Marketing, Interrupted

by Dave Sutton

  results desired; neither so broad nor so narrow as to jeopardize success.

  A performance evaluation process is in place to assure that the project is appropriately staffed with high-quality, high-performing talent—represent- ing the cross-functional expertise needed to meet the business objectives.

  It may come as somewhat of a surprise that these 5 key activities focus more on the management of people-related and culture-centered issues rather than process or technology focused concerns.

  “The P in PM is as much about “people management” as it is about “project management””

  — Cornelius Fichtner

  A Word About Change Management

  Change Management is the label we customarily give to the work activities applied to fostering the favorable work environment that is so vitally important to the ultimate outcome of marketing transformation.

  However, there are two significant problems with this label. First, the label itself carries a connotation that is counterproductive at best. Change Management suggests an activity that is performed on the marketing organization (and hence is undiscussable) rather than a planned activity that is undertaken openly and cooperatively between the marketing executive sponsors, project team members, and the rest of the organization.

  Second, the label is vague. There’s nothing which even comes close to an objective and tangible definition. Depending on one’s perspective, change may be “inevitable”, change may be “painful”, a little change may “do you good”, or it may even be a “welcome change.”

  In accumulating years of experience managing large-scale marketing transfor- mation work and the associated organizational change, the notion of “conditions for success” has emerged. This turns out to be an extremely important distinction in our thinking and our language for a couple of reasons.

  First, “creating and sustaining the conditions for success” is something that a marketing leader or executive sponsor immediately identifies with as being very important to their own personal success. Hence, that which was undiscussable and unilateral as Change Management becomes highly discussable and collaborative.

  Second, the “conditions for success” label is a more concrete definition that implies measurability and action-ability. The conditions for success are either in place or they are not. Therefore, a diagnostic can be defined to help measure the current state, to evaluate periodically throughout the project, and to prescribe specific actions to maintain the conditions for success.

  If one or more of the conditions for success are not in place, you may get “lost in transformation.” The “Valley of Despair” for your organization may be lengthy and deeply unproductive. If the conditions for success are ignored, a transforma- tional marketing project may become stuck in the “Valley” requiring remediation to reinitiate the project. By diagnosing the conditions for success, you can surface the stress points, reveal symptoms and take action to minimize the depth and length of time that your organization spends in the “Valley.” Some of the “how- to’s” and prescriptive treatments include:

  • Developing a Case for Action that links Marketing Transformation to Explicit Value

  • Securing and Sustaining Executive Alignment

  • Generating Accountability in Action

  • Rooting out Passive Commitment and Taking a Stand for Success

  • Managing the Undercurrents of Marketing Transformation

  Now, as you strap in for your transformational marketing journey, eyes wide open and looking forward, you can breathe easy knowing that you have put the conditions for success in place.

  While you’re at it, don’t forget to put your arms up and enjoy the ride. Simultaneous smiling and screaming is encouraged as you move to the TopRight corner of the markets where you compete!

  Chapter 18

  Not Getting Lost in Transformation

  BC, the broadcast network which produced the hit television series “Lost”, is part of the Disney–ABC Television Group. The ABC Entertainment Marketing department devises the marketing strategy and produces the promotional materi- als for all of the ABC television products for delivery to a variety of distribution channels. Steven Bushong, the SVP of Marketing Operations, is responsible for the effectiveness and efficiency of marketing operations with specific oversight on the

  development of marketing systems to execute the marketing strategy.

  The marketing operations team was facing significant limitations in available information on marketing strategies for TV productions, the required marketing assets, marketing headcount, forecasted workload and performance measures. Under Steven’s leadership, ABC planned to implement a new marketing produc- tion and operations management system (“PROMAS”) to close the information gaps and streamline marketing production processes.

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  However, the project faced significant transformational headwinds. The demand for increased analytic rigor would have to co-exist in harmony within a highly artistic and creative culture. A classic left brain, right brain conflict was looming.

  Steven kicked off the project by validating business requirements and workflows and mapping them to their selected marketing automation plat- form. He recognized that he must make explicit linkages to the strategy and its value for the Entertainment Marketing department. If the team did not clearly understand “what’s in it for the business” he did not stand a chance. He also wanted the team to know that he would be very visible on the project because of its importance to the business. He encouraged accountability in action from the team and declared that he was “all-in” and committed to the success of the project.

  It was also important to ensure there was complete team alignment before the first line of code would be touched. To facilitate this, Steven and the team created an illustrative marketing workflow. This came to life as a “hands-on lab” to engage marketing users directly in system design and configuration decisions. Based on lessons from past projects, he knew that people would support what they helped to create, so it was important to create a shared ownership of the project with the end users of the technologies.

  The Result?

  Truth be told, it was not a completely smooth ride. Many stress points were encountered along the way and tension on the project was not always in check. Conflicting priorities for resources on the project were a challenge and early results with the prototype were somewhat disappointing.

  However, there were also welcome discoveries and breakthroughs. By strik- ing a balance between the left brain and right brain talents, Steven was able to focus the tension on finding creative solutions and workarounds to seemingly intractable problems.

  In the end, Steven successfully managed the undercurrents of transformation and generated significant results for the marketing operations. The team was able to endure the “valley of despair” and reach new levels of productivity by stream- lining marketing production processes.

  They are now managing over 13,000 marketing assets per year with over

  7,000 of those being produced in-house. The new marketing systems also enable enhanced visibility between campaign management and the production workflows, allowing management to react more quickly to the dynamics of the business.

  Identifying and Addressing the Stress Points

  In the case of a transformational marketing project like ABC, one’s personal stake in and perspective on marketing transformation actually determines one’s level of anxiety and specific stress points on the journey. For example:

  • The Executive Team makes final decisions, commits strategic resources and budget.

  • Business Unit Leaders provide day-to-day guidance and leadership for the project team.

  • Managers prepare new marketing processes and prepare their teams.

  • Functional leaders provide much needed support from IT, HR and Finance.

  • Marketers train and prepare to use new marketing processes and technologies.

  • A Project Team desi
gns the new processes, develops offers and cam- paigns, designs and produces new creative assets, configures new enabling marketing technologies, executes the strategy in the market and measures the impact.

  Transformational Marketing Stakeholder Stress Points

  Here’s some good news: the stress points for each stakeholder are predictable and can be managed to ensure success. By the way, our goal here is not to avoid the stress involved with a high-speed thrill ride, you’re going to get that no matter what! Our goal is to point out what creates the anxiety and give you some ways to help different people on your team deal with it proactively.

  To help you understand and identify the stress points on your own team, here are several examples across a marketing program timeline including quotes from different stakeholders:

  Stress Points as Marketing Transformation Scope is Being Established

  • Sponsorship Issues: “Obviously, this is going to need close coordina- tion with ongoing campaigns. This can be an aggressive addition to our Customer Retention program.”

  • Resource Draining: “Look, I know John is an important member of your Marketing team, but I need him back. I just lost Jane.”

  • Sniping and Rumors: “They say this is all about automating some of the heavy lifting that we do today in running campaigns, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this is going to result in layoffs on the market- ing team.”

  • Scope Crisis #1: “To get to the bottom-line benefits we’re after, we need to immediately evaluate all of our existing customer touchpoints with a new marketing automation system.”

  Stress Points as Transformational Marketing Project is Created and Execution Plan is Proposed

  • Test of Nerve: “You’ve shown us the customer personas, the journey map and a marketing playbook based on a bunch of assumptions and things that we just don’t know yet -- and how much money do you want for the first phase?”

  • Smoke and Fire: “I really don’t understand why we are focusing on building a new customer acquisition campaign -- we all know that

  inbound marketing is not consistent with our feet-on-the-street sales strategy.”

  • Wet Blankets: “The new Marketing workflow looks fine, but you are asking us to integrate customer data from more source systems in six months than we’ve done in six years.”

  • Sudden Depth Scare: “Wow, if we’ve got to write out the business rules for every major exception to this Marketing process, we’ll be sitting here writing them until next year. They’re out of their minds.”

  Stress Points as Marketing Transformation Moves into the Prototype Phase

  • Sponsor Switch: “I’m absolutely overwhelmed. I can’t even begin to spend enough time with the Marketing team -- I need to dish responsi- bility for the project to John.”

  • Ownership Struggle: “Look, I’m responsible for the bottom line around here, so I’m going to call the shots.”

  • Scope Crisis #2: “Okay, if we try to do everything in this Marketing plan, we’ll need 26 creative teams, 7 pilot processes and over 50% of the company working on this half-time.”

  Stress Points as Transformational Marketing Moves into the Pilot Phase

  • Informed Resistance: “This is not the way to run a high-performance marketing team and it’s certainly not the way we got here.”

  • Passive Commitment: “The inbound marketing strategy and market- ing automation tools look very promising but I’m going to wait and see how things develop before I commit more attention to this effort for my business.”

  • Early Results Disappointment: “We were supposed to increase the qual- ity and the number of Sales Qualified Leads by 5x. After six weeks, we’re actually seeing fewer leads, lower productivity and our best sales guys are grumbling.”

  • Real-World Shock: “I can’t believe they’re still not entering correct data about customer interactions and continuing to waste our time -- these guys just don’t get what we’re trying to do with this initiative!”

  Stress Points as Transformational Marketing Moves into Full Operation and Organizational Adoption

  • Shock over Early Failures: “It’s working for that business unit. I want to know why it isn’t working for all of them!”

  • Implementation Crawl: “I think we need to take more time to under- stand this breakdown in that business until before we go any further.”

  • Pain of Change or Loss: “I took this job because I liked being able to do my own thing— coming to work is never going to be the same again.”

  • Evaluation Avoidance: “We better let this new lead nurturing campaign run a few more months before we can be clear on how well it works.”

  By understanding and identifying the stakeholder stress points up front, your eyes are now fully open and you’re looking forward. You can’t completely avoid the stress points. Some level of tension and anxiety may actually help you achieve our goals with transformational marketing.

  So, what do we need to get in place before we strap in and leave the station on our journey? How can we navigate the stress points, avoid the pitfalls and gener- ate the creative tension that will help catapult us to the next level of marketing performance?

  How do we ensure that the conditions for success remain in place throughout the project and stress and tension do not overwhelm the project team?

  Conducting a Transformational Marketing Conditions for Success Diagnostic

  Our research has revealed five conditions for success in marketing initiatives involving significant change. We have developed a diagnostic framework that can be used with project teams during the initial scoping of the transformational marketing journey and routinely in subsequent phase of the implementation effort. Below are abbreviated definitions from the diagnostic and some illustra- tions of the success markers for each area.

  Explicit Value

  There must be a mutually agreed business outcome that is clearly defined and measurable in terms of strategic, opera- tional, economic and organizational benefit; and a case for user adoption at the individual level.

  If the following is true, you will know that your trans- formational marketing program is tied to explicit value:

  • There is a shared understanding of the desired business outcome.

  • There is a business case for justifying the investment and quantifying the expected return.

  • There is a clear definition of what success looks like.

  • There are measures and metrics established to track the impact of the initiative across key performance dimensions:

  • Strategic

  • Operational

  • Economic

  • Organizational

  • Employees see the reasons for change and are active adopters.

  Full Alignment

  Key executives and stakeholders are fully aligned on the priority of the effort and achievement of intended out- comes. Informed understanding and intention among all the key stakeholders regarding the complete transforma- tional journey to results, including visibility to potential

  challenges and operational implications.

  You will know your team is fully aligned if:

  • Decisions don’t get revisited over and over.

  • Discussions are well structured—not a chaotic mix of clarifying prob- lem, proposing solutions and discussing implications.

  • People feel that they are being heard and understood.

  • Decisions do not divide the group into winners and losers.

  • Decisions are made with an understanding of implications.

  • It’s clear how to decide (vote, consensus, mandate).

  • Once a decision is made, next steps are crystal clear.

  • Decisions being implemented are not frequently reconsidered.

  • People support the decision once it is made.

  Sponsorship and Accountability

  An executive leader or executive leadership team is in place with the positional author
ity, credibility, skill, resolve, and time to get the transformational marketing program moving, and maintain its momentum through to results. Importantly, leadership is personally “at stake” in the journey.

  You will know you have sufficient sponsorship and accountability if:

  • The executive sponsor has a track record of leading the organization through a change effort in the past.

  • Sponsor has a scope of authority, power or influence commensurate with the scope of change involved.

  • Team leaders have strong relationship with key stakeholders.

  • Leaders appear to the team as “in the game” and are held personally accountable for their action/inaction.

  • Leaders are highly credible and command organizational respect

  • Leaders have demonstrated an ability to:

  • Make decisions

  • Influence others

  • Admit doubt or failure

  • Accept criticism

  • Deliver criticism effectively

  • Make things happen

  Organizational Commitment

  It is imperative to root out “passive” commitment to the project and/or passive aggressive behaviors. Marketing leaders must take personal responsibility for the program, are fighting for success and take sides on conflicts and dif- ficult issues.

  You will know that you are dealing with PASSIVE commitment if:

  • Resources on the program are the best people available.

  • A steering committee just monitors progress and manages costs.

  • Communication to the workforce occurs only when requested by the program manager.

  • Responsibility for managing conflicts is delegated to the project manager.