ANA Marketing Maestros

Marketing Needs to Regain its “Street Cred”

Late last week, Peter Kim of Forrester summarized the findings of a long-term study we at ANA have enabled – Reinventing the Marketing Organization. Reinventing the marketing organization is one of our key pillars, in fact, our CEO, wrote about it not too long ago on his blog.

In his 50,000 foot summary, Peter lists 4 steps marketers must take to fix what is broken within marketing organizations:

ü To regain effectiveness, marketers must transition to a Customer-Centric Marketing Organization. Doing so requires: 1) redesigning P&Ls and metrics; 2) shifting culture away from marketing communications; 3) investing in a customer relationship infrastructure; and 4) rethinking agency relationships.

While these are important and meaningful steps – Peter, I think missed the most important first step – rebuilding credibility.  Marketing has little “street cred” within the organization today.  We talk our own language, we are great spin doctors when things are not going quite as well as we hoped they would be, we don’t hold ourselves to the same standards that others within the organizations must, and we often are myopic, looking at activities from our perspective not others.  Until we rebuild our credibility, marketing will never be seen as a corporate strategic leader, we will not be taken seriously, and we will be easily be taken down by finance, production or sales.

As I see it, there are three things that need to be done:

• First we have to help redefine the role of marketing.  That in many organizations is still in question. 
• Second, we need to be the customer insight guru.  Marketing has to be able to help the rest of the company understand what it is doing any why – what action will make your service/product more relevant and compelling than your competitor.  That only comes from customer insight. 
• Third, we need to build a metrics platform that combines the short-term reporting needs of the CEO/CFO with the long-term requirement for understand how we are driving brand equity growth (our job).

There ARE marketers sitting at the CEOs table determining what innovative, investment steps their corporation should take.  Just not enough of them.  Too many of us still think that “they just don’t get what we are doing” when in fact it is we marketers “who just don’t get what the corporation is about” and therefore don’t have the responsibility, authority or mandate to drive change.

Gain your street cred first, then determine what to change.

Managing Your Media Organization

When we started this blog, I never realized what a great avenue it was to discuss our book publishing efforts -- until I realized everyone is doing it, so why not. Our members tell us what intellectual property they want developed and we do our best to comply. Our newest title, Managing Your Media Organization, is one of these efforts. Client side advertisers, big and small, across every industry are struggling with their media and how to manage it. An interesting excerpt from Marketing Vox on media:

"Marketing accounts for about one trillion dollars of spending in the U.S. annually. If marketers slow their spending, that could hurt traditional media channels and the economy overall."

I have included an excerpt from the book (not an e-book, just a simple excerpt) -- a checklist of watch outs for those dealing with the the transitory stages a lot of media organizations are going through. Feel free to pass it along.

How Can You Become a Smarter Marketer?

Where do we start? 

First by moving your strategy and spending decisions down the consumer purchase funnel – the one which starts with building awareness and ends with brand loyalty.  Stop being satisfied with building and reporting gains in awareness.  As Scott Bedbury said “Awareness is fools gold”.  Anyone can drive it, but does it really matter today?  Only as a precursor to how many consumers you’re driving into your purchase funnel.  It time to look for ways to connect with your customers in a way that helps to lock them into your brand.  This means finding new media formats that are a better mixture of promotion and advertising – online media is certainly a strong candidate here.  Find those mediums that can deliver an indication of customer reaction – “how may calls or online registrations did we generate” not what is the cost of a GRP.

Its time to start shifting dollars in a major way from TV to other mediums; it time to face the fact that we need to integrate brand building with product movement.  This will require changing the way we allocate our funds.  It will require that we innovate, think differently, think like our customers.

Starbucks and LL Bean used little advertising to build their businesses.  They instead used a lot of very smart marketing.  How can you become a smarter marketer?

What is Your Marketing Function?

The findings of the ANA/Booz Allen study on Marketing Organization DNA are redefining the way we look at the marketing function. I encourage you to keep your eyes on the evolution of this study.

All right...Its time to call a spade a spade and be honest with ourselves.  We marketers for the most part fulfill a marketing services role to some degree – we coordinate, we communicate, we cheerlead.  We are not considered to be the corporation strategists or decision makers.  It may hurt to face the music, but by doing so now, you can begin to take steps to change your position and your potential tenure – especially if you are your organization’s CMO (Wikipedia).

Those that drive corporate direction share two important traits. 

They are proactive, not reactive.  And they can identify how they have driven revenue growth.

Insights and the Growth Champion

Insight - A profound understanding of customers that leads to a business idea which drives
profitable growth. 

Knowing the insight that drives profitable growth give you as a marketer, the power to help others understand what they are doing and why.  You will be able to bring real meaning to your team – help them understand their purpose, there input, the benefit that makes all of their work relevant.  By being able to tell a relevant and compelling insight story, others within your company will turn to you for additional insight.  They will respect your opinion and ask for your direction. 

Build a great customer insight story add to that a set of metrics to measure whether you’re on target and you too can become a “Marketing Growth Champion” – the driver of the corporate bus.

Growth-The Only Metric that Counts

We now know that marketers are the best bus drivers.  ANA’s recent marketing organization study (phase 3 by the way of this ongoing effort) definitively demonstrates that when marketers are driving company strategic priorities and leading development of brands, products and new businesses, revenue and profits are likely to be 20% greater.  This is a significant finding.

The issue is, that in only about 9% of the time are marketers in a position to actually do the driving.  They often lack the “street cred” to gain the respect of the CEO and CFO to be put in the driver’s seat.  So what do you do if you want to be the strategic growth driver in your company?  You gain your “street cred” through metrics and insight.

When asked “can you tell your CFO what effect a 10% budget cut will have on your revenue and profits?” over 64% of marketers said no.  How then can we expect to gain any credulity when the rest of the organization will resoundingly answer this question with a very loud “YES”.

What do you have to do to get your metrics house in order?  Start by defining the role of marketing, then figure out how to measure whether in fact your are delivering on that role.  Start by tracking those things that you can – sales by product, channel, geography; customers tracked by value, frequency, product mix; awareness, trial, repeat, intentions.  Then move up the ladder, tracking more predictive measures so you can determine not just where you’ve been, but whether a particular action will help you achieve the goal you have in mind.

Tired of Being Told What to Do?

If you’re tired of being told what to do, if you want to take charge, you first have to earn the respect of your executive peers.  You won’t be given that respect, or brought into the inner circle without first demonstrating some real business leadership.  Marketers today must appear to possess the analytic and leadership skills that will allow their team members to work cross-functionally, and even transition into leady operating roles.  Beth Comstock did just that when CMO at GE.  Her work on transforming the company behind the CEOs “Innovation at Work” campaign required that she help strategically redirect the company from a product oriented company to a solutions based organization.  Marketing took the lead on this initiative.

Looking at CMOs like Beth, we can begin to understand, How we can cause the change within our organization.  Like any other marketing initiative, this too will be a campaign.  Without respect, you cannot expect to make changes or direct a strategic plan.  And you cannot gain respect by asking for it.  Leading the metrics charge, no matter how simple, is the path to being asked to do more, contribute more, be a part of the inner circle.

Marketers Must Change or Die

“Executives must begin to treat brands and customers as assets rather than expenses” – headline for a recent magazine article.  No joke.  But, boy am I tired of hearing this.  Marketer’s eyes must be glazing over when they see or hear another article or speech starting out in this fashion.  As a marketer, I know what the problem is, I want to know how to fix it.

At the of the beginning of the book The Goal  (a great book on process) the main character finally discovers the secret to business success.  It is in the form of three questions.  You must know: What to change, What to change to, and How to cause the change.

We know what to change.  Marketers have to be more metric centric like the rest of the business units.  Talk to the CFO/CEO in speak they understand.  Interestingly enough, our ANA study found that marketers at a 4-to-1 ratio are more concerned with brand guidelines than top-line growth (the CEOs top priority). 

Now we know what to change to.  Marketers have to wake up and find out what’s on the CEOs mind.  Executives don’t have to change - marketers do.  Until marketers can clearly demonstrate that what they are doing is making a real difference to the bottom line, executives will continue down the path they are going.  They will tell marketers what needs to be done, they will tell marketers how much money they have to spend, they will tell marketers when they are cutting the marketing budget and staff.  And marketers will just have to take it.

The Reinvention Process

I got some emails asking what I meant when I stated "marketers reinvent themselves."

Well, let me expand on this. Marketers must possess several critical skills.  They must:

• be comfortable counting beans (metrics/accountability)
• they have to know who their customers are and how to effectively reach them and
• most importantly they must help point the company in the right direction. 

Marketers I believe must also ask fundamental questions: 

• What needs to be done?
• How do we get what needs to be done most effectively and efficiently?

The bean counters and researchers are experts at telling us how good our investments were or who are customer is, but they do not have the knowledge, skill or insight necessary to build a focused team able to work within today’s complex, multi media environment – unless of course we don’t fill that void.  Then they will gain those skills and we’ll be left out in the cold.

We marketers can no longer be generals – rallying the troops to storm a beachhead; using overwhelming force to conquer the enemy.  Instead we need to think like maestros leading an orchestra.  Organizations consist of many parts, each with their own sounds, capabilities, ability to add to or detract from the music the marketing department can make.  As the head creative/teacher/big picture seer (what can be done if everyone is playing the same tune), we have to be flexible enough to accept the input from a any section of the orchestra, yet innovative enough to help everyone see why playing together makes beautiful music.

Marketers Need to Reinvent Themselves

Marketers are on a precipice.  Falling into the large crevasse below that is irrelevance is a real and distinct possibility.  In the past marketing, as had been said repeatedly by every pundit and publication, was art and its now all about science.  Now its all about numbers and insights.  Creativity can be bought, so it is becoming more of a commodity. 

If we marketers are not careful, we can easily be replaced by bean counters and researchers.  Bean counters are great at asking the question – what’d we get for our marketing investment?  And in today’s world where you need a much more sophisticated mathematical orientation, bean counters are more likely to be comfortable with the metrics approach need to clearly understand, and determine – what’d we get for our marketing investment?

Researchers can gain the customer insight needed to determine the appropriate marketing strategy to bring customers to your product or service.  They can field the marketing research, they can talk to customers, and they can analyze the results.  Once that’s done, they can they tell the hired creative gunslingers what’s needed.  And the bean counters will be right there to ask – so what’d we get for our marketing investment?

So do we really need marketing any longer?  Is this a role that has run its course? Yes, unless marketers reinvent themselves.