ANA Marketing Musings

Results, Growth A Winning Formula

In this day and age, it’s fun, sexy, and exciting to talk about social networking, mobile technology, IPTV, blogging, podcasting, satellite communications, public relations, event marketing, shopper marketing, and multicultural marketing. The same can be said about innovation, transformation, and creativity. And let’s not overlook behavioral targeting, audience segmentation, and the millennial generation.

But in the end, what it all boils down to is results. And growth. In the past few years we have seen some terrific marketplace examples of companies that have reinvented and transformed their marketing to achieve tangible and substantial results and growth:

• McDonalds leveraged brand journalism, in-store quality, and a “Lovin’ It” campaign to reinvigorate same-store sales and increase fast food restaurant share of market.
• Hewlett Packard’s focus on creative marketing and outstanding quality catapulted it to a leadership position in personal computers and spurred business-to-business sales and growth in the printer market.
• American Express shifted its marketing focus from building brand awareness to creating “relationships,” resulting in double-digit income growth over the past decade.
• Zappos.com developed one of the fastest growing businesses in America by eliminating online sales barriers and focusing on customer care.

In these cases (and many more), creative marketing generated unit volume gains, total revenue growth, profitability expansion, and real advances in shareholder equity. That is the language of the CEO. Aligning the CMO to hear that language, listen to the agenda, and translate it into a motivated, focused organization is the tough challenge. Perhaps the difficulty of completing this challenge is a contributing factor to the relatively short tenure of the CMO.

There is another important challenge that CMOs face – “brand growth.” Brand growth should be the cornerstone objective for the CMO and the marketing organization. But what does that mean? How do you measure it? Is it important to the CEO? Who is accountable for it? The lack of uniform metrics and the inability of the accounting community to put our most important asset on the balance sheet is the subject of more conversation to come. Clearly, we have more work to do.

Essentials for Integrated Marketing

The following appears in the June 16, 2008 issue of Advertising Age, in the CMO Strategy section.

Integrated marketing communications isn't new, but it's gaining momentum as power shifts from the marketer to the consumer and as marketers recognize the power and efficiency of taking a holistic approach to engaging consumers.

Several studies, including one recently conducted by the Association of National Advertisers, indicate that achieving effective IMC campaigns is marketers' primary concern. But there is considerable uncertainty about how to staff, design, manage and measure the success of such programs.

Although 74% of firms we've surveyed say they are using IMC approaches for most or all of their brands, only 25% rated the quality of their IMC programs "excellent" or "very good" -- underscoring the need to identify best practices and address the barriers that can impede IMC efforts, including a lack of strategic consistency across communications disciplines; the absence of a common IMC measurement process; the existence of entrenched functional silos inside marketing organizations, as well as within their agency partners; and the dearth of cross-discipline skill sets among marketing staff.

So what it will take to overcome these obstacles? Four imperatives: