‘The days of the 4 Ps are over’, head of Universal Music Group tells marketers
The marketing mantra that has underpinned the industry for decades – the four Ps – is redundant, with brands urged instead to adopt the four Es, a senior music executive has said.
Universal Music Group new business head, Oliver Robert-Murphy, told the Mumbrella Entertainment Marketing Summit yesterday, that the “days of the four Ps are over”.
Speaking during a discussion on brand integration, he told delegates the focus on price, product, promotion and placement should be ditched in favour of the 4 Es – engagement, experience, exclusivity and emotion.
“We as marketers are trained with the four Ps. The four Ps are over,” Robert-Murphy said. “Information is everywhere, so forget the four Ps. Welcome to the four Es.
“Engagement is a fundamental principle of any interaction with the consumers [and] give the consumer an experience they will remember.”
Exclusivity will give the consumer a product that makes them “feel special”, he added, while emotion is the vehicle, be it music, film or sport.
“If markers can adapt to this technique “you create an intimate relationship with the consumer”, Robert-Murphy said.
Kate Nicholls, head of promotions for 20th Century Fox, told the panel she adopted “three rules of engagement” when discussing the prospect of the movie studio working with brands.
She told delegates it was critical for both 20th Century Fox and marketers “to be clear about their objectives”.
“Making sure you are honest with each other about what it is you are trying to achieve from the outset is so critical,” she said.
Nicholls said there was “no point in trying to force a brand and movie together”. “It has to feel authentic,” she said. “There must be a brand fit.”
“My old boss used to say that he didn’t work with anyone he didn’t like. I really love that principal because these partnerships are not always easy.
“There are bumps in the road in any partnership and if you can find people you like working with it’s a massive bonus because you collaborate and you overcome any obstacles.
“If you get a sense that it’s hard in the first meeting, it may not be worth going there.”
Earlier in the discussion, Universal’s Olivier Robert-Murphy added, that “if you want to touch the heart of millennials it’s not through material anymore”, adding the use of humour and honestly will also help with the connection.
E’s are good, E’s are good etc Ebeneezer Good.
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I have to say that as a female marketer, attending the conference today was pretty disappointing. Mumbrella – you hold the industry to such accountability and it’s time someone called you on your shit. How is it, in an industry dominated by women – MARKETING – only one in five panelists today were women? That’s counting the panels that actually contained women. All panel chairs were men. Maybe I was in the wrong stream? To counter that I would estimate that about 70% of the audience were – wait for it – women!! The day started out well with a female keynote speaker and went rapidly downhill from there. The panel with Simon Canning as chairperson was a total joke – he mispronounced Ana Bacic’s name for the entire session and then called her Melinda! Surely the three white guys on the panel she sat on could have taken the time to learn her name given she is the Marketing Director of arguably the most successful television network in the country?? Sure, I’m a little sensitive after the US election results yesterday, but today was another example of how far we have to go. Depressing.
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So price isn’t important anymore? Good luck with that.
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Hi SF,
Thanks for the feedback. I’ll answer this now, and my colleague Camille, who curated this event, may wish to add further thoughts when she returns to work next week after a much deserved day off today.
IIRC, every panel discussion in both streams had both men and women. (With one or two person case study sessions, that wasn’t always the case of course.) As a matter of policy we try not have all male panels except when we lose a speaker on the day. You’ll see when we launch our callout for Mumbrella360 proposals in the next few days that for the second year running we’ll specifically state that we won’t be accepting proposals that fail to include gender diversity.
The most gender imbalanced panel of six we had yesterday was our session on social media which happened to feature five women and one man, so yes, you may have been in the wrong stream if that was who you preferred to hear from.
It does so happen that in the session featuring TV network marketing directors you refer to, we had anticipated that Melanie Novacan from Stan would join Ana from Seven, Matt from Ten and Rob from Foxtel, for what would have happened to be two male guests and two female guests.
Our moderator Simon did pass on Melanie’s apologies at the start of that session that a late commitment had forced her to drop out. And yes, when Simon wrapped up the discussion at the end and moved to a scripted housekeeping announcement for what was coming up next unfortunately the script had not been updated to remove Melanie’s name from the thank you acknowledgement to the speakers. I was sitting in the front row waiting to go on myself, so was able to hear as the microphones were brought down Simon correct himself and apologise to Ana, but you may not have been able to hear that from where you were sitting.
Meanwhile, it’s worth noting that although our journalists know their marketing, and they do their best in front of a large live audience they sometimes slip up on pronunciations, as many people do when it comes to public speaking, myself included.
You’d have seen me go on stage immediately afterwards and completely fail to get John Quertermous’ pronunciation right ahead of his excellent presentation on Opera Australia’s strategy with Rachael Lonergan. He was kind enough to invite me to introduce him as John Q. And later in the day, I only discovered once I was on stage that I was unable to pronounce Michael Gudinski’s name correctly not once, but twice, when I introduced him. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t because it was because I’m a white guy. I think it was just that I got tongue tied.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
@shrill female
This is a forum and publication for professionals. Please take your racist and sexist ideology elsewhere.
Seeing Tim’s long winded response says more about the fear of pissing off simple minded totalitarian ideologues than about Mumbrella’s lack of awareness of these issues, which. If you read Mumbrella you’ll see these take front, right and center stage way too often.
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Good on you for pointing this out. I notice this all the time at these type of events. Luckily Gruen has balanced it panel out, but probably only because it’s the ABC.
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