Alan See

I’m fortunate to be able to reflect on the role of marketing as both a CMO and educator. In my role as educator my student’s first assignment is always a short interpretive paper in which I ask for their personal definition of marketing; as well as their perspective on marketing’s importance in helping organizations achieve success. Over the years, I’ve discovered that these papers provide a glimpse into the mindset of individuals who are generally not focused on core marketing activities or marketing’s role in relation to broader business strategies.
Demographically, the class typically represents a diverse cross-section. One thing they do have in common; they are full-time working adults who are not shy when sharing their real-world working experiences with the class. More often than not, their original narratives will jump into examples of product-focused mass advertising or publicity activities. The use of sexy and manipulative promotional tactics for selling the audience on why they should want the product is representative of marketing’s tactical purpose in their initial points of view. In fact, for classes that start in January you can bet on at least one reference to a Super Bowl commercial. However; I can tell straight away who is reading ahead in the syllabus, or working for a company that views marketing strategically because those efforts reflect the leadership role that marketing plays as a core business strategy.

An Effective Marketing Strategy

An effective marketing strategy involves a process of narrowing down to a specific target market and marketing mix that represents an opportunity the company wants to compete for based on their business’s mission and vision. Because most company’s resources are limited, and there are usually multiple strategies possible, the ability to consistently zero in on the best market with the best marketing mix will delight both management and the market. Does the previous statement sound familiar? If not, maybe you’ll recognize it in the form of the “right…” phrase that is often found in whitepapers. It’s worded as follows; companies that first focus on the customer’s needs, and then satisfy those needs by delivering “the right product through the right channel at the right price at the right time” will build customer loyalty and maximize shareholder value.
Imagine that an organization fully understands the needs and desires of its target market, and that the marketing mix is combined in a way that fully supports the overall business strategy. In other words, manufacturing, product management, product marketing, advertising & public relations, sales, service, finance and logistics have all pull together to provide perfect alignment. Was that hard to imagine? The perspective painted by my student’s suggests that most organizations are still highly matrixed environments, and that suggests overall business strategies are loosely knit at best. Don’t get me wrong, matrixes are not going to go away. Particularly in large organizations where you need specialists because the scope of the whole marketing job is just too big for one person. Yet, the fact remains that alignment breakdowns between these functional areas continues to put business strategies at risk.

A Written Marketing Plan

How can marketing take a leadership position to help reduce risk and ensure strategic alignment? How about another dashboard or scorecard? After all, a relationship with customers is what capitalism is built on, and the great thing about capitalism is that it keeps score. In fact, at this point technology vendors might be tempted to insert the need for a heavy dose of their specific applications to better manage reporting or improve the ability to target customers and predict their behavior. I can’t argue that specific technology might not help any given situation; however, technology alone won’t turn the product-focused dotted-line matrix challenge into a solid-line customer-focused marketing plan.
A simple but often overlooked discipline to ensure that marketing is facilitating strategic alignment and that the marketing mix is focused on the desired customer experience is to use a written marketing plan for each marketing strategy developed. There is value to organizing, documenting and writing down a marketing plan. The very process of bringing functional areas together to ask and answer the questions posed in a comprehensive marketing plan will create a road map to guide your total marketing efforts, and help bring strategic alignment.
My student’s final assignment is a team-based project that involves the design, documentation and presentation of a complete marketing plan based on the launch of a new product. The presentations always generate lively class discussion as each team talks about their target market and the marketing mix that will be crafted to satisfy the researched needs. Although it takes me several days to grade, it’s encouraging to read their new and expanded perspectives, and I can assure you that the strategic transformation of the marketing function as brought to life in their documented plan would warm any CMO’s heart.

I recently attended a faculty meeting to kick-off the New Year. One of the presentations disclosed enrollment trends that did not surprise, but none the less disappointed some of my fellow faculty. An increasing number of students are enrolling in online as opposed to on-campus courses. In short, the online modality more closely matches many students desired method for consuming education. Although most of the faculty can teach both online and on-campus, their traditional teaching backgrounds creates a comfort level and natural desire to interact with their students in a class room environment. The shift from a class room setting to online just doesn’t feel right to some, and that can make it difficult to embrace change even when the data states the obvious.

Shifting business environments make change necessary, but it doesn’t mean it will be easy. In my role as VP of Marketing there are always struggles to keep new initiatives on track even when the data indicates that the change is not optional. Strong feelings to revert back to the old status quo are often lurking just below the surface. For example, a shift in our media planning recommendations away from traditional media products and into earned media programs at times creates fear, uncertainty and doubt within parts of our organization. You can just imagine the questions swirling:

·         What will our traditional customers think if we’re recommending media they’ve never tried before?

·         How will our competition, not to mention our media partners, react to our strategy changes?

·         How do we know for sure that these new media channels will deliver results?

Change has no conscience. It doesn’t play favorites, or take prisoners. In fact change ruthlessly destroys organizations that don’t adapt. So, from a leadership perspective here are three traits I intend to embrace this year:

1.       Take the initiative by putting my team in charge of problem-solving. If I make them (or let them) wait for hand-feed directions I’ll slow down the process.

2.       Take more risks and be willing to break with the past. I’ll ask my team to mitigate risk when possible; but make no mistake … both my team and I will need more nerve in 2010 in order to keep our new initiatives on track.

3.       Maintain faith in the new initiatives. As soon as change starts throwing off sparks, people become preoccupied with all the headaches, aggravations, and fears. I know there will be dark days; however, I’ll challenge my team to join me helping our entire organization look beyond the bleakness of the moment, and envision the possibilities of tomorrow.

I’m really looking forward to 2010’s opportunities and challenges. How about you?

CREW WANTED FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY

Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success.

** Sir Ernest Shackleton’s recruitment notice for the 1915 Endurance Antarctic expedition (some 5,000 applicants were rejected. For the record … the entire crew did return!)

I welcome each of my new marketing classes with the Endurance help-wanted advertisement. It’s always an attention grabber and a thought provoking way to get the class started. Marketing as a business discipline requires endurance; it’s also a functional area that often faces hazardous conditions in relation to various business environments. In years past you could count on at least one speaker in all marketing related conferences to quote the statistics from the most recent Spencer Stuart CMO survey. The 2008 numbers state that the average tenure for a Chief Marketing Officer is 28.4 months. Compared to previous years the CMO’s tenure is now actually on the rise:

• 28.4 months in 2008
• 26.8 months in 2007
• 23.2 months in 2006
• 23.5 months in 2005
• 23.6 months in 2004

Does increasing tenure suggest that the danger of leading a marketing organization is starting to fade? Probably not, in fact this year’s hostile economic climate will throw all marketing leaders into uncharted waters. Are you prepared to lead amid uncertainty and doubt? Sir Ernst Shackleton distinguished himself as a hero, not only among the masses, but also among the 27 officers, scientists and crew members on his expedition. How did he do it?

1. Trust: While Shackleton was called “The Boss” by his men, he did not differentiate himself from them. When the crew had to move off the ship and camp on the ice Shackleton ensured that neither he nor his officers received preferential treatment. Trust is the foundation of leadership and Shackleton’s crew trusted him during their journey because of his consistent and fair management and communication style.

2. Service: In order to help his crew get over the trauma of abandoning the Endurance, Shackleton literally served his men: “Rising early in the morning, he made hot milk and hand-delivered it to every tent in the camp.” Unlike top-down leadership approaches, servant leadership emphasizes collaboration, trust, empathy, and the ethical use of power. Servant leadership is designed to help enhance the growth of individuals in the organization, and increase teamwork and personal involvement. Shackleton’s servant leadership style helped pull his crew together and secure their rescue.

3. Vision: After selecting five of the toughest and best crew members, Shackleton announced that this select group would seek help by sailing a lifeboat over 800 miles across the most dangerous ocean on the planet in order to reach a whaling station on South Georgia. The plan worked and the rest of the expedition party was eventually rescued. True vision goes beyond what one individual can accomplish. It pulls the entire team forward.

Of course there are additional factors that could be added to the list above; but amid your current challenges what leadership characteristics are you counting on to help position your team for “honor and recognition?”

Whenever a new president takes office talk turns to the vaunted first 100 days - Barack Obama’s 100 day clock is now ticking. We probably all agree that the expectations placed on the new president are pretty high, especially given the extent of the problems our economy is facing. In his 18-minute inauguration address, Mr. Obama promised “action, bold and swift,” but also used some nice sound bites to set expectations concerning how fast we might see results. Whatever the results, Obama will be in office for the next four years as he leads our nation through the “Raging Storms of War and Recession.”

On average, CXO’s cannot count on four years. In an earlier post (“Can Customer Value Be Calculated within Executive Months?”) I mentioned that statistics show that nearly 11 percent of executives will fail in their first year on the job, and according to Manchester Inc. nearly 40 percent won’t make it past the first 18 months in a new position. From the chart below you can see that not even the average CEO makes it for a full four year term.

CEO 44 months
CFO 39 months
CIO 36 months
CMO 26 months

Does this mean 100-day plans are useless in the business world? CXO’s often step into situations without a complete briefing as to all the problems or issues the company is facing. You’ve probably started out in the dark yourself a time or two … “Ok, where are the secret nuclear codes and why didn’t you give them to me on my first day” … All right, that comparison was a little over the top – but you get my meaning.

Almost every organization is really working from a sequence of short-term plans, so it would be disastrous for a CXO to think they have six, nine or 12 months to get up to speed. That means not having a plan coming into a tough situation would definitely be a mistake in my opinion. The goals of the plan do need to be realistic and based on the current state of the company. The plan also needs to be updated as you acquire new information and gain a better understanding of what you’ve walked into. A pretty good read on this subject is “The First 90 Days” by Michael Watkins.

This is not to say you are going to solve all the problems in the first 100 days with your documented plan. But, first impressions and beginning momentum are important to moving the company in a new direction, and all plans have to start somewhere.

BTW … did you see the WSJ front page headline today?

“Obama Freezes Top Salaries”

He seems to be off to a good start concerning his “bold and swift” statement – but that clock will keep ticking.