Wide Angle

Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, Concourse D and I’m eating Sbarro, drinking a Coke, and overlooking flag carriers from the Netherlands, France, Italy, and the UK. The voice from above announces flight information in three languages – Dutch, English, and the language of the country’s destination. The passengers next to me are listening to iPods singing American pop, heading for Africa.

Whither globalization? I beg to differ.

There was a bit of consternation at the Davos confab earlier this year as to whether the era of globalization was the root cause of the global financial meltdown, and as a result, perhaps it was time to roll back some of that interconnectedness. Nicolas Sarkozy was particularly pungent in his argument to this effect. Granted, globalization certainly hastened the onset of recessionary tendencies the world over; international capital flows have only increased since the Asia financial crisis of the late 1990s sent a minor shock wave through the system. Read More »

Advance warning: this post will likely open more doors than it closes. But they are important doors that need opening, especially if they aren’t already. Haniel Lynn pushed the first one open with his earlier post, asking if Marketing could foment a corporate cultural revolution through social media. Member conversations I’ve had over the past week have demonstrated there is a root-cause question that must come first – where does Marketing fit in the organization? Better yet, where should it? Read More »

Marketers would be remiss to ignore the U.S. political events of the past week. Scott Brown’s upset victory in Massachusetts’ Senate race removed the air of inevitability from health care reform. President Obama’s plan for a tax on the largest financial institutions sent the Dow plummeting 5% across three sessions. As December home resale data proved less than stellar, the administration announced a wind-down of federal support for mortgage rates – potentially a double blow to that sector’s recovery. Let me back up: why should marketers care?

Political affiliations aside, government touches more elements of our consumer-driven economy than ever before. One policy change here, another there, ripples through the system with unprecedented speed (like perhaps, an unintended consequence). If banks feel less wealthy as a result of taxation and more limited mortgage support, the less likely they are to expand credit. Tighter credit, as we saw vividly in the fourth quarter of 2008, leads to lower business investment and greater consumer savings – starting another cycle of money removed from our economy exactly at the time it needs capital injected.

Senior leadership teams don’t want excuses, though. After two years of stumbles, most executives look to 2010 for growth. Yet the number of extraneous variables affecting that potential growth is incredibly high, hence marketers’ collective uncertainty. Just take several possible scenarios that could happen across 2010: Read More »

One of the themes we’re picking up from Council members is a reckoning that new product development and innovation approaches are badly in need of an overhaul.  What’s driving it?  Here’s what we’ve heard from marketers at Global 2000-sized companies: 

• The recession has fundamentally recast customers’ hierarchy of needs, priorities and in some cases core values, giving rise to the “New Normal” customer
• The “Good Enough Revolution” (an important read) has demonstrated that, in many categories, the returns curve on adding new features has flattened or even inverted
• The increasing participation of our target audiences in digital and social media has presented an opportunity to dramatically reduce innovation cycle time
• The source of consumption growth is shifting to BRIC countries, which is putting more pressure on innovation processes to produce discontinuous innovation for those markets Read More »

After my gloomy 2009 retrospective, I thought I’d try for a cheery 2010 prognostication. Then I looked at the unemployment rate, continued declines in construction spending, the looming bust of commercial real estate and quickly recalled why I’m a self-described realist (others call it cynic, take your pick).

So how about an even-handed assessment of things to watch for in 2010? Even the cynic can provide that.  Here are three big macroeconomic and marketing-specific trends every marketer should follow in earnest: Read More »

Someone smarter than me has surely waxed poetic on the virtue of looking to the past to prepare for the future.  Yet if 2009 taught marketers anything, it is that the past is no predictor or guarantee of future performance.  Heraclitus figured it out long ago – the only constant is change.  2009 was the year of assumption upheaval, of predictable patterns overturned by equally unpredictable economic conditions.  How about a few examples? Read More »

The economic outlook has forced most marketers to make some of the toughest resourcing decisions of their professional lives. But this is all going to get easier next year, right? Not really. Findings from our 2009 Marketing Investment Benchmarks Survey reveals that marketers do not expect their companies to loosen their purse strings in 2010.

Results from our tenth annual survey show that in 2009, spend on channels conducive to driving consideration (website, social media, direct mail, PR) held flat or grew; while spend on channels that primarily drive awareness (broadcast, print, online display ads) declined in comparison to 2008. The question we asked was what is driving this trend? Read More »

In recent posts, perhaps I’ve been a little sour on marketers’ efforts to emerge from the economic doldrums to provide growth for their businesses in 2010 and beyond. One more sour point, and then I promise to make some lemonade. Fifty percent of the share you lose to private label this year, you will never regain. Stick with me, you optimists – our research shows if your brand can use the recession to jump into the top quartile in your industry, you’ll likely retain that premium position for at least three years.

 Here’s the challenge I’m seeing in recent client meetings, from financial services looking to recover to media companies searching for identity. The single biggest asset we have as marketers is also the likeliest thing we de-emphasized as budgets were slashed in the past 18 months: our brands.  Read More »

I sense an eerie (and I think false) sense of security from marketers as they enter 2010 planning, that the worst is behind us, we can forecast 1-2% GDP growth for the next 12 months, and the Fed has the financial crisis under control. 

After meeting with a regional retail bank, a Fortune 500 CPG company, and a host of planning executives last week, I’m almost frightened by the sense of stability I see in 2010 plans.  The picture is not rosy, certainly, but it assumes stability.  We seem to have checked any Black Swan thinking at the door.  How the economy recovers, its precise trajectory, and changes in consumer behavior are far more volatile than the stability many marketers are putting into their plans.  And let’s be honest – too many of us leave those plans on the shelf for 12 months without revision. Read More »

As the economy faltered late last year, a lot of the marketers we work with started rethinking how important their brands were to consumers. With less money to spend, less access to credit, and less confidence in the U.S. economy, consumers were rethinking when and where they spent every dollar. The question marketers asked us in response was simple: “how do I become a brand consumers can’t do without?”

After a year or so of digging, we learned a very simple but compelling thing about consumer loyalty: it’s probably not you they’re loyal to in the end. While most marketers think their brands have loyal consumers, what they really have are habit-driven consumers—and when a shock occurs to a consumer’s economic reality, it probably doesn’t take much to break their “habit” with your brand. Read More »