The US presidential election already seems like it’s been going on for most of Barack Obama’s second term. In fact, though, the race only started properly in February, with primary voting for both parties beginning in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. While it seems almost certain that the eventual Democratic nominee will either be Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, the Republican field remains wide open with four or five people still plausibly in with a shot at winning, including dynastic candidate Jeb Bush, Christian evangelical Ted Cruz, and lunatic-haired business mogul Donald Trump.
The US electoral process is unwieldy, confusing, wildly expensive and interminably long. While it is also compelling – in the way that watching a very drunk person try to navigate their way across a bar-room is oddly fascinating – I doubt there are many people in the UK who look at US elections and think: ‘I wish our system could be more like that.’
The same, however, is not necessarily true for marketers. A colleague and I both attended Marketo conferences last year. She was sent for a week to San Francisco, while I had just as thrilling a time attending the equivalent event on a rainy Tuesday in October near Liverpool Street. Comparing notes on the keynote speech, there were obvious immediate differences. Where she spoke in awestruck tones of the flashing lights, blared music, and whoops and hollering of the crowd, the London version was much more muted. Attendees weren’t disinterested by any means, but you certainly wouldn’t have described the atmosphere as electric.
This is highly anecdotal, of course. I’ve met incredibly enthusiastic UK marketers who are vibrant with energy and I’m quite certain there are US conferences where participants are bored to tears. But it does raise the question as to whether there are fundamental differences between the way UK and US marketers go about their task. And, if there are, should both sides be learning from the other?
Sometimes the clichés are true
Speaking to the industry, the first thing to note is that generalisations between British people and Americans do translate into real cultural differences. Reflecting on the tone-of-voice used for working in the US and the UK, Susie Hughes, VP, director London office, Allison+Partners, explains: “The approach and language you use can often be different. For example, American audiences are often comfortable with a ‘try it and see’ approach, which can involve relatively bold and confident language. By comparison, UK audiences, particularly those in the B2B space, tend to exercise a bit more caution when it comes to the adoption of a new product or service, and often require upfront proof of how it’s been successful.”
For a marketer such as Lynn Morrison, head of business engagement at Opus Energy, who has worked in B2B marketing on both sides of the Atlantic, the British reserve is a frustration: “Don’t take yourself too seriously in terms of messaging. If there is just one thing I wish my UK colleagues would change, it would be the necessity to keep the stiff upper lip. Thanks to social media, more people than ever are interacting with brands on an individual basis. Take advantage of the one-to-one interaction as an opportunity to let the mask slip a bit and be more personable and humorous.”
Differing objectives
Aside from traditional British prudence versus American gusto, there are other substantive differences in what marketers perceive their role to be. Fran Brosan, chairman and founder of Omobono, argues that the marketing objectives and challenges are contrasting: “US marketers [put] ‘positioning the company as experts’ i.e. thought leadership, at the top of their priorities, while UK marketers put ‘building customer relationships’ in first, with ‘expertise’ in third.”
Philip Black, senior strategist at Omobono Chicago and colleague of Brosan, says: “Our need to establish a sense of expertise [in the US] may correlate with the US market being heavily driven by innovation – promoting or launching newer business lines or products. Whereas, more mature businesses in the UK have established reputations and are settling into customer relationships as their true point of differentiation.”
"As much as we love to hate Donald Trump, there is no doubt he has the pulse of his target audience"
The UK bias towards thinking more about the customer compared to a US bias towards thinking about the product or service is supported by insight from Alan Kittle, executive creative director, Harte Hanks, who argues this is an area where US marketers have a lot to learn from the UK: “The intelligence used to inform communications strategies and campaign creative is often more robust and more sophisticated in the UK. A more segmented approach and better defined insights always leads to better responses to your messaging and, therefore, a better ROI. I think US marketers need to obsess over their data much more.”
Morrison, however, has an alternative take, arguing that, while UK marketers may have all the data on their customers, it’s not translating into the best actions: “As much as we love to hate Donald Trump, there is no doubt he has the pulse of his target audience. He doesn’t waste his time and money trying to win over people who are never going to vote for him. It’s a great reminder [for UK marketers] that they shouldn’t feel guilty for focusing the majority of their advertising budgets on the businesses most likely to make a purchase.”
Marketing and the business
Omobono’s What works where report into the differences between UK and US marketing produced some fascinating insights into how marketing is perceived in the wider business. In terms of digital strategy, for instance, when other departments were asked whether marketing should be ‘in charge’ of this, only seven per cent of US respondents agreed, versus 23 per cent in the UK. Black laments: “Unfortunately, in the land of democracy, everyone thinks they’re an artist. While we marketers know it’s not true, it doesn’t keep our counterparts from dabbling.”
In terms of ROI, however, UK marketers are under more pressure. US marketers are less likely to measure ROI (64 per cent versus 71 per cent in the UK) and, whereas British marketers cite ROI measurement as one of their top three challenges, in the US it doesn’t appear. As Brosan puts it: “It feels like UK marketers are under the cosh a bit more – more pressures on budgets and the need to demonstrate ROI than their US counterparts perhaps?” Or as his American colleague Black more pointedly states: “Who’s got time to count pennies? Not us! And even if we had the time, would our articulation of ROI translate to the c-suite? I am not convinced.”
The media angle
Aside from directly hearing from marketers, I also spoke to PR agencies working on B2B portfolios in both the UK and US to find out if their work in promoting marketing stories is significantly different in either country. In most regards, in fact, it is not. So says Xanthe Vaughan Williams, director at Fourth Day PR: “Overall, I’d say the UK and US media have grown a lot closer in the past 10 to 15 years. The days where UK tech publications would be put off by a press release featuring US spellings are long gone.”
“Due to the pervasiveness of American and British culture globally, there are certainly many shared characteristics between the markets”
The major differences between the two markets largely lie in the nature of the target publications, with UK editors less likely to publish highly promotional product placements under the guise of comment pieces. As Liz Bazini, partner at Bazini Hopp, says: “The media in both markets primarily wants to hear from the users and customers of our clients – they want use cases, ROI and data. However, we do find US coverage still includes pure product announcements whereas in the UK such coverage appears less frequently.”
In fact, the biggest difference for Vaughan Williams – rather shamefacedly – was the divide between trade journalists: “UK journalists are still frequently over-worked, which means they have even less time to hear a PR pitch a story than they did pre-recession. In my experience, US journalists are always charming on the end of the phone.” Obviously, she doesn’t mean anyone at B2B Marketing, but perhaps UK journalists need to be a little more receptive.
I say potato
While this piece has explored some of the areas of difference, for the most part UK and US marketers know they are aiming for the same things. As Hughes puts it: “Due to the pervasiveness of American and British culture globally, there are certainly many shared characteristics between the markets.”
But the differences are still worth reflecting on. For US marketers, it may be that they need to learn some things from their UK colleagues about owning the customer and defending their creative work against non-marketers who feel like chipping in. For marketers in the UK, meanwhile, maybe it is time to loosen up a little, worry less about what could go wrong and focus more on doing things right. As Black concludes: “I think we US marketers are less inhibited. At the end of the day, we need to get stuff done. We’d rather play offense than defence. Ask forgiveness rather than permission.”
