Feature: Proud to be in Sales Promotion

As new year’s resolutions become out of date and we all start to say – well maybe next year, I am faced with having made resolutions that cannot be made annually and have to make the most of this, for me, once in a lifetime opportunity.

I am honoured to have been elected as Chairman of the ISP, a venerable trade body that has been around since 1933 – and to many people in the marketing industry it looks and feels its age.

My role as Chairman is to lead the Board of Directors, who themselves have been elected, and set the agenda that we collectively have to deliver upon.

Therefore my first resolution for not only myself but for the ISP Board is to modernise and contemporise the ISP to ensure that it is seen as very much part of the today’s communications landscape. This should be achieved by ensuring that as many people as possible who work today in the industry have the opportunity to shape the agenda for what the ISP does and what it stands for – this of course is in addition to us continuing to provide the excellent services (that too few people know about) in the areas of legal advice and education that have been the mainstay of the organisation. However it is this engagement with the people in our industry and ensuring that the ISP is seen as forward looking and relevant that is so critical, because if we fail to do this then the ISP could die – and we can not let this happen.

The second resolution is to make everyone fully understand what sale promotion is – which requires the ISP to reach out to people and organisations across all industries and media channels to make them recognise that they too are in sales promotion – as it is the creative content or should I say ‘call to action’ that ‘closes the sale’ in any media.

My third and final resolution is to ensure the ISP provides leadership and carries the flag for sales promotion to restore pride back into the discipline. And it is for this reason that I am proud to have become Chairman of the ISP where I am in a position to influence this move and lead a renaissance that says “I am in Sales Promotion and proud of it!”

There is no better or more challenging time for sales promotion and the ISP to take on this leadership role.

On the positive side the rapid expansion of digital communications, whether via the internet, mobile phones or the return path button on digital TV has meant that these highly promotional media channels put the art of sales promotion front and centre – our task now is to make the people involved in these businesses recognise that they are in sales promotion.

Where the challenge lies is, that whilst there is a significant job to make sales promotion be seen as an inclusive discipline, we have a number of regulatory and compliance issues that become live in the promotional marketing area in 2007 that does nothing to make the ISP look sexy and puts us in the role of ‘big brother’ – that frankly is part of the nuts and bolts of what a trade body is there to do.

In 2007 there is a CAP Code Review where the ISP has to use its influence to feed through the issues that have come up in practice through operating its Legal Advisory Service. One particular issue here is the new code of provisions on gambling which have come about as a result of the opening up of gambling heralded by the Gambling Act 2005 – and from 1st September of this year the promotions industry will be liberated (a rare occurrence for a legislative act) whereby it can run any combination of skill and chance that it likes so long as the product price is not inflated. But whilst there has been this liberalisation there is a strong lobby group that is looking to enforce social restrictions on ‘hard’ gambling and therefore we have to be sure that we do not see regulatory creep into our approach to ‘soft’ gambling as characterised by the games of chance and instant wins that are used in the promotions industry. We have to be sure that the law does not giveth on the one hand and the Code taketh away with the other’.

However if we are to retain the status quo and the intended liberalisation takes effect, as intended, then we have to be sure that further liberties are not taken. I am conscious that the likes of GMTV in this area think they are a law unto themselves and their daily ‘games of skill’ with expensive premium rate phone calls not only go against the spirit of the Code, but are against the law. It would be easy for GMTV to rectify the issue by simply making a free entry option clearly available, use questions that only baboons will get wrong (and I might even be doing an injustice to baboons here) and finally not select the winners at random! High profile organisations like GMTV do our industry no favours by flouting the laws. In this respect I would certainly be looking to ensure that the compliance teams within the ISP, ASA and CAP take strong measures against repeat offenders – and if they are members of the ISP I would have no issue in proposing their disqualification as members.

In what I believe to be a moment of madness OFCOM has placed heavy restrictions on the advertising of certain food products with broadcast media that might see TV lose £40 million of its advertising revenue a year. I am sure that significant amounts of these budgets will be re-deployed and the ISP will be putting its case that the draconian restrictions, that have been placed above the line, do not translate below the line into the non-broadcast Code. This is certainly a key area and I hope that we can call upon the support of the affected brand manufacturers and owners to give us their support in these efforts – a relevant and powerful reason for them to sign up to the ISP directly and not piggy back on their agencies or service companies membership of the ISP.

Whilst I reference areas of threat, 2007 sees the implementation of the EU’s Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, which may look to harmonise European law and specifically in relation to FREE gift with purchase. In most of Europe it is invariably illegal to describe an item as free if there is an obligation to purchase, but of course in the UK it is a common and powerful technique. We must keep it this way.

However there are some really positive initiatives that the ISP is now tackling, that some say are well over due. One specifically is the need to stamp out mal redemption of coupons that the ISP believes is costing suppliers £60 million per year. Well I will follow through on the initiative started by my predecessor Peter Kerr to ensure that we take the positive steps to bring the suppliers and grocery retailers together and honour all coupons as intended. If this can be assured we have the opportunity to see a mass resurgence in the distribution of coupons that the internet age makes possible – but only if handled properly. I think that couponing like my old suits will have its time again and will come back into fashion.

One of the key tasks in my first three months as ISP Chairman will be spent promoting the ISP Awards. They have been re-vamped to make entry truly accessible for anyone in the communications industry (providing their campaigns feature a call to action with a demonstrable benefit – that does not need to be tangible) that underlines that sales promotion is truly media neutral. This is further reinforced by the DMA and Internet Advertising Bureau sponsoring the direct and digital categories in the Awards and is a demonstration of my desire for the ISP to be inclusive and work with all the other major marketing trade bodies.

However my major task, that I hope will characterise my whole period as Chairman, is to get out and meet people and organisations that the ISP represents. The major brand companies are not as well represented within the ISP membership as they should be and therefore will be high on my ‘call sheet’. In this respect I will look to seek out not just the marketing personnel but those working in procurement and sales – as in the new infrastructure of organisations this is where the business of ‘promoting sales’ is now being driven.

All of this said, the ISP’s communications programme must be two-way and I would ask that if I do not find you first then please feel free to get hold of me and tell me what you want from the ISP and even offer your support. You will be assured of a quick response at clivem@isp.org.uk.

I look forward to hearing from you and please do not forget that in whichever media you work the mantra for 2007 should be “I am in Sales Promotion and proud of it!”