Our Approach

The Boomerang approach to marketing strategy development is based on two fundamental truths of marketing:

1. Marketing begins and ends with the customer: "Marketing is the whole business seen from the customer's point of view." PETER DRUCKER
2. Marketing is the process of building relationships: "The purpose of a business is to get and keep a customer. To do that you have to do all those things that will make people want to do business with you. All other truths are merely derivative." THEODORE LEVITT
   

Boomerang looks at an organisation as a holistic exercise. All of the processes of that organisation affect its marketing success.

These processes affect all the relationships that organisation has with people in its key stakeholder groups, including staff, customers, marketing partners, channels, shareholders and the broader community.

It is in this spirit that Boomerang develops strategic advice.

Our Beliefs

Clients pay our salaries. Their needs come first.
We respect each other and expect to be respected.
We are a company of drivers, not passengers.
We charge a fair price and believe it represents value.
We do not buy business. Good advice is never expensive.

Credo: What do we believe?

1. Staff are worth more than the money we pay them - what we get out of them is maximised by what we put in.
   
   
2. Management are entirely responsible for every outcome: they recruit, train and motivate the staff who take all the company's actions.
   
   
3. A company is a community made up of owners, managers, employees, clients and suppliers. When these people share the same objectives, the company thrives. When they are at loggerheads, the company stalls.
   
   
4. People don't work for money alone. They work for self-respect, self-image, a sense of belonging, a sense of achievement and a sense of feeling important.
   
   
5. Our staff are our first priority. Because if we recruit, train and motivate them right, they will do the right thing by the agency and the clients in every situation. By supporting our staff we are backing our own judgement.
   
   
6. Management is responsible for telling everybody in the company's community what the shared values are, what the community stands for and what its values are.

Our Values

1. Self respect is everyone's birthright. No one has the right to take it away.
2. There is a human being inside the business suit.
3. Fear breeds mistakes and failure.
4. We celebrate diversity as the source of creativity and new value.
5. Our success must be measured in human terms.
6. If someone is difficult to deal with, it is because they have a problem. Help them.
7. Every difficult situation has a gilt edge. Look for it.
8. Clients can be creative, too.
9. When it stops being fun, it stops.

The Boomerang Effect: marketing karma

How do companies adopting CRM realign their advertising messages to their new marketing platform? A new theory of advertising is needed. And it needs to be based on a new concept.

Many processes in life are counter-intuitive. They run exactly opposite to the common view. Example: people once believed the Earth was flat and that the Sun, Moon and Planets revolved around the Earth.

The processes of marketing are also subject to medieval thinking. For many years it was thought consumers bought products for their features and manufacturers focussed their selling on these. Later it was discovered that consumers are only interested in themselves and what products benefits can do for them. This was a revelation. Some marketers today still don't get it.

Another flat earth notion is the conventional theory of advertising: you make a product, put it on the shelf, make an ad and run it, your prospect sees the ad and comes in and buys the product. The more ads you run, the more product you sell because the more prospects see it and respond.

 While this process actually takes place, it accounts for far fewer sales than the dominant (but hidden) process of communication we could call the reversal theory of advertising: it is based on the fact that the person least likely to notice and consume an advertisement is the person the ad is aimed at. Sounds ridiculous, but it is true. Consider this: Ford USA found that the driver most likely to read a Ford billboard for a particular model was the one who had just bought the car. Other Ford owners were also likely to notice the billboard. The one least likely to read it was the driver of a competitive make (the conquest target car makers lust after). Marketers are most interested in people who don't already have their product and least interested in someone who just bought. Among consumers, the reverse is true.

Why is this so? Simple. Humans are self centred. Their level of engagement in any activity is dictated by their level of interest which is driven by how closely it affects them personally. A person who just signed up to spend a years salary on a car has more at stake with that model than someone not even thinking of buying a car and currently driving another make. In fact, when you apply the Human Engagement Model to the advertising scenario listing the groups most engaged with the message to those least engaged the actual target comes well down the list, a sorry last.

The advertisement appears and the groups most likely to notice it and absorb it are, in descending order of personal engagement, the agency creative team that made it, the creative director, the account director, the account team, the client contact person, that person's wife or husband, that person's boss, the boss's wife or husband, the competitor's marketing manager, the advertising code regulator, the client's staff, the ad agency staff, the advertising industry journalists, the ad agency's competitor's new business manager, the retail outlet management, the customer who recently bought the product, other existing customers and finally the prospect.

The clue to the round earth theory of advertising dynamics is in the last three groups. Brand insiders (customers) are more likely to engage and notice than brand outsiders (prospects). Countless research reports confirm that brand outsiders are more likely to notice a brand when it is brought to their attention by someone else via word of mouth than via advertising. The most likely culprit for spreading the word? Brand insiders.

This entire process is the Boomerang Effect. It is like commercial karma: you reap the rewards of your good deeds rather than your slick words. It works like this: the customer experience becomes the brand experience via the cumulative impact of the following: product experience, service experience, peer experience, social experience, and media experience (including advertising, press comment, web content, collateral impressions such as movie placement or comment). The combined impact of these layers of experience drive word of mouth which in turn generates interest among prospects. Some of these prospects become customers and the whole virtuous circle begins again.

Yet companies insist on advertising past their customers to new, mythical targets defined for them by the artificial process of market research. Our experience with American Express taught us that customers hate to be advertised to. They assume you've got a relationship beyond that of the foot in the door salesman who continues putting his foot back in the door every time he visits.

Advertising to prospects can be counter productive because they don't notice, they don't care, they have no personal stake in the message, it can alienate new customers, and it can suppress word of mouth. (This is especially dangerous for brands whose actual customer profile and whose advertising target are dramatically different for brand positioning purposes.)

Advertising to customers is, on the other hand, more productive because they notice, they care, they have a personal stake, it can magnify their brand experience, and it can promote word of mouth.

The Boomerang Effect dictates an approach to advertising that aligns internal and external communications focussing on your Most Valued Customers, those who underwrite the future of your organisation. For the first time, it connects your CRM efforts seamlessly with your advertising activities and links advertising to measurable ROI. And gives advertising a legitimate role to play beyond the transfer of surplus corporate wealth to ad agencies and media owners.