Marketing in the US is 'not for little leaguers'

ANDREW GORRIE

STANDING OUT: Claudia Batten says New Zealand firms are known for their innovation and should keep the "big ideas'' coming.

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Standing out from the crowd is all well and good, says Trade and Enterprise adviser Claudia Batten, but there's money to be made from embracing it.

Ms Batten, who is from Wellington, is one of the founders of Massive – a company that sold advertisements in video games that was bought by Microsoft in 2006 for US$400 million.

As part of her role in Trade and Enterprise's Beachheads programme in North America, she advises primarily technology and digital media firms, including Wellington interactive advertising company Eyemagnet, on how to grow and crack the United States market.

While in Wellington last week she met with Core Technology – which has developed a "cloud-based" software development environment that lets businesses develop applications in collaboration with their customers. "I was just fascinated with what they were doing."

New Zealand firms are known for their innovation and should keep the "big ideas" coming, she says.

"Those ideas are extremely valuable because implementation [of ideas] is becoming commoditised.

"On the flip side, they need to be very realistic about what is a new idea and what is fresh and not just from a Kiwi perspective."

Fierce independence can be a barrier to the growth of Kiwi firms, as many are reluctant to let in outside investment.

"We have to be really careful with this `smell of an oily rag mentality' and our pride in our self-ownership. You don't need to have just one good business in your life. I'm on to my second business and I'm in my mid-30s.

"In the business world, and especially in technology, someone is going to come in and copy you or someone else is going to have the same idea and beat you there.

"You need to have the investment there to really exploit the idea and get the market traction you deserve."

Marketing a business in the United States is a whole new ballgame and little leaguers need not apply. "A hundred thousand dollars for a marketing campaign is not going to get you anywhere and you can't rely on a viral hit ... there's no science as to how those things take off."

New Zealand's size and comparatively small business community mean it is easier to find and get your ideas in front of the right people.

Her new business venture is the advertising agency Victors and Spoils, which draws on "crowdsourcing" rather than relying on a group of employees, asking "creatives" to come up with ideas for clients' ad campaigns and paying whoever has the best idea.

This gives the company a cost advantage over competitors with a stable of full-time employees and often means those who submit ideas do so because they are passionate about the project, not because they are compelled to, she says.

Crowdsourcing is a relatively new concept but big businesses such as Unilever are latching on, particularly in the advertising space, and Victors and Spoils has some Fortune 500 firms among its clients.

The approach gives businesses on-demand access to the digital workforce, and New Zealand firms can cash in as both suppliers and customers.

"We have this great example of a wonderful woman in Serbia who did work for us on a couple of projects. There's no reason why great companies in New Zealand can't tap into that.

"It's going to be huge."

- © Fairfax NZ News