Take a look at the websites of most companies operating at the premium end of the spectrum, and you will usually find something about customer service, generally explicit but sometimes implicit. That’s not too surprising, since it can be an important factor in both a company’s brand image and also in persuading savvy consumers that paying extra for a premium product really is justifiable. How important? Here’s a true story.
 
A couple visited the boutique store of a watch company – a premium brand, though not one of the ‘top tier’. He was looking to buy a particular watch, one of the company’s top-end models. Now, this guy is a pretty serious horologist, with a small but decent collection, and an admirable knowledge of the companies and watches at the high end of the market. He visited this boutique for a specific watch, and wouldn’t otherwise have considered one of this company’s products.
 
The service they received was truly exceptional. First, the salesperson knew everything that could be expected about the brand, and about the range of watches, and then some. There was no hard sell; in fact, the process was so ‘soft’that the selling was almost imperceptible. And once the sale was made, glasses of champagne were produced for the couple, to help pass the time while the watch was adjusted, sized, and prepared for use by the on-site watchmaker.
 
The enthusiast's wife was equally impressed; she has a watch from one of the top French luxury firms, whose name is instantly recognizable by all. She’s a devotee of the watches of this brand, and never considered anything else. The salesperson was happy to show her anything she wanted to see, which included one particular watch that took her fancy, providing all the requested information, and offering some accessories with which to compare and contrast the watch. Again, no pressure, just helpful, informative, low-key, and above all relaxed.
 
What topped it all off came a few days later: a handwritten note from the salesperson, thanking them for their visit and their custom. You might think that’s over the top, fawning, cheesy, especially since it was for the sale of just one watch. Well, I can tell you that the couple were mightily impressed; unless you’re dealing with ultra-luxury megabucks products, who offers that kind of service and attention to detail these days? And the result of making the showroom experience so pleasant and unpressured, and taking a few minutes to write that note, is that the company is firmly on the radar for both of them; it has converted the wife from being a devotee of a single brand to appreciating that this other brand has something to offer, beyond just what is on her wrist. And it's worth noting that the watch she fancied, is one of the most expensive the company offers, equal in price to three or four of the watches her husband purchased, and being a branded boutique, all prices are MSRP.  The exemplary service rendered this acceptable for a product that the cognoscenti always purchase at a discount.
 
This level of service, this attention to detail, can help define and distinguish a brand.  It is a primary determinant of sales margin.  Branding goes far deeper than a logo or a corporate color scheme, it is the form and ethos of interaction with the consumer and with partners.  Brand equity is often the key differentiator between a company and the competition, and the strategy through which a brand is built and managed simply cannot be about the corporate logo, or what font to use; customer service needs to be an integral part of what you do, since it is central to how you are perceived by your customers, how often they buy from you, the emotional investment they make, and how much of their temporal and pecuniary currency they spend.

It’s been a couple of months since I took a look at the figures released by AdMob on the number of ads served to mobile devices. It was worth taking a break – as I predicted in my previous article, the number of ads served actually fell in February. The January numbers showed spectacular growth, but that was something of an anomaly, a blip driven by the large number of devices coming online after the Christmas period.

So if we compare the numbers for March with those for January, we see a growth of 9.6% - but since January saw a spike, perhaps a more meaningful comparison is with December 2009. That gives an increase of a remarkable 45% overall, in the space of just three months, but as with all statistics, you have to look beyond the headline figures – and in this case, the picture changes. The numbers above refer to the growth in mobile ads worldwide – according to AdMob, some 16.7 billion ads were served in March around the globe. But there are significant regional variations.

Take the North American market, where 8.2 billion ads were served in March. That makes it the single biggest market in the world, with 49% of the worldwide total – but growth since December was 'only' 39.7%. That’s still a spectacular increase; if that quarterly rate is sustained, then March 2011 will see 31 billion ads served in North America alone, almost double the number served to the entire world in March 2010. The European market is also growing – but the powerhouse behind the increasing numbers is Asia. The total number of ads is only half that for North America - but growth over the quarter was an explosive 72%. If that is sustained, then this time next year Asia will overtake North America as the largest market, with an astonishing 36 billion ads.

Of course, all of this is speculation, and shouldn't be relied upon. The increasing number of phones based on Google's Android OS may have an effect, along with the 3G-enabled iPad and the iPhone 4G. It also remains to be seen at what point the North American market becomes sated, while demand in China may still be ramping up. Looking at it from a marketing perspective, any multi-national company planning a campaign which incorporates mobile ads needs to be paying attention to just how big the Asian market is becoming. You can find the AdMob reports here.

Pretty much all companies in the premium consumer market recognize the importance of a strong brand image; after all, to a large extent that's what people are buying into. And for a brand image to work and remain strong, all of a company's marketing and advertising - anything the consumer comes into contact with, in fact - has to live up to, and reinforce, that image.

Having said that, Abercrombie & Fitch seem intent on demonstrating that slavish adherence to the brand image can be damaging. Last year the iconic firm was ordered to pay thousands of pounds in compensation after requesting a worker with a prosthetic arm confine herself to the storeroom - rather than the sales floor of its London store - until winter uniforms, covering up more of her arm, were introduced. Not the kind of publicity they would want, but possibly something which could be dismissed as a one-off.

Abercrombie & Fitch are set to open a new store in Aberdeen, Scotland - only its second store in the UK. Last month, reported Personnel Today, outside the Aberdeen store, posters recruiting new staff appeared - posters which asked for "cool and good-looking people". Now, this isn't directly outlawed by the UK's anti-discrimination legislation, but an older person, or someone with a facial disfigurement, who were turned down for jobs or consigned to the storeroom could claim the posters were evidence of a predisposition to discriminate against them. Even if no action is ever taken, the bad publicity such an ill-advised campaign can generate, in combination with the earlier incident, is hardly good news. It makes Abercrombie & Fitch look like the kind of company which is solely interested in the cool and good-looking, something which may stop the rest of us from even crossing the threshold of their stores.

It is important to recognize that a strong brand image is an essential part of the portfolio of companies striving to attract high-end consumers; but that has to come with an appreciation that slavish adherence to an image which is designed to appeal to a specific niche can alienate potential customers who don't quite fit the profile. And that can impact a company where it hurts most: on the bottom line.

If someone told you that your marketing and advertising was failing to target a significant market segment - one that makes up a sixth of the population, one that spent over a trillion dollars last year - would you be concerned? You should be, according to a survey commissioned by Orci.  Just over half of respondents prepared no materials in Spanish to target the Hispanic market, and another 32% had at most 10% of their material in Spanish.

Those statistics suggest a remarkable degree of complacency by the marketers who responded, and the survey was commented on by both Forbes and Advertising Age. What should the marketers do about it? Presumably they should go out and find an agency with specialist knowledge of the Hispanic market and start targeting this neglected segment.

But maybe companies should also take a look at the survey in conjunction with the results of the Pew Foundation report from 2007, which, while stressing the bilingual nature of the Hispanic population, also found that 88% of second generation Hispanic adults and 94% of third and later generations spoke English very well, although they still speak Spanish.

Also, Hispanic marketing isn’t as simple as getting materials and ads done in Spanish. Cuban-Americans are different than the Puerto Rican community, who are different than Mexican Americans, and once marketers go down the road of specific Spanish-language Hispanic advertising and marketing efforts, it can be a fragmented and expensive effort.  If you believe that your current efforts are reaching a significant portion of the Hispanic population through English at some point, then you will not do more specifically aimed at Hispanics unless there is a compelling reason.

What would be a compelling reason?  Products that skew Hispanic, proof of return on investment and an expectation of significant sales growth from the Hispanic market. Do the survey results bear this out?

Orci’s press release noted the survey was sent to 9,300 senior marketers at Fortune 1000 companies in February 2010.  The results available on Orci’s site contained no data on the actual number of respondents, so there is no way to know what the final sample was.  This is unusual – and disturbing.  While it’s normal for companies to spin results of surveys and reports to be as favourable as possible and to use them to generate business, it’s very unusual to have sent out a survey to over 9,000 people and then not release the respondent sample size.

• 60% of respondents had Marketing/Ad budgets of $1 million or less – which means the sample skewed to the small end of the Fortune 1000 – it’s not clear how representative it was;
• Only 4% of respondents believed their products were more suited for the Hispanic than the General Market in the US.  There wasn’t a huge number who were looking at a big Hispanic skew.;
• While 8% of respondents said they expected sales to Hispanics in the US to increase significantly in the next 12 months, only 26% said they expected them to increase moderately and over 50% said they expected them to stay the same – which may explain why 38% said they didn’t believe an increase in marketing budget to Hispanics would be justified with a return on investment and 29% believed what they were doing now was appropriate.

I guess I should apologize here and now to Orci for having picked apart their survey; there is nothing particularly special about it, nothing that separates it from similar efforts by other companies. And that's my point: next time you see an article which quotes statistics and conclusions from a survey, don't necessarily believe what you read.

AdMob, the company which places ads on websites targeted at mobile users and which has just been acquired by Google, has published the results of a survey into app downloading, buying and usage habits. While the survey was quite small – under 1,000 people who opted-in to the survey – the findings were interesting. iPhone and Android users both downloaded just under 9 apps per month on average, but both were outdone by iPod Touch users, who averaged 12 apps per month.  And those iPod apps also get more use; an average of 100 minutes per user per day, compared to 80 minutes for iPhone and Android.

When it comes to actually paying for apps, Android users average just over one app per month, with only 21% of users buying anything; iPod Touch users average 1.6 apps per month, while the iPhone leads the way with 1.8 – and with 50% of users buying at least one app per month.

The number of ads served by AdMob continues to grow at an astonishing rate; in January, over 7.3 billion ads were served in North America, a jump of a third over December 2009. That rate of growth may slow in the coming months – all those Christmas presents are sure to have caused a spike in January demand and usage, which will likely drop off a little in February. The iPhone and iPod Touch accounted for a whopping 40% of those ads.

What does all this mean? It’s a good indication that the apparently insatiable appetite for apps shows no sign of slowing, and that the rise of the smartphone has yet to get anywhere near a peak. The marketing opportunities presented by providing branded apps, or by using mobile advertising, are ones that companies ignore at their peril. You can find the AdMob reports here.