by Robert Rose
But if we aren’t willing to start someplace and begin to experiment, we risk being left behind. New ideas, new platforms, and new media all matter. It’s not about grabbing the ship with both hands and trying as hard as we can to turn it. It’s about placing little bets and learning. It’s about trying little experiments and seeing what happens.
As marketers, our ability to continually learn and adapt will be what determines how well we’ll be able to thrive in today’s fluidly evolving environment.
ENDNOTES
88 Edelman, David and Heller, Jason. Marketing Disruption: Five Blind Spots on the Road to Marketing’s Potential. McKinsey & Company, October 2014.
89 Mitchinson, Adam and Morris, Robert. Learning About Learning Agility, Center for Creative Leadership and Teachers College, Columbia University, April 2012.
90 http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/28/apples-170-billion-2013-amazing-and-amazingly-forgettable/ accessed November 7, 2014.
91 https://www.apple.com/pr/products/ipodhistory/ accessed November 7, 2014.
92 Ries, Eric. The Lean Startup. Crown Business, 2011.
93 http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/218259-general-electric-wants-toact-like-a-startup Accessed November 7, 2014.
94 http://www.ge.com/about-us/openinnovation Accessed November 7, 2014.
95 http://www.ge.com/about-us/openinnovation Accessed November 7, 2014.
96 Interview with Carla Johnson, December 16, 2014.
97 Ibid.
98 Ibid.
In Stephen Greenblatt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Swerve, he tells the story of Poggio Bracciolini—who was trained as a “scriptor”—and how he ostensibly transformed the entire world.
In the pre-Renaissance world of early 1400s Rome, Poggio would be the equivalent of today’s content strategist. His job as scriptor was to write the official documents. He was skilled enough at it that he rose through the ranks to become the secretary to Pope John XXIII. Poggio’s passion, however, was “book hunting.” He, like others, would travel throughout Europe and look (usually in monasteries) for ancient texts from authors of ancient Rome. The right book (or content) could propel a scriptor like Poggio to great fame.
The competition for this content was thick; the monasteries where many of these books were stored were hip to the agendas of these book hunters. Some of the more unscrupulous book hunters would try to steal the books, while others tried to buy them. In short, it took a fine combination of diligence, charm, and politics to come away with a great find.
While on one of his hunts in 1417, Poggio found himself in a monastic library in southern Germany. There, he found a copy of the ancient book/poem On the Nature of Things by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius. This book had disappeared for more than 1,000 years and the fact that it had survived was remarkable.
There are a number of extraordinary topics covered in On the Nature of Things, including the nature of man, the idea of free will, and evolution. But perhaps foremost is the idea that everything that one can know is made up of extraordinarily small particles, which was ostensibly an extension of the Greek Atomists.
In The Swerve, Greenblatt argues that it is Poggio’s rediscovery of On The Nature of Things, and the ideas it represented, that “swerved” the direction of the world into the Renaissance.
Poggio could just as easily have accepted his job as a simple “scriptor” and created content for the organization he worked for. But, his passion and diligence for content led him to something that would ultimately spawn a renaissance.
We were very lucky to have our friend Eduardo Conrado, senior vice president – chief innovation officer of Motorola Solutions, write the foreword of this book. When we asked him to write it, the reasons were more than his stature in the industry. He truly represents the type of change agent that is driving the “renaissance in marketing” that he describes.
Our point: You never know when a diligence and passion for undiscovered content-driven experiences will result in something that might just change the world.
It is with this idea that we send you forward from this book into your own grand adventure. We invite you to remember something that Robert Rose’s grandfather used to say to him:
“Every experience you create is the opportunity to have impact on someone. You choose—as well as get to experience yourself—what that impact will be.”
Our hope is that your answer to what you really do is:
“I create remarkable experiences.”
AON LEVELS THE PLAYING FIELD
For Aon, trying to earn brand recognition and get out of the transactional rut was like shoveling quicksand. That is, until they partnered with Manchester United.
Content marketing has played a critical role within Aon for the last 15 years and serves as the core of how they create and deliver value to their customers. It’s also core to the eight-year, $240 million sponsorship of Manchester United, which Aon signed in April 2013. “Without content marketing, we can’t explain what we do,” Phil Clement, chief marketing officer for Aon, told AdAge in an interview about the partnership.99 This sponsorship extended the relationship that Aon started in 2009 when it invested $130 million over four years to display the brand on Manchester United jerseys.
That’s not the only part of the relationship. Aon delivers solutions for United in 20-plus areas and played a key role in Manchester United’s initial public offering (IPO), providing advice on the best strategies and options for access to capital. Aon Benfield helped raise $233 million for Manchester United’s IPO and was a co-manager in syndicating the equity necessary to complete the transaction. As a result, discussing the work Aon does for Manchester United provides a noteworthy and memorable way to explain what Aon does.
Evolving the Industry
Aon serves as an intermediary between insurance companies and buyers so that buyers can make smarter decisions. For example, if a company is building a major facility overseas, they need someone to advise them on the project and broker the insurance to give investors the confidence to green light the effort. But there’s so much to know about these wildly complex projects that whether or not a client is able to move forward often depends on the content they can find that will help them make decisions.
“For us, early on we hired thought leaders,” Clement said. “It was an investment because we were looking at the problems we wanted to solve for our customers, not just looking at transactions in insurance.”
“Thought leaders” meant professionals—some with Ph.D.s—in data, analytics, multi-variant regression, engineering fusion, and economics who could model the flow of capital as it moves around the world. “We looked at how all of this went into the cost of a solution,” he explained. “You have to account for your investments in a different way. Investment is where a lot of companies lose their fortitude and one day they find out that they’re in a place where they’ll become extinct.”
That’s where Aon saw an incredible opportunity and has shifted their focus from transactions to consulting in order to add value. After working in this direction since 2000, the company has reached an interesting point. Every year there is less concentration of revenue coming from transactions and more from consulting fees. Making that shift, however, hasn’t come quickly.
“We’re halfway through the shift that started 15 years ago,” Clement explained. “And it will take another 15 years to conclude to a point where everyone isn’t in a transaction industry but rather an information industry. It’s hard; it requires a different kind of employee; our footprint looks different and what clients expect over time changes. But if an industry is moving forward aggressively and a company doesn’t keep pace, a transaction becomes a commodity.”
Comprising 495 companies that have been put together by acquisition, the individual business units within Aon have created content and overseen its distribution. But now, as the company has higher expectations and goals for the brand and the section, they are consolidating activities so they can more actively manage th
e control of editorial calendars in every part of the globe.
One of the things that Clement’s team has done to help people understand Aon’s business is create an online hub that explains how the six services that it provides–—capital, data and analytics, health, retirement, risk, and talent—benefit Manchester United. The company gives advice on expensive risks that companies face, such as compensation, pension, and how to keep employees healthy. Aon also offers counsel on how to lessen the impact of those risks and how to help employees. All of this is different from the risk-management industry from which Aon came.
Not Your Everyday Play
In struggling for brand recognition, Aon realized they needed a big partner to help with global recognition.
“We have 78,000 employees all over the world, but it’s hard to find more than 3,000 people in one place. We needed something that we could rally around internally and also engage clients in the conversations that we needed to have. But first they needed to know who we were.”
Clement got approval from his executive team by showing how the sponsorship supported the company’s goals. “When you show up with an idea that focuses on things that the C-suite wants to accomplish, it’s easier. We had strategic uniformity between the Manchester United sponsorship and what we wanted to accomplish for the company.” The things he hoped to accomplish included:
• Brand awareness. The Manchester United sponsorship gave Aon an explosion of brand awareness. This proved particularly true in developing markets that are important for the company, such as Korea and Brazil. Once the market knew that Aon existed, it also made it easier to answer the question: What, exactly, does Aon do?
• Creating a common conversation. Aon used their sponsorship of Manchester United to get people to engage in the spirit of the company in ways that would have been difficult without it. They were able to catalyze the energy of the company and the sport in many ways, one of which was to take three balls from a game in Manchester and fly them to southern-most points in the world where Aon had offices—the tip of South America, the tip of South Africa, and the southern side of Australia. The balls were passed from employee to employee all the way back to London. As the balls arrived in offices, employees created content about the journey and talked about how Aon was impacting communities. It was engaging for clients to track and brought employees together with a common challenge.
• Direct client engagement. The six areas Aon operates in tie directly to the Manchester United team: capital, data and analytics, health, retirement, risk, and talent; this made it easy to tell the Aon story using Manchester United as an example. “As companies, we know that access to capital is a big part of performing. A big part of Manchester United’s strategy is how access to capital plays out on the field. For Aon to be able to tell that story through football is much more interesting.”
“When you show up with an idea that focuses on things that the C-suite wants to accomplish, it’s easier. We had strategic uniformity between the Manchester United sponsorship and what we wanted to accomplish for the company.” | Phil Clement, Chief Marketing Officer, Aon
As important as this high-profile partnership has been for Aon, it has proven equally important for Manchester United in their efforts to raise capital. United’s attractiveness to commercial partners stems from its unparalleled ability to reach global audiences. Its supporter base, alongside its rich history and tradition, makes the company uniquely appealing to sponsors. United, in turn, has been able to help Aon connect and engage with supporters; the club’s relationship with Aon is key to this process.
Aon’s sponsorship of Manchester United has brought Aon significant brand awareness and given the brand an interesting, almost universally relatable way to explain what it is that the company does. Credit: Aon/Manchester United
“Partnerships such as the one with Aon clearly demonstrate how Manchester United provides a powerful global platform that enables our partners to amplify their brand and grow their business,” said Richard Arnold, group managing director for Manchester United.
“Solid risk management advice and human capital solutions provided by Aon frees up capital for us to invest. As a result, our commercial segment has been growing at very fast rates, is highly profitable, and the revenue stream is highly predictable due to the long-term nature of our contracts. We remain convinced that there are huge commercial opportunities out there for Manchester United, both in terms of categories as well as countries, and we are excited about the growth opportunity that lies ahead.”
Redefining Value
Clement notes that the difficulties of content marketing are really underestimated.
“Any marketing organization that decides to move in this direction needs to focus first and foremost on understanding how they’re creating value. Content strategies don’t work when it’s, ‘We have a solution, now write about it.’ It has to be at the core of the value creation process. It’s important as a marketer and an enterprise to understand how you’re perceived, the strategic value that you add, and if you’re creating value for your company and your industry.”
Success also depends on the talent of the team. Clement is still working on this. In order to create great, compelling content, a company has to have people with varied skills—not just B2B writing, but writing for television, magazines, and anywhere content needs to live. “We look for people who’ve been in places where content is important,” he said, “places where they live and die by the quality rather than just writing to a project plan.”
In It to Win It
Does fortitude pay off? It certainly has for Aon. They’ve gone from an unknown, second-place runner to a well-known number one in their industry. When it comes to dollars, that translates into almost doubling revenue from $6 billion to $11 billion and market cap from $13 billion to $28 billion.
“We’re in a completely different category of how the market perceives our brand than before,” Clement pointed out. “Where before we were in relative obscurity and firmly planted in second place in the heads of many clients, we’re now recognized by more people on the planet than not, and recognized as the most credible in our space by people who make those decisions.”
ENDNOTES
99 http://adage.com/article/btob/content-marketing-plays-role-aon-manchester-united-deal/294282/
100 http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-12-05/the-rise-and-fall-of-blackberry-an-oral-history
BLACKBERRY IS BACK IN BLACK
When BlackBerry came out with the device of the same name in 1999, it turned the mobile industry upside down. The company forever changed customer expectations of the work environment by creating the true definition of “mobility.” The 15-year-old Canadian company was known by few until it released BlackBerry, which made it easy, secure, and effective for people to send and receive emails while they were away from their desk.
In the beginning, the company focused on business customers; one of its earliest fans was Michael Dell. In the decade after it released BlackBerry, the company grew to become one of the world’s most valuable tech companies, and both business and consumers lined up in droves to get the latest device. Oprah Winfrey named it one of her “favorite things” in 2003, exploding brand awareness. In 2006, BlackBerry came out with the Pearl, which had a camera and could play video; this entrenched it in the consumer market. The employee base went from approximately 2,000 employees to 12,000. One chief technology officer described the allure of BlackBerry as “digital heroin.”100
From CrackBerry to ShrinkBerry
In 2007, the stock price was over $200 a share and in 2008 the company was valued at $83.4 billion, putting it shoulder to shoulder with companies like Goldman Sachs. In 2009, BlackBerry tallied approximately 15 million device sales each quarter. But employees began to see corporate CIOs carrying iPhones, a sure sign that the spunkier Apple phone was cannibalizing its corporate customer base. By third quarter 2013, BlackBerry device sales plummeted to 5 million per quarter.
BlackBerry was suffering from a lack of focus—consumer versus enterprise—and a chronic problem of overpromising and under delivering. Internally, employees weren’t held accountable and deadlines came and went without consequences. Management focused on competition from sexier providers like Apple and Android and let their attention on the enterprise market wane.
Competitors and nimble startups cannibalized BlackBerry’s position with existing customers during the bring-your-own-device movement. They also weren’t talking directly to their enterprise customers. The market for devices had been changing dramatically and executives were too scattered and inattentive to lead employees through the necessary change.
In 2013, sales fell 56% and the company cut about 4,500 employees, or about 40% of their workforce. BlackBerry also began to seek a buyer to take the company private.
“Reports of our death are greatly exaggerated”
In December 2013, BlackBerry brought in a new CEO. John Chen was the former CEO of Sybase, where he righted the sinking company and turned it around to sell to SAP for $5.8 billion. One of his first actions was to send an open letter to customers and drive a stake in the ground about BlackBerry’s future:
“We are very much alive, thank you.”
“Our ‘for sale’ sign has been taken down and we are here to stay.”101
Next came clear focus on their market: the enterprise customer. BlackBerry had an installed base of more than 80,000 customers that accounted for 80% of revenue.