Lairig Marketing

Marketing’s Four Questions For 2013 – Part 4

Now that you have decided to leave your media mix “as is” for next year AND invest in some rigorous customer research, AND be making movies, on location (cue Dire Straits), let’s move on to the fourth and final big marketing question for 2013.

The Fourth Marketing Question For 2013 goes like this:

Are we going to go another year with zero investment in improving our knowledge of marketing’s fundamentals ?

Generous to a fault, we will once again provide the answer:

No.

That is the only correct answer, because you and/or your marketing support staff can’t be running around all of 2013 without satisfactory answers to these “subquestions”:

>>> Do I/we really understand the essentials of customer segmentation?

>>> Do/I we know how to reposition a brand or product from scratch?

>>> Do I/we have any idea on how to put together a defensible, quantitative market forecast?

>>> Do I/we have the skills required to conduct a customer journey analysis?

Everyone claims to be too busy, under budget, and without enough staff. Yet hundreds of thousands of marketing professionals somehow find the time to read Seth Godin, Richard Branson, Mashable, and TechCrunch. Where the ephemeral reigns supreme. Every single day.

The answer to the Fourth Marketing Question of 2013 – why aren’t we spending the money and taking the time to up our core marketing skills ? – is easy. We thought there was a shortcut to being smarter than the other guy. When all along, that was the wrong goal.

As far as marketing knowledge goes, we just need to be smarter than we were the day before.

What’s In Your Resume – Part 1 of Many

With apologies to the folks at Capital One…think of your resume indeed like a wallet. You don’t use it all the time, but when you do, the right stuff better be in it.

An article in an IT newsletter showed how the online career site, Dice (no relation to Andrew Clay), can be used to divine emerging in-demand tech skills by seeing what search terms employers use on dice.com. Turns out that “iRise,” which believe it or not is NOT a new alarm clock from Apple, is #1.

An IT pro with iRise experience, therefore, would be wise to include the term on his or her resume. And so on, down the list of top search terms.

There is no Dice for marketing, so Lairig Marketing will hypothesize how this “search term indicator” would work in our world. However, given the parallel universe some marketers live in, we are forced to set it up as such:

• What terms marketing employers are looking for in candidates’ resumes

Versus

• What terms marketing employers SHOULD BE looking for in candidates’ resumes

First up: “Groupon” versus “Business”

By choosing the first search term (for which you can insert any similar shiny new toy similar to Groupon), marketers ensure they will attract one-trick ponies and trend huggers. After the first Groupon deal is launched, these candidates would have nearly zero value.

By looking for candidates who use terms like “business strategy,” “business acumen,” “business outcomes,” etc., marketers will attract candidates who can link marketing strategy to business strategy, who know the difference between revenue and profit, who can run a true ROI calculation.

Tomorrow: a look at the buzzwordy search term “innovation.”

Don’t Passover Marketing Experience

A wise old rabbi came to the Seder meal, and spoke at length, and in great detail, about the history of the Passover observance. Those in attendance listened intently to the rabbi, often nodding affirmatively at his allegories, deep knowledge of history, and the wisdom of his point of view.

Even better, most of the Jewish and non-Jewish listeners came away with some new insights. Firstly, the wise old rabbi suggested that the modern Passover Seder focuses too much on being a secular celebration of the exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt. Secondly, the often-used reference to a “Jewish people” is incorrect when it comes to the exodus, since the rabbi told us there were, technically, no Jews on the planet at the time.

Where are the wise old rabbis of marketing?

You can be wise, but you can’t be old. Over 45 years of age, unless you have a crack at the top of the agency pyramid (where “Mad Men” still exist), you have been put out to pasture. The Great Recession was a great excuse to accelerate the “exodus,” if you will.

Now, the wise old rabbis of marketing are freelancing and/or running one-person consulting shops, weeping when they come across the hundredth blog in two weeks titled, “5 Things Your Company Should Be Doing On Facebook, Right Now!”

The economy, at least in agency land, is back, and hiring is underway. Articles and blog posts with tips on how to “hire the best” are back also. All running counter to the notion of experience. In fact, last week AdAge ran one from the Antony Young, the CEO of Optimedia, who said the hell with experience – hire someone with “enthusiasm.”

Wow.

We have reduced the field of marketing to nothing but “enthusiasm.”

On the one hand, he could be right. Data released by the GMAT folks reveal that the lowest scores on the test come from undergraduates majoring in – drum roll – MARKETING. Dead last. Even the Humanities guys kicked our butts.

On the other hand, though, the field of Marketing is f*cked if it doesn’t soon recognize its experience problem. A few “grey heads” in the corner office isn’t the solution.

It is long past time to find the wise old rabbis of marketing, and have them mentor the Lost Generation.

A Great Question For Your Next Marketing Interview

Shocking. Frustrating. Devastating. Not enough words to describe the New York Rangers double-overtime loss to the Washington Capitals. After battling valiantly, a tiny breakdown on the Rangers part cost them the game.

The Caps Jason Chimera (what a last name!) flew down toward the left circle and forced a shot on goal. Defensemen Brain McCabe made a great play, partially blocking the shot. The puck bounced and slid toward the prone Ranger goalie, Henrik Lundqvist. Trailing the play was Marian Gaborik, an overpriced player who scored his first goal in a blue moon earlier in the game.

As the puck slid to within two feet of Lundqvist, who would have easily smothered it, Gaborik waved his stick at it. He half hit it. Chimera, who had wisely skated to the goal mouth, received the puck in his chest. It dropped to goal line. Chimera stood there alone, behind Lundqvist, the puck at his feet. Time stood still for Ranger fans the world over. A millisecond later, bam, Chimera stuffed the puck into the net.

Game over. And, if the Rangers lose Saturday and exit the series, this could become Marian Gaborik’s “Joe Pisarcik” moment.

What a nice interview question for your next marketing manager candidate. Show him or her a video replay, then ask: What two mental mistakes did Marian Gaborik make on the play?

Here is what you should hear.

Gaborik reacted as most players are taught to – a loose puck in front of a goalie should be swept away. But Gaborik’s first mental mistake was not adjusting to the environment at hand. With a better sense of awareness, he would have seen Lundqvist was on his way out to, freely and clearly, cover the puck. One more second, and the whistle would have blown for a faceoff.

Awareness and confidence, not only in his goalie, but in himself, would have changed his decision.

Mistake #2 came when Gaborik opted to swat the puck randomly. He plainly did not keep Chimera in his actual sight, or in his mental sight (“I don’t see him, but based on where I saw him last he is probably standing at the goal mouth.”). That’s what it means when someone says “heads up” play. Gaborik’s move was one of desperation.

If your interview candidate doesn’t catch mistake #1, that says he or she may be too much of a rigid thinker for your organization, unable to adjust to new information. If he or she doesn’t catch mistake #2, that indicates your candidate won’t be much of an asset to help you think ahead one or two steps.

If you hire this candidate, you can expect plenty of hard work. Just don’t expect the outcomes to be anything other than devastating. Heads up.

Marketing: Definitely Do Try This At Home

Going on and on about consumers can be fun, but it keeps us from recognizing, or at least remembering to recognize, how important employees are to this puzzle we call “marketing.”

I stumbled across a couple of stories yesterday from the site of a consultant by the name of Miri McDonald, who has her act quite together on the topic of employee communications.

McDonald reported on internal-communication practices from Frito Lay and Molson Coors, companies so large it almost seems ludicrous to think they might provide learning to more than a handful of other businesses. But that, my friends, is the difference between best practices and case studies (yes, another call back to a post here from earlier in the week). Best practices are always good, and always accepted from any company of any size in any industry.

In her posts, McDonald outlined a million tactics each company uses to keep employees up to date on company happenings, as well as to maintain alignment on goals and objectives. But rather than look at this as consumer marketing being applied to internal “consumers,” I want to flip this around using some of the ideas McDonald cited.

Intranet portals with instruction on how to use various tools
Funny you don’t see this often enough on the consumer side. Forms and commerce applications are designed for Einsteins, leaving end-consumers in a jam – do I click here or there? What is this field asking for? Can I hit the “back” button?

Podcast stations to listen to leader messages
Amazing how underutilized audio assets still are on end-user sites. If I use iTunes as a hint, something tells me that people aren’t averse to streaming and downloading good audio content.

Molson Coors’ “Pub talk,” where leaders use plain language
The example given in McDonald’s article was the term “core competencies” – why not use “things we do well.” Why are end-users forced to slog through messages that include terminology like “software architecture fabric”? (I’m talking to you, Hewlett-Packard!)

Again, this is only a sampling. So much excellent effort put into communicating with employees in a compelling, clear, and pervasive way. Then these same people go out and build customer communications that fall short.

Internal communications programs need one more module built into them: “Making Sure We Apply What We Do Internally, To Our Customers.” A good reminder that, ultimately, customers are the only reason we all come into work everyday.

I Read The News Today, Oh Boy

Over the past month, I’ve been putting together several industry assessments for a client. The intent is for these write-ups of targeted industries to give field marketing and sales insights into the most critical business and technology challenges for each sector. With these information “cheat sheets,” marketing and sales can, in theory, have more success generating leads and closing sales.

The tricky part was writing content that would have to last a couple of years, until the next iteration of the field materials would be developed. Since all but one of the industries is still struggling at the moment, I felt I couldn’t write about the “future” without acknowledging where we’ve come from. So, I made a number of reference to the economic situation of the prior two years, sometimes using the phrase “the Great Recession.”

The two client executives managing the project circled the phrase every time it appeared, noting in the margin, “Why are we referring to the 1930s?”

On a subsequent conference call, they repeated the question. I was stunned. I explained it was for 2007-2009, not for the 1930s Great Depression (duh). I explained the Great Recession was a new but common reference. Neither one had ever heard of it.

How can anyone pretend to be a marketing leader in a business-to-business environment while being oblivious to the macroeconomic environment?

How can marketing copy be written that proves your company understands not just a prospect’s technology needs, but the business issues that are driving – or maybe impinging – on those technology needs?

How can a sales executive meet with a prospect and be armed with only product slicks, rather than raw material for a good discussion that ties a client’s business pain points to his or her technology pain points?

This is what happens when marketers come to work every day, go heads down, and churn out inward-focused print ads and website copy that goes on and on about “them,” not “you.”

If you want to have more success with business, you need to know more about business. You need to read the business section of a newspaper or online finance site every day. Subscribe to something like a Reuter’s daily market recap newsletter. Force yourself to read about banking reform, the Federal Reserve, or Walmart’s quarterly earnings meeting. Watch for trends and forecasts.

Become familiar with terms like “the Great Recession.” Do it, to keep us all from falling into a great depression.

The Art & Science Of Managing The Boss

Three minutes before you go into a client meeting to review the latest campaign work, ask an older Creative exec what he thinks the client feedback will be. If he’s on his game he will say, “Shouldn’t we make the logo bigger?”

It’s an old joke (and even a popular blog by that name). But it references a constant in the world of marketing – senior client executives so far out of the loop that the only “value add” they can offer is a comment on an ad’s graphics.

I thought of this when I saw a report the other day from Nielsen (who seems to be very busy lately publishing its various research studies) about the dynamics of new product development. In so many words, it concluded that CPG companies with less senior management involvement have more successful new-product launches. In an ideal world, marketers should be able to apply this to campaign development – keep the VP of Advertising, CMO, et al. out of the way until after the campaign launches.

Unfortunately, marketing is anything but an ideal world. Management consultants call this technique of cutting out senior input as “asking for forgiveness, not for permission.” In marketing, however, this is asking for being fired.

New product development is mostly science, so keeping unknowledgeable execs out of the lab makes sense. But, as Yogi Berra might put it, marketing is mostly science too – it’s just that the other half is art. And there isn’t a senior executive alive who doesn’t think he or she is a consummate artist. Which is how we often end up at “make the logo bigger.”

Cutting an “artist” out of the marketing planning process is a recipe for disaster. The better way is to…

• Lay out, and get buy-in to, a solid plan of action
• Supply research-based customer insights frequently
• Update senior managers on progress weekly
• Force senior managers to give continuous feedback – make them vote early and often
• Document and publish the feedback (aka “CYA emails”)
• Ask “why?” or “why not?” every time the senior exec opens his/her mouth

You will know that you followed this technique successfully if the CMO gets to the final meeting and says “Shouldn’t we make the budget bigger?"

Be A Meeting Superstar

I’m sorry to keep harping on this arrogant white male thing, but this one was too precious to ignore.

About a week ago, an AWM named Robert J. Levin testified before Congress’s Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission about the goings on at Fannie Mae circa 2006-2008. Levin was Fannie’s chief business officer at the time. When he was asked during the hearing whether Fannie should have redirected attention away from the low-income segment, Levin answered, “That wasn’t done at my pay grade.”

Between 2000 and 2008, Robert J. Levin reportedly made roughly $45 million. One wonders what the pay grade is at Fannie Mae that signifies a level at which an employee could or would make adult decisions. An AWM who is also a DB.

Your business meetings probably aren’t Congressional hearing material, but you should treat them as if they were. They are your chance to shine (or, like Levin, to make a fool of one’s self). Take heed below. And if you are on in years, then consider the following topics advice you can provide as a mentor.

Just The Facts
Never make a point or argument in a meeting without a fact to back you up. Cite a third-party research finding, or better yet, some analysis from your own company’s database. Be known as the guy (or gal) with great insights…not the guy who pulls stuff from his butt.

No Samples of One
Blurting out “Well, I never watch TV anymore” or “I thought that TV ad sucked” proves only that you don’t understand the context of the topic at hand. A marketing meeting is about the customer’s perspective, not yours.

Know Thy Enemy
Refrain from talking about the obvious, direct competitor. Chip in with your observations about indirect competitors or emerging threats. In most industries, these are the types of players that cause the most significant disruption.

Forget Where You Came From
Using your previous company as a reference for how things should be is a nonstarter. Watch the eyeballs roll as you talk. By definition, you are no longer at your ex-employer, and there is probably a good reason for that.

Business As Usual
When you make a recommendation, include the impact on the business – more sales, profits, new segments, market share, etc. It’s the only reason marketing exists.

Follow these meeting-behavior pointers, and you just might end up in front of Congress. Not as a Robert J. Levin, but as an expert marketing witness.

Please Help Save Marketing From Itself

Three demographic “megatrends” are playing out that will dictate the future of the marketing function. The third of these appears to be in sorry shape, and needs imminent attention from marketers.

First up is the fairly well-known Baby Boom labor bust (in marketing, a 50-year-old is considered ancient). Vacancies that were masked by the Great Recession will start to rear their ugly heads over the next 12 months.

The second trend is the apparent backfill of the Boomer loss by the 30-something crowd. I say apparent, because by and large this group – made up of too many know-nothing, unemployed freelance social media guru bloggers – ranges from useless to dangerous. [Quick aside: Ad Age’s critic Bob Garfield, in his final Ad Age column, called them “narcissists, conmen, naifs and a number of blithering morons.” I commented that this was his best criticism ever, which netted me top-rating of 4 thumbs up.]

On the face of it, you wouldn’t worry about the second trend, because the third – the trillion teenagers in the U.S. – will knock the 30-somethings on their butts. Except maybe they won’t.

“The American Freshman,” an annual survey administered by the Higher Education Research Institute that I’ve referenced in earlier posts, released its 2009 findings recently. It could be bad news for the future of marketing.

Work Experience
Due mainly to the recession, the percentage of students who said they held a job during high school fell from 69% to 63%. We can only hope there are summer jobs this coming season for them. It’s not only the experience they lack, but money to keep them in college. Unpaid internships are in reality a loss-loss.

College Selection
The percentage of students who said a college’s job placement success was "very important" hit its highest level ever. The driver for this can be seen from another question also hitting an historic high: “Top goal for college graduation is being well-off financially.”

When I Grow Up
At the other end of the spectrum, the choice of business as a career hit its lowest level in 35 years – just 12%.

It’s hard to think about in current times I know, but we’re right around Defcon 3 in terms of future resourcing of marketing. Start thinking about the colleges you should be aligning with (those with high job placement stats!), mentoring programs, and paid internship opportunities. Sponsor scholarships and campus events. Get a manager or two to teach as an adjunct.

Don’t wait. That’s what everyone else will be doing.

Train(ing) In Vain

They say marketing is the first thing cut in hard times (who are “they” anyway?). Wrong. Training is.

So I must be near-mad to endorse both at once - marketing training.

Why talk about marketing training during a recession? Because: (1) if you have a job right now, you are not in a recession; (2) it’s a requirement for success, regardless of the economic environment.

Let’s look at two recent studies. Through its Marketing Leadership Council, the Corporate Executive Board surveyed 100 different marketing functions at 130 top companies. One of the top-three drivers of "breakout" success, or market-share growth near 30%, was “marketing talent focus.” Here’s an excerpt from CEB:

“…commitment to talent, even in the face of enormous pressure to divert resources to shorter-term needs. Specifically, these organizations prioritize the hiring and development of high-caliber talent rather than over-focusing on specialized skills, such as an expertise in specific emerging media.”

Hmmmmm, I wonder if that last sentence refers to “expertise” like social media?

In addition, at the end of last year McKinsey (the consultants, not the sex doctors) reported that two of the top-three obstacles 100 leading business executives cited as hindering talent-management success were related to lack of management support for, and leadership of, employee training.

If You Are The Boss
Look around at the employees you’re keeping. When was their last review? What specific skill sets were/are inadequate? What plans did you jointly make to address deficiencies? What novel, useful, cost-effective, strategic training opportunities can you come up with in the next six months?

When the hard times end, dissatisfied employees will leave, and a high percentage will be those you don’t want to see go. The poorly trained employees who remain will limit your future business opportunities.

If You Are The Employee
Do you want to grow? Do you want to add more value? How much of your current marketing role requires or allows you to think and act strategically? Do you think “on the job” learning is going to satisfy your needs?

Recession excluded, hiring and firing decisions will be made like always - add measurable, strategic value, get hired; or don’t, and get fired.

Don’t let the train(ing) leave the station without you.