Autumn 2009
Welcome to the first edition of our Newsletter. Our aim is to use it to give you advice that you will find useful, based on our experience over the years and, as you might expect, we also want to let you know about some of the work we are doing to help to inform you and perhaps provide you with a little inspiration.
So this month, we’re exploring an idea I’ve come up with based on many years of marketing experience – 360 Degree Marketing™ – as well as telling you about the projects we’ve been involved in for some of our clients. We are also giving a marketing perspective to a key issue facing us all in terms of raising participation in sport and meeting the national target of ‘a million people doing more sport by 2012/13’, with the aim of starting a debate on our forum.
We hope you find it an interesting read – please let us know what you think.
Best wishes
Ricky
Ricky Coussins
Managing Partner, Coussins Associates
In this edition:
Towards 2012 - Team Sutton
We have recently been working with the London Borough of Sutton, helping them with an exciting project in the lead up to 2012. They have come up with an innovative idea to showcase talented sportspeople, with a connection to the Borough, who have the potential to compete in either the Olympics or the Paralympics in As well as showcasing the Borough’s sporting talent,
· Enthuse Sutton residents about the Games;
· Inspire Sutton’s young people to take up sport;
· Provide a focus for Sutton’s schools to incorporate activities around the Games;
· Encourage businesses to support local young sportspeople; and
· Support sports clubs and volunteers to fully prepare for the interest the Games will generate.
The starting point for us was to compile a set of key messages for each of the different audiences, which provided the basis for copy for all communications to ensure the messages going out were consistent and at the same time tailored for each of the audiences.
The Council were aware of many of their potential Olympians, having always supported young sportspeople, but they also wanted to encourage Sutton’s residents to get involved so we wrote some press releases for the local newspapers encouraging people to tell their story (or that of a friend or relative) about their aspirations and potential to compete in the 2012 Olympic or Paralympic Games. We then put together a campaign to go to all the schools and sports clubs in the Borough asking for similar information regarding their pupils and club members respectively.
Once all the information on the athletes had been checked and verified as to their potential to make the 2012 Team, we then interviewed the chosen athletes over the phone and compiled profiles which will appear on the soon to be launched
An additional aspect of the project was to produce a Roll of Honour of past Olympians and Paralympians, also with a local connection, through their home, club or school, so we undertook desk research, and talked to local sports clubs to uncover some interesting stories and connections. For example one of the local swimming clubs can boast seven Olympians including three Water Polo players who represented
Having experience in incorporating film into marketing communications work for many clients, led to the production of a short video on one of the potential Olympians which was used to engage young people in schools. The resulting DVD, sent to all the Borough’s schools for them to use during National School Sport Week at the end of June, explains the benefits of sport from a young person’s point of view, and encourages them to participate.
We also coordinated a schools’ Design a Logo competition producing a promotional poster, a PowerPoint presentation and a creative brief that all the Borough’s schools could then respond to. With over 100 entries, the competition was a great success and the competition winner is now going to work with a professional designer, and will see his finished work all over the Borough.
Sutton Sports Development Officer Beverley Rand noted that, “It was great to work with Coussins, using their expertise in this field to good effect, whilst retaining control of the project. Team Sutton has already achieved more than we thought would be possible in the timescales, thanks to our partnership with Coussins Associates.”
runningsports Research
To truly understand our markets, users, customers and prospective customers and the challenges we can help them resolve, or the aspirations that they want to achieve we must have impartial and informed data. Only then can we hope to provide the services and solutions that deal with their issues. So we need research. It is the DNA of marketing.
Research is about gathering information and providing conclusions as to the implications of that information that help us decide what to do in response. Without the conclusions, the information on its own is not worth that much. In fact, in the 21st century, one thing most managers would like to escape from is more information. What we all need, in fact, are the conclusions, inferences, understanding, and recommendations contained within the information Without such information most organisations would see a decline in their effectiveness or would cease to function altogether.
However, although it is a vital part of the marketing process, research should be treated with a little caution because any research project poorly executed will result in a waste of precious financial resources and no insights.
Research Can: Research Cannot: · Enhance and add value to your management information · Support your thinking · Guide your way forward · Tell you what your partners/ end users/non users think at a given time · Help you to understand your audiences at the present time · Lead to the successful development and launch of programmes, services and solutions that meet your customers’, users’, and stakeholders’ needs and requirements. · Be a substitute for effective management information · Be allowed to override your management judgement and ability · Make decisions · Predict the future · Last forever without being updated
In fact good research depends on a focused approach and asking the right questions that lead to the key insights. It is very much prone to the problem of GIGO – Garbage In Garbage Out.
One of the best ways to avoid this is to draw up a comprehensive research brief, one that includes the following elements:
The Rationale
Define precisely what you want to know about It will help you (and your colleagues/suppliers) to understand the context for the project. It will therefore be useful to set out a background in brief, outlining who you are as an organisation and what you do. More importantly yet will be the reason why you are conducting this research. What is the background that has brought you to this point? What are the drivers and the imperatives?
The Problem Statement
This sets out the what and why of the research project. An example of a problem statement might be:
“We want to understand participants’ views of our project in terms of the value added services that we provide so as to find out if our project has been more successful than previous projects; to understand what they like about the service, as well as what they do not like so as to improve and come up with opportunities in the future that will appeal to them.”
Research Objectives
The objectives should be set out to provide the focus of the research. They are specific statements of the information that is required.
Terms of Reference
This refers to the framework within which the research will be conducted; specifically in relation to whom will be researched, how many of them to speak to and in what proportion, what degree of error rate is acceptable (which also is about sample size, of course), and how long the study might take.
Research Methods
Is there any secondary/desk data available and how should this be used? Then, there are different kinds of field study – e.g. phone, interview, self-completion, qualitative or quantitative. Think also about the composition of sample and who is to be surveyed as well as size of the sample. How is the information to be collected, analysed and reported? Who will draw up the recommendations? To whom will it be shown? Research must have an aim and an outcome; it might be the germ of a strategy.
Follow these rules of structuring, ordering and considering what you want back before you embark on any research project, to ensure that what you get back from it is useful, worthwhile and value for money.
runningsports – Sport England’s portfolio of resources and support for sports volunteers – uses research with sports volunteers to measure awareness of and satisfaction with the portfolio, as well as to gauge respondents’ views of proposed plans and products.
Coussins Associates carries out the research on behalf of runningsports, the results of which drive the marketing of the portfolio for the following year.
Using our specialist software package, respondents can complete the survey conveniently online, and, by making sure that we ask a number of questions to categorise the respondents we can then compare responses between different customer or user segments– for example, are volunteers that have been volunteering for more than 20 years less likely to find runningsports’ resources useful than those who are new to volunteering?
We make sure our recommendations will contribute to at least one of the runningsports KPIs and demonstrate how we have arrived at each recommendation. For example the usage data showed that very few people had used two of the runningsports resources; the Health and Safety and Volunteer Co-ordinator e-learning tasters and the online club problem solving tool. However the satisfaction data showed that these two resources were rated highly and seen as very valuable by the people that had used them. As a result it was logical to recommend ‘relaunching’ the two resources and also raising their profile on the website so that more volunteers might become aware of them. Successful implementation of these recommendations will contribute to increasing the use of the runningsports programme, one of five KPIs, as well as hopefully raising satisfaction levels.
And Phil Collier, Director of runningsports, was pleased with the 12 recommendations we made, “This research is a very important part of our marketing planning, and Coussins don’t just present us with the data, they undertake a detailed analysis of it and more importantly make practical recommendations for us based on that analysis. And then to make sure we get real value for money from the research, they use the findings for future communications campaigns”
If you have a research project you need help with, or are planning one and just want some early input, for some free advice contact us on 020 8392 1118 or angela@coussins.co.uk
360 Degree Marketing for CSPs & NGBs
You know about 360 Degree Management, right? The concept that, at the same time as your manager is providing feedback on you, you are providing feedback on your manager. There is a Dilbert cartoon that sums it up where the pointy haired manager is saying to Dilbert that anything that is said about him as a manager will in no way impact Dilbert’s own appraisal. He will be judged solely on his work and performance in the job. So when Dilbert tells him what a bad manager he actually is, how he bullies them, and how unsupportive, de-motivating and generally incapable he is as a manager, the pointy haired boss simply says ‘that’s funny – your performance in the job and work overall seem to be going way down!’ But however sceptical you may find me on the value and effectiveness of 360 degree feedback (and I’m sure some of it works for some people) I am a real believer in something I call 360 Degree Marketing™. I coined this phrase because some time ago I began to realise that to be truly effective at marketing we needed to think far beyond target markets, consumers, customers and segments. Let me explain. Markets are all around us. The idea that we simply need to focus on our external customers is mistaken, because in this connected world of ours, markets go way beyond this limited view. Think of the whole market and look around you all 360 degrees. It might help to think of it in terms of an old fashioned ship’s compass (or a high tech one if you prefer). When you do that you can plot markets at each point of the compass rose and this is what, for me, that compass looks like: There are, then, four distinct points that we need to consider in 360 Degree Marketing™ and they consist of: In a connected world they are all inter-related and networked up. So what we say to one part of this 360 Degree market has impact and implications on many or all of the others. Yet for most marketers their focus is almost exclusively the traditional external markets. The other points of my 360 degree compass barely register. So it may pay to review each of these in turn. 90 Degrees - The External Market This involves the marketing that we all know something about. The overall approach to make marketing work for you involves understanding your customers and prospective customers (their needs and wants, their aspirations and goals, and their challenges and ‘pain’) and working out what you can develop and provide in response to this at a price that they would be willing to pay. Then it is simply about making sure that they know you provide this stuff and persuading them to take part. I say ‘simply’ and, put in those terms, it sounds simple enough, but of course there’s a life’s work involved in learning how to do that well, getting it right, and making it happen. Either way I probably don’t need to add much to your thinking and knowledge here. If you do want to read more about Coussins Associates’ various views on the traditional marketing mix and improving your performance then please click here to see the rest of the site. 180 Degrees - The Internal Market This is solely about marketing to your own organisation. It took me a long while to get this, but internal marketing is vitally important. In fact, in service dominated organisations it is probably more important than external marketing. However, in my experience, it is something that most people completely neglect or do very poorly. For some reason or another, when it comes to marketing within our own organisation we just don’t do it. Oh sure we tell people about our campaigns, and we may even flag to colleagues what is coming up in our marketing communications schedules. But in terms of treating them as we would a market place, and using our skills to understand their needs and concerns, make things that help and work for them and then communicate benefits and persuade them – in my experience very few marketers have any strategy for this. But the rewards for everyone involved are substantial, because if you focus some of your marketing skills on persuading your own organisation you can get: Let’s start by taking a segmented approach to this market place and look at the three key segments in a brief overview, which are: 1. Marketing to the Development Team My view is that if you can get the development team – colleagues who are out in the field working with partners or customers – to buy into the concept of your organisation brand or ethos and to truly understand the benefits and values of your programmes and services then you are a long way towards communicating your brand and the products and solutions you offer to the marketplace. So all we have to do here is to use some of our marketing smarts and expertise to sell to them. Listen to the issues and challenges that they face. Understand their ‘pain’ and what they want to achieve for themselves – all just as we would in any other market. Then give them some ownership during the development process (whether that be for an initiative or service or your values) and a stake in the success of the programmes, services or brands. Tell them about the benefits (the benefits to them not the benefits to the customer) of the initiatives, programme or services we are asking them to sell. Persuade them of the value (to them) of the organisation or brand values. Use all your marketing communications skills to market to them. Think about ‘communications campaigns’ focused just on them (emailers, presentations, webinars, launch presentations, conferences, even direct mail) about all of this and execute them regularly. You’ll find the time you spend on this work pays you back many times over. Work out what materials they could use out in the field – what would help them to explain a particular initiative – do they need a brochure to leave behind, or simply a fact sheet? Would a PowerPoint presentation work better for them or both fact sheet and presentation? All your colleagues need to share the values of the organisation and live up to the promises you make. A lot of this is to do with levels of customer service provided. So if you use the cliché about having a passion for excellent customer service, then these people need to understand what this means to them in their daily work and how they will deliver it. If you promise that you ‘always go the extra mile’ (to use yet another cliché) then these are the people that need to live up to that and know what ‘going the extra mile’ looks like. So you not only need to tell them about the values of the organisation (which is what most organisations do), but sell them the idea of those values. Make them believe in them. Help them to understand what that might look like and ensure that they have understood all this and believe it too. Far too often organisations do not follow through on this which means that the interpretation and execution of your key values are left to the individuals involved, to their attitudes and to chance. According to my research so many organisations fail to live and deliver on their promises because they fail to get those key workers, the very people responsible for delivery of these values, to understand or believe in them. As with the values, so with the programmes and services you provide. If they don’t believe in them or understand them, then don’t expect them to be able to sell or support them. However tempting it is to assume that they understand and believe or, worse still, simply expect them to because that is what they are paid to do, try hard to resist the temptation. It is our job as marketers to ensure that these key colleagues have all that they need to do their job effectively and we must include them in our list of key markets. 2. Marketing to Finance You don’t need me to tell you that the finance officer/team is important. They are the people who hold the purse strings that control your budgets. The fuel that makes marketing work. Yet too often marketing simply see the finance guys as the people responsible for ‘raining on our parade’. We see them as ‘bean counters’ with no respect for, or understanding of, our work. Yet if you take a moment to look at this the other way round you find that many of them regard us as ill disciplined spendthrifts who have no understanding of proper fiscal diligence, and they see marketing as a business expense with no or little return on investment (ROI). For my part I have always welcomed input from the finance team. Why? Well because they add considerable value if you can bring them on-side. They help you to work out what has worked well and what you need to change. If you make them friends rather than enemies you can work with them to help you to improve what you do and how you do it. And once they support you then you’ll find that most of the rest of the management team will follow. So how do you do that? Well a good starting point is to have some real key performance indicators for your marketing communications activity and preferably things like target ROIs for your campaigns. If you get used to working to target costs per enquiry and target costs per ‘sale’ for your marketing communications, that will begin to win them over and prove you are sincere about offering a decent return for the organisation’s investment in your communications campaigns. Get them to help you with developing the business case for your new product developments rather than doing it alone. Or, more negatively, leaving them to be a part of the review team happily dismembering your idea or development. Learn a little more about key financial metrics and how they work if you feel you don’t know them well enough. Stuff like Internal Rates of Return (IRR) or Net Present Value (NPV). Get their expertise working for you rather than against you. You see it does all come back to marketing again. Finding out what their issues, concerns and needs are and then making sure we have solutions that deal with these. Showing we understand and empathise. You’ll find it will make all the difference. 3. Marketing to the Board and Senior Management Have you been telling the board or your senior managers how well you have been doing for the organisation? If not then why not? They are only going to know about the details of your success if someone tells them. And as a large part of marketing is about communicating then why should that someone not be you, the marketer? Especially now you have won over the support of the development and finance teams? Here too it is about thinking what works for them. What their issues, needs and challenges are. So the information you provide should be key data (not every little campaign of course) and in easily digestible forms. Key numbers, examples of major campaign material, responses, participation figures, and plaudits won (ideally from partners and participants). Keeping senior managers and key board members in the loop and up to date outside of any meeting papers you have to produce will help to keep them onside and supportive of what you are doing. 270 Degrees - The Funders This one is the one we sometimes forget. Most funders now tell us what they want in terms of reporting and evaluation, and it can be quite daunting, so it’s not surprising if we just give them what they want and race around to meet their deadlines so they won’t hassle us any more. But why not tell them what you want to tell them as well. Make sure Sport England and other funders know that when they are looking for a CSP or NGB or a Sports Development Unit or Leisure Services Trust that is leading the way in a certain area of work that they think of you. Case studies to back up data bring projects to life and you never know when your example might be timely when a DCMS Official wants to visit a certain type of activity, or when your work could help to make the case for continued funding for a particular initiative. You need to tell them about your successes and to sell them the idea of seeing you as one of the key organisations. You want them, too, to believe in your future. Making that bit of effort to include funders in your marketing plan could pay off in ways you never imagine. 360 Degrees - The Stakeholders This is simply all those who have a stake in your organisation. A useful definition is: “Individuals or organisations that have a material, legal or political interest in or who may be affected by the activities and performance of your organisation.” The following groups of people are likely to be your stakeholders:
As we’ve already dealt with the first two elsewhere in the context of 360 Degree Marketing™, it is the remaining four which concern us here. And here again it is about working out what it is that each of these groups are interested in and concerned with that should guide our marketing work in this respect. Partners are an obvious group of stakeholders and you don’t need me to tell you that you need to remind them how much they get out of working with you, and how much value they are getting out of their contribution to the Partnership. The local communities in which you operate are also a key market. Whether that is your club or volunteer network or local voluntary organisations, you need to demonstrate the added value you can bring to them. It will be their support and goodwill you will need to ensure your future plans are a success. So it will pay you to take time to ensure that they are included in your communications plans and understand the benefits you deliver as a part of that community. What they want to hear about is your support for them, your plans that will help them to make their organisations and lives better, and your commitment to their community which, after all, you are directly a part of. Any government organisations and agencies with an interest in your field must also represent an important stakeholder audience. Their interest can be harnessed for your own marketing of course (though take care here as politicians have a habit of hi-jacking your message to support or enhance messages of their own). But this is more about making sure that they understand what you are doing, why you are doing it and why they need support you. It’s about telling them why what you are doing is good for them and good for the communities that they serve. It is about them seeing you as an informed source of information and expertise in your area. And all of this applies no matter what the size of your organisation. Finally, you also need to market to the professional bodies, associations, and groups that have a voice in our sector. You need to ensure that they perceive you positively and are broadly supportive of your organisation and what it is trying to do. So you need to include them in your marketing strategy and your communications. Keep them up to date with your developments. Encourage them to think of you as an informed and important industry leader. Share your thought leadership pieces with them. Let them know about your new developments and plans. Tell them about your new products and initiatives. The more you have them on-side and supportive, the more they can help to position you as you want to be seen by your market, your competitors and your own organisation. Finally Some of you who are old enough might have been thinking that some of this sounds a bit familiar. Well, there really is nothing new under the sun to coin a nice biblical phrase. What seems like millennia ago, there was marketing and then there was Public Relations with a capital P and a capital R. PR meant all of the publics that an organisation related to. Marketing focused on customers. And anyone who worked in marketing in those days would have recognised that a large part of this 360 Degree Marketing™ concept revisits and borrows from that thinking. Over the past years public relations has begun to be used inter-changeably for press relations and much about how an organisation relates to all of its publics has been forgotten. That’s a shame. But there is a part of this that I like to think is new, or at least will serve as a timely reminder. Thinking about our colleagues inside the organisation as a market place in its own right, with segments and segment needs is, I think, vitally important for the 21st century marketer. Getting their support and buy in to our marketing and having them onside rather than hostile and negative must be a real plus. Marketing to our suppliers can only have positive results and few, if any, organisations that I know of, have any plans in this respect at all. So, if we could just work a bit harder to think about the less obvious markets, segments and customers and use our marketing smarts to market to them too, just think how much more successful we could all be. 
Join The Debate
Recent research (summer 2009) from the Young people are bombarded with a myriad of messages that compete for their attention, their money and their time, so it’s no wonder that if sport has not successfully marketed itself to them by the time they leave school they are lost to sport, sometimes for good.
Action to stem the drop-off is required much earlier than 15-16 as young people start to make up their mind about sport at a young age. And while all the money going into school sport is welcome and undoubtedly producing results, I would argue that until similar amounts of funding are invested into community sport we are not going to much change from the headline above.
From a marketing perspective schools have it (relatively) easy. Young children find physical activity in its purest form (running, jumping, throwing etc) fun. So I would argue that the basic product (sport) is valued. Schools can offer the product (in the form of PE) for free The curriculum gives schools a window of opportunity and the fact that it is compulsory means promotion is not a huge issue. However, something is going wrong despite this, as large numbers of young people, particularly girls, are being ‘turned off’ sport during their early years at secondary school.
The current emphasis on increasing competition in schools is not the answer. And neither are ideas like the Schools Olympics that came out of one of the party conferences last month. These types of initiatives might produce good stats at the time but will do nothing to arrest the drop off because they do nothing to encourage young people to participate out of school. And we know from experience that competitions tend to bring out the competitive spirit in the adults responsible for organising teams so you end up simply with the best participants being selected all the time. And where does that leave those young people who do not enjoy the competitive side of sport, or those that do, but are just not good enough to make the team? They deserve the same chances to find a sporting activity that appeals to them, which is not likely to happen with an increasing emphasis on competition. More competition in schools will just provide more opportunities for those young people who are already into their sport.
Yes, competition is important. After all it’s no fun just practising skills if there is no game at the end of it. But to attract as many young people as possible and give them a lasting love for their chosen sport, participation should allow for competition at all levels and embrace as wide a range of skills and abilities as possible. Playing the game shouldn’t just be for the elite few. So how can we cater for this approach? Well I think it needs to be about clubs as well as schools. This is, in my view, where we need to focus our efforts. In the club environment, creating friendly, actively and successful local clubs where young people are especially made to feel welcome and comfortable and given a chance to learn, participate and enjoy their sport at all levels. After all what is the point in introducing young people to a sport, getting them enthused and then not providing them with the means to carry on the activity? Unfortunately this is what is happening all too often. The latest PE and Sport Survey tells us that whilst 50% of schools offer Cycling, only 12% have links with a Cycling club. And although the proportion of schools with links to golf clubs has increased from 22% to 26% this is still quite a long way short of the proportion of schools that offer golf (42%). It would surely be quite straightforward to look at local provision as a starting point when deciding what to offer pupils.
Sport Unlimited is a welcome step in the right direction. One of the reasons for its early success is undoubtedly the choice that it has offered young people. The fact that participants have chosen to attend the sessions rather than experiencing the sessions as a ‘captive audience’ gives us cause to be optimistic about the results of the programme in the future, as well as about participation rates among these young people as they grow up. And the opportunities offered were backed up by research which as a vital part of the marketing process is another welcome step in the right direction. Two consecutive steps in the right direction – now there’s a thing! So let’s resolve not take three steps back here.
After all it’s quite simple sports development really; introduce young people to as many different sports as possible in school, in partnership with local clubs that are well prepared to cater for young people and will provide a welcoming environment, incentivise them to go to the club at an early age, and get them hooked on their chosen sport outside of the school environment so that when they leave school they have already made the transition, and will be more likely to reap the benefits of lifelong participation in sport.
What do you think? Where do you think the emphasis should be? How best do you think we can slow down the drop out rate? Join the debate here.
