The Blog Watcher writes...

The blogosphere is where it's at you know. In every issue we recommend recent entries on PR-based blogs from around the world. Today, what recession lessons we can learn from McDonalds, and the need for newspapers to up their game if they're going to survive.

From Piaras Kelly blog: Lessons to learn from McDonalds during the recession

“I stumbled upon this excellent interview with Larry Light, McDonalds’ former Chief Marketing Officer, thanks to Kim Brater. I find McDonalds an extremely fascinating company and have written about their Ten Commandments in the past. The Ten Commandments were at the core of the company turnaround in 2002.

Reading the interview with Light, I couldn’t help but think about how some of the lessons McDonalds learnt back in 2002 matter more than ever during a recession. Here are two key quotes which I think are particularly relevant in the current economic climate.

‘During the years preceding 2002, McDonald’s focused on cost reduction, rather than customer experience improvement. The result was the incremental degradation of product and service quality’.

Managing costs is a major focus at present. Companies are right to look at cost savings when it comes to improving efficiencies, but unfortunately many organisations are cutting off their hand at their wrist in order to save on trimming their fingernails. The majority of companies need to shift their focus from customer acquisition to customer retention. If companies want to improve their customer offering, the best way to do it is by focussing on customer experience improvement. Robin Blandford has an interesting blog post on this topic about how organisations can turn customer complaints to their advantage.

‘Effective marketing is essential for enduring profitable growth. It is not enough to renovate and innovate. Customers must be kept aware and reminded of the brand promise. And the brand image needs to be kept up to date. Beginning in 2003, the McDonald’s brand reputation experienced a major rehabilitation and revitalization’.

One topic consistently brought up by advertisers is the old chestnut that the companies that profited during the last recession were those that maintained or increased their advertising spend. I think this is over the top, what companies need to focus on though, like McDonalds, is reminding customers about their brand promise. McDonalds took a step back and looked at what was really important to their customers. People go to McDonalds because they want to get something to eat quickly in a clean and friendly environment, so they invested in fulfilling this experience for their customers through clever investments like hostesses to cater for parents with small children.

Competing simply on price is a short term strategy, it only buys you some time before your competitors eventually respond. If you want to build brand loyalty then you have to develop an experience which isn’t easily replicable by your competition”.

Read Piaras’ full blog post on this topic here.

From Murphy’s Law: Traditional media needs to take ownership of its future

“I have always been of the view that while traditional media is clearly under pressure, it is not going away, rather we are seeing a re-balancing of media consumption.

The oft floated idea that traditional media is ‘dead’ and that all media will be ‘user-generated’ is flawed in my opinion because people are busy and therefore want trusted filters on what’s going on in the world. Oh, and many of us are inherently lazy.

I believe that the traditional media can find a profitable future in that role, whether it’s in print, online or over the air waves.

However, to thrive they need to be focused on adding value to their audience. This can be through news gathering or great opinions and content amongst other things, but trust is absolutely key.

Any ten year old can cut and paste content off the web.

I’ve written about Wikipedia before, but if traditional media are going to lazily do an internet search, cut and paste what they find and publish it as editorial, then maybe the future of traditional media isn’t as healthy as I imagined.

Today I read about how the UK Guardian newspaper included a quote from Wikipedia in an obituary of French composer Maurice Jarre. The only problem was that the quote was made up by a 22 year old student in Dublin and posted online.

Siobhain Butterworth, writing on this snafu for the Guardian, pointed out that: ‘Wikipedia editors were more sceptical about the unsourced quote. They deleted it twice on 30 March and when Fitzgerald added it the second time it lasted only six minutes on the page. His third attempt was more successful – the quote stayed on the site for around 25 hours before it was spotted and removed again’.

She adds: ‘The moral of this story is not that journalists should avoid Wikipedia, but that they shouldn’t use information they find there if it can’t be traced back to a reliable primary source’.

While I am a passionate advocate of ‘social media’, I am equally passionate on our society’s need for a strong traditional media. However, to survive and thrive, traditional media and journalists needs to take ownership of the value they can offer their readers.

Of course this was just a mistake, and mistakes happen, we’re all human, so let’s not blow it out of proportion, but I think it’s a great reminder of how important it is that traditional media focuses on the value it can deliver.

That ‘value’, in my humble opinion, isn’t mastering internet search and cut-and-paste”.

Read more from Tom Murphy’s blog here.

Posted Friday May 29 2009