Wide Angle

If your company is like mine, the beginning of the fiscal year (now, for most of us) is when we’re thinking about project portfolios and operating plans – and, it’s the one time we managers have to focus on our direct reports’ development plans.  Setting development goals for staff while creating these “IDPs” (as we call them: “individual development plans”) is easy for some functions. Sales has revenue goals. Procurement has cost-cutting goals. But for marketing, setting development goals – and understanding the underlying functional competencies marketing staffers need to develop (and then creating action plans that line up to their current projects) – can be a little tricky. Why? Read More »

Tired of playing 20 questions with your legal team?  Let Lizzie help.

As Digital Web Lead at Allstate Insurance, Lizzie Schreier has faced her share of legal battles.  After jumping through hoops to persuade Allstate’s legal team to embrace (or at least accept) social media, she’s ready to share her key lessons learned. 

Here’s her advice on how you can make the marketing / legal partnership a little less painful: Read More »

Frank Sinatra famously crooned that love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage.  Little did he know that, in an ironic bit of pop culture repurposing, the song would come to signify the often hostile—though ultimately committed—relationship between Peggy and Al Bundy in the TV sitcom Married … With Children.

Dysfunctional?  Yes.   Mutually dependent?  Absolutely.

The same can be said of Sales and Marketing.  The two functions often butt heads behind closed doors, but their cooperation and interconnectedness is necessary to achieve key business objectives.  Of course, getting the two groups on the same page is often easier said than done.  We typically see breakdowns in the following areas: Read More »

Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo!, recently identified the volume of information flow as one of the largest challenges facing corporate leaders today.  In marketing, the issue is not simply one of volume but of information richness.  Well beyond the reams of rational data about customer click-thru rates, viewing behavior, etc., the emotion and human insight embedded in unstructured information available via social media (e.g., dialogues, comments, ratings) elevates this challenge for marketers above volume alone.  Read More »

It’s that time of year again – predictions and “what’s in/what’s out” lists.  Thought I’d jump onto the bandwagon by sharing some of the themes we’re hearing from leading B2C marketers as we ask them “what’s next?” for marketing.  Here are a few of the more provocative ways F1000 executives think your job is likely to change in the decade ahead. Read More »

As followers of the Chinese Zodiac prepare to usher in the year of the tiger, marketers appear to be ushering in the year of the re-org.  Having seen their markets soften, crumble, and begin to show signs of life—all in the last 18 months—marketing leaders are rethinking the organizations they’ve built.  Even if the basic structures we’ve built appear to be viable, new segments need to be addressed and  new teams need to be formed to address markets that look very different from the ones that we faced just two or three years ago.    

Unfortunately, many of the marketing reorganizations that will kick off in 2010 will take a year or two to implement.  Right around the time that key players settle into their new roles, teams start to gel, and new processes start to fire on all cylinders, market conditions will have changed, and it will be time to start all over again.  Read More »

In the increasingly peer-centric landscape sparked by recent excitement (and anxiety!) around social media, we find ourselves with a new operating challenge: Marketing and Communications functions find themselves at odds with (or just driving different objectives from) many of their peer functions around the corporation.

We’ve all spent too much time talking about why social media matters, and even how to exploit its power, so let me skip over that well-worn path.

Inside the enterprise, I see a culture change afoot.  As companies try to maximize their ability to capture customer voice and shape product, to drive brand and product awareness, to leverage advocacy, they are further extending themselves out beyond the “safe” boundaries of their corporate walls.  We know that social media is by nature unstructured, unreliable, and, at its most powerful, deeply unpredictable. Read More »

I’m on United 7094 to Chicago, thinking through a barrage of B2B member conversations last week that all led back to a seemingly intractable problem – the proper structure, interface, and (potential) integration of Marketing and Sales. B2B marketers have long had an inferiority complex relative to their B2C brethren, to which B2B folk reply, ‘if you had Sales to deal with, you’d feel equally humiliated.’ Touché.

Why the conflict? Why the insistence on separate spheres of influence? Why all the talk and no walk? Over the past two years, MLC members have seen quantitative research demonstrating the necessity of marketing and sales partnership, whether it be in differentiating the purchase experience to drive loyalty, or crafting a unique customer experience to boost preference. Here’s what I’m hearing as the stumbling blocks to full partnership and better business results: Read More »