Speed Marketing (Geeks In A Crypt).

So, I found myself in a crypt full of geeks.

Theoretically, I was there to learn some more about cloud computing, but instead I got a lesson in bad marketing.

If you're allocated five minutes to present your thinking and insights, you can do one of two things. You can try to cram your regular half hour into the reduced time which involves subjecting your audience to a blur of slides and/or an avalanche of speed-reading.

Or you can acknowledge that five minutes is not thirty and tailor your presentation accordingly. Embrace the limitations that are set rather than see them as an inconvenience. You may not impart as much information, but at least it will be heard.

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Missing The Bus.

So, let me get this right. I could buy a coffee for £3, but rather than do that I should buy one of your £3 coach tickets and travel to an unspecified location where I can then spend some more money to buy a coffee I could have bought some hours ago?

Isn't the point of travel to enable you to do something you couldn't do where you were? Isn't the point of this example that marketers should always ensure that they and their media contractors know what it is that they're selling?

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Alone In The Crowd.

Marketers are increasingly trying and failing to inject social interaction into their activities. The key is to realise that something which seems social may not be social at all.

In this article about Sleeveface, one line stuck out.

"We know this one woman who got into it, and she used to do flash-mobbing. But she says you'd just turn up, do something funny and leave, so she didn't get to meet anybody. Sleevefacing is more social"

Too many markerters/advertisers think it's enough to turn up, do something funny and leave. It isn't.

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Your Customer-Driven Future.

At the heart of the VRM philosophy is the intention to impel businesses to move away from a customer-focused approach and towards a customer-driven outlook. Some recent developments at Tesco.com (the online service of the UK's largest supermarket chain) provide an opportunity to clarify the distinction.

Customer-Focused

Tesco were the first UK supermarket to launch an online shopping site, but its initial iteration seemed to have simply cut and pasted their warehouse stock-lists into a template. Whereas a supermarket shopper would select the shelf for the category, identify their favoured brand and then select the size of product they wanted, hereyou had categories listed by size of product. You found yourself looking at a list of the various 250 ml aerosol deodorants and then the various 100 ml deodorants. An experience at complete variance with what you understood shopping to be.

I recall writing to the CEO and being told that things would get better and of course they did. But this was customer focus in action. Target those shoppers who might be net savvy and keep them in the fold by giving them a website as soon as possible regardless of its usability and the experience it offers them. Customer focus is about putting the passive customer in your cross-hairs and deciding when you squeeze the trigger.

Customer-Centric

Last week at the Microsoft PDC in Los Angeles, Tesco.com announced among other things that they had created software that enabled any online shopper to use their webcam as a barcode scanner when setting up their online shopping lists. That's all about making the process easier for the customer. It's about thinking about how the customer behaves and how you can make it easier and more agreeable for them. That's arguably a good definition of customer centricity.

But it's splitting hairs. Customer centricity is still not enough because the imposed passivity remains and the customer only gets what they're given and nothing that they've driven. Echoing Adriana's earlier post, Doc Searls twittered this week from a web 2.0 conference in London,


Customer-Driven

The key to customer-driven lies in the verb. There can be no doubt here, the user is in charge and actively directing the process.

In a move that really hints at the customer-driven future, Tesco.com also announced last week that they were opening up their API. By summer 2009 anyone will be able to create widgets and programs that can facilitate the use of the system. Many of those geeks will be existing customers who have had frustrations with the current system or who have identified ways that make the process easier for customers.

The outcome should be that customers will be able to drive how the service works for them, that Tesco.com will gain a richer knowledge of their needs, and that those customers will be better customers as true loyalty displaces habituation.

You can make as many proclamations as you like about being customer-focused or customer-centric, but do so in the knowledge that you are well behind the curve. In a collaborative, post-messaging world, your "focus" has to "centre" on creating a customer-driven business.


Bonus link: The guy from Tesco who made the announcements has a blog.

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Marketing's Planning Process: An Ongoing Activity, not an Annual "Trip to the Dentist"

As your marketing organization approaches the end of its annual planning cycle, remember that it shouldn't end on January 1, 2009. As marketers we must get better at managing our annual and intra-year process as a part of our regular business processes vs. a once per year disruptive event. Doing so could be a helpful step forward in improving our ability to manage investment, shift resources in response to market conditions, and improve alignment within marketing and with the rest of the organization. Based upon interviews with marketing leaders in the technology industry and findings from IDC's recent Marketing Operations Board meeting, I'd like to offer the following "food for thought":

1. Staffing: Do you have an individual or team who's accountable for developing, executing and governing your planning process? The marketing operations function can provide the foundation and discipline for a well-orchestrated and managed planning process. Although this role has been effective in planning and orchestrating marketing's annual and intra-year planning process, marketers' view of planning as a separate activity from their daily job coupled with their lack of financial acumen continues to hinder the success of planning. (email me to receive a copy of our recent mktg. ops. study. . mgerard@idc.com)

2. Process: Marketers have made significant progress in establishing planning processes, such as global marketing leadership boards, a consistent taxonomy, financial tracking and other performance measurement processes; however, the lack of consistent adoption of these processes across the organization including a lack of alignment with finance, sales and regional marketing must be overcome to advance marketing to a higher level of operation and performance.

3. Technology: It is only in the past 3-4 years that most marketing organizations have actually achieved an understanding of how much they spend on marketing across the organization, mostly leveraging highly manual processes and Microsoft Excel. A recent IDC study revealed that 40% of IT marketers in companies >$3B in revenue continue to use Excel and other manual processes vs. a more automated MRM(marketing resource management)-type solution. It is time for us to advance to the next level of marketing, including tracking of investment at a more detailed level. (e.g., by objective, campaign, activity, brand, product, country, or segment) MRM applications offer the opportunity to do this in a more systematized and efficient manner. But remember, process first.

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The iPod Generation Isn't A Generation.

While participating in a panel at Mondays's VRM conference, I made a comment about the need for all businesses to recognise that the iPod generation were accustomed to having an entirely personalised music experience and that this technologically-driven expectation would spread into every area of their life.

I was bemused by some of the audience's accusations about my use of a generational generalisation and their insistence that they were more technologically-aware than their kids. No doubt they are. For me, it was not the make up of the generation, but the behaviour that was the issue. The reaction, however, was based on traditional segmentation thinking which defines all "generations" as age-ranges.

The iPod generation is the first "generation/group" who've experienced iPods. They are purchase-defined, they are behaviourally-defined, but they are not age-defined. Indeed, I've always doubted that any segments really were.

It may be correct to infer that the younger members of that generation will have a greater sense of entitlement to personalisation because they have known nothing else. It is not correct to assume that the older ones think very much differently, both because technology is agnostic and not ageist and because that sort of thinking is predicated upon a chronological definition of generations.

If you insist on simplifying this complex world by putting individuals into boxes, then do so based on how they behave and how they think. Not on what it says on their birth certificate.


Image via kristabel.

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Managing Expectations.

Imagine how people will be feeling tomorrow if things don't go as they've been led to believe. Anger, disenchantment and distrust will prevail.

When your marketing efforts overhype what you can deliver or you fail to fulfill your promises, the same feelings pervade your potential customers. It may not be as palpable, but the emotions will be there. Just as deep and just as damaging.

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