AGENDA: Countdown to a profitable 2000 - The Millennium Bug has a range of possible effects which marketers must take into account and plan for. However, preparation could offer companies an advantage over rivals, writes Rachel Baird

As Action 2000 last week launched TV ads to persuade businesses to

respond to the Millennium Bug problem, household-name companies were

reluctant to discuss what the change of century meant for their

marketing.

Press officers insisted that their marketing colleagues would get the

benefit of their multi-million-pound, company-wide Year 2000 programmes,

but were unwilling to allow the marketers to speak for themselves.

It is true that one of the major Year 2000 challenges facing them is

IT-based: they do need to identify computer hardware and software which

uses dates, discover whether it will recognise the Year 2000 (instead of

assuming that ’00’ means 1900), fix or replace it and then test the

final set-up.

A Year 2000 paper by the Direct Marketing Association highlights

invoicing, interest calculation, age-related mailshots and sell-by-dates

as potential problem areas.

Faulty sell-by dates, for example, could kill people as well as

brands.

Ray Perry, director of marketing at the Chartered Institute of

Marketing, says: ’Ultimately it could destroy a brand. All your yoghurts

could appear with the wrong date stamp, and poison your customers.’

Playing advantage

Barclays and Midland banks are hoping to reap a marketing advantage from

their Year 2000 support to business customers. A Midland spokesman says:

’Part of our work in terms of advising our customers is to build a

profile of ourselves as being Year-2000 aware.’

Could something similar be achieved when - as seems likely - consumers

become increasingly concerned about the millennium? Niki Akhurst,

marketing director of the government-founded company Action 2000, says

yes.

’Companies will get far greater benefit from reassuring their customers

than from saying nothing, as long as they can back (those claims)

up.’

Others regard discretion as their best bet. Alan Smith, director of

Prudential’s millennium programme, said: ’We are being deliberately

reactive. If something untoward did happen, we’d look pretty silly.’ But

Prudential will have a marketing advantage, he adds, if come January

2000, its competitors are in turmoil while it is coping well.

Whether your company decides to be proactive or discreet about its

readiness, customers will be upset if their questions on the matter are

left unanswered.

But according to communications consultant Regester Larkin, which last

month surveyed 50 companies, many firms are ill-prepared. Researchers

posing as worried customers found one ’leading roadside assistance

organisation’ claiming that to disclose its level of millennium

compliance would breach the Data Protection Act, while a ’major

supermarket chain’ insisted that its preparations for 2000 were

’confidential’.

Panic attacks

Companies need to do better than this, not least because consumer panic

will cause disasters even if computers perform perfectly. A rush to

withdraw savings from banks or to stock up on food, for example, could

lead to banks with no money and shops with no food. Asda is taking this

possibility seriously enough to consider research on whether there will

be panic buying.

Some marketers are currently facing the challenge of explaining to

customers why their companies may be unable to offer any service over

the date-change period. BA, for example, cannot instruct air-traffic

control organisations or airports, and it may well decide not to fly to

certain locations in the run-up to 2000. Thomson has not yet decided

whether to operate over the period.

While reassuring customers is the easiest thing to do, knowingly

misleading them, let alone harming them, could be commercial suicide.

Marketers should remember the words of a Midland Bank spokesman: ’Until

the date actually arrives, no one can be 100% sure what will

happen.’

Which leads to another year 2000 lesson for marketers: the importance of

contingency planning. At a personal level, this means preparing for the

possibility that your company will not survive the recession which some

people predict will follow the date change. At a professional level, it

means knowing how you’ll get your goods and services to market if the

usual channels fail.

MILLENNIUM CHECKLIST

- Get your software, hardware and embedded chips fixed and tested as

millennium compliant.

- Find out about the readiness of the companies on which you depend for

supply and distribution. Action 2000 is encouraging companies to sign a

pledge to take positive action rather than legal action on the bug.

- Ensure that customer-facing staff know what to do in response to

queries about your company’s millennium readiness.

- Consider using the millennium as an opportunity to show what a

well-organised company you are, but recognise the dangers.

- Get informed about the worst case scenarios for your company and have

a contingency plan in case things do go terribly wrong.

- Contact Action 2000 for more information: 0845 601 2000.

This article was first published on Marketing