Wide Angle

Marketing is about creativity, punchy language, and ad campaigns, right?  Not in social media. This post summarizes 5 outdated marketing beliefs and offers quick tips for adapting to the new world of ‘unmarketing.’ Read More »

What are the limits of the Nature vs Nurture debate?  Was I really a St. Louis Cardinals fan at birth?  (of course).  One friend of mine seems predisposed towards the Jersey Shore.  Is it in her nature?  (well, she is from New Jersey).

I’ve even heard echoes of the debate when members refer to their employers:

“It’s our nature to follow very specific processes”

“Our culture hasn’t changed in 85 years”

“Our leadership believes that our go-to-market strategy from 2002 is still relevant”

“Our brand personality mirrors one thing: our company’s history”

In other words, some members claim that Nature trumps Nurture.  That the innate qualities of a firm’s culture, leadership, brand personality and politics (Nature) eclipse the impact of externalities and experiences (Nurture). Read More »

I met with a retail-industry member last week that’s in the midst of growing one of their businesses from a regional brand focused on Latin America to a global brand with a strong footprint in the US and the UK.  As we talked about what it will take to enter a crowded retail space, our member expressed it this way, “we need to be very clear what are our brand standards and what are our brand standouts.”

I loved the simplicity of the statement and the depth of the insight. Given the increasing prevalence of mobile/social/location technologies like Foursquare, it can be awfully tough for retailers to differentiate, so the customer experience has never been more important.  Do you know the difference between your brand standards and your brand standouts?  If you are like most businesses, the truthful answer is “no”. Read More »

Often times in an organizational structure, the approval chain of command can be quite unclear.  Logically, the CEO would make all the executive decisions, and the CMO would sign off on all marketing decisions.  But is it really efficient or even necessary for the big cheese to approve everything the company makes in his or her respected department?  Seeing as there are more than likely bigger fish to fry, it probably isn’t. 

Questions about organization structure are very popular in our recently-launched Marketing Org & Ops Forum, where one executive question asks, “What type of communications get what type of approval?”

Read More »

The US is in a kind of tough place right now. Let’s see: unemployment is hovering around 10%, not only idling millions of workers but keeping millions more stuck in jobs they don’t like; it’s shaping up to be the hottest summer on record in many parts of the country; and, to top it all off, traffic is getting worse as local governments run out of money to invest in public transit and new roads. Add these (and many, many other) factors up, and it’s no secret why your average American is a little on edge these days.

So when JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater made a dramatic exit from his job on Tuesday, delivering an expletive-laced tirade to passengers over the intercom before grabbing a beer from the service cart and sliding down the plane’s emergency chute, it wasn’t surprising when he became something of a cause celebre. A Facebook fan group established after the news broke on Tuesday now has nearly 200,000 fans, and there’s talk of a legal defense fund (Slater was cited for public endangerment). Slater has been hounded by reporters and paparazzi since being released on bond, and his relatives have made the talk-show rounds. Read More »

(Note: This is Part 2 of a 4-part series on marketing planning. Part 1, “Making the Case for Higher Spend“,  can be found here. Check back here every Wednesday in August for a new installment!)

B2B marketing organizations today are emphasizing the transfer of ideas to customers (just consider the rise of terms like “thought leadership”, “consultative selling” or “solutions”).  This makes sense – done right, an insight-based approach is one of the few ways suppliers can avert pure price-based competition. Additionally, our research shows that insight is valued by customers in the long term.  “Teaching” activities such as offering unique perspectives on the market or helping the customer navigate alternatives strongly predict loyalty.

It follows that marketing plans this year should have a strong insight orientation.  Naturally the marketing plan will align to broader organizational strategy, but the marketing objectives that support company strategy should be grounded in delivering insight that changes customers’ valuation of your offering. Read More »

Ah, the good old United States of America. Home of mom, baseball, apple pie, the Mustang and the Corvette. It stands to reason that the most auto-dense country in the world would be leading the charge of automotive innovation, and we covered some of the innovative products coming from domestic manufacturers here.

But that’s not stopping the rest of the world from employing their resources to make car ownership easier, cheaper and greener. Our friends at Iconoculture have rounded up some of the best examples of how car ownership is changing throughout the world. Read More »

WD-40, the famed degreasing and rust-preventing agent, is widely known for its versatility.  As the story goes, it was originally designed and marketed in the aerospace industry to aid in airplane maintenance. But through the years, thousands of new applications were found and problems solved.  Everything from lubricating door-hinges to de-squeaking bedsprings to freeing tongues stuck to frozen metal in wintertime.  The value of a can of WD-40 has undoubtedly increased in the mind of consumers as its perceived utility increased.

The reality is, most B2B companies are much more capable of doing something very similar.  One example that we’ve found is from Dow Chemical.  Like many B2B companies, Dow has a broad array of products and services and interacts with their customers in many different ways.  But, through surveys and conversations with their sales reps, they’ve found that there are often pockets of customers within every customers segment that tend to value a particular part of Dow’s offer far more than other customers in the same segment. Read More »

Here in Washington, the community is abuzz with news that Wikileaks, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing whistleblowers a safe place to publish sensitive information, has released a gargantuan store of documents related to the war in Afghanistan. The documents paint a picture that is decidedly at odds with more official portrayals of the war.

The same day, the Library of Congress’ Copyright Office determined that “jailbreaking” the iPhone – a process that allows users to access apps not available in Apple’s App Store – does not violate copyright laws. Apple contends that jailbreaking can harm the phone’s user experience, and leave it vulnerable to viruses; the company voids warranties of jailbroken phones. The Copyright Office, however, said in its ruling that jailbreaking is “innocuous at worst and beneficial at best.”

Regardless of your opinion on the war in Afghanistan, the ethics of leaking sensitive information to the public, or the use of products in ways that weren’t intended, these examples serve to illustrate one principle of the changing information economy: You are not in control. Read More »

It’s that time again – we’re spotlighting the top 5 case studies, event replays, and MLC studies as accessed by our members in the travel and leisure industries! Read More »