As most B2B marketers are aware, it’s getting harder out there for their Sales colleagues. The economy may be showing some signs of life, but a key feature of long recessions is that the efficiency-oriented behaviors learned therein are usually retained, to some degree, even when good times return again.

In the coming months and years, it’s clear that B2B marketers are going to have to lean heavy on the solutions lever for maintaining margins and increasing customer satisfaction. But selling solutions requires very different organizational capabilities than traditional B2B sales, and many companies struggle to get reps and marketers to adapt a solutions posture in the marketplace.

At MLC, we’ve been on this case for awhile, and we have an entire topic center devoted to solutions-oriented Marketing functions. But we’ve also taken a special look at the necessary elements of a solutions-selling powerhouse, and we found that the best of the best had a lot in common: in fact, they each did 20 key things well. Those 20 things can be loosely grouped into four categories: Read More »

This year’s crop of ads was among the best in recent memory. Only a few absolute clunkers, and a lot that were just plain enjoyable – bringing some life to a game between two teams I don’t particularly care for (sorry, Pats and Giants fans).

Here’s our best and worst of 2012. MLC members, for more on advertising, check out our findings on getting the most out of agency relationships as well as our Creative and Content topic center.

Best Ads

Acura – “Transactions”

Jerry Seinfeld has been somewhat absent from the spotlight since his eponymous TV show ended in 1998 – I think he’s done a few standup tours, Bee Movie, and that show where couples argue on television – but this is a neat return in support of what looks to be a pretty nifty car. My favorite transaction? Making small talk with the omelet guy – always the most awkward part of a Sunday brunch buffet.

Honda – “Matthew’s Day Off”

Folks who were in high school in 1986 – the year Ferris Bueller’s Day Off perfectly captured the delight of playing hooky on a beautiful spring day – are now a good way into the “responsible adult” phase of their lives; running kids to soccer practice, going grocery shopping, that kind of thing. So good for Honda for matching up this old cultural touchstone to new circumstances. As a sidenote, one has to feel for Matthew Broderick: to many (including me) he’ll never be anyone other than Ferris Bueller.

Dannon/Oikos – “The Tease”

A dark horse choice, I know. But there’s just something viscerally satisfying about this ad, from Dannon’s Oikos brand, locked in a tough battle with Fage for Greek yogurt supremacy. I think Shelley put it best: last night, she e-mailed me and said “Who among us hasn’t wanted to head butt John Stamos at one time or another?” Who among us, indeed.

Worst Ads

GoDaddy – All of Them

We don’t have the space to post every GoDaddy ad, but here’s a fairly representative one. They deliver a pretty commodified web service, and as such are pretty marketing and advertising-driven – so I’m assuming they know something I don’t, and that these titillating ads actually work on some level. I suppose, then, that my disappointment is more that they dowork, and what that says about my fellow men.

Chrysler – Halftime in America

I have two gripes with this ad. The first is the same as the complaint I had about last year’s similar spot, featuring Eminiem: I don’t think the ad is properly targeted to anyone; while I admire the sentiment, I don’t like the chip-on-the-shoulder tone; and I don’t think people buy big, expensive things like cars – especially in this economic environment – on sentiment alone. I think folks have it pretty hard in most places, and the “we have it harder than you” stuff is off-putting. I understand that others feel differently (as our Iconoculture colleagues do) and that Chrysler must have some good data supporting their decision to buy another extended spot this year; they certainly got great mileage out of the last campaign. In other words: as a piece of dramatic film, it’s quite good; but as a vehicle for selling cars – I’m not so sure.

The second gripe is more operational: notice how we haven’t embedded the video? The company must not have gotten its permissions straight beforehand, as the video was taken down from YouTube earlier this morning. They knew they were going to get massive post-game play for the ad, and I’m shocked that all the legal ducks weren’t in a row so that folks could play it again this morning.

H&M – David Beckham Bodywear

So much wrong with this one. First, who thought it would be appropriate to feature a near-naked Beckham as a pitchman in a male-dominated event like this one? Second, why is H&M – a fairly niche brand focused on affordable hipster clothes – advertising during the Super Bowl, anyway? The reaction at the Super Bowl party I attended was one of palpable awkwardness, and we were a pretty well-balanced crowd from a gender perspective.

B2B marketers typically don’t get to participate in the Super Bowl hoopla – at least, not in the same way that their B2C colleagues do. There are only a few kinds of B2B products that lend themselves to the Super Bowl treatment – in recent years, they’ve tended to be tech products, for instance – and so B2B marketing organizations typically slog ahead, doing the things they do best, instead of creating glitzy ads for mass audiences.

But if you’ve got the budget for it, there’s a smart way that Super Bowl ads can fit into B2B marketing plans. Recall that, in last year’s research project for B2B marketers, we talked about the “mid-funnel” – that grey area between awareness and purchase that, increasingly, it’s Marketing’s job to own:

That area – the second half of customers’ information-gathering process and the first half of the evaluation process – is currently an area not covered well by Marketing and Sales organizations, and it’s a prime vacuum for what we in a B2C context might call branding – the provision of well-designed mental shortcuts that address areas of customer need. In the B2B space, those needs tend to be more practical. “I need a blade server that won’t burst into flames during key processes” is something you might hear from a target of B2B branding, while a B2C consumer would say – perhaps subconsciously – “I need a potato chip that makes me feel young and vital again.” But the needs of business buyers are needs nonetheless – and they’re complex and subject to heuristics that simplify the buying process.

How might a B2B Super Bowl ad work in an empty mid-funnel world? Let’s look at last year’s ad for Chatter.com, Salesforce’s enterprise social media platform:

There’s an emotional message here: the cloud, as embodied by Chatter, is a futuristic, quasi-magical solution for keeping far-flung, overworked teams on the same page. But emotions typically aren’t enough to justify a B2B purchase, one that typically has to be worked through a committee or a procurement department. Pairing the emotional message with one tailored for the four profiles of B2B buyers yields functional and emotional differentiation, and consistently using the symbols of the original ad allows marketers to re-invoke the emotional cue whenever they’d like. In other words, the advertisement serves as both the opening salvo for a campaign – driving customers into the wide end of the funnel – but also as a template for more functional, tailored messaging as the funnel narrows.

Now, Chatter hasn’t done that. The original ad was not well received by pundits, and perhaps it wasn’t well-liked by customers, either. (Using the Black-Eyed Peas, who later turned in a sub-par halftime performance, probably didn’t help). But one could imagine a successful campaign along these lines.

MLC members, what do you think about B2B ads in a Super Bowl setting? Let us know in the comments.

Usually, the Super Bowl features some cool ads, some interesting new takes on long-standing brands – oh, and right, a football game. But this year, I think we saw a big step towards mobile and digital integration with traditional TV advertising – and, depending on the results, it’s a shift that could make brand extension onto the second screen most folks have in their pockets a more permanent part of the advertising landscape.

The Giants won the game, but we think mobile won the event. Here’s why: Read More »

It’s officially 2012, and, again this year, we’re hearing “2012 is the year of mobile commerce“. We heard it in 2011 too. Did we hear it in 2010? Yep. In fact, as far back as 2007, pundits and observers have been prophesizing that the days of whipping out our phones to pay for all sorts of retail sundries are just around the corner.

First, I think it’s probably important to get some definitions right. As the Forbes link above says, I think it’s fair to say that mobile-enabled e-commerce does not equal mobile commerce, at least strictly speaking. When you buy a book from Amazon on your iPad, you’re not engaging in mobile commerce per se – you’re using an e-commerce portal adapted for your mobile device. “Mobile commerce” is probably best described as shopping that takes advantage of unique properties of mobile devices.

So, why doesn’t it ever seem to happen – and when it does, why does the development in the space seem to happen so slowly? Read More »

At MLC, we’ve been harping on innovation for a few years now – why its important for marketers to be active participants – if not leaders – in the innovation process, bringing to bear important consumer perspectives that only they can offer. We hope you were listening, because for many industries, the time is coming fast where innovation won’t be a luxury but a necessity to stay afloat.

For an example, look no further than the auto industry. The recession years saw a few automakers nearly go out of business, while others, like Hyundai, Kia, and Subaru, posted double-digit increases in sales and market share – albeit in a seriously depressed market. In particular, Hyundai accomplished this by offering an excellent price-to-value proposition and with a few catchy campaigns that engendered a ton of consumer trust, like their Hyundai Assurance program – which allowed buyers to walk away from their car loans if they lost their income or were disabled during the term. Read More »

If previous “ages” of marketing could be described as eras of Big Brands, or Madison Avenue, this age of marketing can probably just as well be described as the era of New Channels – a time when one of Marketing’s principal jobs is to navigate new communications technologies and the shifting consumer behavior that results. It’s something that lies at the heart of what marketers tell us about agility – the subject of this year’s B2C research – marketers and their organizations need to be prepared for what’s next at all times.

It’s the organizational part that’s more difficult, though – people naturally get stuck in routines, are averse to change, and executives are loath to take risks on projects that have uncertain chances of success. We’ve collected our best practices in getting organizations to adapt in our Make the Case to Invest in Social Media challenge center, and most of the lessons there hold true for channels like mobile, as well.

With that in mind, we also thought we’d take a second look at an interview we did a few years back with Susan Lavington, former SVP of Marketing at USA Today. She was at USA Today during the heyday of social adaption, and led that paper – a progressive one, by print journalism standards – through a difficult transition to social.

MLC members can read the interview in its entirety.

As I’m guessing everyone is aware of by now, MLC’s B2C team is currently knee-deep in our 2012 research project. This year, we’re looking into analytics and “Big Data” – a space where there seems to be a lot of potential (and a lot of hype) but not too much in the way of best practices or frameworks for moving forward.

So we’re currently trying to tease out, exactly, what people are using analytics for, and what ultimate goals those actions feed into. When we’re on the phone with members, overwhelmingly we’re hearing that data brings enterprises closer to the consumer, leading to all sorts of better outcomes: more resonant marcomms, higher margins through more effective price discrimination, and, for some companies, better products that arise through access to protected, proprietary data assets (like Nike+).

I could imagine two ways that data might feed into customer centricity (whether it’s helping or hurting). Story number one more or less goes: we as a company had very little idea who our customers were, what they liked, how they socialized and what kind of products they bought from others that they could be buying from us. When we integrated advanced marketing analytics and unstructured data, the numbers told us more about our customers than we already knew, and we became more customer-centric.

The other story goes: we as a company had very little idea who our customers were, and therefore we integrated big data and advanced analytics. But we couldn’t choose which data to use, and our analysts and marketers got caught up in a never-ending cycle of analysis paralysis. Moreover, thinking about the consumer as an abstract concept in data led to people forgetting the importance of experience and observation. In the process, we lost sight of the softer, qualitative ways that we learned about customers, and ended up becoming less customer-centric.

Which of these is more plausible? I’m not sure, but my gut says it’s the second story. I can count the number of companies with great, consumer-apparent uses of data on my fingers and toes, and analytics vendors have bigger appetites than that; there are surely hundreds of companies out there with data on their hands of varying effectiveness.

So, we thought we’d bring the question to you. Answer the poll below to let us know how you feel about data and analytics’ role in customer-centricity. Want to add some details? Let us know in the comments section.

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If you’re a B2B marketer, you know that one of the biggest overarching trends in your work over the last few years has been the gradual complication of the sales process. Budget pressures facing business buyers, the greater availability of information via the internet, buying committees and all sorts of other roadblocks and tangles have managed to fit their way into the path between Sales and the sale.

These factors are creating the “no-man’s land” facing Marketing and Sales, one that we told you about last summer in our annual B2B research project. But they’re also making Sales’ job harder by making the process more complex: when buyers have ideas in their head that they get from internet research, or when a committee makes a purchase, rather than an individual, complex contingencies quickly develop, ones that can be hard to manage for individual reps.

Johnson Controls, an industrial controls and facilities management company, sells complex products and solutions. Its reps ran into the problem described above, and had trouble making complex sales. The company’s solution was to embrace game elements to help reps unearth critical, unarticulated customer needs that aren’t being met effectively – and, in turn, reconcile competing priorities among multiple stakeholders.

Johnson Controls first gets all the stakeholders into a room and asks them to fill out two kinds of cards: “needs cards” represent key priorities for each participant in the buying process, and “practice cards” represent the organizational actions needed to meet the needs.

Cards are then mapped onto a special gameboard developed by Johnson Controls, that graphically represents where the customer thinks critical needs are going unmet. Armed with data and benchmarks from across the customer’s segment, reps can challenge customers in the moment by comparing them to competitors.

For more, including how Johnson Controls reps balance multiple priorities among stakeholders, check out the full case, or listen to this webinar replay to see how this and other companies have revamped their needs assessment process.

With social media moving towards the maturity phase in a number of big companies, we’re finding that more and more members are looking for formal plans from their social media teams – detailed ideas about what the team will do in a channel in a given year.

That might work (and be necessary) for TV, a channel where ad buys have to be coordinated months in advance and audience preferences don’t change too much. But for social media, where channels change near-daily and audience behavior is still in flux? We think companies should be focused primarily on experimentation and flexibility – and that plans should optimize to those goals.

Our Social Media Plan on a Page will help get you there – it’s a five-step method for creating a world-class social media experimentation strategy, one that’s grounded in enterprise priorities and audience preferences. Here’s what you’ll do:

Ground strategy in business objectives. Pick – and fully understand –  your company’s 2-5 growth priorities for the year. This guards against wasting time and money by choosing projects that don’t mesh with enterprise-wide priorities.

Assess your audience dynamics. Dig deep, and understand how and why your target audience consumes social media. Make sure you have an idea of where consumption might be headed in the future by identifying your lead users and examining their behaviors.

Identify your strategic opportunities. Explore how social media can help your company accentuate its strengths, as well as meet customer needs in ways that are difficult for competitors to replicate.

Select the highest-potential experiments. Determine which near-term experiments in social media will help position your company to take advantage of longer-term strategic opportunities in social media.

Measure your social media efforts. Use a “Return on Objectives” approach to assess if and how your social media efforts are driving business results.

MLC members, you can download the full Social Media Plan on a Page template and get started on your social plan today.