ANA Marketing Maestros

Driving Marketing Effectiveness Forward

By: Michael Palmer

ANA offers its members a unique opportunity – to benchmark six of its marketing processes (btw this service is free to ANA members) including:

1. Overall Process Linkage
2. Insights and Marketing Knowledge
3. Marketing Strategy
4. Annual Marketing Planning
5. Integrated Marketing
6. Marketing Measurements (Metrics)

What we have discovered is most interesting.  The two areas that have bubbled to the surface as those where marketers are having the most difficulty (regardless of whether they are B2Bor B2C) - Insights and Marketing Knowledge and Integrated Marketing.  Marketing organizations are horrible about collecting data and turning that data into insightful action – then sharing those incredibly valuable insights internally to drive revenue growth.  Integrated marketing is something we marketers talk about incessantly, but do little about.  This is the area where we have the paltriest of results.

What’s the problem?  First, a consistent weakness is an inadequate marketing library from which success models and critical marketing documents may be easily shared globally. Most companies seem to have a poorly maintained repository of aging and increasingly irrelevant documents which are largely ignored by the employee base.  So the information is collected but no one is using it effectively.  Not very smart when we know that marketing insights drive everything we marketers should be doing.

Secondly, most companies lack anything meeting the definition of a process in the areas of insight development, brand equity building and integrated marketing campaign assembly. Marketers seem to employ an ad hoc approach whose output depends upon the individual brilliance (or luck) of a team leader rather than an embedded, reproducible corporate competence.

And we marketers expect the rest of the company to respect us as business leaders? 

If you are an ANA member company why wouldn’t you want to measure your effectiveness in the six key processes listed above, the fact that you can learn where and how you could increase your marketing effectiveness and thereby increase your marketing leadership would seem most valuable – if this is the case, just send me an email (mpalmer@ana.net) and I’ll hook you up. For those not ANA members who wish to find out where/how you can improve – email me as well and we’ll talk membership.

The Relevance of Marketing

By: Michael Palmer

A silo mentality has been with us for years and is unlikely to change in the near future.  People have too much invested in building the importance of their leadership to give up being in charge.  Marketing, however, truly has the ability to transform this mentality from a “what’s in it for me” attitude to let’s work together as a cross platform team.

What, you ask, is the carrot that can make this horse move? It's customer insight. 

Recently, an ANA member CMO was faced with a challenge from her organization’s production VP about increasing her marketing spend.  Production it seemed needed new equipment so they wanted the dollars available; marketing wanted to extend a current campaign.  Smartly, the CMO changed the conversation from winning or losing to what was right for the customer.  She showed the management team that the campaign she was running was working to drive revenue – the production equipment would not garner the same return.

Make marketing relevant by understanding your customer better than anyone within your organization – use that insight to drive decisions, use that insight to excite the team, use that insight to create cross functional teams focused on one objective, creating satisfied, highly motivated customers who will do your selling for you.

Define Your Marketing Organization

By Michael Palmer

With a New Year upon us, what can we do as marketers to make 2007 a better year? Restore and rebuild our credibility.

Sadly marketing and marketers seem themselves as marketing communications professionals. A MarketingProf survey asked marketers what their primary job was – 90%, that’s right 90%, said marketing communications. If marketers continue to think of themselves as communicators and not strategists, the rest of the world is then going to think the same. And the problem with being a marketing communications professional is?

1. You will not be in charge of your own destiny: some one else, either the sales department or your CFO will determine what your budget is not you.
2. You will be looked at as a tactician, not a strategist: marketing should not be about logos, advertising or brand promotions; it should be all about driving revenues and profits.
3. You will constantly be fighting for resources: sales, R&D and production will out trump when money is allocated because you will be thought of as a support department, not the engine of growth.

Start the year off by first defining the role of marketing in your organization – find out via an audit if need be what your constituents think marketing brings to the table. Do they look at the marketing department as marketing services, or the driver of growth? Once you know that, you can start determining how your going to change and grow the credibility of marketing in your organization. AND if you need help, ask us. ANA has spent the last three years building a model to help marketers "Rejuvenate the Power of Marketing" and we would be delighted to share our insights with you.

Happy New Year.

Technorati tags: marketing organization strategy

Relevancy Part Two

By Michael Palmer

I'm not in the market for a RV, so no matter how great an RV advertisement, I'm going to ignore it. I don't care. But there are people who do, so of course target them. And don't we all know by this point that narrow casting is more efficient than mass advertising. Come on, we marketers have to push back and let the world know that we get this message, that we are in fact not blind mice still chasing the farmers wife.

What then is important? I think social currency. Russ Klein, Burger King's CMO, introduced me to this concept at the ANA's Masters of Marketing meeting. Its the ability of marketing to get the right audience talking about your product. Its the ability to get those you want to love your brand so much that they tell others, bring brand references into their conversations, that they relate their brand experiences to others. The Burger King King has become a new personality relevant enough to be the subject of hallway conversations. He has become cool, so then are the products and brands with which he is associated. What are people doing - they're telling stories. And it is the practice of story telling that can truly bring a brand alive.

So I say to all the marketing pundits and consultants - get over it. We know relevance is important. What we have to learn is how to tell our story so that those who care, will tell others. Then in the words of Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, we have built a lovemark.

Technorati tag customer

Relevancy Part One

By Michael Palmer
Don’t focus on everyone; focus -- carefully target your messages. As markets fragment, simple demographic targeting is not enough. Marketers must thoroughly understand demographic and psychographic information and seek opportunities to be truly relevant. Really get to know your customers. Stop messaging that screams “Notice me!" Choose messaging that means something to your targets. Start connecting with them.
This is from Peter DeLegge's Marketing Today. He is the publisher and has nearly twenty years experience in marketing, advertising and e-business strategy experience, holding marketing management positions at both Fortune 100, 200 and medium size firms.
Now I don't know about you, but to me relevancy is not the new black.  McDonald's, under Larry Light's leadership, researched and determined that relevancy was in fact more important than differentiation four years ago.  So unless you have just pulled a rip van winkle and are just coming back to the marketing community - hello, its time to wake up, relevancy has always been the key.

Data is the New Oil

By Michael Palmer

"Data is the new oil!" Clive Humby, ANA Senior marketer’s summit, Kellogg School.
Data is just like crude. It’s valuable, but if unrefined it cannot really be used. It has to be changed into gas, plastic, chemicals, etc to create a valuable entity that drives profitable activity; so must data be broken down, analyzed for it to have value.

The issue is how do we marketers deal with the massive amounts of data that are available to us? How can we change this crude into a valuable commodity – the insight we need to make actionable decisions?

First we must understand that data is not insight. It is easy to grab a single fact and extrapolate that one fact into an actionable direction. But without context a fact is just that a fact, it is not an insight. For instance, if you discover that in one area your brand awareness level is significantly below your brand awareness level of other regions, should you panic? One brand analysts did. He sent up a red flag throughout his company telling the world that the sky was falling. However, when the CMO checked other facts (share levels, profit margins, target segment awareness) he uncovered that the once thought issue area was in fact a not a problem at all but a very profitable area.

Marketers: What is Your Legacy?

When James Schlesinger became the new secretary of defense, his most ardent desire was to leave a legacy behind. He wanted to people to know that he had not only occupied the “SecDef” seat, but had made a difference. To find out how to do that he sought the counsel of a number of people, but one in particular, Colonel Richard Hallock. Richard was a paratrooper, a highly decorated combat hero and a person who understood the hollowed Pentagon halls well. Especially the potential pitfalls. More importantly, Hallock understood how the institutions like the Pentagon can quickly swallow you up by engaging you in so many projects, you end up being known or standing for nothing in particular. Hallock sat Schlesinger down and said, “You must understand that if you want to leave a legacy it is vital for you to make a decision about what you want that legacy to be. If you don’t make that decision, and make it early in your tenure, you will have no legacy. Because even after several months on the job you will become so caught up in the business of the Pentagon, so enmeshed with the generals, so overwhelmed with the scope and enormity of the job that it will be too late.

As a marketer, what will your legacy be? What few projects will you pick and put the full weight of your office behind them? How will you guide your legacy projects and nurture them? If you determine from the very beginning what your legacy will be, then and only then can you force them through the bureaucracy. And you will have to force them through the bureaucracy especially if you wish to be a change agent. The world only embraces change agents when they have succeeded. Not the ones who are in the process of driving change.

Burger King: Using Social Currency

Russ Klein, Burger King’s CMO, told us of social currency. This is a very interesting concept. He said "when they know you more than love you" you have an unremarkable brand – one people don’t want to talk about, share with their friends or go out of their way to buy, promote, recommend. What’d BK do? They got down and partied. They ingrained their brand into the fabric of their core customers by giving them something fun to talk about. They returned to social relevance by providing consumers with interesting content and by surrendering their brand to their customers. This is the ultimate in listening; giving your customers the opportunity to tell you in their own content and words, what they feel about your brand. This is how to make friends. I’ll bet most of you remember seeing the King score an NFL touchdown, or the subservient chicken perform. Did you talk to a friend about those ads? I know I did. That’s social currency – that’s making your brand relevant again.

Customer insight is king (no pun intended). With it, a brand can become relevant and differentiate itself in a meaningful and compelling way – the result, you’ll see a substantial increase in your organic and very profitable growth. Talk to your customers, every day and in every way. Let them help you, help yourself.

Consumer Insights - What a Concept

Frankly I was both surprised and at the same time reassured that a simple but so compelling and relevant message was reiterated at our Annual Masters of Marketing Conference earlier this month. That message – customer insights are the key to success. AG Lafley showed us several very specific examples of how P&G now listens better and then uses the insights they’ve gained to change the way they market. As he reiterated at this conference "The Consumer Is Boss" – he first told us this in 2000 when he was once again our keynote speaker.

Why am I surprised? – one after another, each speaker in turn said much the same thing. Listen to your customer, they will tell you what they want, when they want it, and how they want it. Pretty simple, huh. Must not be or why would each of our speakers, who when asked to demonstrate how they have reinvented marketing at their organization, first touted both their need and ability to listen to customers. Dave Thomas, Wendys’ founder often said "Simple is hard". It must be.

Why was I reassured? – because the same message "listen to your customers, let them tell you what they want" was not only repeated, but also each of the CMOs who illustrated how they expertly reinvented their marketing efforts demonstrated how "listening" paid off. How by better understanding their customers they were able to rebuild, rejuvenate and reinvigorate their brands and their company’s organic growth efforts. Becky Saeger, Charles Schwab's CMO, focused the Schwab brand on being approachable, trustworthy, and consumer centric. These are critical aspects the Schwab Company had walked away from and the industry had abandoned. Then to me the brilliant part, was the way Schwab communicated their brand reinvention message in terms I could understand, the way I would talk. Again they listened to their consumers and talked to them as if they were friends, not clients. What a concept.

CMO Roundtable: What Is the Role of Marketing?

In a recent HBR article, Jeff Immelt, GE CEO said  “marketing at GE was a place where old salesman go to die.”  His purpose for sharing this quote was to demonstrate how far marketing has come as a sophisticate element in driving the organic growth for GE.  Marketing at GE today is one of the three critical factors (taking risks and innovation are the other two) for growing GE at its record pace.

What is the role of marketing?

At ANA’s Annual Masters of Marketing conference, we asked three CMOs (Tom Haas – Siemens, Cie Nicholson – Pepsi, Becky Johnson – Brinker International) this question.  Their answers:

• Tom said marketing is a contributor of growth, a catalyst to get the right people to the table.  Marketing at Siemens has to drive sales, educate people as to what the sales process is and help the sales team deliver the right message to the sales influencers.
• At Pepsi, marketing is a growth driver explained Cie.  Marketing is all about driving consumer pull, innovation, differentiating their products through image and strong brand positioning.
• Becky Johnson (pictured above with Randy Rothenberg) explained that marketing has undergone a transformation at Brinker.  It was part of restaurant operations, but has now moved to being its own entity, responsible for communicating with the restaurant operators what value and difference Chili’s brings to the marketplace.

Marketing is different in each organization.  The key to being a successful CMO is to clearly define how the organization you work for sees marketing.  The three CMOs above have done that and that’s why each has, or will be in their position longer than 24 months.

New beat blogger Burt Helm at the BusinessWeek site Brand New Day shares his thoughts of the Annual Conference:    Day One    Day Two   Day Three