Brand America

In these fractious and partisan times it’s interesting how U.S. politicians of all stripes are eager to distance themselves from their chosen profession. Democrats and Republicans alike, no matter their actual tenure, are all suddenly Washington “outsiders.” Many have also developed a newly found appreciation for how businesses are run, and think government could learn a trick or two from corporate America. We don’t need a President, they seem to be saying, we need a CEO.

Government-as-business is an interesting concept, which got me thinking: Why not elect an American CMO, a kind of Marketer-in-Chief?

The question isn’t as facetious as it might seem. Lots of countries actually do elect or appoint someone – often a “president” with limited legislative clout – to represent their country without having any overt political baggage. Truth is, in Europe that’s what royalty’s for.

America desperately needs a Marketer-in-Chief. America the Brand isn’t so brave anymore. You don’t need to conduct an audit to see the signs of dwindling brand loyalty and a confused brand identity. A good CMO would have read the signals long ago: The latest Rasmussen Poll shows that only 16 percent of likely voters think their country is “heading in the right direction,” while only 35 percent think America’s best days are to come. This is Quickster bad. The truth is, behind all the Tea Party bluster and Take Wall Street theatrics, there’s a shared disquiet that the US has lost its way and compromised on some ideals.

Overseas, Brand America is being bashed as bad as tainted Tylenol or New Coke. A couple of foreign wars certainly don’t help, and a worldwide financial pandemic is also souring the mood. Interestingly, Obama’s reputation abroad remains strong – his personal brand is relatively unscathed.

But Brand America has dealt with crisis before and come through, so, what’s the problem now? I blame the politicians. As some famous American once said, “a house divided cannot stand,” and Brand America has some deep-sea-trench divisions on strategy and values. No self-respecting CMO would stand for this. It used to be that the country coalesced around a universally accepted brand promise: Liberty, justice and the pursuit of happiness, etc. This was considered enough. Now, while we might agree on the brand promise, we dogmatically disagree on how to deliver on that promise. Even the role of government is being questioned. Meanwhile, as our fearless political leaders seem to encourage polarization, we flounder dealing with looming competitive threats from Brand China and the rest.

As any CMO knows, brand equity is a fragile commodity, hard to earn and too easily lost. However, in the case of Brand America, I think the gloomy prognosis is overstated.

A couple of months ago I was sworn-in as a US citizen, along with 260 others from over 30 different countries. It was a moving and sobering experience – I sat next to a Somali woman and a Nigerian man, both with harrowing stories of lost relatives and exile. An Indian man told me about the Pharma start-up he was creating – in the US. That same week, I listened to American scientists from the Kepler project describe discovering the first planets from other solar systems. And this year U.S. citizens netted seven Nobel prizes. On the global stage, America is still a place of invention and promise. The old cliché is true: American is a land of opportunity.

All we need is a Marketer-in-Chief to sell it better.

Is social media saturating – and what are the implications for marketing?

According to the latest data from Nielsen Research and Experian Simmons, the adoption of social media in the US has skyrocketed to 80 percent of those with online access, or over 40 percent of the overall population. Putting this in perspective, among those 35-and-younger, the adoption of social media is approaching that of US car ownership. Safe to say, it is clearly foolish to think of social media as something new or novel – it is an everyday part of most people’s lives.

Collectively, Americans now spend almost a billion hours a month exchanging news, information and gossip at social media sites. Last I checked there are still only 24 hours in a day: As you look at these stats, especially for the college-age set, the use of social media starts to look like borderline addiction. For many teens and tweens being connected online is an umbilical necessity for sustaining life. You wonder if Facebook and the rest shouldn’t carry warning labels, like cigarettes: Using Social Media Is Not A Substitute For Food, Sleep Or Reality.

More seriously, as social media adoption becomes mainstream, what are the consequences for marketing?

First, marketing pros should understand that media use overall is usually a zero-sum game: If we’re all spending more time online with social media, it usually means we’re doing less of some other media activity. There’s evidence to support this view, with online activities eating away at everything from watching television to reading. Second, we should anticipate that the use of social media is saturating. The amount of time we spend on social media is cresting, especially among those 35-and-younger.

This is a familiar scenario for marketing folks who have lived through other communications and marketing revolutions. I can remember when email marketing was a novelty, with response rates for well-targeted campaigns routinely reachig 3-5 percent (I’ve seen similarly impressive stats for the novelty-of-the-moment, QR codes). As social media saturates we should expect it to become harder and harder to create and sustain relationships between prospects and our brands. Saturation equates to clutter, attentions wane, and people become weary and guarded.

We should also remember that social media got that name for a reason – it’s a tool for staying in touch with friends and family, not primarily for finding your company, not matter how lovely it may be. Understand that social media is only one part of an integrated marketing program. Have realistic expectations - and make sure you communicate these to your management teams. As you work with social media, be true to yourself and your brand. The fundamentals of good marketing have not been re-invented: Be engaging, be credible, be trustworthy, and be unique.

Sales and Marketing May be Better Aligned Than We Think

When I was asked by Bob Johnson at IDG to be on a SMEI panel to discuss the divide between sales and marketing, I had a strong feeling of déjà vu: I can remember ten years ago being invited on another panel to debate the exact same issue. That event had been in London, hence there was an open bar before the panel convened; I recall the discussion getting very heated indeed.

As I prepared for the SMEI panel I began to wonder if the marketing/sales feud had improved much in the intervening decade, so decided to pull together a short survey to find out. Using social media I got just under 100 responses from an assortment of friends, followers and colleagues  – certainly not a representative sample, but diverse nonetheless.

Q: Over the last 5 years, do you think the relationship between sales and marketing has: 

Grown Worse:                                                 24%
Stayed about the same:                                   33%
Grown Better:                                                 43%

The results surprised me; I’d guessed that as we endure a drawn-out recession, relations between sales and marketing would have become more frayed. I was wrong, and by a large majority the audience at the SMEI event also believed sales and marketing were getting along much better these days.

I then asked was might be the root cause of any conflict:

Q: The main cause of conflict and disagreement between marketing and sales is (pick one): 

Lack on alignment on goals and objectives:        43%
Resource allocation:                                          11%
The quantity and quality of leads:                       23%
No clear demarcation of responsibility:                4%
Lack of processes to coordinate activities:         12%
Lack of professional respect:                               8%

By a wide margin, most respondents think that conflict is caused by a lack of alignment around goals and objectives. This view was echoed by my fellow panelists, Ann Marie Beasley from CA and Mark Blessing at Bright Computing.

I discussed how the most common model used for engineering alignment across sales and marketing – the ubiquitous marketing funnel – may be long overdue for an overhaul. Whatever model you use, successful alignment across the two organizations starts with a candid discussion on joint KPIs and metrics. Measured accountability, agreed and shared, is the root to success.

Marketing and Sales: Closing the Great Divide

I'm excited to have been invited to speak at the Sales and Marketing Executives International event here in Boston on September 14th. The subject is a perennial favorite -- Marketing and Sales: Closing the Great Divide.

I'm interested in your views - over the last five years has the relationship between sales and marketing improved, grown worse, or stayed about the same? What causes friction? Leave me a comment -- or better yet, take 30 seconds to complete this three-question survey. 

I'll share results of the survey in a later post. Thanks!

The Science of Marketing?

Reading recent headlines and watching the gyrations of the stock market it’s easy to see why economics earned the epithet “the dismal science.” But is marketing any better? Indeed, is there any science to marketing at all?

Usually not.

Take social media as an example. Normally, marketing treats social media data in the same way that air traffic controllers treat blips on a radar screen – as signals that require careful help in landing, or emergencies demanding evasion on interception. The only difference is we marketeers attempt to land customers and intercept naysayers, rather than planes. Don’t get me wrong – marketing needs radar – but this hardly qualifies as science.

Data by itself isn’t science: Marketing pros usually have an excess of the former and very little of the latter. A scientific approach would require proposing a hypothesis to explain observations or ideas, then devising an experiment to test the hypothesis. It requires the rigorous definition of terms and ways of quantifying things. It demands objectivity.

Tom Webster gets at this distinction is his recent blog post, and argues that we’ll always need a mix of qualitative and quantitative information. It’s tempting to agree with Seth Godin and others and say marketing is both art and science, but this feels like a cope-out to me.

What we can say is that marketing is getting much more quantitative. This is a good thing. I can remember from my teaching days that marketing undergrads hated even the most rudimentary classes on quantitative analysis and statistics – today, they’d be well-advised to take these courses very seriously indeed. Science or not, the future of marketing will clearly move toward a more disciplined and measured approach. But the real gains will be with those organizations that go the next step, and apply more scientific rigor to their marketing investments.

Brand Potter: What Harry Can Teach us about Marketing

This month, at midnight, I took my daughter and a gaggle of her friends to the opening night of the final film in the Harry Potter franchise. Dressed as favorite characters – Luna, Bellatrix, McGonagall and Hermione – we arrived an hour before the show to find the movie theatre packed and transformed to a mini-Hogwarts. “Wingardiam Leviosa!” exclaimed our would-be Luna to the ticket guy, to which he responded brightly “Diffindo!” as he ripped the tickets. It was another world. And when we left the theater at around 3am it felt more like mid-afternoon on a busy weekend – the parking lot was packed and another crowd of Dumbledores, Snapes, Rons and Ginnys were piling in for the next show.

JK Rowling published her first book in 1997: Seven novels, 4,000 pages and eight movies later, Harry has become a pop-culture phenomenon unparalleled in modern times. A whole generation of kids – including my daughter and most of her friends and cousins, not to say her parents – have grown enthralled by a fully-realized world of magic. Commercially, the Potter phenomenon has no equal: Over 400 million books sold in every language imaginable, a worldwide movie gross over $7 billion, and even a theme park in Florida. How on earth did this tale of a boy wizard going to school become so successful?

There is no question that Rowling’s vision – and her near-flawless execution in her books – was the core of the success. She created wonderful characters, embellished her plot with great imaginative touches, and had a story in her mind that she knew would hold an audience across a decade of reading.

But Rowling did more than that. Famously, she demanded great control over all things Harry, from franchising to having full creative control over the movies and their scripts, even selecting actors. She also remained true to her readers – she was almost possessive of them – and communicated directly to young fans in her blog and elsewhere. My daughter talks about “JK” as if they’ve met recently and are close friends: This is remarkable. Rowling also embraced the runaway success that Harry enjoyed. She has said that Harry and his world felt almost independent of her, and there must have come a point where the pop-culture juggernaut also felt outside her control. Despite this, there is a fidelity to the world she created that has never changed despite the movies, the fanzines, the endless media hoopla and the passage of time. Among her many other talents, Rowling has expertly managed the Harry brand. Her focus and fidelity to a vision is something we all could learn from in marketing.

Marketing and Me

Last week, after three great years, I left my job running corporate communications for a large software company.

I was very fortunate – I left of my own accord, and I had plenty of time to think about the transition. Even so, I had two contradictory reactions to being gainfully unemployed: a feeling of delight at having oceans of time; and a feeling of mild panic at having no viable income. It’s hard not to oscillate wildly between indulging in projects and activities I’ve put off for years, then frantically job hunting.

I’ve worked almost all my career marketing, mostly in the high tech world but also for professional services firms and some consumer brands. In the last few weeks I’ve learnt that marketing feels very different when the subject at hand is You. Thinking about Brand You does a lot to focus attention on the fundamentals. Here’s some observations:

• Know Thyself!
  It’s easy to have an instinctive understanding of what your professional value is, but I found myself having to work hard to organize my search. What are my target markets? What is the current demand in that market? What’s my professional objective? What differentiates me from the many other candidates? Like any other marketing program, answering these fundamental questions is Step One.
  
• Resumes Revisited
  For many decades the basic tool – the promo piece – for advertising for work has been the resume. Nolonger. I’ve found that many conversations start because someone “found me” at this blog, because of press coverage I’ve appeared in, or via some other online imprint. Increasingly, our online resumes – our brand – is a diffused collection of activities. Managing these properly is critical.
  
• Networks and Friends
  The influence of word-of-mouth on brand perceptions is well understood, but the reality comes sharply into focus when you’re searching for work. A recruitment consultant told me that over 75% of jobs are found through an individual’s immediate network of friends, colleagues and family. We often forget that the same is true for how most people make decisions about what brands to trust and invest in.
  
• Social media works – and doesn’t
  A recent Pew Research study showed that fewer than 10% of “friends” on Facebook have never met in person. Social media is a wonderfully efficient way to maintain connections to our extended network of friends and colleagues, but it’s not so efficient at broadcasting beyond that network. Once or twice removed, the signal seems to get attenuated.
  
• Professional networking and career sites can work
  I’m using Ladders, LinkedIn, Indeed and the rest, and they are remarkable. One reservation – moving to a premium, fee-based service on some of these sites has only a marginal benefit. The basic service is often enough, raising questions about the business models for some of these companies.

One other thing – I’ve come to realize how much I enjoyed the ‘Company of Friends” I worked with over the last few years. Good luck to you all!