Consider the following two vignettes:
- In the book “Winning,” Jack Welch describes a tactic he used at GE to force himself to always enter a business situation with a fresh perspective. Every time he travelled, he got off the plane imagining that the Jack Welch of yesterday had had no idea what he had been doing. He felt that this ritual of taking a critical eye to past decisions helped him enter every situation as an opportunity for improvement.
- In a recent issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, Laura J. Soave, a marketing executive at Fiat discussed details of Fiat’s ‘Return to North America’ marketing launch, adding that “My ultimate goal would be not to spend one dollar in traditional advertising.” Instead, she says that she will focus on social media and other grassroots approaches to target likely buyers.
Now, consider the following: If you were starting the marketing function within your business today, how would you choose to allocate your media mix? In other words, if you had a zero-based planning process (rather than one based on the previous year’s plans), what would you choose to spend your money on? Read More »
When we talk with heads of marketing about what “good” information flow between sales and marketing looks like, you can imagine the usual suspects that pop up: marketing updates provided to the sales team, sales providing feedback on messaging that’s resonating (or not resonating), and some type of ongoing win-loss analysis.
