Peter A. Blackwell
Managing Partner at 4thought Marketing Consultants

His 20 years’ experience with some of the most successful and well-known Consumer Packaged Goods and Retail companies is drawn upon to lead organizations in the complex, yet essential goal of achieving full Marketing integration across all marketing channels, all parts of the marketing organization and its agencies and all other areas of the business.

What has he done?
Peter started as a Marketing summer intern and now he’s Managing Partner at 4thought Marketing Consultants.
He began his career in Brand Management at Adams Confectionery he oversaw brands like
Trident Gum and Halls Cough Drops – each $50mil brands in Canada, interfacing with teams in
Mexico, Brazil and Japan.
He then served as Director of Corporate Strategy for Kraft’s $3 bil Canadian business after
which he spent five years as VP Marketing for Canadian Tire – a 90 year old, $7billion Mass
Merchandising Retail icon and Canada’s most beloved retail brand. Peter was responsible for a
budget of $400 mil in Marketing spend, including a team of 130+ marketing colleagues working
with over 20 agencies.

What will you learn?
His innovative and unique approaches to solving business and people challenges will make you understand that a brand is not only a logo, a slogan or an advertisement. He will explain that a Brand is the sum of every experience a customer has with your business/organization, why it’s important to put Brand first in your business and he will help you assess if your brand is truly the heart & soul of your business.

Actionable learning for you to take home?
‘To succeed you must increase the practice of putting the Brand first – establishing a clear, compelling Brand Purpose followed by processes & policies that align, guide and inspire everyone in the company to deliver consistent, on-Brand, superior customer experiences at every single touchpoint – always! ‘
Join us at Leaders in Marketing on October 18, 2012 in Bucharest, Romania to hear more about Peter A. Blackwell and our roster of international Marketing heavyweights.

Leaders in Marketing
Get Smart …stay Smart!
Smart people welcomed

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Michael Ruckman
Relationship Centricity Pro, Founder, President and CEO
Michael presents a framework for building mutually beneficial relationships with customers. This man has a vision, a different approach. Although using a banking approach first, Michael’s holistic approach to reaching out to customers and securing relationships can apply to other industries as well such as telecoms, broadband, cable and utilities.

What has he done?
Michael worked in his twenty-year career both as a banker and as a consultant for retail banks in over twenty five countries around the world. He is also known for his leadership in promoting the value of Customer Experience in retail banking, he has a tremendous experience in distribution network development, alternative channel roll-outs, sales development, alliances and ventures, systems implementation, and corporate culture development.
He has authored a unique methodological approach to operationalize the Customer Experience principles in practical use, resulting in greater customer loyalty, increased sales, and better customer service. He regularly writes articles for a number of professional publications in Europe and the United States and makes appearances in international conferences as a guest speaker. In addition, Michael has been a guest professor at an Eastern European MBA program, introducing students to modern economic theories and their practical implementation in the business field.
Michael’s work portfolio includes a number of large-scale transformation projects for brands such as Abbey National, Alfa-Bank, Atlantico (Millennium BCP), Banco Venezolano, BNP- Paribas, Citibank, ING, Vneshtorgbank, Bank Menatep SPb, Nadra Bank and many others.

What will you learn?
Like in any business, the most important stakeholder is the Client. Michael explains that relationship-centricity is the concept that a provider and a customer can have a mutually beneficial relationship. Learning what your customers really want just might be the key to creating a relationship-centric relationship.

Actionable learning for you to take home?
“We must stop selling products. Instead, we need to sell solutions that help people to achieve certain results. Regardless what can be found in the package, it is important to that it offers a solution for a specific purpose. First, we should find out the customer needs and then start developing a plan for ways to achieve those goals. And I am not talking just about the goals that the customer has today, but those that he may have in six months, a year or two…”
Join us at Leaders in Marketing on October 18, 2012 in Bucharest, Romania to hear more about Michael Ruckman and our roster of international Marketing heavyweights. See http://leadersinmarketing.ro for more details.

Leaders in Marketing
Get Smart …stay Smart!
Smart people welcomed

The post Leaders in Marketing: Speaker Profile appeared first on .

On a recent trip to Canada, a former boss and mentor (In fact to think about it…a lot of my former bosses are now friends and mentors!) shared this article with me which is really an interesting article about Brand building on the web, Facebook’s latest performance and companies like GM dropping Facebook. I mean c’mon now…GM dropping FB! Is this the beginning of a new trend? Is this the beginning of ‘Facebook bashing’?

Typically I would attach the link and wish you ‘good reading’ but this time with this article I thought maybe you‘d like to go through the same experience I did.

The fellow, Robert V. Green is writing about Marketing. So in order to make this interesting (no peeking) while you read this article, think about these questions:
1) Is this fellow a marketer? Either MBA or perhaps a Marketing prof? Perhaps he’s a CMO for a large multinational?
2) Do you agree with his belief on FB?
3) I would like to see attendees ask this question to our lineup of Marketing heavyweights at Leaders in Marketing in Bucharest, Romania on Oct 18, 2012. (http://leadersinmarketing.ro/). In fact, as moderator I intend to make this a topic of debate in one of our panels.

Hint: At the end of the article I will reveal what Robert V. Green does for a living.

In the meantime enjoy the article like I did. It’s a bit long yet thought provoking for anyone who considers him/herself a Marketing Pro.

Ahead of the Curve

Updated: 02-Aug-12 09:49 ET

Facebook and the Great Internet Advertising Dream

The collapse of Facebook since its IPO is generally being attributed to shares being overpriced originally. However, there may also be other reasons. Is there perhaps an extreme oversupply of advertising space, not just on the Internet, but in the media in general? How much advertising can we really absorb as consumers? Is Internet advertising even effective? Here are some thoughts, and how it applies to Facebook.

Advertising on the Internet – The Great Promise

Advertisers have always sought to direct their message to precisely the persons most likely to absorb the message and be motivated by it.
This concept is called targeting, which means that information about the type of person who is likely to see the message is known to the advertiser. The more accurate and more detailed the information about the user can be, the more effective the advertisement can be, presumably.
The great promise of the Internet, since the very early days, has been the idea that advertisers could accurately target their message to the user. The pursuit of this dream has been the foundation of many a startup company.
After all, the Internet is the greatest spying tool ever invented for advertisers. By tracking a user’s actions on the web, a detailed profile of the user can be created.
Television show audiences are measured by surveys of individual users that are extrapolated to a larger audience. The content of the show and the ratings metrics are then used to create a demographic profile of the entire viewing audience. This has always involved an element of uncertainty, which the Internet has promised to remove.
To date, the company that has done the best job of fulfilling this dream of the Internet as supreme advertising vehicle has been Facebook.
But is this dream actually real?

How Facebook Targets Advertising

Targeting an audience has always been important, even before the Internet.
The key elements for targeting an audience know the particular demographics of that audience, from which the likelihood of an ad being effective can be estimated.
DoubleClick was the first company to truly begin to target individual users by developing a detailed profile.
DoubleClick did this by tracking the surfing history of a user, recording each visit to a page where a DoubleClick ad was displayed. The ad is drawn from the DoubleClick database, but the database also records the unique ID of the user (stored in a cookie) and tracks the user over time.
DoubleClick’s value proposition was that improved targeting could be provided by the detailed profile created by a history of surfing. Using this profile, an ad most likely to appeal to that user could be displayed.
This value proposition was so strong that Google bought the company in 2007 for $3.1 billion.
DoubleClick’s value proposition was eclipsed by Facebook, however, as Facebook promised an even more detailed and more accurate profile.
This profile is created in part by the user themselves, as data such as birth date, education history, geographic location, and much more is actually given up freely by the Facebook user.
Furthermore, since the “like” button can be placed on other web sites, or persons can sign in to other sites with their Facebook profile, Facebook promises an even more precise profile than DoubleClick can create, since the user themselves has defined the details of their interests.
Add to this the incredible number of users that Facebook has been able to sign up – almost one-quarter of the adult persons on earth – and it seems like Facebook has finally cracked the problems faced by all advertisers.
At least, that is certainly what the advertisers buying space on Facebook believe, or are led to believe.
Does it actually work, though? Or is the Facebook promise more of an illusory dream of perfect advertising?
To answer this, it is first important to consider the various types of advertising.

The Types of Advertising

Historically, there have been three main types of advertising:
• Name recognition
• Sales generating
• Brand building

The Internet has created a fourth type, which can be called “traffic generation.”
Name recognition is simply the idea that the advertiser’s name becomes common and accepted in the potential customers perception of the everyday world. Little, if anything, is conveyed about the product, service, or company except the name.
Companies that purchase the naming rights for stadiums, for example, are not able to communicate anything about their product or service except for the idea that they are large enough to spend millions of dollars annually simply to place their name on the team’s stadium.
Name recognition is the least effective of all advertising in terms of generating revenue for the advertising purchaser. It is very difficult to measure the effectiveness of name recognition advertising.
Sales generating advertising is a very specifically targeted message that is intended to generate immediate revenue. Coupons are the most obvious example, although media advertising promoting lower prices or promotional financing rates are also in this category.
Sales generation advertising is generally easily measured, as the promotions usually have expiration dates and revenue during the sales promotion period can be compared to those before and after the promotion.
Brand building advertising is the most powerful form of advertising, although measuring the impact in precise metrics is difficult. Nevertheless, this type of advertising is considered the best-spent
Brand building advertising, however, requires the “telling of a story.”

Brand Building Advertising

This type of approach generally uses a story, of whatever level of detail, to communicate a particular feeling. This feeling is then associated with the product or company, sometimes by no more than displaying the brand name at the conclusion of the story.
The best example of this type of brand advertisement is Budweiser beer, particularly the advertisements developed for the Super Bowl. These ads usually tell a short, humorous story that either provokes laughter or warm-hearted empathy. The story is then associated with Budweiser simply by displaying the brand name at the end of the ad.
Although some of Budweiser’s ads include the beer within the context of the story, it is very rare for the ads to make any type of statement about the features or qualities of the beer itself.
It is enough to simply associate the good feeling created within the viewer with the brand name. The hope is that this same feeling is then regenerated in the viewer at the moment of decision at the liquor store, either consciously or unconsciously. The purchase decision then revives the good feeling created by the ad’s story, resulting in sales.
This is the core concept of brand advertising: the telling of a story that evokes a certain emotion that is then associated with the product, service, or company.
The effectiveness of brand advertising is difficult to measure, except by comparing regional sales with and without a particular ad campaign. However, most companies choose to purchase brand advertising when they can afford it, particularly if overall revenues have been, and continue to, rise.
Perhaps the purchase of quality brand building ads makes the advertising companies feel good about themselves as well, just as it is intended to make potential customers feel good about themselves.

Advertising on the Internet

Brand building advertising’s greatest media vehicle has historically been television.
On the Internet, however, we would argue that no one has – at least, not yet – created a meaningful vehicle for true brand building advertisements.
In fact, the bulk of Internet advertising since the beginning of the world-wide-web in 1994 has been banner ads, which are primarily either name recognition or sale generation advertisements. In recent years, the development of traffic generation ads has become important, but the difference between traffic generation and name recognition is blurry.
Measuring the effectiveness of banner ads has been much easier than other types of advertising, however, as the user’s reaction to ads can be instantly tracked and measured.
This measurement, over time, has led to the now-common practice of extremely low prices for banner ad placement, with a much larger payment made for a “click-through” — which means that the user has intentionally seen and reacted to the ad (unless the click-through was accidental).
The Internet has developed its own type of advertising category, which can be called “traffic generation.” This category is intended to guide a user to a particular web site where that site can make its own value proposition without having to pay someone else for displaying the message.
The greatest seller of traffic generation ads has been Google, who sells advertisements based upon the information typed in as a search string by the user. The purchaser of the ad intends to steer that potential user directly to their site as a result of the prominent placement of the ad in the search results.
The market for this type of traffic generation ad has been so strong that Google can actually price the ad’s placement in accordance to how prominent it appears on the page. Higher placement in the list of returned links costs more than placement of the ad’s link on the side of the search results.

No Brand Building Advertisement Vehicles on the Web

Almost the entire amount of advertising displayed on the Internet since 1994 has been in the traffic generation, sales generation, or name recognition category.
We would argue that there has been almost no brand building advertising on the Internet, at least in a historical sense.
Why?
It is simply difficult to “tell a story” in the current incarnation of the wide world web.
The only real attempts at this have been short ads that precede a video that the user has requested, such as are now appearing on YouTube and other video-based information sites.
However, in almost all cases, the user has the option to “opt-out” of the ad after a short time period. We are curious how many users do this. Certainly it could be easily measured, but we have seen little public information about this practice.
Perhaps the absence of data on this practice is telling in itself.

Where This Leaves Us

The Internet, therefore, is primarily a vehicle for the least effective types of advertising: name recognition, traffic generation, and sales generation.
Even though Facebook has done the best job of creating a detailed profile of users for advertisers, they still haven’t created a meaningful vehicle for brand building advertising.
Furthermore, the continual creation of new websites whose business model is advertising has led to an almost incredible overcapacity of advertising sites.
We wonder if venture capitalists have any interest in supporting a new Internet startup whose business model is based upon banner advertising. We would not be surprised if they didn’t.
After all, the total advertising budget of all advertisers put together isn’t growing. When the potential supply for placing ads increases, it simply reduces the prices that websites can command for advertisements, particularly banner ads, which fall in the least valuable category of all advertising.
Perhaps now is the time for some young entrepreneur to start pitching the “I’ve solved the brand building advertising problem on the web” idea to venture capitalists (whether they actually have solved it or not).

GM’s Dropping of Facebook

Perhaps the greatest clue in how the industry is viewing Facebook and Internet advertising in general was the announcement by GM, just weeks prior to Facebook’s IPO, that they were canceling all ads on Facebook.
GM simply discovered that Facebook ads just weren’t selling cars.
And since Facebook has no vehicle for creating brand building advertisements, GM found no reason to purchase ads on Facebook.
We think that the primary impact of GM’s decision was to prompt other advertisers to start asking the exact same question about their own advertising budgets.
We suspect most people who buy ads on Facebook also buy ads elsewhere, probably in other mediums as well, such as magazines and television.
How many of those advertisers bought ads on Facebook simply because it was the latest fulfillment of the advertisers dream?
How many of those advertisers have actually started to examine the effectiveness of those Facebook ads, as General Motors did?
We wonder.
Certainly if they haven’t yet done so, they will eventually. No business entity makes ineffective purchase decisions forever, although many certainly do for short periods of time.

Conclusions

The decline of Facebook stock’s value since its IPO is being attributed to the IPO being overpriced and oversold to poorly informed retail investors. Those investors associated Facebook’s explosive growth with a near-certainty of future revenue growth, and value.
We have begun to wonder if the decline in Facebook’s value is instead associated with an increasingly prevalent re-evaluation of advertising on the web in general.
Certainly, GM’s decision to stop purchasing advertising on Facebook had nothing to do with Facebook’s IPO pricing. It was simply an informed advertiser’s assessment of Facebook’s effectiveness.
We think that the decline in Facebook stock has as a lot to do with a widening reassessment of the value of Internet advertising in general and, in particular, the absence of true brand building advertising on Facebook.
If such a reassessment leads advertisers to view Facebook as other than the fulfillment of the ultimate advertisers dream, and instead to view Facebook as yet another Internet promise that just didn’t last, then Facebook stock probably is likely to drop much more over time.

Facebook (FB) August 2, 2012: $20.37 -0.51 (-2.4%)
Comments may be emailed to the author, Robert V. Green, at aheadofthecurve@briefing.com

Answer: Robert V. Green is a Senior Investment Strategist for Briefing.com (http://www.briefing.com/corporate/our-experts.htm), not a Marketing expert!
Paul Renaud

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Common integrated campaign pitfalls.
Pitfall #1: Media that don’t reinforce each other
Pitfall #2: Create a budget first, metrics second.
Pitfall #3: Awareness vs. sales
Pitfall #4: Delegate and forget
To close off this topic and as a continuation of my last post on the topic of campaign integration here’s pitfall number 4.

Pitfall #4: Delegate and forget
Another pitfall is when the Chief Marketing Officer decides to get involved, rolls up his/her sleeves with the team and assists them in launching his first campaign with the team then retreats to his/her management meetings leaving his deputy in full control of the subsequent campaigns.
Till then he or she sets the direction and tone of the Marketing plan (example)
“I want us to be positioned as the company whose real estate project owns the concept of European living standards such as providing large green space, offices, large employer complexes, schools, retail, professionals, fitness centers, public transport.”
He/She made sure the message was communicated efficiently by signing off on all ads, and held the Marketing department responsible for the success of their campaigns (“If we don’t generate revenues that are at least twice what this new Marketing program costs, I want it stopped”).
The campaign was a huge success, improving sales and raising the company’s presence to the point where it could demonstrate a correlation between sales and the advertising campaign.
Then he/she takes his eye ‘off the ball’, starts trusting the agency and then makes the decision that he/she would change from being an inspiration to becoming more involved in day-to-day management. He begins focusing exclusively on the dynamics of reporting systems and internal controls. Although he was a sale-and-Marketing pro who had built the Marketing department from the ground up, he/she now feels that time should be spent building an internal organization.
Soon enough Marketing was delegated to inexperienced staff that could go through the motions of creating Facebook pages, web-site banners, and the like, but who were lost without the leadership it takes to turn these elements into a powerful sales-building machine. No wonder revenues and earnings slowed down.
The team needs inspiration all the time. This means getting involved in all aspects if the Marketing leader wishes to see results while at the same time maintain the consistency of the message.
He/she is supposed to be diligent enough to have created a succession plan but rushing into management duties too fast is not going to help anyone especially when it comes to generating Top Line revenues with Marketing.

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On the topic of integration, budgets and measuring results I have found that the following pitfalls are common when we think that the campaign is integrated.

Common integrated campaign pitfalls.
Pitfall #1: Media that don’t reinforce each other

Pitfall #2: Create a budget first, metrics second.
Pitfall #3: Awareness vs. sales
Pitfall #4: Delegate and forget

As a continuation of my last post on the topic of campaign integration here’s pitfall number 3

Pitfall #3: Awareness vs. sales
Marketing agencies that are ineffective i.e. that struggle to turn advertising, public relations, direct mail, and other initiatives into sales probably will never admit to being ineffective, otherwise they are risking their credibility as ‘creatives’. Think about it. Awards are given out based on an agency’s ‘creative’ talent. Other awards – ‘Effies’ are awards that have proven that a particular campaign had a positive effect in revenues.
Rather agencies like to talk in terms of “image or awareness Marketing”. They will insist that although you can’t measure the performance of what they do, you should rest assured that image is improving, the strategy is catering to your target audience, reach is attained, the awareness of the brand is improving because you selected them
Horse feathers! If you hear such baloney from an agency pitching for your business, instruct them to go pitch for your competitor.
It is possible to design Marketing so that the initiatives and tools you create can generate customer revenues.
What you are looking for in a good agency or in a candidate to run your Marketing department-is that they understand the importance of integrating all of your Marketing initiatives.
It’s normal for an agency to spend a lot of time on the creative, either to seize the newly found customer insight and to become unique in the way it intends to address that market or audience or its innovative way to communicate the message. After all, the client’s brief did say ‘we have to be different’.
By the time they have done the creative there is little time for execution or better still integration. So they go based on what they remember-what they did in the past, as a benchmark. In most cases, the benchmark or what they did in the past carries no tangible metric or measure that is, ‘when we used TV+ Social media we saw a sales report from the client that sales increased by 20%.’

Rather, they use what they remember, and this seems to be a comfortable fit for what they consider as an integrated campaign. As a result the integration part gets 10% attention of the planning time. No wonder since you too were swayed by the really cool creative that you may have completely forgotten to ask the obvious…how is this integrated?
It’s happened to me on many occasions. I too, got caught up in the ‘sizzle’ of the creative and forgot to ask about integration. Don’t get caught like I did!

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Common integrated campaign pitfalls.
Pitfall #1: Media that don’t reinforce each other
Pitfall #2: Create a budget first, metrics second.
Pitfall #3: Awareness vs. sales
Pitfall #4: Delegate and forget

Pitfall #1: Media that don’t reinforce each other
TV commercials are not always a success story, i.e. poor creative or a TV ad which was not sales actionable. At times if we are not careful, we can make the same mistake or worse, the TVC does not support other media used (ex. Radio and online). The messages have to be consistent and the choice of media needs to build a 1-2 punch and they must complement each other.
Now we can’t cover every potential combination of one medium plus another but I feel compelled to remind you that when an agency proposes 2, 3 or 4 types of media it begs the obvious question of:
Why combine these?
What proof do we have that the combination of these 4 media will give us maximum impact?

Hearing things such as:
‘In our opinion we felt that these were a good combination’ or
‘This combination always worked well for us in the past’ or
‘We tested this on another client and the results were great’.
These are not justifiable reasons and they are a sure sign that this combination was made in haste or random.

If you are still not convinced, ask the agency or the team making the proposal:
‘The TVC will complement online how?’ or
‘Prove to me that some customers will see the same message in 2-3 different media and therefore creates a call to action?’
‘Explain to me the link between Outdoor and the web banners?’
Here is an example of how various media work together as parts of a sum and feed into each other.
Let’s use a campaign example of a local real estate developer called PrimeProperties.com
In addition to print advertising, the agency convinced the company to place banner ads on real estate websites. Additionally, they prompted the company to test TV and radio advertising designed to serve as a lead generator for all segments (residential, commercial) as well as office space prospects, notaries, real-estate agents, bankers, and inspectors.
This broadcast approach served as a “Go-to-the-Web” driver (“Go to PrimeProperties.com now and receive…”) and helped to build a database of leads that could be pursued through telemarketing and mailings.
Instead of sending the prospects a single piece of communication, which is rarely enough to initiate relationships, the agency suggested a multifaceted campaign that called for prospects to receive a personalized introduction letter offering a “Prime customer” gift, a follow-up postcard focused on the property’s key benefits, a direct-response brochure and Go-to-Web card, and a telemarketing call.
Adding any combination of media is easy; getting them to work ‘in synch’ (and therefore generate revenues) is not.
There is still room for taking risks here and testing combinations but there has to be a rationale; assumptions need to be noted and written down as to why you are combining this medium to another at the outset and the corresponding objectives as to why you combined them in such a manner.
By documenting the rationale (memo, assumption or stated objective) you can always go back and validate if the combination of media was successful – this is part of the monitoring function.
If on the other hand the combination was haphazard, not documented and no post mortem was done, you are simply wasting valuable Marketing funds since you have no way or tool to consider the cause/effect of your media combination.

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An integrated campaign as a reminder means that the campaign does not use any one single component of marketing-be it advertising, public relations, sales promotion, or social media but rather a combination of these to make sure that most audiences will be addressed via one media or another.

Putting all your money in one medium is likely to falter precisely because it is not supported by a full complement of marketing initiatives that must reinforce one another, producing exponential results such as 1+1=3.

One may ask, “Isn’t advertising in one medium only better than doing nothing at all?” That’s question misses the point. A wiser approach is to ask what can be done to support the investment in advertising so that you achieve the objectives you established at the outset.

What is preferred logically and in an efficient manner is an integrated set of marketing tools and initiatives carefully planned within the framework of a multifaceted marketing campaign.
To do that, you must create a media plan designed to make sure that all of your marketing tactics work together.
Lastly, getting marketing to generate Top Line revenues implies marketing initiatives that produce a significant return on the marketing dollars spent.
In order to give you some direction on ensuring that the campaign is (in fact) integrated, watch out for the following four pitfalls:

Common integrated campaign pitfalls.
Pitfall #1: Media that don’t reinforce each other
Pitfall #2: Create a budget first, metrics second.
Pitfall #3: Awareness vs. sales
Pitfall #4: Delegate and forget

For the purpose of brevity for today’s post let’s explore the second one:

Pitfall #2: Create a budget first, metrics second.

We’ll spend more time on metrics, analytics and ROI later but a common mistake is to set a budget first, then spend later on a variety of media.

The justification to coming up with a budget first could be:
a) Slow sales

b) Competitors are not advertising as much or,

c) The state of the economy.

In fact even if sales are slow during an economic downturn, they never stop altogether. And if everyone else is cutting back on spending during a recession, this is the worst time to cut back on marketing as is frequently the case. Studies show that businesses that continue marketing through a recession (http://www.renaud-investments.ro/five-steps-on-how-to-survive-in-a-recession-3) are the ones that come out ahead when the economy begins to turn (ex. Orange in Romania).

This could be an opportunity for you to gain market share by being aggressive.
But at the same time coming up with a budget figure out of the blue or out of thin air because sales are down, orders have declined and inventories are mounting is not rational thinking either.

You must consider the following instead:
1) Who’s the target of the marketing campaign?

2) Do these initiatives follow the marketing plan?

3) What goals will this campaign seek to achieve?

4) How these funds will to help sluggish sales?

5) The messages used to position your product as The customer solution

6) How the campaign will be measured?

7) How leads will be captured?

8) How are you going to monitor the results?

Committing to X million euros to a marketing budget in the blind implies that you will be spending big money without any clear plan for how it will generate additional revenues for the business.
This is certainly not the way to generate Top Line revenues with Marketing!

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In fact do you know what is worse than a customer complaining?
A customer that does not complain (…and walks).

We hear the cliché that ‘Customers comes first’ or ‘The customer is number one’ but those clichés remain clichés unless the brand has the ability to deliver SOUL in our day-to-day transactions.

In simple terms, the Soul is what the brand represents…it’s the promise delivered every day. This is what a Marketing leader must convey but at times when it comes to frontline staff talking or meeting customers that ‘fire in the belly’ or that brand soul may not come across loud and clear when its desperately needed. This is an area where Branding can help.

Let me give you an example (yes banking).

I deal with a bank that it based in a country that has received a lot of attention lately. The staff are great helpful and courteous. So far, so good.

4 years ago my debit card had to be renewed and the bank rep told me that I needed to wait for my new card. After 1 week I called and they told me ‘nope not ready yet’- pretty impractical since if I wanted money, I needed to go in person in a branch to get cash ( when was the last time you did that?).
After another week – same answer and they could not tell me. Well this went on for total of 6 weeks when the paperwork or ‘form’ was lost or whatever (remember, I’m a customer – I really don’t care of the reason) I finally get my card.

In my next meeting with the Branch manager I tell him ‘Catalin, you’ve got great people at this bank but unfortunately your processes suck…’ I was sincere. How is it possible that a client has to wait 6 weeks to get a renewed card?’

Fast forward 4 years now. Same bank!

They called up my friend who recently traveled to Dubai and told her that because of recent fraud issues in Dubai, they strongly recommended to her to cancel her card and to get another one. That’s pretty progressive right? A bank calling you to deter potential fraud.
My friend agreed and also agreed to go to a nearest branch to fill out a form to get her card renewed.
At this point I started to worry!

It took 5 weeks to get a renewed card after multiple calls – probably for the same reason…again we don’t care about the reasons – we’re the customer.
When we went to a branch in Baneasa mall and spoke to a bright looking fellow and my friend told him the story about the card. Then I added then . ‘Yep in my case 4 years ago I had to wait 6 weeks.’
We were pretty cool and not upset by this point.
His reaction? ‘Humm’ is what he said, his head nodded, then went back to filling the form.

Not ‘well we’re really sorry about this’…
Not ‘well let me look into this…this is unacceptable to make customers wait 5-6 weeks to get card’…
Not ‘I will look into this and get back to you’ or…at the minimum…’I will report this to our customer care team and I will ensure that someone calls you to give you an update/explanation. I will personally follow up with our customer care department to make sure someone gets back to you’
In other words…Initiative, attention to the customer and a bit of empathy (not apathy).

Ok you’re going to tell me Paul this is a customer care issue and the bank probably needs to take care of its customer care policy or this your fellow was not properly trained or worse… this is Romania. NOT!

I don’t agree. Before that fellow gets on the phone and follows Customer care procedures, he needs to WANT to get on the phone and put out this fire! Training is important but you can’t train people to HAVE the initiative. This has to come from the soul; the soul is what the brand is all about.
In other words are people going to kill themselves to solve this problem? If so, THAT my friend is brand loyalty and brand affinity.

I had the pleasure of working for brands that I wanted to kill myself for those brands; I wanted to please my customer and I wanted to make a difference.

Why? Well because I felt part of the brand. When I showed people my business card I was proud that I worked for Bell Mobility, Connex or Orange. It was a cool place to work; we were going to ‘invade the nation’ with this brand and unbeknownst to me, the Marketing leaders at the time (Tim McChesney, Aneta Bogdan and Paul Phillips in this order) had managed to instill that sense of pride, joy and the SOUL that made me wake up every morning and do the best for our brand!

A little naive?
Want more proof?
I challenge you to listen to any interview of an Apple employee that was involved in the IPod, IPhone or IPad. Look at how their face lights up when they explain how much they were part of the Apple development team. Of course Steve Jobs made this an amazing place to work but Apple employees are passionate. We don’t all work for Apple but the same unbridled enthusiasm is possible for you, the Marketing Leader to instill regardless if you sell paints, pharmaceuticals or yogurt.
The brand makes it happen.

Follow my next post as I describe areas where as a Marketing Leader, you can unleash this SOUL so that your team members actually enjoy killing themselves for the brand.

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Marketers need to understand sales effectiveness. This seems terribly simple but ultimately the most direct effect of sales (as a result of marketing) is that sales generates revenues.
Plus as a Marketer how you can’t expect to drive top line revenues from market initiatives unless you have a thorough understanding of your company’s sales department and how effective they are.

Fact:

There is a strong link between sales and marketing and dynamic marketing leaders are always seeking feedback from the sales team when it comes to reading the market, understanding competition and fine tuning products and services.
In fact you should always welcome it.

Ask yourself when was the last time a sales peer gave you feedback on prices, the promotion or the new products launched last week?
If you can’t remember – that’s a problem; either:
1) As a marketer you are not getting feedback from sales since they don’t have your phone number or email or a method/channel to give to feedback,
2) You are not welcoming feedback,
3) You have not created an environment where sales can openly give feedback.

In all cases, something has to be done immediately.

Any customer centric organization has to provide an environment where sales can for example, get on the phone or email you to say ‘hey…this client is telling us that our prices are too high’ (common sales reply)…or this client has decided to leave for x/y/z reason because of the product.
Another reason could be that customers expect a higher group discount or are asking if we can modify the product/package or distribution somehow. These are all legitimate questions and market feedback and it implies that there is a dialog between marketing and sales.

As a Product Manager, I would get the distribution sales team to call me on a daily basis to complain (read, suggest) about one aspect or another about the products. This is healthy. As a Marketer, you have to welcome this kind of feedback and you have to toughen your skin since you may get a lot of criticism.

In Romania we initiated this environment of informal feedback since the sales team simply did not know that they could or should give feedback to Marketing.
We also had a product development board (formal feedback) where new products and enhancements were presented because existing products lacked a better price/package or feature.

Informal since you want to hear it ’live’ or before someone has to write an email and formally since it’s important that if you are getting similar feedback from many sales teams about the same problem, this implies that the problem must be addressed immediately or it has to be elevated to your boss or the next product development board.

Experience:
I am assuming that all good marketers have some form of sales experience. If you don’t I would try to deflect this aspect about your career as long as you can. In my opinion you need to have sold something to be effective in marketing. Sales may seem easy but it’s not. There is a lot of work to even get a customer interested in your pitch and even then, that does not guarantee that you will close. Marketers must understand this pain of trying to ‘make the sale’.

If you wish to stay in marketing and you cannot leave your marketing job tomorrow to start a new sales career, then I strongly suggest that you engage in a MLM (Multi-level marketing) or network marketing organizations like Amway, Tupperware, HerbaLife, NU Skin, and Avon in your spare time. Even if you try it and don’t like it, the fundamental part of this exercise is to understand what is required to sell. You’ll get free training and initial products to sell to your friends and family. After a while say in 2-3 months you will either love it or hate it. That’s the pain I am talking about.
Bottom line- Selling isn’t easy.

Sales discipline: Basics
The success of any organization resides in the Sales department’s ability to reach sales targets that were established in the Business plan – this is imperative.
Each Sales representative – let’s call them Account Managers (AM, for short), must go through a consistent prospecting process till a sale is made. I’ve described for illustrative purposes the most basic sales process below. I will assume for sake of example that the Account Manager is new and was not given any particular segment focus – a ‘shot gun’ approach in other words.

Day to Day Plan:
Daily Activities

0930 – 1030
Account Managers starting their day early, on time to do Telephone calls
Returning phone calls of previous day
Leads generated internally
Cold calls to prospects
Confirm presentations booked by other team members
Call on new contact developed within existing clients
Follow up on Direct mail program

Goal: Book a meeting even if it short in nature. The AM does not try to sell products/services over the phone.

1030 – 1230
Customer meetings either booked or “in the neighborhood” calls to existing clients.

1230 – 1300
Lunch

1300 – 1600
Customer meetings

1600 – 1900
Returning phone call messages on same day
Leads generated internally.
Follow up on Direct mail program.
Cold calls to prospects
Confirm presentations
Call on new contacts provided by Marketing leads or Customer Service.

This has to be done religiously – every day!

Adding to the rigor of cold calling, prospecting and meeting customers, the AM needs to initiate the following:

1) Direct mail to selected targets such as Romanian publicly traded companies, banks, manufacturing, trading firms, NGOs, insurance companies, government institutions or other relevant vertical markets.

2) Telemarketing to customers. Purpose of call is to introduce your company. Other reasons are to explain offerings, getting feedback on existing suppliers, product/service guarantees – but not on the phone. Remember the objective is to get an appointment!

3) Chamber of commerce/trade association events.

4) Accompanying the Sales Manager for customer visits, both to introduce company and prospect for more business.

5) Customer ownership focus:
Develop/add/ complement the customer profile and account review in your CRM for new contacts that you have developed.

7) Thank you letter after each call and place lead information in CRM that can be recalled for future prospecting purposes.

You get the idea.

The trick in sales is that if you repeat all these steps in a consistent manner, you will develop a small yet growing database of good customers.

It takes time.

I have sold water filters (yes…MLM), mobile phones, computer equipment, consulting contracts, sponsorships and coaching services. In my experience the AM starts to become effective and on ‘top of his/her game’ after approximately 1 ½ years of selling. It takes that amount of time to get to know your customers, learn the tricks of the trade; you avoid mistakes and become focused on customer needs and an expert at ‘closing’.

Rome was not built in a day, nor will you become an effective Account Manager overnight.

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