Principle 1. "Hit the ground running" - 9 out of ten on this one. The waves caused by the decision to close 'Gitmo' alone merit this score.
Principle 2. "Suppress the marketing psyche" - 10 out of ten here. We identified the key 'anti-marketing' characteristics as humility, patience and empathy. Obama does a good job of exuding, (or at least successfully faking) all of these.
Principle 3. "Resist the quick wins itch" - just 5 out of ten on this. The critical factor is to listen and learn, rather than rush-through ill-conceived plans. It depends which side of the political divide you sit as to how you judge the fiscal stimulus, but what's certain is that widespread buy-in. Many groups in US society are alienated by these initial decisions.
Principle 4. "Build the role of the whole function" - 7 out of ten. The jury's out on this one, It's open to question how far Obama is legitimising his approach to big-tent, collaborative government, rather than cult of personality. More work to do on this, for sure.
Principle 5. "Recruit internal allies" - 9 out of ten. Obama has fine-tuned the language of government to appeal to all functions.
Principle 6. "Adapt your personal experience to the prevailing culture" 9 out of 10. Obama is successfully resisting the urge to turn government into a community campaign - something his detractors feared - but is still bringing his background and values to bear.
Principle 7. "Build your front bench rapidly" 5 out of ten. A stuttering start on this one, with days passing between appointments and legal challenges standing in the way of momentum.
Principle 8. "Treat your advisers as partners" 10 out of 10. Obama's relationships with external collaborators - notably other world leaders have been exemplary to date. He shows exceptional willingness to listen.
Grand total. 64 out of 80.
"B+"
Barack is a highly popular member of the school. He has been active on a number of fronts and is clearly highly talented. However, he needs to learn to make friends with his own classmates and ensure he finishes all the projects he starts.
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With 70% of decisions now made in-store and traditional 'push-media' increasing fragmented, attention is now turning to building conversation with shoppers, rather than end-consumers of products.
The previous assumption of marketing was that you created products for the person who actually used your product and hoped they would use their 'pester-power' to influence whoever did the shopping.
Today's assumption is that you should talk directly to the shopper, which means the store itself has become the most important medium.
OxfordSM research this trend with Europe's leading marketers, and discovered that 'shopper marketing' will outgrow even digital marketing in the next 3-5 years. If getting a grip on shopper marketing isn't in your 100 day plan...it probably should be.
You can read the Shopper Marketing report HERE.
]]>In OxfordSM's training work with major corporations, we constantly grapple with ways to optimise the sharing of marketing insight and best practice around fragmented marketing functions.
However, even more critical is the way that marketing culture spreads into other functions.
And more critical still is the way that market-led behaviours are institutionalised within front-line encounters and back office relationships.
At least part of the answer lies in an open-source approach...as highlighted in this Economist piece.
However, bringing open-source thinking into marketing demands a radical culture shift, from one that sees customers and colleagues as static knowledge-repositories, to one which sees them as dynamic collaborators.
The question is...can marketing communities actually ever perform a decision-making role within a corporate environment? or must they play the role of agent provocateur...?
But, from a marketing perspective, how succesful has he really been? Send us your views.
]]>There can be few stronger cultures that the 'one firm' culture of McKinsey, and few better articulations of values-based leadership than that of Marvin Bower, its leader, who led the organisation's change from 'efficiency experts' to management consultants. One memo is often referred to as the tipping point for that transformation.
"We are what we speak - it defines us - it is our image. We don't have customers, we have clients. We don't serve within an industry, we are a profession. We are not a company, we are not a business. We are a firm. We don;t have employees, we have firm members and colleagues who have individual dignity. We don't have business planes, we have aspirations. We don't have rules, we have values. We are management consultants only. We are not managers, promoters or constructors."
Bower's target for McKinsey as an enduring institution was dependent upon three characteristcs:
Common values
Common problem-solving philosophy
and Action Orientation
The difference, between McKinsey, and many other branded service organisations, is that it ruthlessly and relentlessly stuck to its principles....
As 'rules' and 'processes' have replaced values, many of today's service brands have become flabby and unreliable. Marketing leaders have a duty to put this right, and stand up for the customer's interests.
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Now, thanks to blogging, you can go direct.
Hugh Mcleod merely mentioned in his blog that he was having trouble with hisTabletPC wireless link...
After a round of 'you should go mac' jibes...Robert Scoble pops up to say...
"Funny, I read on an internal Microsoft mailing list that you're having troubles, so a group of people are trying to figure out how to help you.
One thing? This is why I put my cell phone number on my blog. 425-205-1921. You could have just called and I would have gotten you help you know. :-)
But, now that we're here, are you still having troubles? "
By all accounts the problem is now fixed...but there is a deeper conundrum here.
Improved dialogue poses a real ethcial problems for companies about the quality and consistency of their customer accountability....
]]>"Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem, in my opinion, to characterise our age."
He was speaking more broadly of course, but the adage was just as true of marketing.
In 50 years, we have arguably become much more adept at defining and redefining our goals...
It is in the agreement of means that confusion reigns...
]]>Bower belongs firmly in the tradition of the charismatic leader - setting a famously stentorian moral tone...including mandatory hat-wearing (!?).
He mellowed into old age, dying rather poignantly aged 99....having established and maintained (marketers take note!!) the cult of excellence, honesty and respect, that still characterises McKinsey to this day...
One Bower memo, on blue paper, written by the long-time managing director of McKinsey in 1961 can only make us pine for this long-departed era of measured communication...no blogs...just memos in in-trays...
Bower writes: "Before I turn to the future, I would like to preach my perennial sermon on the subject of behavior. I want the newcomers to know what kind of behavior we admire, and what kind of behavior we deplore:
* First, we admire people who work hard. We dislike passengers who don't pull their weight in the boat.
* We admire people with first-class brains, because you cannot run a great (organization) without brainy people.
* We admire people who avoid politics -- office politics, I mean.
* We despise toadied who suck up to their bosses; they are generally the same people who bully their subordinates.
* We admire the great professionals, the craftsmen who do their jobs with superlative excellence. We notice that these people always respect the professional expertise of their colleagues in other departments.
* We admire people who hire subordinates who are good enough to succeed them. We pity people who are so insecure that they feel compelled to hire inferior specimens as their subordinates.
* We admire people who build up and develop their subordinates, because this is the only way we can promote from within the ranks. We detest having to go outside to fill important jobs, and I look forward to the day when that will never be necessary.
* We admire people who practice delegation. The more you delegate, the more responsibility will be loaded upon you.
* We admire kindly people with gentle manners who treat other people as human beings -- particularly the people who sell things to us. We abhor quarrelsome people. We abhor people who wage paper warfare. We abhor buck passers and people who don't tell the truth.
* We admire well-organized people who keep their offices ship-shape, and deliver their work on time.
* We admire people who are good citizens in their communities -- people who work for their local hospitals, their church, the PTA, the Community Chest, and so on. In this connection, I am proud of the example set by some of my colleagues during the year.
There is, it seems to be, something ultimately very paternal about great leadership...
How many marketing departments feel like this?
]]>This US article suggests that when women come to dominate an industry sector, they actually tend to have a deflationary affect on salaries across the board...
The phenomenon is clear in the HR industry...and may account for a 20% drop in real pay over the last 15 years...
The article also highlights an interesting sociological phenomenon....
Men with children will be more likely to get a job and more likely to be paid a high salary, than single men.
Seen as more reliable, preumably...
Who does worst, applying for exactly the same jobs? Mothers of course....
Seen as less committed...
One final piece of evidence of a continuing discrimination against assertive women. A recent Carnegie Mellon study shows that women who try to negotiate a higher salary will be less likely to be offered a job, than men who do so...which further accelerating the downward pay spiral...
For female marketers, acheiving success is not enough. Achieving fair reward for that success is a separate,. and difficult challenge...
]]>Inspirational marketers maintain this momentum right through their reign... Sergio Zyman is a case in point, as this AdWeek extract testifies::
"When Sergio joined us, we agreed on a couple of things up front," says Ivester. "He was not the advertising director, and he was not the marketing director. He would be chief marketing officer. A chief marketing officer is a businessman who understands cash flow and has expertise in the marketing arena. That is probably as big a shift for our organization--for any organization--to make the business of the company marketing."
Despite the leisurely tone of his Southern accent, Ivester is a hard-driving, results-focused executive. He came up through the company's financial ranks, oversaw Coke operations in Europe (where he breached Eastern Europe swiftly after the collapse of the Berlin Wall) and North America, and helped spin off Coca-Cola Enterprises, the company's biggest bottler. As president, he relies on Zyman for strategic insights. "I might see a commercial once every three months or something like that," Ivester says. "But we don't spend our time talking about the commercials or the marketing programs. We spend our time talking about the opportunities."
To capitalize on those opportunities, Ivester notes that Zyman has much greater budget control--across many departments and divisions--than any predecessor. "Marketing at the company is no longer a function," says Zyman. "It's no longer, 'you have marketing, finance, operations and legal.' Marketing is what we do." Short and lithe, Zyman punctuates his remarks with body language. He clearly enjoys taking the stage, and his appetite for performance has grown with his expanded role. Says Zyman, "What we do is we have to find ways to sell more product in order to make more money in the most efficient way, right? What I've said in interviews is that marketing is too important to be left only to the marketing guys. What we're bringing in is an infusion of blood."
For many agencies, it's their blood that has either been spilled--or raced faster--since Zyman returned, Napoleon-like, from exile. He has wholly reformulated Coca-Cola's relationship with advertising agencies in his 27 months. Instead of relying on a few account and media handlers for all brands and all regions, Zyman has opened up Coca-Cola's advertising to the brightest thinkers--and, some say, lowest bidders--in the business. Coke now boasts an arsenal of nearly 30 agencies, including top names in the U.S. like Wieden & Kennedy and Fallon McElligott (and, until a client conflict, TBWA/Chiat Day), and hot shops around the world like Bartle Bogle Hegarty of London and Spain's Casadevall Pedreno & PSG. He has a French agency developing creative for the American market and a Chicago stronghold doing worldwide campaigns for a New Age drink.
Zyman is blunt about why he broke down his company's four-decade reliance on a single agency. "You have great talent [at the top of agencies], and it starts going down real quick," he says. "So you end up with 17 brands in one agency. One brand's going to get the good stuff; the rest are going to get Xerox copies of the same creative. It's that simple."
What's more, Zyman has deliberately moved responsibility for writing strategy in-house, taking it away from the agency account executives and planners. "We are the stewards of strategy," he says. "The advertising agencies are supposed to execute strategies that we devise." Starting in January, he also will roll out a new compensation system for all of Coke's shops, one which he says will reward and motivate them more effectively. Amidst all this change, Zyman has elevated himself above the day-to-day dealings with agencies, leaving that to his director of advertising, David Wheldon. A former agency executive himself, Wheldon has tried to match Zyman's appetite for rewriting the agency rules with a new set of rules about agency conduct and performance. "
Ed. The is, of course the same 'Vodafone' David Wheldon...who contributed to our own first100 days research. Clearly, 'once a reformer...'
]]>Guinness's new UK blog is nicely produced, as you'd expect...but the entry screen does not allow Americans to participate...nor those of various advertising-restrictive alcohol markets...
Of course, you can always lie!
This is getting considerable flak at Gaping Void. The internet presumes freedom of speech and expression...hence Google's slamming after it caved in on Chinese censorship...
The Guinness 'advertising showcase'/'brand engagement' approach is in marked contrast to the belt and braces 'get people talking' approach of Gaping Void itself...which is simply giving Stormhoek wine away to any 'geek' who wants to host a dinner in the US from May onwards...
It will be interesting to see which approach generates the best brand outcomes...
]]>Yesterday, multi-mllion dollar budgets were required to make and distribute ads.
Today's google's inexorable effort to replace search-based advertising with attention-based advertising...means I can put this Honda ad online in seconds...
Or even better...create my own ad...and upload it HERE.
While you cannot expect to be an expert in every emerging technology, it's critical to know people who are...
You may just be able to decimate your budget...
According to research they did with Loudhouse...the Procurement department has become a significant factor in 30 per cent of US agency repitches...and the level is already at 11 per cent in the UK.
Meanwhile, a change of is a factor in 44% of UK repitches...and just 14 per cent of US ones...where personality-based decisions are giving way to rational, financial ones
The US is now treating marketing procurement as a serious value-based decision..and .the UK cannot afford to lag...
]]>Steve Rubel, among others, has picked up on Technorati's
State of the Blogosphere report
Technorati now tracks over 27.2 Million blogs..
* The blogosphere is doubling in size every 5 and a half months
What's interesting is that 13.7 million bloggers are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created.
This stuff is addictive...
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