The latest issue of our e-newsletter, Perspectives, is available online now.

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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CMO tenure is a common topic in our world of strategic marketing consulting and we recently formulated a few thoughts around why we believe this phenomenon exists.

Based on our experiences and perspectives we believe that marketing leaders often focus their energies and expertise on winning in the marketplace and fail to recognize the critical linkage between a strong internal foundation and the ability to execute effectively externally.

To help bring this to life, a colleague used the analogy of being tasked to round up marbles in the center of a room with an uneven floor…an unending, maddening task that will lead to nowhere fast.

In an effort to help marketing leaders diagnose the strength of their foundation and ultimately improve their tenure we propose four areas for marketing leaders to evaluate:

1. strategic alignment,
2. performance measures,
3. management buy-in,
4. and asset leverage.

For more information on these areas and our thinking on the topic please read our article  How Solid is Your Foundation?: Addressing CMO Tenure.

This is the seventh and last in a series of short posts related to The CMO Agenda research. Informed by recent CMO conversations and CMG Partners‘ collective experience helping top marketers develop marketing strategy, we have compiled a list of seven ideas or jump starters for further conversation. These are meant to spark discussion, ideas, and action as we all enter a difficult 2009.

Over the past few years, measurement of marketing has dominated the vernacular of lead marketers and marketing literature - ROMI, ROI, campaign tracking and management, etc.. The reality is that not everything worthwhile can be measured and it takes an equal or greater effort to generate insight from measurement.

Watch out… As the pendulum swings back, companies are re-evaluating the right mix of measurement and management. When they do, will your staff’s talent and skills be seen as they key to decision-making or a weak link in the connection between metrics and action?

Skills of successful top marketers and marketing executives are evolving. More business orientation and holistic approach to decision making are a must to continue to demonstrate value. This means marketers are adopting revenue as a measure and some are responsible for a P&L.

What is your next move?

This is the sixth in a series of short posts related to The CMO Agenda research. Informed by recent CMO conversations and CMG Partners‘ collective experience helping top marketers develop marketing strategy, we have compiled a list of seven ideas or jump starters for further conversation. These are meant to spark discussion, ideas, and action as we all enter a difficult 2009.

Whether developing new products or looking to increase loyalty, having a continuous stream of customer insight that draws on many different sources is important. This feed needs to be constant and plentiful. Technology is making it easier to find new ways to gather and make use of customer insight with limited resources.

Customer research and voice of the customer programs like councils and feedback meetings are the more traditional ones many marketers employ.  Marketing organizations should not forget the many simple everyday ways to accomplish this via tools like email, google alerts, RSS feeds, Twitter or talking with the services or sales representatives. The important thing is to make it an integral part of your day / week.

What can happen if you are not watching/listening?

Many should not forget the Motrin campaign that had so much twitter backlash over a weekend after the launch of a new “hip” mommy ad that the parent campaign pulled the ad. Don’t let this happen to you! Ensure your insight and listening post are capturing as much feedback as possible.

An example of a company doing this well is Dell with their IdeaStorm.com, where users generate ideas for new features or often irritating sales and marketing practices or service policies. The community can then vote on them which helps Dell focus and prioritize.

[Repost from http://alanhart.wordpress.com]

The most recent issue of Perspectives, our e-newsletter is now available online and includes several articles:

• How Solid is Your Foundation?  Addressing CMO Tenure
• The Case for Customer Intimacy: Transforming Retail Financial Services
• Rewriting the Rules of PR

You can also read Sparking Transformation within your Organization, recently published by CMO Council in its monthly e-journal, Marketing Magnified.

At CMG we stress collaboration and teamwork both when helping our clients solve problems and when turning inward to find opportunities for our own business. One of the nice perks of operating this way is that you have plenty of stimulation to get the wheels turning when a thorny issue arises (and the support to keep you honest). It’s a benefit of working across a variety of industries and a wide range of marketing disciplines as well. We learn from working with clients in one industry and get to apply those ideas to clients in another. And for most of us, that kind of diversity is one of the big draws of working in consulting.

What we’ve learned through our conversations with CMO’s (as part of our CMO Agenda research) and through our experience helping companies is that this type of knowledge and inspiration is truly coveted by marketing leaders. It’s a big part of what led us to kick off our CMO Agenda research, now in its second phase. We are not only getting the opportunity to have fascinating conversations that provide insight and inspiration to our team, but we’re able to pass on the ideas and learnings from participating senior marketers to their peers and our clients.

Here’s an article we published with the CMO Council in their monthly e-journal Marketing Maginified that explores seven thought starters for active leaders looking to transform their organizations. These concepts flowed both from our CMO research and our work, and we hope they spark an idea or two for you.

You can find out more about the first phase of our CMO Agenda research effort by reading our executive summary or requesting a copy of the full report.

This is the fifth in a series of short posts related to The CMO Agenda research. Informed by recent CMO conversations and CMG Partners‘ collective experience helping top marketers develop marketing strategy, we have compiled a list of seven ideas or jump starters for further conversation. These are meant to spark discussion, ideas, and action as we all enter a difficult 2009.

Many industries and sectors have seen new growth opportunities shift from products to services. For example, take the classic case of IBM and the switch from product to services, which is cited many times over as what saved the company.

“Experience” might be next frontier as customer service is now becoming a qualifier for purchase decisions versus an order winner. Differentiating on an experience could range from engaging all the senses in industries like travel and leisure to providing simple surprise and delight moments in less experiential industries like technology or manufacturing. The Experience Economy by B. Joseph Pine and James H. Gilmore is a source for much more to think about along these lines.

Recently, I worked with a luxury travel company on defining a new set of products for the high net worth baby boomer market. Through focus groups we learned that boomers were craving experiences. The example that sticks out most was a person stating: “I want to be guided by a well know chef through the Moroccan spice market, hand select ingredients for dinner, then participate in the cooking process — culminating in the meal itself.” Oh.. and research shows that they are willing to pay through the nose to get this!

For a more grounded example…
Not too long ago, I opened a college savings/investment account for my newborn daughter.  I picked Scottrade because I had previously opened a brokerage account and was satisfied.  Within 4 hours of applying for an account online, the local branch office, one mile away, called to make sure everything went as planned and to see that any questions I may have had were answered.  It was a simple yet effective point of differentiation, and I loved it.

Whether meandering through a spice market or simply calling your customers to make sure they had a good experience, marketers need to think beyond the widget or service offering of today. How will your company or industry take advantage of this opportunity to win or retain customers with a unique experience?

Mirror post at alanhart.wordpress.com

This is the third in a series of short posts related to The CMO Agenda research. Informed by recent CMO conversations and CMG Partners‘ collective experience helping top marketers develop marketing strategy, we have compiled a list of seven ideas or jump starters for further conversation. These are meant to spark discussion, ideas, and action as we all enter a difficult 2009.

For many companies, innovation means creating a new product, but this is only one of many potential growth drivers. As a lead marketer, your job is to get close to your customers and find other ways to innovate and deliver value – through service, new methods of distribution or new avenues of consumption.

How can you achieve this level of innovation?

A consistent and constant review of your business model and practices can reveal many new opportunities. In other organizations, culture is the driving force which allows for employees to surface new ideas. I recently heard from Jeffrey Phillips, VP of Sales and Marketing for OVO and author of Make us more Innovative. Jeffrey focuses primarily on innovation processes necessary to build a sustainable innovation capability.

Some examples of innovation:

A recent example of a innovative concept I heard was at an HVAC equipment manufacturer. The company leadership decided that they are in the “refrigerated air” business vs. the air conditioner product business. This shift is thinking has many different implications from R&D to value delivered. One idea for commercializing this concept is to sell the service of refrigerated air like a utility. This would increase the number of touchpoints with customers and involves a deeper understanding your customers’ businesses to deliver on this new business model. While this is an innovative idea, it has not been commercialized yet which should be the yardstick for actual innovation. 

You need creativity and invention, but until you can connect that creativity to the customer in the form of a product or a service that meaningfully changes their lives, I would argue you don’t yet have innovation. - A.G. Lafley, CEO of P&G in a recent BusinessWeek Interview

Another example that has been commercialized and can be seen in a grocery store near you — Red Box.  Red Box has redefined the video store rental model and all for $1 per day per movie. (Disclaimer: I use and love Red Box.) Red Box has a great value proposition that makes it difficult for the troubled Blockbuster to compete and is now in the sights of the CEO at Netflix as he states they are the chief rival now.

Mirror post at alanhart.wordpress.com

This is the second in a series of short posts related to The CMO Agenda research. Informed by recent CMO conversations and CMG Partners‘ collective experience helping top marketers develop marketing strategy, we have compiled a list of seven ideas or jump starters for further conversation. These are meant to spark discussion, ideas, and action as we all enter a difficult 2009. 

True differentiation is increasingly hard with faster moving markets and better-educated shoppers. This means the task of constantly exploring whether your products and services stand out in the mind of the consumer is critical.

How will you differentiate for the long-term?

Forecasting the “death of the American Brand” as one CMO said, forces you to think about the private label explosion and house brand strength by the likes of Target and big chains. These house brands are successful because very little separates them from the old standards.

This trend is happening in everything from CPG to Computers to Insurance. Dell rode the wave as it commoditized the PC market, which now tries to find a sure footing again. Even service markets like insurance are seeing this trend as GEICO and Progressive lead the charge to commoditize auto insurance and drive down prices — even large cost-ridden competitors are following them in this practice.

In this tough economic market, for many the first reaction is to discount or attempt to push value and rationale messaging, but marketers need to understand the long-term impact. It is time to reassess the market and understand current strategic impacts to make decisions and trade-offs on how your company can differentiate in a unique way.

Mirror post at alanhart.wordpress.com