients on their books but that balance is now beginning to change.

Architect firm Populous was heavily involved with the London 2012 Games and were responsible for the overlay of all London Olympic venues including Horse Guards Parade that was the setting for the popular beach volleyball event.

Populate Activate is now a thriving sports and entertainment marketing activation business, born out of the sports and entertainment architecture business following the design of the current O2 by the practice over a decade ago.

“New business opportunities are often driven by events, so Russia is a big growth market for us at the moment because of the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi 2014 and the FIFA World Cup in 2018 and we’re doing a number of venues there,” explains Nicholas Reynolds, a director at the company who also continues to win sports marketing business in the UK.

“We’re doing some work with Premier League clubs that’s around redefining existing building and financial value. This involves going to clubs and trying to connect their redevelopment opportunities with their sponsors as a mechanism for paying for work.”

It’s this level of ingenuity, creativity and commercial nous that has marked out the UK sports marketing and consultancy sector as being the best in the world.

Ardi Kolah is author of High Impact Marketing That Gets Results (£19.99), published by Kogan Page and available from Amazon. Click the book to order your copy today!

Few would argue that the nature of social media, communication, information and the global economy have merged to transform the way we must now communicate and prospect for customers and clients.

In many respects, the strategies that are often employed to predict and manage customers’ or clients’ purchasing behaviour have been spurred on by the growth of online data, which in itself has its own challenges for the sales and marketing professional.

What started life within the airline and hotel market segments has rapidly been adopted across other market segments that now database and online strategies proliferate sales pipeline management thinking.

Implementation of these techniques often requires a combination of sophisticated mix of tools with equally sophisticated statistical methods to help manage and track frequency and timing of purchase, repeat purchase behaviour, market share and other indicators of commercial success including cost of sales and profit data and return on equity.

Customers are more different and individual, more discerning and demanding than ever before. Whilst 100 years ago, a new car buyer would be more than happy to buy a Ford Model T, a model that hardly changed in decades, in ‘any colour as long as it’s black’, today customers are intelligent, expectant and pedantic. Their stated needs may well be true, but their unstated needs and wants often matter even more.

A recent survey in the UK showed that 70 per cent of the respondents found that online research and review to be extremely helpful in making a purchase decision and 97 per cent of them also trusted online reviews (both negative and positive) five times more than they trusted information in a TV commercial or newspaper advertisement.

As a result, there’s a fundamental shift in power to the consumer, to the people. That requires us to engage, to create and connect with consumers on a scale that we’ve never seen before. And this is regardless of whether they are in the home or at the office.

Every consumer today has either heard of or knows someone who’s been on the wrong side of a sales transaction that’s gone badly wrong. Today, its colleagues, friends, family and peers that your customers and clients will want to listen to and it’s this group that increasingly has a stronger influence on the ultimate purchase decision that’s being made.

The starting point for marketing to customers, clients, supporters and prospects is to take a more enlightened and focused approach.

And in practical terms this means sitting in the passenger seat and not believing we can see everything that’s going on from the comfort of our own cabin.

Ardi Kolah is the author of High Impact Marketing That Gets Results published by Kogan Page. Click on the book to order your copy today!