I have now completed my second month managing the validation and launch of a new service for a large technology company. My continued mission is to share my learning and best practices along the way and do my part to help more new product and service launches succeed in the marketplace! No small task, given that at least 1 in 3 new launches fail in the marketplace every year, despite diligent research and planning.

In my first month, I focused on getting up to speed fast, identifying and building relationships with key stakeholders, quickly understanding marketplace dynamics and driving alignment around scope and key assumptions, framing fact-based strategic options, developing a robust timeline and, most importantly, keeping the communication lines open across the organization.

Month 1 was a little hectic, but the pace of activity only intensifies as the service is readied for launch and decisions are needed quickly to meet an extremely tight timeline! Strong communication remains imperative to continued progress toward the launch date.

Month 2: Validating the Proposition and Developing the Launch Plan

Finalize the Research Plan & Execute: All challenges are different and the research objectives and methodologies we choose to leverage vary based on these factors. It is important to identify the right questions that, if answered, will drive a higher probability of success. I am launching a new service in a very cluttered and competitive space. Most of the competitors are well known brands with the resources to support a large-scale initiative. Given these dynamics, it was important to get closer to the consumer to understand what needs were being met with current offerings, where there were gaps and ultimately, how our service could be positioned to uniquely fulfill these needs and differentiate versus key competitors.

I worked closely with internal Market Research to build a two-part plan. In the first stage, we conducted exploratory research in focus groups to uncover new insights, while gaining initial feedback on strategic hypotheses. In the second phase, we leveraged the learning from focus groups to refine concept options including positioning, packaging and pricing variables, to test in quantitative research. We chose an interesting methodology that allowed us to test more variables than a traditional conjoint analysis would allow. In this research, consumers will be exposed to holistic concepts. Based on their preferences during the exercise, top concepts emerge yielding the higher purchase interest, relevance and believability. These concepts are then tested against competitor concepts on both a monadic and discrete choice basis to understand the breadth and depth of appeal versus competitor offerings.

The net takeaway is to do the due diligence. This six-week process allows us to get close to the consumer to understand unmet needs and where we are best positioned to win in the marketplace. With one shot at success, we are spending the time and resources necessary to validate direction.

Develop the Launch Plan: The other big work stream in month two was developing the launch plan. How are we going to generate demand? With such a tight timeline, it must be nailed quickly to allow enough runway for creative development, production and deployment (which is why a robust timeline is important). This is where your relationships come in handy as well, because determining tactics, cost and timing requires a collaborative effort across functions (Product Marketing, Media, Marketing Communications, etc) and agency partners.

Building on the insights from focus groups, I developed a briefing document focused on the key consumer barriers to success. During focus groups, consumers clearly had concerns about the value of the service and had doubts about the company’s ability to deliver the service. These barriers helped us to identify the “job” marketing was required to perform to overcome these challenges. Our message needed to focus on the value of the service and we needed to tangibly demonstrate the benefits to consumers. These barriers informed our marketing objectives and strategies and we used this framework to facilitate a brainstorm with the broader team to develop a list of tactics to address each strategy. We gathered costs and timing for each tactic and developed a recommended launch plan and timeline. This approach allowed us to focus on the behavior we needed to impact to be successful and kept the team focused on the task at hand!

Month two was another busy but productive month that moved at the speed of sound. With quantitative research in the field and a tactical launch plan developed, we are well on out way to launch! We focused on consumer needs, developing a proposition that not only best meets these needs of developing a targeted and focused tactical support plan, but also was collaboratively created to impact the consumer behavior needed to ensure success.

With research results expected in a few weeks, we must move quickly into creative development to bring the strategy to life. Month 3 is all about execution! I will continue to share my experiences next month, but I want to hear your thoughts. What are your research best practices in validating a new product or service? Is there a framework that you have used to successfully build an effective marketing plan?

Here are the top five best practices to gaining a marketing performance advantage that we identified:

1. Foster Senior-Level Buy-In

2. Seek Strategic Alignment

3. Make Targeted Investments

4. Develop Strong Processes

5. Leverage Marketing Performance Beyond Marketing

Successful launches are critical to the success of an organization, so how can you avoid being part of the 33% that never take off?

Disciplined strategic planning and flawless execution are imperative to ensure success. As experienced strategic marketing consultants, we have helped numerous clients across industries successfully launch new products and services into the marketplace.

Our countless experience in this space allows us to “drop in” to an organization and manage complex product launches on tight timelines, a situation I find myself in right now.

I am currently working with a large technology company looking to launch a new service business … in only four months! This tight time frame is not uncommon, but it does bring with it unique challenges that must be anticipated and planned for in advance.

Over the next several months, I will provide updates of how the project is progressing, note any challenges that arise and document all the lessons learned along the way. This inside look into a real project, in real-time, will provide a picture of why some launches succeed and others fail.

This is the first installment outlining my experiences managing this project.

Month 1: Establish Relationships & Set Direction

Identify & Build Relationships with Key Stakeholders
Launching a new initiative requires a collaborative cross-functional team effort, involving a diverse group of talents. As the first order of business in week one, I worked quickly to set up meetings with all key players. During these sessions, I focused on developing rapport, understanding the roles and responsibilities of each team member and confirming their alignment with important initiative details such as scope and timing.

Get Smart Fast: Understand the Marketplace & Gain Alignment on Key Assumptions
With tight timelines, it was important to get up to speed quickly. I read everything they gave me, often twice. Through this work, I generated answers to a number of important questions. What is the market opportunity? How big is the category and how much is it expected to grow? What are the key underlying customer dynamics driving this growth? Who are the prioritized segments? Which competitors are winning and how are they positioned? In doing so, I had a particular focus on uncovering potential weaknesses and customer needs that are not currently being addressed. Along the way, making sure key stakeholders understand and are aligned with critical facts and assumptions.

Frame Fact-Based Strategic Options & Validate Direction
With answers to key marketplace questions in hand, I quickly worked to develop strategic hypotheses for how my client can win in the marketplace, laying out value proposition options (positioning, packaging and pricing) and determining the financial implications of each option. I collaborated with internal market research to identify research vendors and methodologies to validate the strategic direction.

Develop a Robust Timeline
With a research timeline in place to validate strategic direction, I worked with other marketing functions, such as Marketing Communications and Marketing Operations, to develop a master launch timeline.

Keep Communication Lines Open
As a large organization with team members across functions internally and externally, communication is paramount to success. I set up weekly cross-functional team meetings to actively manage the timeline and move the project forward. No major issues yet, although there always are, and I will quickly and proactively address any that arise. It will be important to maintain alignment across the team and throughout the organization to meet our aggressive timelines!

It has been a busy first month and it’s not about to let up. If anything, it will become more intense. With key relationships established and a clear direction set, I’m gearing up for month two where the focus will be validating our proposition through market research and developing the detailed go-to-market plan.

If you take away one thing from my experience during the first month of this project, it’s this:

develop fact-based strategic options and ensure alignment up front! Make sure all key stakeholders are on the same page. Failure to address key questions or concerns, especially among senior leaders, adds significant risk to your timeline and the overall launch.

I’ll continue to share my experiences, but I also want to hear yours. What have you experienced with new product and service launches? Anything you would never do again? Or anything you learned along the way that you wish you had learned earlier? What are your launch success stories or go-to-market nightmares?

⁽¹⁾ Source: Winning at New Products, p.9

If you weren’t able to join us for the live webinar, no worries, you can still catch it on demand here, where we share emerging trends shaping the future of the lead marketer and discuss where marketing as a function is headed. If you have any questions after viewing the presentation, post them here and we’ll get back to you with answers.

What should a director or VP of marketing who reports to the CMO take away from this research?

A couple of things stand out. First, CMOs on the path to being a transformative leader, as described in CMO 2.0, need talented people to help them drive change inside the organization as we have talked about. To that end, much of the same apply to theses “lieutenants” in terms of interpersonal skills and alignment with strategy and objectives of the organization. You can take the action plan we have laid out and adapt the essence of it to better support your head of marketing and the initiatives that you are leading.

Secondly, this research can be used with your CMO or head of marketing to discuss where you are as a marketing function and what you as an organization can do to ensure the marketing function is creating maximum enterprise value. You can help foster alignment with business objectives and assist in communicating across the organization to ensure alignment.

Who do you think are successful CMO 2.0s in the marketplace today?

Jeff Hayzlett, soon to be Former CMO of Eastman Kodak, breathed life and transformation into a historically mega brand that had lost its relevance over the years (e.g. finding a new way to differentiate and bringing the customer back in focus). In his new book, “The Mirror Test: Is Your Business Really Breathing?” Hayzlett coaches business owners how to thoughtfully yet aggressively evaluate, deconstruct, and then reconstruct one’s business in order to focus on its bottom line.

Chris Moloney, Former CMO of Scottrade now at Experian, has a keen focus on customer experience and loyalty and how this can unite an organization and determine operations (e.g. distributed call response by local branches vs. mega call centers).

Keith Pigues, CMO of Plygem (formerly with CEMEX NA), maintains a strong focus on customer value creation and linking that to a measurable value proposition. He has a new book coming out this summer “Winning with Customers”, Wiley Books.

What are real life examples of ways CMOs are using technology effectively to be more customer-centric?

One large diversified financial services company is using CRM technology to gain a single view of a customer across the portfolio of products (insurance, investments, etc.).

In the realm of social media, many CMOs are listening, or in some cases, engaging in the conversation with all the usual suspects like Twitter, Facebook, forums, blogs, etc.

What really does a relationship plan look like for growing relationships across the c-suite and have you ever done it?

Well, we aren’t CMOs, so we have not done it ourselves, but based on our client experience and research, relationships are the key to leading transformation inside an enterprise, but real tangible value has to be created as well. In many of our conversations, there was much more focus on the “value” a leader was bringing, which created opportunities to build a relationship with a peer or the CEO.

A phrase that applies here is, ‘you have to give, to get’. You have to give value to receive something in return. If you are united with your peers around the success of the enterprise and understand the value you bring and ultimately deliver, your peers will allow and welcome relationships to be born

That said, I am sure that there are some savvy relationship builders out there, but without meaningful value being delivered, the relationships can fall out of favor over time.

You’ve outlined a lot of things the CMO 2.0 can do, but wondering about more of the intangible behaviors and attitudes that are underlying the successful CMO 2.0?

The only thing that stand outs is a true passion for the business. It seems simple, but these jobs, especially when taking on transformation initiatives, require a lot of a person and having a passion for what you are doing will keep you motivated when things get tough… and they will.

Can you please expand on the marketing effectiveness, specifically the measures that really separate great performance from good performance?

In our Marketing Performance Advantage research, we address marketing effectiveness as both the measurement AND management of marketing efforts. It is the management effort that many organizations lose sight of.

The measurement frameworks that marketers seem to have more success with map very closely to the measurement frameworks of the c-suite. We highlight an example along these lines in the whitepaper, The Marketing Performance Advantage.

Lastly, I have heard from a number of folks that measurement is not something that should become stagnant and unchanged. One executive I was chatting with recently said that finding the right measures was like a never ending quest for truth because each time they found a measure that was working to help improve performance, it would become less valuable over time and they would need to find a new one. With this in mind I would advocate holding two opposing thoughts in your head: a) I have to measure and this one seems to be working, b) This measure could be leading me astray and I need to find a new one.

Does customer centricity always mean a central database for all customer engagement and communications?

The simple answer is no. Databases are tools which aid in customer information collection and segmentation methods. Customer centricity is a much more macro concept, which begins to address the orientation of your business behaviors (not just the communications) from internally driven to externally customer focused.

This webinar and information is based on our recent research study, The 2nd Annual CMO’s Agenda. The CMO’s Agenda, published annually by CMG Partners, surveys, examines and summarizes critical challenges facing lead marketers today, trends CMOs are watching, the importance of marketing performance management and thoughts on and approaches to transformational marketing. This ongoing research effort cumulatively represents more than 60 one-on-one conversations with lead marketers and CMOs within mid-sized organizations to Fortune 500 companies.

As the global recession slowly recedes, many businesses are moving their focus from survival back to growth. Investment in finding and capturing growth opportunities is returning. However, during the downturn, the agenda for marketers changed. To meet new demands, marketing’s role must evolve to accept greater accountability for its performance.

CMGP has always believed that marketing can and should be a strategic asset. As such, the increased focus on marketing’s accountability is a natural evolution. Continue reading to learn more about this evolution and its implications, as well as how marketing performance management will be a key differentiator in today’s highly competitive marketplace.

In this issue:

• The CMO’s Agenda
• Achieving the Marketing Performance Advantage
• Loyalty, the Holy Grail of Marketing

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(We will be tweeting live throughout this event May 13, 2010 at 3:30 p.m. ET at twitter.com/cmgpartners. Follow us to receive real time updates of the conversation.)

“Marketing is about being customer-centric and the first step in driving loyalty is creating attachment,” said Rich Beatty, founding partners of CMG Partners, opening the Loyalty Lab Client Summit panel discussion on April 8, 2010 and setting the tone for the conversation. He went on to explain that “Driving attachment impacts behavior, which drives financial results.”

These two statements lead to the same conclusion … customer loyalty drives financial results. With customer loyalty tied directly to performance of your bottom-line, marketing leaders cannot ignore this critical piece of the marketing puzzle.

The New York panel brought diverse experiences from senior marketing executives across industries, including Cindy Ricciardi, VP of CRM at SiriusXM; Robert Birge, CMO of Kayak; Margaret Hynes, Director of Platinum Card Marketing American Express; and Jeff Bedard, Brand Manager Campbellkitchen.com Campbell Soup Company.

Despite hailing from different backgrounds and industries, their views on customer loyalty were remarkably similar. It is all about understanding and addressing the needs of customers.

“Business success is predicated on people coming back, the focus is entirely on continuously improving customer experience,” said Robert Birge.

Jeff Bedard added, “The objective hasn’t changed, but the tactics have. It is about creating a community of shared needs and beliefs.”

Another panelist noted, “It’s becoming more difficult to drive loyalty, so it’s even more important to stay close to the customer to understand their needs.”

All panelists agreed that a large part of the brand’s role in meeting customer needs is creating the community of shared beliefs that allows for heightened engagement and interaction. New, emerging technologies such as social media have changed the approach to customer loyalty, forcing marketers to focus on driving ongoing dialogue versus one-way communication. It is truly about creating a relationship with customers and, like all relationships, marketers must adjust to changing customer needs and nurture these relationships to drive success over time.

This Thursday, May 13, 2010 we are taking another cross-industry look at customer loyalty challenges and rewards with a new panel and new insights.

The Loyalty Lab 2010 Client Summit Chicago event is taking place at the W Hotel, City Center in Chicago, Ill. and CMGP’s Chicago panel includes: Scott Lerner, Founder, Sol Elixirs; Jonathan Lange, SVP, Group Account Director, Deutsch, Got Milk? campaign director; and Bryan Shimko, VP of Marketing, HSBC.

Along with Rich Beatty, this panel will be discussing trends, successes and challenges in customer loyalty while sharing insights and personal experience from their respective industries.

We will be tweeting live throughout the event at twitter.com/cmgpartners. Follow us to receive real time updates of the conversation. Be sure to check back here as well for a recap, highlights and take-aways from the discussion.

So, what sets successful marketing organizations apart from their less successful peers?  To learn more, join us for our webinar The Marketing Performance Advantage on February 25 where we will share best practices in measuring and managing Marketing Performance that we uncovered from a study among over 400 CFO, CEO and marketing leaders.

To build the marketing organization’s capabilities to measure, learn from, and improve upon marketing strategies and tactics over time — with the goal of ultimately delivering improved business results.

By studying the responses of organizations that are experiencing a positive impact to their business from their Marketing Performance practices, we were able to identify five key best practices.

To learn more, join us for our webinar The Marketing Performance Advantage on February 25 where we will share best practices that we uncovered from a study among over 400 CFO, CEO and marketing employees of companies with 100+ employees interested in measuring the performance of their marketing initiatives.

But has the result been a corresponding improvement in business results?

We found that many of the 400 organizations we surveyed appear to be stuck in the basic tracking and measuring stage of improving marketing effectiveness. And an almost equal number are focused on breaking down barriers to improved performance in areas such as the correlation of measurements and data or incorporating insights into the decision-making process.

We also found that those companies who have fully embraced the concept of Marketing Performance Management have seen a more positive impact by the marketing organization on the business and in turn are more likely to be market leaders. By studying these top-performing companies, we were able to uncover a series of best practices that can be translated across a wide array of organizations to help drive business results.

To learn more, join us for our webinar The Marketing Performance Advantage on February 25 where we will share best practices in measuring and managing Marketing Performance that we uncovered from a study among over 400 CFO, CEO and marketing leaders.

Having developed this affinity towards Southwest I started to contemplate their business model and success.  What struck me is the both the genius as well as the simplicity of their model.  Genius from the standpoint that they were able to innovate by addressing the emotional needs of customers while their competitors where focused on the functional needs (this may be a stretch) and relied on monetary loyalty systems to increase attachment (certainly Southwest’s regional expansion strategy helped them to stay under the radar and gain scale but from my perspective this is not why they are still in business).   Simplicity from the standpoint that there model is based on basic common sense - people like to feel treated well, and if we’re paying for service we expect to be treated well.  And while simple, Southwest’s model is darn near impossible for their competitive peers to replicate because it’s rooted in their culture (one of the most challenging areas for a company to change) and the premise that happy employees = happy customers.  This manifests itself across every touch point I have with Southwest - from the gate agent, to the flight attendees (while I may not always find their attendant performances over the PA system necessarily funny or entertaining I certainly respect the effort - it adds one more personal, human element to the experience) and pilots, to the personalized Southwest stories of exemplary service in their monthly magazine.

While there is no doubt I’ve been converted and am an advocate of Southwest - their success, and the success of others like Zappos, begs the question of which industry and what companies are next to be caught sleeping at the wheel - i.e. do not truly understand their customers and their motivations?