'The Cheque’s In The Mail’ and ‘This is a Portable Phone.’ Tall Stories From the 80s
Plus 2016 Online Marketing Outlook
Remember big hair, shoulder pads, smoking seats on aeroplanes, huge “mobile” phones, foreign exchange controls that we (Kiwis) could avoid by using a credit card when overseas, being told “The cheque’s in the mail,” 20 Mb hard drives which were “all you’ll ever need,” DOS prompts, Rolodexes and VCR tapes?
Online advertising was unheard of in the 80s. Read about how the NZ Finance Minister of the day accidentally inspired the creation of blackboard menus in restaurants and why it made sense to borrow money at 18% interest.
Plus how the elimination of wetware will see private car ownership become a thing of the past.
Wine Tip for 2016. Drink Rose
The best wine in 1980's NZ was considered to be French. Check out old magazine ads and you’ll see what kind of wine was prestigious. NZ wine was mostly Muller Thurgau, sweet and since pulled out of vineyards. Moet was pronounced here with a silent “t” until we discovered that all four letters are pronounced. But the silent t was stubbornly retained as it sounded more sophisticated.
In 2015 the French drank lots of rose – it’s now 1/3 of their total wine consumption. That’ll happen here in 2016 if it hasn’t already. Don’t worry, winemakers are starting to make serious rose now.
What will 2016 offer to online advertisers and marketers?
Tall Stories from the 80s
The Cheque’s in The Mail and 2015 Versions
In the 80’s an excuse for not paying an account on time was “the cheque’s in the mail.”
People actually said that.
It was such a lame excuse that it quickly became a standing joke recited along with other famous lies that aren’t printable here, NSFW.
These days, debtors don’t have the luxury of blaming the postal service for their reluctance to pay in a timely fashion but with human nature being what it is, people are just as creative.
Some well used favourites from 2015: “I didn’t receive that invoice, can you send it again?” which starts the whole cycle again or “We have paid all our accounts from you, there’s nothing outstanding” knowing full well this will take a few weeks of back and forth to sort out or “I’ve submitted it for payment” or “It’ll be paid when our accounts person is here next, they only work Wednesdays.” And sometimes even “We are paying that today” – and just not paying it that day.
Mobile?
Cellphones arrived in the 80s. The first “mobile” I saw, a guy arrived at a meeting with a large box with cables and a hand piece. A bit like a WW2 field radio. Mobile? Depends how strong and determined you were. More like luggable. He must have been very important to need to be in touch with everyone all the time.
I leapfrogged that low tech large phone embarrassment and went for a Mitsubishi phone that just fit in the pocket of my suit jacket. Funny? Well, it was smaller than the legendary Motorola brick.
Other Tall Stories and Rules That Begged to be Broken
Inflation Creates the Blackboard Menu
NZ had rampant inflation in the 80s. The PM of the time Sir Robert Muldoon who was also Finance Minister, implemented his solution. A wage and price freeze. I remember the first ever blackboard menu in a restaurant in NZ. Why did this useful innovation occur? To offer a better dining experience with a changing menu that reflected produce that was in season or available fresh at the market that morning? No. A new menu allowed restauranteurs to put up their prices any day they wanted to without printing a menu which in those days was prohibitively expensive. A new menu meant new pricing was permitted - price freeze avoided. Some genius invented the blackboard menu. And it was a black board too, with white chalk. The PM’s policy certainly stimulated innovation.
A Temporary Tax Levy - 66% Tax!
I don’t think people really believed Muldoon when he said that a 10% extra tax “levy” was only temporary so nobody was surprised when the top personal tax rate went from 60% to 66% and stayed there for some time. How did the market respond? With opportunities of course. Tax shelters. A $1 deductible investment no longer had to make a return on $1 invested, it only had to return more than $0.34 to be viable. Yes, you could lose almost 2/3 of your capital and still be ahead which inevitably led to many disastrous investments notably in films, deer, goats and kiwifruit. And best of all, you could borrow the entire sum invested. Those were the days. Well, they were days. Days to remember.
You’d Be Crazy Not to Borrow Money at 18%
Interest rates were running at 18% but if you owned an income producing property you could claim the interest against your taxable income at 66% so your effective interest rate was now 6%. With inflation pushing up the value of your real estate at 15% per year you’d be crazy not to borrow and invest. A real net interest rate of -9%. Coupled with rapid economic deregulation in the 80s, it all ended in tears triggered by the ‘87 share market crash which, incidentally was just a correction in major overseas markets. We had several years of recession.
Other 80s Moments
No Cars and Wetware
The oil crises saw NZ introduce carless days and an 80 km/h top speed limit. People’s response? Buy another car with a different day sticker and get a radar detector.
We can all look forward to carless days soon with driverless cars set to annihilate private car ownership as soon as technology eliminates today’s biggest obstacle with cars – the wetware. Wetware? That’s us.
Imagine no traffic jams, (almost) no road accidents, no cost of car ownership, no taxis, no taxi drivers to entertain and inform you, no truck drivers, no bus drivers, no garages and no waiting around for a ride.
My First 2 Computers had 20 Mb hard Drives! State of the Art
Video and cassette music tapes were a revolution but now seem so archaic. Now we stream music and movies which has disrupted (i.e. triumphed over) the monopolies enjoyed by recording studios and radio stations. Those were the days when a 20 Mb hard drive was big enough to handle anything; now 20 Mb is a large file to email. Remember floppy discs?
TV
Appointment TV is dying. Why watch when they tell you? Get Netflix and watch what you want, when you want, where you want and how you want. On your phone if you like.
Smoking or Non-Smoking Seats?
In a world before OSH, aeroplanes had smoking seats, usually down the back. Never mind that the smoke was evenly distributed by the air con. On the upside there was no security checking or scanning. And hardly any terrorists flying, just an occasional hijacking.
Cool Tech Tools and “Databases” from the 80s
Laser printers, soon to be relegated to the museum of technology, weren’t even thought of. We had dot matrix printers and lineflow. You could even make clever images from alpha-numeric characters printed in a pattern. Well, they looked like images as long as you stood back far enough.
We all had a classy desktop Rolodex, a full one if you were important, to store business cards so they were easily found. MS Outlook? We had to wait until the 90s.
To keep a track of client info and deals in the pipeline, what better tool than a wooden box containing handwritten 3x5 cards. Database? I have one. It’s in that box.
When Did You Decide to Advertise Online? Still Buying Print Ads?
This year is a record for the number of clients who’ve told us that they only want to advertise online. Which got me thinking, as we are wont to do at this time of year. I found my mind drifting back to the 80's when I started out in business. Next thing, I'd written this article.
Just 7 years ago when we started our first online publishing venture we had to convince clients of the need to advertise online.
I can’t recall the last time I had to even think about whether a business needed to be online, the discussion is now about what’s the best way to get your message to the right audiences online.
2016
Predictions for online and advertising?
Facebook and Instagram, already the world’s most powerful advertising platform, will continue their constant innovation and success. We like Google ads of course, both Adwords and display ads. We especially like re-targeting with both Facebook and Google - advertise to people who visited your website. Plus use video ads for amazing low cpc.
Print will continue to shrink on the back of high costs of production and distribution and its inability to deliver useful ad stats.
Once classifieds went online, the easy money for newspapers was gone. Then the internet delivered the best international papers to our phones. The lack of newspaper ad income has led to slashed costs and a dumbing down of journalism in NZ’s main newspapers. The worst of them use clickbait and rollover ads along with video ads that you can’t skip. Annoying.
Local, community newspapers might still have a place for local advertisers but they are expensive, reflecting the costs of running the business rather than the cost per impression or read. Larger NZ daily papers in NZ - what’s their reason to exist? Maybe none. The purpose of a newspaper story is to sell ads. Watch where big budget, smart marketers advertise in 2016 – supermarkets, big retailers, car dealers, telecoms and banks. The ongoing trend is less print, more online.
Websites
Mobile, mobile, mobile. Everything is moving to mobiles.
Current website design trends favour big postcard shaped sliding images and lots of white. We’ll keep an eye out for the next trend.
If your site is more than 4 years old, chances are it’s due for replacement. The recent triumph of free, open source content management systems has democratised websites for businesses. They’re low cost, highly functional, offer endless free or cheap enhancements, not tied to any developer and easily updated.
The next big phase in websites is already underway – SaaS. Most platforms don’t quite cut the mustard yet, but they will. Shopify is an obvious exception although it has spawned thousands of websites that won’t ever make a profit for the retailer. A website is no longer a barrier to selling online but you still need a product that people will buy and a marketing plan with a budget. A good product, a good message and reach.
The ‘build it and they will come’ approach to online shops hasn’t worked. Which brings us to a big theme for online retail in 2016.
Bricks and Clicks – The Outlook for Online Retail
Pure play online retail – that’s 100% online – has proven to be a harder nut to crack than many anticipated. The trend is to a combination of online retail and some kind of physical store, but not a traditional shop. Watch leading US retailers. A 2015 prediction from a US researcher predicts Amazon buying in 2016 a national chain of sites such as gas stations - for pickups, warehousing and a semi-retail experience. Message me for the video link to the entire presentation.
Amazon and Sears among others now offer their online shops to retailers worldwide, maybe you. Amazon will even provide all the logistics including shipping and returns.
Up to 90% of sales in some retail categories starts online but a good chuck of purchases still occur offline.
2016 Will See
…the continued disruption of artificially constrained, cost heavy industries like music, movies, TV, printed books, newspapers, magazines, taxis, accommodation and maybe banking. Disruption puts the consumer in the driver’s seat. Information and choice triumph. Unproductive costs and barriers dissolve.
In addition to new waves of website technology and the ongoing refinement of online ads, our love affair with mobiles, video, streaming and social media will continue. 2016 will see new retail models. And good old email marketing will still rule.
The businesses that will prosper are those which stay sharp and responsive to satisfy the needs of well-informed customers who can and do compare offers with a click.
Here’s to 2016.