The Rigidity Of The Geeks.

Over the past few days, the blogosphere has largely reverted to its primordial incarnation as the playground of the geeks. There have been interesting debate and wonderful acts of humanity not to mention all manner of prescriptive projections of future human behaviour (predicated upon technology of course).

However, my ultimate take-away has been a reminder of the rigidity of geek thinking. Perhaps it’s down to their technical detail-orientation, but it’s remarkable to see the virulent reaction of a geek to another person’s argument if it doesn’t correlate exactly with their own worldview.

As we move toward marketing 2.0 or the new marketing, the lesson, of course, is that despite their volume, the geeks are not the majority. There’s a lot of inspiration to be gleaned and ideas to be considered, but it’s not the early adopters who ultimately shape the future. It’s the people who use stuff who do that.

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Sprouts As Social Objects.

Ask people to name their most hated vegetable and it's generally agreed that the answer will be sprouts, yet annual sprout sales in the UK are worth £35m. That's allegedly 47,000,000 units of distress purchase and judging by the supermarket tonight, most of them are bought this week.

It's not the season of masochism, so why the paradoxical behaviour? Because people have bought a story that convinces them that sprouts say Christmas like no other vegetable. Because people can joke about them and because people see other people doing it.

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The Marketing Operations Function - Can we Maintain the Momentum?

I first studied the rise of the marketing operations (MO) function early in 2005; and MO professionals and teams have made significant progress since then. However, much work still remains; and the momentum of marketing operations leaders' strategic impact is at risk of being lost at many organizations. Here are some key findings/insight from my 3rd annual study of the MO function to help ensure the continued success of this important role in the marketing organization:

1. Make the case for an MO function that reports to the CMO if you haven't already, and leverage IDC research to justify staffing levels for this function. Based upon IDC's Marketing Performance Matrix, 90% of companies in the Marketing Leadership quadrant have one; and your position and your marketing organization's success depends upon the strategic planning and process discipline that this role brings to the table. IDC's overall guidance or "rule of thumb" for staff allocation to the MO function is 2–4% of total marketing staff and one MO staff person for every $10 million to $15 million of marketing budget.

2. Know your CMO's priorities. To ensure that the marketing operations team remains highly relevant and successful at a strategic as well as a tactical level, its objectives and priorities must be in alignment with the needs of the CMO. The more advanced MO teams will help to identify these priorities for the CMO.

3. Maintain Your Team's Focus on your Top Priorities. More and more MO teams are becoming overwhelmed with the quantity of projects that they're involved with, resulting in a loss of focus; which is impacting their efficiency and effectiveness. Be realistic about your goals, and focus on the areas where you can make the greatest impact in your organization in the short-term while laying the foundation for longer term efforts.

4. Drive the MO team towards continuous improvement and innovation. This may include improving existing processes or acting as the catalyst for development and execution of new, innovative ideas.

Want more information on this role? Feel free to send me an email at mgerard@idc.com and I'll be glad to share some of the results of this study with you.

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Worldviews.

Where else in the world would an atheist comedian and the head of an international religion overlap in a radio show, chat without interruption from the host and be recorded on webcam? The BBC can still be remarkable.

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Gorilla Update.

Campaign magazine's 2007 round-up awards campaign of the year to the Gorilla and reports 9% year on year increase in weekly sales - (in October I assume) though as I said before the June 2006 weekly sales were down 25% due to the salmonella scare.

The same magazine also brings home to me how many smart people I've got to know this year and credits many of them with both great blogs and actual work too. Trebles all round!

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Something From My Comments.

Lazy blogging I know, but I wanted to share comments I contributed to two interesting debates on other blogs recently.

Marketing isn't any harder than it used to be - it's just that people forgot that it centres upon product development and meeting customer needs and instead got obsessed with pretty words like branding which is all too often skin-deep rather than a reflection of the DNA of a business. No marketing isn't harder, but getting away with sub-standard behaviour very definitely is. (Collaborate Marketing)

It’s a myth that most categories are commodified - a myth perpetrated by arty agencies who want to pad their book rather than be a little dull and focus on product attributes. (The Kaiser Edition)

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Fourth Wall Marketing.

Watching the magnificent Tinariwen the other night, I realised that
here were visually spectacular and musically dynamic performers having a real problem in breaking the fourth wall between stage and audience.

This was largely because they are a group of Touareg bedouins from Mali who collectively speak very little english. They had a few stock phrases and meant them sincerely but inevitably it wasn't continuous, it wasn't a real connection.

The breakthrough came when the previously seated drummer walked to the edge of the stage both to play and encourage a typically passive white european audience. The wall was well and truly broken, but it reminded me that you have to very actively make the connection with your audience even if they've already given you permission to excite them.

Think of your marketing efforts in terms of performance and audience and you'll quickly see the tactics that will fall flat and you will save yourself a lot of wasted effort.

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