ANA Marketing Maestros

Wal-Mart Brand Reinvention

The Wal-Mart brand is being reinvented. After decades of meteoric growth, the brand needed something to help it maintain and enhance its growth prospects in the highly competitive retail workspace. In directing their strategic platforms, Stephen Quinn, SVP, Marketing at Wal-Mart (and ANA Annual conference speaker and board member) altered their growth strategy. The changing brand and media landscapes were a significant influencer in altering their marketing choice and practices.

In an excellent article by Dave Evans at ClickZ, the author discusses another member of the Wal-Mart marketing team, Julie Roehm, who was brought to Wal-Mart to, among other things, direct these interactive strategies:

All of sudden, e-marketing is the focal point for many otherwise offline campaigns, boosting overall effectiveness of each individual channel. Wal-Mart's Julie Roehm noted marketers still pushing the default notion of TV as central are shortsighted. In an Association of National Advertisers (ANA) speech in 2005 she said, "The upfront doesn't recognize or integrate marketing and promotional relationships."

Growth the GE Way

"Before we launched this growth initiative, marketing was the place washed-up salespeople went." Jeff Immelt talking about the organic growth initiative GE has been driving for the past three years and how previously even a sophisticated company like GE looked at marketing. It was a dumping ground for has been sales people. No wonder we don’t get no respect.

Is it all doom and gloom for marketing – Headlines tell us CMOs have shorter tenures today than three years ago, now Jeff Immelt tells us that we are not as valuable as tired sales people?

Do not despair. Jeff Immelt in the same HBR article (pdf on GE website) also said - In a deflationary world you can drive margin through productivity, now you need marketing to get price. There is not only light at the end of this tunnel, there is actually a garden of eden. Marketing it turns out is the driver of organic growth. But to make this happen, marketers must change their thinking. Marketing can no longer be thought of as a creative activity – it must now be viewed as an innovative process. A process that can be systematized to ensure we create a repeatable process that can be spread throughout an organization, driving growth in a number of places. And of course, we have to build the right metrics platform for this process to drive accountability and demonstrate that we are moving in the right direction.

Yes Virginia, marketing is more important than ever. And marketers can have a special place in CEOs' hearts. But they have to earn that place or they’ll be looked at as sales support or worse, washed up salespeople.

How to Be a Better CMO

A recent Brandweek article cited a Spencer Stuart study highlighting the decline of CMO’s tenure. Greg Welch, who heads the marketing officer practice for the executive search firm, said “there are several things behind the turnover rate. First is that CMOs need to do a better job of communicating with all their peers at the C-suite level, making sure everyone understands what marketing can and can’t do for the entire company.”

In our investigation, we’ve discovered that the first and most important step is not helping everybody understand what marketing can do, but building a contract with the CEO as to what he/she expects from marketing.  Writing that contract may mean educating the CEO, but most importantly it means clearly outlining his or her expectations of marketing and at the end of the day, how those expectations will be quantified. 

If the CMO has the impression that he/she is to be a change agent, but that role is not definitely spelled out, the CMO will be quickly surprised to see this tactic come back and bite them, hard.  The role of marketing in each company is different.  It has to be spelled out.  Each party has to know exactly what is expected of the marketing effort the CMO is driving.  Once the CMO establishes credibility, changing the role of marketing is not hard.  But without credibility, trying to execute a change agenda is both difficulty and deadly.  One CMO I recently interviewed said that any new CMO that does anything but listen in the first 90 days of their new job is just asking for problems.  Often the answers are lurking within the company – all the CMO needs to do is to have the skills to ferret them out.

Of course it is critical for CMOs to “do a better job of communicating with all their peers at the C-suite level, making sure everyone understands what marketing can and can’t do for the entire company” – but they can’t do that until they have clearly defined the role of marketing for themselves and the CEO.  Then they’ll be able to clearly share that insight with others within the company.

Top CEOs. Top Business Leaders. ANA Members.

Best Practice Institute lists their top CEOs "selected according to their tenure, company size, commitment and investment to positive organizational change, growth strategy, and earnings estimates."

Not surprisingly, these industry-leading companies are all members of the ANA:

• A.G. Lafley (The Proctor & Gamble Company) and our keynote speaker at October's Annual Conference)
• Andrea Jung (Avon Products, Inc.)
• Andrew Liveris (The Dow Chemical Company)
• Anne Mulcahy (Xerox Corporation)
• Bill Sullivan (Agilent Technologies, Inc.)
• Bill Weldon (Johnson & Johnson)
• Bob Nardelli (The Home Depot, Inc.)
• Brad Anderson (Best Buy Co., Inc.)
• Dick Kovacevich (Wells Fargo & Company)
• Fred Smith (FedEx Corporation)
• J.P. Garnier (GlaxoSmithKline)
• Jeff Immelt (General Electric Company)
• Jim Skinner (McDonald's Corporation)
• John Chambers (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Ken Lewis (Bank of America Corporation)
• Kevin Rollins (Dell Incorporated)
• Meg Whitman (eBay, Inc.)
• Michel Tilmant (ING Group)
• Pat Russo (Lucent Technology)
• Paul Ostellini (Intel Corporation)
• Paul Pressler (Gap Inc.)
• Robert Ulrich (Target Corporation)

Congratulations to these companies for their exceptional organizational leadership and growth strategies!

Print Reinventing Itself

Lots of news in the print world about adjustments, layoffs and brand building.

Ad revenue and lagging subscriptions are blamed for the recent layoffs at a number of big dailies, as reported by Adjab. Advertisers are moving their dollars elsewhere so publications are getting leaner and gradually adjusting and reinventing their business models.

Time magazine recently announced their switch to Friday distribution, just one of many adjustments. Time's Inc.'s thoughtful leader, Anne Moore, is leading the company's change process and leveraging Time's core values to bolster company-wide trust. The Time Inc. CEO (and ANA Annual Conference speaker) said:

"We are creating a more vibrant TIME brand overall that will undoubtedly energize our readers and
also attract younger consumers so we're competing more effectively with all news brands in the print and digital worlds." (Thanks to News on Women for the heads up).

Print, like the marketing function/profession, continues to reinvent itself. The changes in the marketplace continue to affect all media, while some get fat (Google), some get lean (the news dailies) and others (like Time) modify their brand strategy.

Branded Entertainment to Triple

Brazil and Australia follow the US in spending on branded entertainment. China is on track to outspend the U.S. by 2010. These are but a few of some intriguing insights reported by the BBC on the spending trends expected for branded entertainment. The research, orchestrated by PQ Media, also says to expect over $7.5 billion in spending by 2010, largely due to the evolving media environment of ad skipping and fragmentation.

Join the Masters -- Reinvention and Innovation

ANA's Annual Conference -- The Masters of Marketing -- has grown over the last few years to a point where one media guru called it the "Congress of Kings." After attending my first one last year, I could clearly see why. The slate this year is just as powerful, with a rich line up of industry leaders and CMOs (and, of course, the rich social scene) The list of our esteemed presenters:

• The  keynote is Procter & Gamble's CEO A.G. Lafley --an article here discusses how Lafley sees innovation driving top line growth.
• Linda Kaplan  Thaler -- CEO and  Chief  Creative Officer of The Kaplan Thaler Group
• Stephen Quinn -- SVP, Marketing at Wal-Mart talking about reinventing the retail giant's brand.
• Becky  Saeger --  Charles Schwab's CMO on leveraging 'Talk to  Chuck.'
• Jim McDowell -- MINI's Managing Director will discuss how innovation has driven the brand.
• Russ Klein -- Burger King's Marketing Chief on their strategy with "The King."
• Sony's CMO Mike Fasulo highlights their reinvention and the power of ideas.
• Larry Flanagan -- MasterCard's CMO discusses how he made "Priceless" accountable and grew brand equity.
• Yahoo's CMO  Cammie  Dunaway  will  discuss how technology can help brands in increasingly innovative ways.
• HP's Gary Elliott on brand leadership and surviving the technology crunch.
• Anne Moore --  TIme Inc.'s CEO gives the media perspective on the evolving landscape.
• The Battle of the Bairds -- The NFL's Lisa and Philips' Bob square off on 'The Great Media Debate'
• Kathryn Olsen, CMO of Leapfrog, on how marketing innovation keeps them at t he top.
• Ken Romanzi,  COO of Ocean Spray teams up with adman Fran  Kelly to discuss brand  reinvention.

If  interested in finding out more, our Masters of Marketing website has a wealth of information. If you are interested in blogging the conference in early October (5-8 to be exact), please let me know.  (wwaugh@ana.net).

SAG/AFTRA Negotiations: "Both Sides Working Together and Recognizing One Another's Critical Needs"

This statement was issued by JPC Chief Negotiator Doug Wood as the advertising industry and performer's union tentatively agreed on a two-year extension to the current Commercial Contracts.

In addition to selecting a consultant for the joint compensation study, AFTRA, SAG and the JPC agreed that:

• Along with advertisements that appear on TV, radio and the Internet, the agreement will also cover all commercials that appear in new media—for existing platforms such as cell phones and for future platforms yet to be developed.
• The agreement provides advertisers with more flexibility to edit commercials for the Internet and new media.
• A New Media Committee, comprised of representatives from both the unions and the industry, will be empowered to make adjustments to the agreement to accommodate changing technologies and shifting paradigms within the commercials industry.

This is a great sign of progress. The marketing community should be thrilled about this compromise.

Prospects of an E-Media Exchange

Marketing is in a continuous state of reinvention so it makes sense that media would evolve as well. The ANA, along with the 4As, formed an industry task force comprised of leading marketers and media agencies to plot a pilot program to test an e-Media Exchange in early 2007. The pilot is a result of a grass roots initiative to explore ways to maximize new technology in order to enhance the current media buying system.  It reflects an evolution of the industry and another potential way for buyers and sellers to efficiently facilitate media transactions.

Our CEO Bob Liodice says it best -“We must address the changing media landscape and determine the opportunities generated by the rapid advancements in technology. We are committed to engaging our senior marketers and discussing and testing an online exchange for the buying and selling of advertising.”

Lots of folks are talking about it. Below are a few media outlets and what they have to say:

• Red Herring
• Ad Age (subscription needed)
• Adotas
• Houston Chronicle
• MediaPost
• Marketing Vox

The Power of Search

I admit it. I got into Search Marketing late in the game. In fact, I didn't really think much about it until I looked at the numbers...and the cost...and the ROI. USA Today has a feature today about Search Engine Watch, in particular search guru Danny Sullivan. Some interesting nuggets from the article:

• Many companies have dedicated search marketing professionals. In fact, advertisers like Citigroup and Coca Cola, actually have Vice Presidents of Search.
• Forrester expects search listings to grow to $26 billion by 2010
• Small and mid-sized businesses consider the ins and outs of search marketing "life or death"