Archive for the ‘marketing communications’ Category

Failed icon. Sounds like dismal hook to hang one’s hat on doesn’t it? Especially given that most of us have such an aversion to failure in life and business—or even being associated to failure in any way. 

When you think of failure, would you consider someone who: 

• has spent a large amount of their career on educating and helping corporations and marketers to become customer-centric;
• is a Professor Emeritus at a well-known university that has a graduate program to educate students in being data-driven to ensure that customers’ needs and wants are met;
• has written over 10 books on subjects like driving and determining brand value and measuring ROI; and
• was named one of the 80 Most Influential People in sales and marketing a failure? 

No, I wouldn’t either. 

And yet, that’s exactly how Don Schultz, one of the founding fathers of integrated marketing communications referred to himself at Blur (‘The Conference that Erases Lines’), the recent PMA Annual Integrated Marketing Conference.  

Schultz stated, “…that after 20 years of integration, IMC, IM and all the other versions and visions that we’re no closer to developing a holistic, customer-focused, marketing and communication system than before.” 

20 years have gone by and companies are still no closer to putting the customer first? Seems odd that a company wouldn’t put the people who willing to part with their hard-earned cash to buy their products and services first, doesn’t it? But that is reality for the majority of businesses out there. 

Integrated Marketing Communications: It Isn’t What You May Think It Is 

When IMC was first introduced, the mission was simple: “One sight and one sound.” Because then the challenge revolved around multiple, siloed departments reaching out to customers in accordance with their revenue generation or communications plans. On the receiving end were the customers, who were left to analyze and pull together all of the assorted messages in order to make sense of what it was the advertiser, marketer, publicist, and sales person wanted them to do. As we know today, that simply doesn’t work (and it most likely didn’t work then either). 

According to Schultz all of these years later, “…it only added value to the marketers, not the consumers. It was all “outbound” where we were trying to influence and persuade the customer to buy/try our product/service…” 

And yet, most companies that practice integrated marketing communications today are still in this phase of “one sight and one sound.” That’s where, unfortunately, the notion of what IMC is has come to rest in most marketers’ minds. 

Barriers Are More Dangerous than Silos to your Business 

It’s rare to see a company organized completely around its customers and it will probably be another 15 years before we are even close to that being the norm. As in the past, there are still many silos today. But at least the silos are seemingly working together (branding and marketing communications; marketing and PR; or customer services and sales, for example) to achieve one sight and one sound. It’s not enough, but it’s a good start. 

Barriers to becoming customer-centric include: 

• Resistance to change
• Organizational structures
• Functional separations and budgets
• Capabilities and control
• Marketing planning systems 

Whether as customers or employees, we have all seen these barriers. And they are as smart as putting a concrete barrier in front of your corporate headquarters. 

The good news? The world has indeed changed. 

Schultz went on to say that “…when he and the rest of the marketing “icons” weren’t looking, the world changed. Today’s information technology has given consumers control.” 

If IMC is So Good, Why Isn’t It Being Implemented? 

This very question was asked by Loyd Pettegrew, Ph.D. in his 2000 article of the same name. Dr. Pettegrew points out eight conditions that a company must adhered to accurately reflect the practice of IMC: 

1. Must speak to all stakeholders with a single, consistent voice
2. Must assume the consumers’/customers’ point of view
3. Strategic communications disciplines must be internally integrated
4. It must have a clear and consistent message that is more effective and efficient than competing messages
5. Messages must cut through the increasingly cluttered commercial landscape
6. Must foster two-way dialogue between consumers and itself
7. Must build bonds that lead to long-term, consumer-to-brand relationships
8. Must not place excellent marketing ahead of corporate reputation 

I’d like to add a number nine: Top-down management buy-in for becoming customer-centric. 

Sounds familiar doesn’t it? I hope you are making the natural bridge to social media. As Don Schultz has stated, consumers [and customers] now have control. As such, it will be hard for companies to not start adhering to these 9 conditions if they want to be successful socially. If not, we will begin to see a lot of failed icons in the social media space. 

Failed Icon or Visionary? 

I am going with the latter. Let’s just hope that this time around, we all get it right. Because in the age of social media I don’t think consumers and customers will give us a second chance (as we’ve seen evidence of already).

[Image Source: The Gig Girl]

There are a lot of marketers out there that understand that integrated marketing and communications (IMC) is a preferred way to do business because it is an outside-in approach. If an organization isn’t integrated, what are the best approaches to getting management buy-in? Anna Barcelos and I wanted to share nine key ways to provide management with the value of IMC.

Sales-Oriented Vs. Market-Oriented – Which Are You?

It’s often been said that the mindset of “If we build it, they will come” is not viable for long term business. To understand why, let’s look at the difference between a sales-oriented and market-oriented organization.

Sales-oriented organizations have a heavy reliance on promotional tactics to sell whatever products/services the organization has selected to produce. Sales teams, not marketers lead the pack and have the burden of performance (i.e. revenue generation).

In the short-run, markets can be created with aggressive campaigns and sales work; however, the lifetime value of a customer is minimal. The organization mindset is focused on ‘the next big thing,’ hungry and aggressive sales teams, and sales beating up marketing for not dishing up qualified leads or customers ready to spend.

Market-oriented organizations identify what markets need/want first and tailor their operations to deliver products/services that meet those demands as efficiently as possible. Within a market-oriented organization, marketing takes the lead not sales.

Because the market-oriented company has its complete focus on the customer, the end result is often brand loyalty, sales, and strong customer lifetime values.

Getting Management Buy-In

If you are in a sales-oriented organization, how then can you get management to understand the benefits of customer-focused integrated marketing and communications? Here are five areas to focus on:

1. Execute long-term customer acquisition programs across channels instead of short-term lead generation to feed the sales funnel. While the former may take a little longer, the end results produce longer term customers with much higher life-time values. Demonstrate this with metrics and show management. They are always interested in seeing results tied to revenue generation. 
2. Emphasize that a customer for life is a much more cost-effective model versus solely focusing on new customer acquisition.
3. Communicate the benefits of how integrated marketing communications delivers a consistent message to both existing and prospective customers.
4. Involve key players from “silos” within the organization in planning process. If you can’t beat them— join them. Realistically, sales-oriented organizations will always have silos due to individual department goals/quotas.  If sales and marketing work together, both are vested in acquiring/retaining customers.
5. Build incentives around existing and new business initiatives to not only motivate sales, but customer service and marketing as well.

You would think that a market-oriented organization would have a leg-up on getting management buy-in, but a lot of times there are still silos and separate budgets in place that affect true IMC. But by demonstrating the value of IMC, chances are you’ll have an easier time convincing management of its inherent benefits. Here are four ways to show value:

1. Do an A/B test of an integrated campaign versus a non-integrated campaign (suggested by Valeria Maltoni, Conversation Agent) Testing is a risk-free, quick way to prove the value of IMC. Large companies shy away from radically changing their current marketing efforts. Testing gets them interested without any disruption in day to day. If tests delivers expected ROI, then scale.
2. Leverage/collect behavioral data and analytics for follow up IMC campaigns with existing customers and build profiles on potential untapped new markets. It’s astonishing how companies have amazing databases that they are not exploiting as much as they could.
3. Survey/talk to customers for the best insight on what works with them and what doesn’t. (“How can we be better?” “ Where do you want to find information?”) Management is always interested in seeing results of these efforts!
4. Maintain communication across all departments. Market-oriented organizations are more customer-centric than sales-oriented organizations. Goals are aligned across the organization from top to bottom. Everyone plays a part in the customer experience. IMC works well within these organizations, but communication is key.

Whether an organization is sales- or market-focused, and the latter may be more beneficial, the reality is that unless upper management encourages a customer-centric culture, self-contained silos and status quo will continue to be the norm.  The benefits of outside-in planning that IMC offers will bring you closer to the customer and social media has really helped put that into perspective.  The voice of the customer is louder than ever, which is forcing traditional organizations to rethink their marketing communications strategies and encouraging customer-centric organizations to develop deeper relationships with their customers.  Both take time, but small efforts across an entire organization will deliver what’s most important—a happy, loyal customer.

Share your expertise with us! Have you encouraged management to implement IMC? Have you broken down or bridged silos in your organization? What worked best? What didn’t work? What would you add here?

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The hiatus is over! For those who have been loyal readers of this blog, Happy New Year! And I thank you for hanging in there with me while I took the time to consider where to head next.   

For a long time I focused on marketing, PR and social media, but rarely the integration of them all. The focus of The Harte of Marketing for 2010 (and perhaps beyond) will be integrated marketing & communications. While integrated marketing communications (IMC) is nothing new, the embracing of social media surely puts IMC back in the spotlight as its principles are similar to long-standing IMC principles.

I have often said that social media isn’t shaking the foundations of marketing or public relations; it’s just driving us home to our roots, which seem to be long forgotten. The same is true of the integration of communications (advertising, branding, PR, direct marketing, etc.) or marketing functions (the 4 Ps)…many people have been integrating since the 90s and for them this will be nothing new, but I hope to add a few twists and turns even they weren’t expecting.

The Eight Guiding Principles of IMC

I am a long-time student of Don Schultz (interview with Don), professor emeritus-in-service of integrated marketing communications, Northwestern University, as well as Larry Percy, Clarke Caywood, Robert Lauterborn, Philip Kotler and all the other folks who worked diligently to put customers at the forefront of our marketing and communications. While times have changed since they first wrote and educated on IMC, the need to prove value to management has not. These are the eight guiding principles from Don Schultz’s book “IMC: The Next Generation. Five Steps for Delivering Value and Measuring Returns Using Marketing Communications.(2003)” 

• Principle 1: Become a Customer-Centric Organization
• Principle 2: Use Outside-in Planning
• Principle 3: Focus on the Total Customer Experience
• Principle 4: Align Consumer Goals with Corporate Objectives
• Principle 5: Set Customer Behavior Objectives
• Principle 6: Treat Customers as Assets
• Principle 7: Streamline Functional Activities
• Principle 8: Converge Marcom Activites

These principles don’t seem earth-shattering, do they? Then why is it many organizations today still struggle? Helping organizations make these principles a normal course of their business operations (and more!) will be the focus here and I hope you’ll come along for the ride!

By now it’s not news that there have been a lot of citizens sharing their thoughts and concerns about the national healthcare plan being discussed in local town halls (if you haven’t seen the videos, check some of them out on YouTube). 

My friend Ken Yeung had an excellent post, What Happens When You Think your Customers Will Kowtow to You? (had to use the post name because I love the word kowtow), last week about how the AARP representative totally dismissed any comments or discussion that their members wanted to share in light of the position that AARP was taking in regards to national healthcare and sharing with them.

In short, the AARP representative told the members “we want to hear from you” and when they started speaking she said: ”Excuse me, but I really appreciate it if everyone could keep their comments quiet until there is time for the public…” By the end of the video, she was so mad that she couldn’t deliver her message that she walked out on the members. [Check out the video on Ken's post, it's quite interesting to watch.] 

I don’t find any of the passion or discussions (some may call them disruptions) out of the ordinary at all. Why should I, right? We tell organizations everyday that they need to listen to their constituents and that they can’t push their messages, and that they are no longer in control of certain situations or their community. 

But what did surprise me were the social media folks on Twitter talking about how these town hall discussions were out of line. Really? 

I’m sure that Dell, Motrin, Dominos, Tropicana, Walmart, United and MANY more organizations felt that the discussions that their customers were having about them were totally disrupting to their business day. Right? 

And yet, social media proponents analyzed their every action (or inaction) to death, shared their opinions on Twitter, their blogs and in conversation. These same companies are often used as examples of “what not to do (or to do right…after the fact). We tell companies to get with the program because this is the way it is today because ALL customers have a voice. 

If you are going to be advising clients, organizations or management on social media, please be very careful to not pick and choose when you think customer conversations are acceptable or not…especially if they are based on your own political affiliation. 

I understand that some people are very passionate about their politics, but I ask you to remember one thing: the government gets their money from taxpayers. That means, just like organizations, they need to be prepared for conversations, disruptions, and negativity because ALL customers have a voice. Right? 

(It doesn’t matter if it’s on- or offline because eventually it could end up online anyway.)

If you embrace social media…don’t talk out of both sides of your mouth. You are either for open conversation and dialog in any form that it happens in or you aren’t. Which is it? 

Thoughts?

[Image: Flickr, Boxelf]

Last night on our weekly PR 2.0 chat on Twitter (anyone can join this weekly chat Wednesdays at 8pm EST. Search on hashtag #pr20cat and join in!),  we discussed branding and PR 2.0 and why PR folks (and marketers, that’s a topic on integration for another day!) need to understand branding and how it affects their interactions with constituents (or publics). 

If you’ve hung out in social media circles long enough, I am sure you’ve heard “you don’t own your brand, your customers do.” Nothing can be further from the truth and why we need to be very careful with how we phrase this as marketers, consultants, agencies, etc. 

FACT: You do own your brand and brand messaging
FACT: You don’t own relationships customers have with your brand 

I kicked off by asking people’s definitions of branding and a lot of people responded with a brand relationship definition, which is great but I think it also leads us to, as marketers implementing social media, to want to easily hand over the keys to the castle a little too easily. 

For some people it’s a chicken and egg situation. Do you love the logo or the company that produces the product/service first? Vanessa French asked me (paraphrased) “what if your mom gave you Pepsi as a kid, you’d have a relationship with Pepsi (based on emotion).” My response was “what if your mom served you Pepsi in a plastic cup and you never saw the bottle?” 

People tend to identify with a brand (i.e. logo, message, etc.) first and then they relate to it. I think it explains why there are so many fake bags (Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Kate Spade, Hermes, etc.) not to mention other products on the market. It’s not that people relate to the company that owns the brand it’s that the brand (in this case a logo) gives them a perception of inclusion without the sting of the price tag. If they truly had a relationship with the brand they would never by fakes. Unfortunately, the perception of others is what spurs on the fakes market. 

From “Driving Brand Value” by Tom Duncan & Sandra Moriarty (what I shared during the PR 2.0 chat): 

Brand relationship is driven by: 

• Trust
• Consistency
• Accessibility
• Responsiveness
• Commitment
• Affinity
• Liking

(Sounds a lot like what we talk about with social media, huh?)

Five Levels of Bonding:

• Awareness
• Identity
• Relationship
• Community
• Advocacy 

I think we also tend to mixed up brand perception with branding and brand relationship. My perception of a brand comes after my relationship with the brand. For example: 

I bought a Jaguar and it was a piece of junk that could never be fixed. The Jaguar dealer and Jaguar wouldn’t do anything about it. I bought based on the brand (awareness/identity), my relationship was affected by lack of trust, consistency, accessibility, etc. My perception is that Jaguars are bad cars. I am sharing my story (WOM) on my blog (social media). 

So, if you are Jaguar’s PR folks and I had consistent blog about this and chatted on forums, you might want to pay attention. I would hope.

The tenets of branding are still viable, but just like everything else with social media they are more visible today and brand relationships and perceptions are out in the open. 

But we DO have control over our brand and messaging! You might want to reconsider using “trust” in your brand (logo) or messaging if the case is that the brand relationships and perceptions indicate that you are not an organization to be trusted. 

By the way, Driving Brand Value was written in 1997, and yet offers lessons that we still have not learned. It’s available on Amazon starting at $0.38 USD. I suggest you snap up a copy. 

Also, grab Integrated Branding by LePla and Parker while you’re at it… 

What do you think?

[Image: David Armano]