by Robert Rose
Here are some examples of the new role of marketing:
• For five months, Antonio Lucio, global chief marketing and communications officer for Visa, had human resources report to him, during which time he tightened the relationship between the company’s strategy and how employees were recruited, developed, retained, and rewarded. “I fundamentally believe that there is one brand and one narrative, but you have multiple stakeholders that you serve,” he shared. “Although everyone talks about it, and it’s intuitive to do, it’s important to approach your employee audience with the same attention and rigor that you do with external audiences.”31
• Eduardo Conrado, Motorola Solutions’ senior vice president – chief innovation officer, now holds responsibility for both marketing and IT. He’s able to move IT from back-office support to an integrated approach to creating systems of engagement with marketing. “If you’re able to invest in systems of engagement,” said Conrado, “then IT becomes a point of differentiation in the marketplace. IT helps us get closer to the customer.”32
Marketers have a set of tools and skills that allow us to drive change. We also have a front-row seat from which we can watch the continually changing landscape of customer expectations and monitor the need for driving outcomes. By stepping beyond what our peers see as our traditional functions, we become valued advisors and trusted leaders within the company.
MARKETERS AS UNIFIERS
As we expand marketing’s role outside the wall of “just marketing,” we can bring people together by building non-traditional teams that collaborate to solve customer problems. This means we’ll have to learn what motivates each group and then develop a compelling vision as well as superb communication and integration skills. In order to unify, we have to serve as advocates of innovation; we must help people understand the greater vision and then we must serve as the point-people when those team members execute the work. Change can’t be addressed tactically. Instead, we have to think strategically about how we create and lead experiences that fascinate and inspire audiences to take action—both inside and outside of the enterprise.
“People judge you on the totality of how they experience the brand,” said Linda Boff, executive director, global brand marketing for GE. “There are many things that aren’t traditionally part of marketing brand that now matter in how you show up. If your marketing is good but your product is bad, then that means your marketing is bad, too.”33
By thinking of ourselves as unifiers, we’ll gain a holistic view of what needs to be done and an understanding of how to integrate processes to drive growth. It’s important to understand the key relationships for marketing, but it’s equally important to understand how everyone is interconnected throughout the organization. Thinking like a unifier will demonstrate real business results that align across the enterprise, and marketers will take on a measurable role in generating revenue, and creating new and different customer experiences.
Too often, when talk turns to the details of how to get the work done, marketing stands up and leaves the room. We don’t know what to do, we’re uncomfortable, and there’s plenty of work waiting back at our desks. That has to change.
The classic scenario works like this: human resources asks us to give a public relations spiel to new employees. Great…we show up, give our 15-minute talk, and we’re done. There’s no consideration about how our presentation (from an external marketing perspective) translates into what new employees hear as a first impression of the company. Is what we discuss from a customer experience perspective the same thing that these employees can expect now that they’re part of our team?
Here’s how it should work: marketing sits down with human resources and talks about what human resources is really trying to accomplish with new employees. People who work in human resources aren’t communicators; marketers should be. So how do we unify the message and the experience between the brand and new employee on-boarding—and ask how we extend the brand story through human resources so that the people who we recruit fit our culture, believe in our purpose, and seamlessly step in and begin creating delightful experiences for our customers? How do we reach them in new and meaningful ways based on their generational preferences? How and when do we need to bring IT into the picture so that the experience the candidates have is easy and skips the typical online frustrations and black hole of bureaucracy?
We must be willing to stay in conversations longer, dive deeper into what, strategically, needs to be accomplished, and bring our unique skills to the table. It’s our ability to set a vision and close the gap between that and the current reality of what actually “is” that adds value. By helping people understand what could be, how all the puzzle pieces fit together, we’re taking off the blinders and helping groups understand how to work together to create new and different experiences. It’s our opportunity to use diplomacy and stellar interpersonal skills to help bring ideas to the table and build confidence in our new approach to old challenges. We can facilitate collaboration while still owning part of the process and the outcomes.
MARKETERS AS INNOVATORS
One of the newest responsibilities for marketers is that of spearheading inspiration. It is our responsibility to see where the world is going and to help our companies get there before the world does. We must look for opportunities to incubate ideas in small ways. Once we understand where our world is headed, we can translate that understanding into practical direction, inspiration, and executable actions.
The marketing environment has changed so dramatically in just the last few years that many people are fearful. That fear leads them to taking the safe route with their careers and their corporate initiatives. The result is the delivery of uninspired work by professionals who struggle to function in a new, changed environment. This squanders opportunities and fuels the perception that customers have of “noise in the marketplace.” Instead, we should be thinking “future forward” and lead from the future. If we know what we want our organizations to look like by 2020, how do we back that into today and start laying the groundwork for that change?
In his book, Escape Velocity: Free Your Company’s Future from the Pull of the Past, Geoffrey Moore explains how the things that made a company successful in the past can be the same things that hold it back from going forward in the present.34 Marketing’s history of task-oriented roles, product launches, lead generation, and media hits are often the culprits that can hold that past in place, frustrating forward progress. That has been a big factor in Barnes & Noble’s inability to understand the digital landscape of its business. While the company held onto the brick-and-mortar mindset of how customers buy books, they’re flailing because they can’t keep up with Amazon. Instead of reinventing their business (and marketing) model, they’re putting a bandage on the real problem by partnering with Google for delivery.35
We have to reconsider how we can serve as a seamless conduit through all parts of the organization to set the strategic direction required to free our companies from the practices that hold them back.
Our impact on the business is “transformation.” It’s all about transforming how marketing is organized and functions, how we integrate with and lead others, and how we get customers to view us. We have to be responsible for building our credibility. We must shed the idea that growth comes only with perfection, because perfection is impossible to achieve. Instead, we must give ourselves permission to fail while in the process of innovating. As long as failure scares us and keeps us from trying new ideas, we’ll never be able to unleash the energy, passion, and contagious enthusiasm that organizations need in order to transform.
As we marketers learn how to lead with inspiration, we’ll strengthen our ability to generate new breakthroughs and help others develop more creative vision. We’ll be able to push boundaries by leaning into creativity, mental agility, and liquid processes.
MOVING FROM PRODUCTS TO EXPERIENCES
To grasp the concept of moving from products to experiences, we h
ave to understand purpose. By understanding and infusing the experiences that we create for customers with a shared brand purpose, we create critical moments of truth about what our brand truly stands for, rather than what we’re trying to sell. BMW understood this decades ago when they quit talking about gas mileage and power windows, and instead about the ultimate driving machine. Dove talks about how to have real beauty rather than how great their soap cleans. Marketers who first focus on “purpose” ultimately engage, delight, and inspire customers.
Newton’s first law of motion states that an object at rest will stay at rest until an external force acts upon it. It also says that an object in motion will not change its velocity unless an external force acts upon it.
The powerful forces of our customers’ changing behavior and expectations are only now beginning to move us off dead center. But, we’re still behind. It’s time to change the vector and velocity. Beth Comstock, CMO of General Electric, talks about the need for perpetual motion marketing—marketing that’s continually in motion and evolving, rather than the “one and done” mentality. What do vector, velocity, and perpetual motion have to do with our behavior?
In a Harvard Business Review article titled, “Rethinking The 4 P’s,” Richard Ettenson, Eduardo Conrado, and Jonathan Knowles discuss how to refine the four principles of marketing: product, place, price, and promotion. Developed in 1960 by Edmund Jerome McCarthy, a marketing professor at Michigan State University, the four P’s no longer reflect today’s customer behavior, particularly in the B2B world.
During a five-year study (which they describe in the article), the authors found that the four P’s model fell short in three important ways:
1. They stressed product quality and technology (even though these are now table stakes for doing business);
2. They failed to spotlight the value of solutions; and
3. They distracted from taking advantage of opportunities to serve as trusted advisors and strategic partners.
In contrast to the four P’s, the authors introduced a new framework, Solution, Access, Value, and Education (SAVE), that looks like this:
• Solution: Instead of product, the focus is on solution. Define offerings by the needs they meet, not by their features, functions, or technological superiority.
• Access: Instead of place, the focus is on access. Develop an integrated cross-channel presence that fits customers’ entire purchase journey, instead of individual purchase locations and channels.
• Value: Instead of price, the focus is on value. Talk about the benefits relative to price, rather than stressing how price relates to production costs, profit margins, or competitors’ prices.
• Education: Instead of promotion, the focus is on education. Provide information relevant to specific needs at each touch point, rather than relying on generic advertising, public relations, and personal selling.36
In order to SAVE ourselves and evolve our marketing mindset, we must let go of our outdated approach to marketing. We need to take the business objectives we’re trying to move forward and think about different frameworks and approaches that might get us there. It’s clear that our traditional product structure isn’t moving our business strategies forward. Therefore, we must reevaluate how we function because structure should always follow strategy.
The SAVE model reflects the approach marketers need to take to create conversations with audiences around solving problems, rather than selling products or services. Credit: Motorola Solutions and The Harvard Business Review
MARKETING FORWARD
Our only continuum is one of change. But constant change creates fear because we don’t have a “normal” to use as a baseline reference. However, without someone (or something) to compare ourselves against, how can we know if we measure up? The old measuring devices no longer work, so we have to look at what we do as a form of perpetual motion. We have to evolve every day: learn, iterate, and repeat. Technology certainly helps us do this faster.
However, marketers aren’t changing as quickly as the tools we use. There’s a wealth of information about the problems facing us, but only a trickle of insights from companies who actually have gotten the ball in motion and have momentum behind it. To get there, we need a proactive mindset: a willingness to learn, get uncomfortable, and accept that “normal” no longer exists.
To elevate marketing to the leadership position it deserves within our organizations, we must be able to articulate the value that we’re able to create. Because, until we can elevate the dialogue about what we do and how we can impact the business—i.e., how we can maneuver the new environment—we’re doomed to remain as order takers, tacticians, and undervalued overhead.
Now is the time to scan the horizon and discuss what could be. What’s our story as a marketing profession? Knowing that story is the only way we will be able to prepare—today—for the skill sets, demands, and expectations of what companies need to create agile environments capable of shifting with changing customer expectations.
In order to lead companies and industries, we marketers must first understand how to lead our own profession. How will traditional processes hold up under this time of transition? Without the willingness to have these conversations, we’re perpetuating a hidden force that undermines our work: legacy thinking. It is easy, when under pressure, to default to what is comfortable. The pull of the past is hard to resist. That pull is so strong that it makes it hard to change thinking, processes, and outcomes. If we’re ever to come into our own as a profession and leaders within organizations, though, it’s time that we step out of our comfort zones.
THE ROAD AHEAD
This is an incredibly exciting time to be in marketing. We’re in the midst of redefining our role from the communication and brand people toward the pathfinders who evolve business. We have the ability to restructure how we function and contribute to the greater growth of the companies for which we work. Our profession has a vital role in driving business, integrating teams, understanding customers, connecting with employees and, ultimately, creating the experiences that woo and capture audiences.
This is our time. Let’s make it remarkable.
KEY CONCEPTS IN THIS CHAPTER
• Marketing’s role must expand beyond the traditional responsibilities of managing the brand and generating leads. Marketers must now create audiences and evolve buyers into satisfied customers and loyal brand subscribers.
• While buyer behavior has changed dramatically, marketing has not kept pace. Our inability to establish credibility and exert authority hinders our ability to drive change within our organizations.
• Much of what we do as marketers expands outside of tactical skills and falls into three areas across the enterprise:
1. Growth drivers—marketers must insert themselves into the overall corporate strategy. To do this successfully, we have to understand business goals and objectives and then establish marketing as a vital role within the organization.
2. Unifiers—marketers have the ability to bring cross-functional teams together to engage customers and solve their problems.
3. Innovators—as the group closest to the customer, marketers have a responsibility to see where the world is going and then help our companies translate that into practical direction, inspiring ideas and executable actions.
• The SAVE framework shows how marketers can shift their mindset from one of products and features to one of solving customer problems. It updates the concept of the four P’s into Solution, Access, Value, and Education.
ENDNOTES
25 http://blogs.hbr.org/2012/05/three-myths-about-customer-eng/
26 https://www.fournaisegroup.com/Marketers-Lack-Credibility/
27 http://www.kornferryinstitute.com/reports-insights/transformative-cmo-three-must-have-competencies-meet-growing-demands-placed
28 Interview with Carla Johnson, December 12, 2014.
29 http://solutions.forrester.com/Global/FileLib/Reports/B2B_CMOs_Must_Evolve_Or_Move_On.pdf<
br />
30 http://www.cmo.com/articles/2013/4/30/the_future_of_marketing.html
31 Interview with Carla Johnson, December 19, 2014.
32 Interview with Carla Johnson, November 24, 2014.
33 Interview with Carla Johnson, December 16, 2014.
34 Moore, Geoffrey A. Escape Velocity: Free Your Company’s Future from the Pull of the Past. HarperBusiness, September 2011.
35 http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/08/11/sorry-the-barnes-noble-and-google-partnership-wont.aspx The Motley Fool, accessed November 25, 2014.
36 http://hbr.org/2013/01/rethinking-the-4-ps/ar/1
“What lies behind us and what lies between us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” | Oliver Wendell Holmes
What are “experiences” and why should marketers manage and deliver them?
These might seem like obvious questions, but they deserve to be asked, because the phrase “customer experience” still seems to lack a common definition. Ask all the analysts, software tool providers, consultancies, and agencies out there, and you’ll get a variety of divergent proclamations about what “customer experiences” are, the best way to deliver them, and why, of course, they deserve to be managed carefully.
None of this helps those who need to understand it most: we marketers who are responsible for navigating our businesses through change and creating optimal customer experiences. How ironic that these analysts, agencies, and software companies haven’t created an optimal customer experience in their efforts to communicate what it means to deliver that very “experience.”