TUTORIAL

The Futurist CMO Magazine

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 07:24:57 +0000

There is an excitement, an energy, a buzz, that accompanies a well-managed gathering of like-minded peers that I enjoy. It’s the same reason we hang out with friends, or spend time on social media. But in person it is much more.

That’s why I wanted to put together The Futurist CMO Conclave - to bring together India’s best Magain one room, and learn from them. It was one of the founding aims of Paul Writer, the firm I set up in January 2010 after leaving my job as CMO of Wipro’s tech business. Many of you have been part of my evolution as an entrepreneur, and I am deeply grateful for that and your support of this inaugural Conclave.

Please click here to download a copy of The Futurist CMO magazine.

Importance of Technology for Marketers - Interview with Palash Nandy - Legrand

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 04:06:55 +0000

Palash Nandy is the Vice President for Marketing at Legrand India. We got his views on the use of technology for targeted communication from customers to the internal sales force. This is a part of the interview series to identify the tech savvy CMOs for the Marketing and IT Recognition - M.IT.R Top 50 list.

PW: As a marketer what would you say are your current priorities?

PN: My current priorities are to take advantage of the growth opportunities that the India growth story provides. In order to be able to do that one of the key areas to work includes new product development, building Customer Data Management & Analytics systems and a more digital and social media led communication initiative with our consumers. Additionally, it is integral to ensure a healthy link between Supply Chain and Marketing Initiatives. These initiatives if executed well could positions our organization at the forefront in our Industry.

PW: At Legrand (India) Pvt Ltd, how has technology played a role in customer acquisition or retention?

PN: We use a CRM software called Activa which is used for analyzing existing customers and identify potential customers, This helps to identify focus areas to ensure customer retention and customer acquisition. Additionally, the marketing team works very closely with the commercial controller to identify the performance (volume,value, profitability etc) of our direct customers.

PW: How has technology played a role in new product development, market expansion or other areas?

PN: Our CRM alongwith market survey plays a significant role in product development, market expansion and competitive intelligence. We also use IT extensively to systimise the process of indenting, making and distribution of marcom tools and means. It is also used for proving technical information and training to the sales team. Over and above our digital and social media communication initiatives have helped us in targeted communication with our consumers.

PW: Do you have a separate budget for the IT component of marketing? And how aligned are the marketing and IT functions in the organization?

PN: We do not have a separate IT budget per se for Marketing. We decide on the process and initiatives required for fulfilling certain objectives and then decide the most effective way to execute them. This obviously means using technology at different levels for different tasks. This defines how much we would invest on technology / IT. It function in our organization acts like an enabler for all the other functions including Marketing. Hence, its obvious that marketing and IT are well aligned.

Importance of Technology for Marketers - Interview with Abraham Alapatt - Future Generali

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 04:40:59 +0000

Abraham Alapatt is a Marketing & Brand professional with over 16 years of full-time professional experience across advertising, web-technology, brand strategy, corporate communication, PR, internal communication and media relations. We Interviewed Abraham Alapatt – Senior Vice President & Head - Brand & Corporate Communication - Future Generali India Life Insurance & Future Generali India Insurance as par of our ongoing series on importance of technology for marketers. Here are the excerpts from the Q&A.

PW: As a marketer what would you say are your current priorities?

AA: In this current marketing environment, my priorities include Customer Data Management & Analytics, fostering a Customer Self Service Attitude and promoting growth of our organization’s e-commerce in volume, value and quality of service.

PW: At Future Generali India, how has technology played a role in customer acquisition or retention?

AA: Our portal www.futuregenerali.in allows customers to renew, service and buy life & general insurance policies online. The portal delivers instant, secure transactions and on-the-fly document generation. In just over a year, we have served over 20,000 customers and generated over Rs. 20 Cr. of GWP via the portal.

We also use SEO/SEM campaigns targeted at customer segments to solicit online evaluation/purchase. We are encouraging customers to renew online because it is simpler, instant and convenient for both the customer and us to do this. We also use cutting-edge technology to offer full service presence at over 70 Big Bazaars across the country through our Mallassurance™ desks - to customers to either service their policies, renew or buy our special OTC insurance products. Customers can get their policy document generated at the outlet and can pay at the cash counter along with their other purchases.

PW: How has technology played a role in new product development, market expansion or other areas?

AA: Following our success in the online space, we are dedicating increased focus on developing all our retail products with a view to offer them online as well. In the case of Life insurance, we offer both a competitive Term Plan - Future Generali Smart Life and a unique monthly-pay ULIP that is very much like a Mutual Fund SIP, called Future Generali Select Insurance Plan.

On the General Insurance front, we offer competitive Personal Accident, Travel and Health Plans currently, and will soon be going live with Motor policies renewal and sales online. We have also filed an extremely attractive "online-only" Health Plan and are awaiting approval from the regulator soon.

PW: Do you have a separate budget for the IT component of marketing? And how aligned are the marketing and IT functions in the organization?

AA: Other than our robust, dedicated IT budget, we allocate about 8% of our Marketing budget to digital/online marketing efforts. These typically include SEO/SEM efforts, traditional and innovative forms of banner advertising online as well as via social media investments (including category-brand integrated games developed for our Facebook™ followers) to seed the brand and increase our share of mind in an evolving target customer segment.

Our IT and Marketing efforts are fully aligned and our IT team works with our external partners and agencies to ensure front & back end synchronization and optimization.

About Abraham Alapatt: He has worked with leading advertising agencies, internet/web solution start-ups, asset management companies (mutual funds), banks and insurance companies. Abraham is also a part-time writer/columnist and his articles, opinions and interviews feature in various Brand & Marketing forums, portals and publications. Abraham is also one of only eight “Futurist CMO” Hall of Fame inductees from across India for 2011-12. The CMO Hall of Fame program is intended to recognize senior marketers who are developing and enhancing the marketing eco-system in India and is by invitation only.

Importance of Technology for Marketers - Interview with Arun Malkani - Birla Sun Life

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 03:07:24 +0000

Arun Malkani is the Chief Marketing Officer for Birla Sun Life Insurance Co. Ltd (BSLI) responsible for determining and defining the marketing strategy and initiatives of the company and its offerings. He is also a member of the Marketing Council of the Aditya Birla Financial Services Group. Paul Writer in its hunt for tech savvy CMOs spoke to him about his views on technology in marketing. Here are the excerpts

PW: As a marketer what would you say are your current priorities?

AM: Amongst my current priorities for this year are Customer Data Management & Analytics, Social Media & Digital Marketing and revamping our company’s website.

PW: At Birla Sun Life Insurance Co. Ltd, how has technology played a role in customer acquisition or retention?

AM: Our entire customer cross-sell and upsell program and analytics marketing is based on statistical models and the use of technology and systems. Customers are also periodically communicated with on offers and relationship initiatives through database management based on technology. They are also able to make premium payments and do a number of other transactions online at their convenience. This reduces pressure on physical branches and personnel and gives the customer the opportunity to interact/transact at his will and time.

Web based analytics using relevant tools is also integral to both acquisition and retention initiatives by the organization. Overall, technology has really added teeth to our marketing initiatives and is playing and will continue to play a very integral role in the marketing initiatives in my organization.

PW: How has technology played a role in new product development, market expansion or other areas?

AM: Accelerating opportunities to leverage and adopt technology is the key to long-term business growth and productivity. Technology will serve as the connect between the organization and the opportunities and solutions they require to grow and compete in the global marketplace. Technology, in partnership with other key organizational functions such as marketing, product and sales, will develop the tools and processes required to bring about innovative new product and process improvement opportunities adapted to the needs of customers.

Additionally, technology will make available a range of products and assistance services to help the company rapidly move new product opportunities into production and out into the market. In fact, the internet has the potential to become a full fledged alternative channel even in a complex product category like insurance. This will lead to simplification of the product and hence much greater opportunities of reaching out to lesser financially savvy customers.

PW: Do you have a separate budget for the IT component of marketing? And how aligned are the marketing and IT functions in the organization?

AM : IT is integral to most functions within the organisation and marketing is one of the chief users of technology. In fact IT as a function within its budget provides for marketing driven technology initiatives.

Both IT and marketing are very aligned and are jointly taking forward a number of large organizational initiatives

About Arun Malkani: Arun has done his Masters in Management Studies (specialising in Marketing) from Mumbai University and has worked experience with leading MNC and Indian private sector organizations, primarily in the banking and financial services industry. He has been on the panel of judges for the Effies Awards of the Ad Club, Mumbai. He is also an occasional guest lecturer on marketing at management institutes.

Importance of Technology for Marketers - Interview with Anshu Bagai - Tupperware

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 03:11:57 +0000

Anshu Bagai currently heads Marketing at Tupperware where he is responsible for designing and implementing strategic initiatives to drive growth in India. This includes developing India specific Products, Market Research, Brand Management, Incentive & Loyalty programs, Events and Institutional alliances.

Here are his views on the importance of technology for the modern marketer in a Q&A with Paul Writer. Read all about it…

PW: How important is technology for the success of the modern marketer?

AB: We are currently going through a phase of rapid change in India. Internet penetration is expected to reach 300 million in 3-5 yrs. Social Media is allowing connections between people in a way that has never happened in human history before. Trends are spreading faster, there is plethora of information available on the touch of a button and there are no boundaries left between countries.

This has made it possible for brands to reach out to consumers directly with targeted messages. Thus we are moving from an era of mass media monologue to a dialogue with consumers. The new age consumer too will demand and expect the modern marketer to reach out to his specific individual needs.

Further for most industries in India e-commerce is currently a small part of their business. However with increasing internet penetration and standardization across various product categories, e-commerce will soon become a game changer.

These changes have opened up opportunities for marketers to create interactive brand experiences for consumers. However it will require a lot of adjustment from them to marry Marketing with Technology. So I would say we can no longer think of Marketing in isolation from Technology.

PW: What are your current marketing priorities & how does that translate to technology?

AB: Being a direct selling company we rely entirely on community selling by independent lady dealers. It is essential for us to build interactive communities that share a healthy dialogue. Thus social media was a logical extension of our business model. Our Facebook page has reached a fan base of about 3 lakhs in about 10 months, which is the highest in our industry.

India’s demographics are getting younger. Thus it is imperative for every brand to develop a younger personality in order to connect with the consumers of tomorrow. So revamping the website and even making apps for smart phones is high on our priorities.

PW: In your organization how has technology played a role in customer acquisition or retention?

AB: In our business we have two sets of target audience- one is the end consumer who buys and uses our product and the second is the independent lady dealers who sell the product. These dealers are attached to our Distributors and customized software helps us acquire, track and retain them. We regularly develop incentive programs to motivate the dealers to do better in their business. Technology helps us maintain the data of active and inactive dealers and helps us come up with more relevant promotions for them. It also helps us gauge the impact of our existing promotions. With a vast network across India, such data is priceless for us to keep our sales growing and only through technology can we monitor it on a weekly basis.

For the end consumers, we run on a lean non-stocking model for the Distributors. So our entire model is dependent on technology. When the end consumer orders a product the order needs to be entered in the system by the Distributor and tracked till it is fulfilled. In this chain of operations, we have to ensure customer delight by timely and accurate delivery. Technology ensures that this model works successful.

So such a vast community of consumers and dealers can only be kept together through effective use of technology that facilitates smooth communications.

PW: How has technology played a role in new product development, market expansion or other areas?

AB: We rely heavily on market research to generate insights into the need-gaps in the market and our consumers’ preferences. Before the launch of any product or category it is extensive use of technology in MR that helps us forecast sales and make important decisions.

Globally Tupperware has over 4,000 products and the kitty only keeps increasing. We have an extensive global data-base that gives us easy access to all necessary information about all of our global SKUs that helps us determine which of them would be suitable for India.

PW: Would you say the level of collaboration between the CMO and CIO in your organization was:

AB: As I mentioned earlier, we are a company that runs on a lean non-stocking weekly business model so technology, marketing and operations work very closely for effective performance. In fact within the Marketing function we have a sub-function titled ‘Marketing Systems’ that has a dotted line reporting to the CIO. This how closely our CIO and CMO work

About Anshu Bagai - A career spanning 19 years has given Anshu opportunity to work across industries with hands-on Marketing and Sales experience.

He was responsible for making Sodexho vouchers a widely recognized brand and building the Sodexho retail network to a record 8,000. Prior to Sodexho, Anshu was part of the start-up team at De Beers and was responsible for innovative Marketing and Sales programs which positioned the brand at the top-of-league in the highly competitive jewellery market. As a Brand Manager at De Beers, he launched Nakshatra which was the first brand in the jewellery industry. Anshu is a Graduate in Electronics and Communications from Delhi College of Engineering, Delhi University and a MBA in Marketing from NMIMS, Mumbai

Importance of Technology for Marketers - Interview with Chandrashekar Pitre - DHL

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 06:36:47 +0000

Chandrashekhar Pitre is the Senior Director Marketing - South Asia, DHL Express where he is responsible for the entire spectrum of DHL Express’s marketing, advertising, promotional and communications activities in South Asia. He is also responsible for the development and implementation of marketing plans that will play a key role in enhancing the market share for DHL Express in the region.

Technology plays a major role in DHL’s marketing plan and here are the excerpts from the interview with him as part of the series on Tech savvy CMOs

PW: As a marketer what would you say are your current priorities?

CP: Justifying Return-on-Marketing-Investments by opting selected measurement techniques that help drive specific business objectives. At the same time provide our customers with unique value propositions that last longer. Main areas of focus in this current marketing year should include particular attention to Customer Data Management & Analytics and Social Media & Digital Communication. Additionally, a Customer Self Service attitude should be developed to increase online dependency. Finally, New Product Development and e-Commerce should be an ongoing investment.

PW: At DHL Express, how has technology played a role in customer acquisition or retention?

CP: Technology has played a pivotal role as e-Commerce applications enable daily transactions to be completed faster and error free (if any). Applications like SMS/WAP ensure timely updates providing customers real-time updates and accessibility anytime anywhere giving DHL an edge over competition. As part of many firsts to our credit DHL Express India also was the first to introduce India’s first and only 24-hour customer service call centre in the Express industry.

Multiple Tracking Options: DHL’s online tracking is the fastest way to find out where your shipment is. There is now no need to call Customer Service numbers when we can offer you real-time details of your shipment. The call is answered in three rings. Our back-up Customer Contact Centre in Chennai makes sure that the customer gets un-interrupted service all the time, even in case of emergencies.

PW: How has technology played a role in new product development, market expansion or other areas?

CP: Technologies like Scanning Solutions, TCL, Smart Truck ensure customized solutions which creates a need of new products and markets that directly contribute to market and business expansions owing to their highly intrinsic nature as per customer requirements.

To start with the Online Scanners (Motorola 9596 series of PDA) which is designed to talk to customer services and operations systems parellely – where once a booking is captured in customer services application (CSV – Cyber Services) based on the courier’s area of operation receives the fresh request within three to five mins of registration and courier upon accepting the request whenever courier collects the parcel from customer the event is captured and transferred back to track and trace server within three to five mins giving next to real time visibility to the end customer. The same technology is used when the courier is out for delivering a parcel and based on the timing of the event the information travels instantly to the backend systems within five mins and the same is visible to the entire world through DHL’s Track and Trace.

Customs clearance is considered to be a tedious process across the globe and where the need of paperwork for dutiable shipment plays a crucial role at the time of both the export and import clearance – this is where the imaging solution of DHL namely CIA (Clear In Air) comes into picture wherein the paperwork are scanned flight-wise at origin and destination within a minutes of image scanning is able to download the images and file the documents for pre-clearance – this clearly saves six to 12 hours of clearance time thereby gives us a clear edge over all the other competitors.

Last but not the least the SMART TRUCK solution, a technologically advance solution wherein for huge volume / remote area and higher cut-off demanding customers – a vehicle equipped with GPRS connectivity having capability of enabling the couriers of performing data capture / re-weighing / imaging while on move and thereby reducing the processing time in facility and clearly allowing the customer to have late cut-off’s – also this vehicle’s location can be tracked using map’s thereby the back office can also plan their processing activities accordingly.

PW: Do you have a separate budget for the IT component of marketing? And how aligned are the marketing and IT functions in the organization?

CP: Yes indeed we do have budget for IT Components as in today’s scenario any marketing plan would be incomplete if it does not have a space for IT in it. We at DHL believe marketing decisions depend upon IT, and IT depends upon marketing decisions. The two are interdependent. Decisions that are made in marketing are based upon information provided by IT, and systems that are developed by IT are based upon requirements provided by marketers.

About Chandrashekar Pitre – He has over 15 years of experience in the banking industry. Prior to DCB, he was with leading foreign and private sector banks like ANZ Grindlays, Commerzbank and ICICI. His extensive experience is ideally suited to meet the challenges and opportunities that the DHL brand will experience over the coming years to retain its current number one position in South Asia.

Importance of Technology for Marketers - Interview with Sharmili Rajput - Oriflame

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 06:55:20 +0000

Sharmili Rajput is the National Marketing Director for Oriflame India and as part of our series on importance of Technology for Marketers we spoke to Sharmili on how technology has made them connect with their consumers and consultants in different and interesting ways. Read on

PW: As a marketer what would you say are your current priorities?

SR: At this moment, a marketer’s priorities should include enhancement of Social Media & Digital Communications as well as investing in new product development. Furthermore, focus should be drawn to E-commerce.

PW: At Oriflame India, how has technology played a role in customer acquisition or retention?

SR: We launched our new website two years back and today our online ordering share is over 90%. Our consultants have functionality to see their invoices; outstanding payments of their network, business points they have earned and report of their complete business setup.

We also have many applications for iPhone like Sun Coach which helps you to get the most out of the summer weather. There is another iPhone application that will take your make-up to a new level and turn it into your one stop shop for make-up tips, beautiful new looks and advice on making the most out of your Oriflame products.

So whether you are looking for that new look or help with that final touch, the beauty partner speaks out and tells all the secrets. We also have iPad application for Catalogues for our consultants.

PW: How has technology played a role in new product development, market expansion or other areas?

SR: Oriflame India made its foray into Social Media in 2011. With campaigns like 'Make That Change' and 'Dare To Be', we have been fairly successful in reaching out to desired segments of the market.

'Dare To Be' India Facebook Fanpage helped us to connect with the youth. Various applications & contests received very good response. 'Make That Change' was promoted as a grooming channel. Also, Oriflame India Fanpage enabled us to listen to what our consultants are saying and turn marketing into relationships and hence make the brand more human. In fact, our consultants interact with each other resulting in a fair amount of brand evangelism. The next step would be to launch eCatalogue on our website. Our products will be available online for everyone to buy which solves the problem of availability. This will be a first of its kind initiative among direct selling industry.

With 45 years of beauty expertise, Oriflame products are developed and manufactured based on stringent quality norms. The products are tested with independent bodies for unbiased claims and not tested on animals. In our pursuit to extend the best products, we give due emphasis on the packaging as well. Towards achieving this goal, Oriflame strives to package its products in recyclable packaging which is safe to the environment.

PW: Do you have a separate budget for the IT component of marketing? And how aligned are the marketing and IT functions in the organization?

SR: Yes, we have a significant part of our marketing budget that is kept for Digital media. Online is a very integral part of our business. Like I mentioned before, today our online ordering share is over 90%. We keep special focus on social media, iPad applications and online ordering.

About Sharmili Rajput - Sharmili brings with her a rich experience of over 15 years in marketing and brand building. Prior to her appointment at Oriflame, she has been associated with brands like ABN Amro Bank, Tissot watches, World Gold Council, Knorr Soups et al. She has to her credit, creation and management of various marketing activities for brand promotion, increase in sales and volumes of businesses and strategic positioning of brands and sub-brands.

Importance of Technology for Marketers - Interview with IDBI Bank

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 03:12:26 +0000

As part of our series on importance of technology for marketers and our hunt for the M.IT.R Hot 50 list in India - Paul Writer got how IDBI Bank has used various technology and marketing media to reach out to customers and grow their presence. Here is the detailed Q&A with them

PW: How important is technology for the success of the modern marketer?

IDBI: In the current context, technology plays a vital role in every marketing campaign. In India with an increase in adoption of emerging consumer media platforms, smart phone and tablet devices and consistent growth in e-commerce transactions makes technology enabled platforms a very high-impact and cost-effective proposition for marketers.

With the roll-out of 3G services and proposed implementation of Digitization of Cable Bill will enable marketers the opportunity to innovate and engage with existing and potential customers while providing better user experiences.

Digital media marketing has become an integral part of all marketing strategies of companies who are serious about keeping in touch with their consumers. Digital media is the only medium which can connect with the end user one-on-one, allows two-way communication and reach out or target only those consumers whom the marketer would like to reach out to thus optimizing one’s market spends. Hence in today’s world, digital media and technology have become extremely critical to modern marketer and one’s marketing strategy.

PW: What are your current marketing priorities and how does that translate to technology?

IDBI: One of the focus areas in terms of consumer segments for IDBI Bank being youth, proactive and sustained usage of social media channels and digital communication are an integral part of our marketing initiatives. With focused products designed for a younger demographic such as ‘Freedom Card’ and ‘Being Me’ account utilization of digital marketing channels have helped us to expand our customer base with targeted, relevant and cost-effective campaigns. In addition to our offline activity, our marketing and brand communication involves mobile, social media channels, SEM campaigns, display advertising amongst focused marketing efforts such as e-mailers to users with active interest in these products. Apart from a sustained social media strategy, based on marketing priorities, key initiatives are actively promoted by using digital media tools as a part of a 360 degree integrated marketing campaign.

To sum it up, our marketing priority is to have an effective digital strategy which covers search, social media, display advertising and mobile.

PW: In your organization how has technology played a role in customer acquisition or retention?

IDBI: At IDBI Bank customer focus has always been a key priority. With effective utilization of digital marketing tools we are able to reach potential customers. As the depth of mobile and internet penetration in India increases, we have seen that apart from urban markets, a lot of our customers in semi-urban areas are also active users of technology and new media. This helps us reach a wider base of audiences through an integrated approach to marketing. For instance, IDBI Bank celebrated Customer Contact Week from 12-17 December 2011 across 933 braches in India along with a digital media campaign. This campaign received a phenomenal response from customers in terms of participation both online and offline apart from the positive rub-off for the corporate brand. Our in-house technology for customer inquiries and query resolution are deeply entrenched in terms of processes and call to action with respective customer service teams. This enables us to provide a seamless and hassle-free experience to customers through effective customer management.

Digital media such as mobile, social media, web portal etc were extensively utilized to promote an IDBI Bank sponsored TV quiz show named Sawaal India Ka. The youth across the country were made aware and invited to participate. Registrations for the show were taken completely online. The youth were invited to play a quiz online to qualify for the second round of the TV show.

Products such as NRI services, preferred banking were promoted in specific countries through mobile medium by enabling minute targeting of handsets.

All the campaigns undertaken through various digital vehicles ensured generation of leads which were later converted into business for the bank.

PW: How has technology played a role in new product development, market expansion or other areas?

IDBI: IDBI Bank, along with the technology partner Oracle won the Asian Banker Technology Implementation Award 2011 for Best Data and Analytics Project for implementing an analytics solution that measures and analyses interest rate and liquidity risks, integrates its performance management framework and conducts faster and robust scenario analyses. We are focused on product innovation using technology solutions that enables better insights and adds value to our products and processes. Online analytics, geo-tagging solutions, etc. help in identifying new markets and interest observed from these markets for our products. This enables us to strategize and think about products which are relevant to the local market in India, while deploying targeting marketing strategies for better reach.

PW: Would you say the level of collaboration between technology and marketing in your organization was:

IDBI: IDBI Bank has embedded the benefits of technology in all aspects of marketing activities carried out. Technology has been effectively utilized for customer data management, analytics, customer acquisition and customer servicing. Technology has enabled the marketing activities to be more focused and overcome spillage. The customer data is effectively segregated as per various marketing parameters to enable the roll out of relevant product campaigns on requirement basis. Leads generated through various digital campaigns are passed on to the branches pan India through an online lead tracker system, thus ensuring prompt and local response.

Broadly speaking, IDBI Bank has kept itself abreast with the technological changes taking place in the market place that would enable it implement effective and efficient marketing strategy having a direct impact to the business of the Bank.

Importance of Technology for Marketers - Interview with Sangeeta Sundaram - Capgemini

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 02:51:29 +0000

Sangeeta Sundaram is the Marketing and Communications Leader, Capgemini India. In this role she is responsible for all marketing and communications activities across the various business units for Capgemini in India. In this role she is responsible for market development activities for local business, managing the brand reputation in India through advertising , PR and TPA relations, along with the task of building employee engagement through internal communications.

Here are some interesting and unique ways in which technology is used for brand building and communication within the organisation as well as externally. Yet another Tech Savvy CMO in our hunt for the M.IT.R Top 50 in India.

PW: How important is technology for the success of the modern marketer
SS: Today’s marketer cannot function without technology. It is an integral part of marketing.

We need technology for measuring the ROI. Marketing budgets are always under a scanner compared to other departments, and the use of technology to track data and analyze our returns and monetize the success of any media and communication is very important.

In large corporations like ours, with multiple geographies, deploying consistent brand assets would be impossible without technology. Today, monitoring the brand, ensuring consistency in its usage, reusability of brand assets and checks on communication guidelines, is all made much easier with archived portals and other such technology.

And most importantly, digital technology and the use of social media, our website and other digital properties have made it possible to interact with customers and respond and communicate to and with our target audience, making it the key support for marketing.

There are no doubt challenges in the adoption of technology in the marketing arena. A personal evolution is required. Awareness of ever changing trends and changing the composition of the marketing team is required today. While I have hired specific people with technology skills, I also ensure that my team members learn new things and update themselves constantly.

PW: What are your current marketing priorities & how does that translate to technology?

SS: If I have to identify my top priorities for the next 12 months, they would be:

Brand development for both the internal and external audience in a manner that integrates the process completely. Ability to have a same brand experience internally and externally. A clear shift to digital advertising. Globally, Capgemini has already taken a decision to move its marketing channel from the traditional to the digital. In India, we have used some traditional medium in the past, but going forward it will be more digital media.
Gear up to drive a content management strategy
And, an Account Based Marketing approach for greater customer intimacy

PW: At Capgemini how has technology played a role in customer acquisition or retention?

SS: Well, apart from the obvious CRM system in managing the sales and marketing pipeline, we have used technology in a powerful way for our recruitment communication and process. For each recruitment communication campaign as well as all organic visits to the website we are not only able to track and analyse the statistics, conversion rates etc. we are also ensuring that the resume’s received are categorized and sent to the corresponding technical leader in the organization for review. The life-cycle of a resume is completely supported by technology at Capgemini making the process more efficient, effective and transparent. We are also able to drive efficiencies on our campaigns owing to this.

On the customer end we are still in the early stages of technology adoption in India but are clearly moving towards it. At the moment we are able to do some customer behavior analysis and tracking of sales leads etc. But what we would like to move towards is specific content for customers based on their requirement, more engagement and two-way communication.

PW: What is the level of collaboration between the CMO and CIO in your organization? Does marketing have a separate IT Budget?

SS: I think the level of collaboration between Marketing and IT is definitely improving. There is a sense of understanding of each others business needs which has led the two to work together. This in our organization was clearly important when communication to 37000 employees in over 8 locations in India had to be streamlined. But, it is also true that the CIO now involves marketing when evaluating vendors for some communication technology, or inputs are taken from our department when revamping a CRM system. Marketing is definitely an important stakeholder in any customer engagement or sales technology being implemented. This was probably not so true, say 2 years ago.

Globally, the marketing budget at Capgemini had evolved to include technology that was required. Here in India, we have slowly moved to get less and less dependant on the IT budget for technology that we need to run successful marketing programs. Be it an upgrade for the website and intranet, analytics and tracking or bandwidth for launching campaigns, we now manage it ourselves as IT has other responsibilities that require their attention.

About Sangeeta Sundaram: Sangeeta has nearly 14 years of experience in various fields of Marketing and Communication, across corporate communications, market research, consumer behavior, internal communication, branding and PR, across IT and other industries. She has worked with AC Nielsen (was ORG MARG then) and The Gallup Organization as a market researcher. At Capgemini she previously played the role of brand manager for India before moving to her current role in 2009.

Importance of Technology for Marketers - Interview with Kunal Mukherjee - UTV Group

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 08:41:28 +0000

Kunal Mukherjee currently heads the Marketing Division of all the UTV movie channels. In our hunt for Tech savvy CMOs we interviewed him to get his views on the importance of Technology for Marketers.

PW: How important is technology for the success of the modern marketer?

KM: As we move ahead – Technology will go hand in hand with marketing initiatives. Marketing with have to be an integral part of all new technology development and needs to be platform agnostic.

PW: What are your current marketing priorities & how does that translate to technology?

KM: Brand building, customer acquisition and retention are the marketing priorities for UTV. Technology is the medium for promoting and hosting customers.

PW: In your organization how has technology played a role in customer acquisition or retention?

KM: All BTL lends to customer acquisition using technology e.g. register via the Ipad and ATL supports technology initiatives. However, in Social media the role is most significance in terms of engagement, which is a key to customer acquisition and retention. A lot of focus in this space is to lend to word of mouth and retain fans via engaging initiatives like contests etc.

PW: How has technology played a role in new product development, market expansion or other areas?

KM: All products being developed are hosted across platforms and engage consumers across platforms.

PW: What would you say is the level of collaboration between the CMO and CIO in your organization?

KM: Extensive and on an everyday basis.

About Kunal Mukherjee: Kunal Mukherjee has an industry experience of nine years, specializing in marketing. Prior to joining UTV, he was with Zoom as the Marketing Head and has also been associated with S-Group at TAM Media Research. Kunal is a movie buff and loves travelling.

Retailers Not Catering to Tablet-Wielding Shoppers

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:26:14 +0000

So far retailers are not taking full advantage of the opportunity to extend their content efforts to tablets, a survey of 100 major retailers sponsored by Zmags has found.

The study reports:

More than two-thirds of retailers have not optimized their sites for tablet commerce. Instead, they are hoping their traditional websites are “adequate enough” for tablet shoppers.
While some retailers have developed iPad apps, 25 percent of those don’t allow consumers to make purchases directly through the app.

The push to develop mobile shopping platforms (i.e. smartphones) in retail has been in high gear over the last twelve months, but the Zmags survey suggests too little attention has been paid to the surge in tablet adoption. This is notable because in October 2011 comScore reported:

“Tablet owners exhibited significant use of their devices throughout the entire online shopping process – from doing the initial planning, conducting product and store research, making price comparisons, to finally transacting.”
Almost 50 percent of tablet owners had completed a purchase on their tablet.
More than half of tablet owners (usually iPads) “looked up product or price information for a specific store (56 percent) and read customer ratings and reviews while on a tablet (54 percent).”

Gilt Groupe, Disney, Urban Outfitters lead

While optimization for tablets among retailers is still fairly low, some are jumping on the opportunity to provide differentiated shopping experiences. Gilt Groupe, Disney, and Urban Outfitters are ahead of the pack in supporting commerce and marketing apps on most or all mobile devices, including iPads. In addition to providing a rich shopping experience with more touch-screen capabilities, these retailers also use their mobile platforms to promote events and distribute free music.

For Gilt Groupe, the return on investment is relatively easy to understand. When the luxury online retailer launched its iPad app in April 2011, it quickly found—within two working days, in fact—that the tablet app was generating three percent of the company’s revenue.

Since then, Gilt Groupe has found that tablet order values are 30 percent higher than the company’s iPhone or standard website counterparts.

Nike also way ahead

Only one top-100 Internet retailer, Nike, is fully taking advantage of the tablet’s unique interface capabilities, study authors said. Nike’s native iPad app offers a rich interface to browse shoes and engage Nike’s rich media library.

More than half of the surveyed retailers have created simplified mobile sites for smart phone users, but few are developing native iPad apps like Nike’s. The findings should not be surprising, given the newness of the tablet phenomenon, and the uncertainty about which devices are “must-support” channels.

Most retailers are using their existing websites to display tablet content, which translates into a clunky and often frustrating shopping experience for consumers, the study suggests. Among the issues: slow loading times, unavailable content and Flash-related issues.

Opportunities for Marketers

Considering the adoption rates for tablet users, as well as the fundamentally different navigation experience of the tablet versus the laptop or PC, marketers must decide whether tablet optimization makes sense and what types of content make the most sense to distribute through tablet-ready sites.

What’s more, marketers must develop a better understanding of tablet shoppers. ComScore reports that in the U.S., tablet users “display the characteristics of early technology adopters.” That is, young high-income males. That said, it’s not clear how quickly these demographics are changing, nor whether tablet shoppers differ from the universe of tablet users.

About the Author: Gary Kim has been a communications industry analyst and journalist for more than 25 years, and currently writes mostly about end user behavior, mobile applications, mobile payments, mobile banking and business models in the broadband ecosystem. He recently was cited as a global "Power Mobile Influencer" by Forbes; ranked second in the world for strategic coverage of the mobile business. He writes for several online content sites, including Carrier Evolution, IP Carrier, Mobile Marketing & Technology, Content Marketing Institute and TMCnet.

Syndicate Partner: Content Marketing Institute

Image Courtesy: Shutterstock

The Essential Guide to Meta Descriptions that Will Get You Found Online

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 02:54:14 +0000

If you think meta descriptions are no longer important, this post may change your mind. In fact, with the rise of social media, they are more valuable than ever.

Meta descriptions are little snippets of text (about 155 characters) that appear in search engine results and with links shared on social media and bookmarking sites. Although they have very little pure SEO value, meta descriptions are still important for communicating your brand message and for conversions — i.e., getting people to click on your links.

Meta descriptions in action

First, let’s take a look at meta descriptions in action with a recent post on my company’s blog, YouTube Video Optimization Best Practices. This post was originally published without a meta description. When the post cropped up on a Google search engine results page (SERP), this is what you would see:

Notice that for the snippet of text under the link, Google picked up the first 182 characters from the post. This is OK, but in my view not ideal for conveying the primary value of this post or motivating people to click through and actually read it. I added a meta description, and a few days later — after Google had re-indexed the page — the SERP looked like this:

The meta description above has three characteristics I shoot for in almost every situation:

A quick summary of the content
A reason to read the content
Fewer than 155 characters

I’ll get into writing tips for meta descriptions later, but first I want to give you a feel for how meta descriptions look, and where they appear on the most popular social media platforms.

Meta descriptions on Google+

Google+, the latest and greatest social network, picks up meta descriptions on shared links. Again, let’s look at the difference. Here’s what people saw on Google+ before:

And here is the same post immediately after I added the meta description:

I hope you agree that the second version tells a better story, fits the Google+ format by eliminating truncated text, and does a better job of encouraging people to read and re-share the post.

Meta descriptions on Facebook

Facebook displays meta descriptions as well. Here is the post before:

And here is the post after:

Again, a meta description gives your social sharing more persuasive power and an all-around more professional look.

How to add meta descriptions to your web pages

If you’re not sure a published blog post or web page has a meta description, check your browser’s “View Source” option and look for the code contained in the red box (note: the box was added by me — you won’t actually see the box in your code):

If this line of code is not there, it means that search engine and social media text snippets associated with that page will probably default to:

the first several characters of text (as we saw above), or
text surrounding keywords from the page that matches up to the search phrase entered by the search engine user

Any decent content management system (CMS) allows users to add a meta description. We happen to use the All in One SEO Pack plug-in for WordPress, which looks like this in the post editor:

If your CMS does not allow you to add/customize meta descriptions and titles, I urge you to upgrade.

Tips for writing stronger meta descriptions

Use relevant descriptions. A good meta description provides an overview of the page’s core message and purpose. Descriptions should be fully relevant: There is nothing more detrimental to conversion and reputation than setting up people to click through to a link that contains content other than what they are expecting. You never want to mislead users and leave them feeling used and abused.

Highlight a reason to read. A gentle (or sometimes not so gentle!) call to action influences click-throughs. How will people benefit from reading your content? The meta description is an ideal place to tell them. Here are some examples:

Learn the essentials about…
Discover why…
A complete guide to…
Order by January 31 and receive…

Leverage your credibility. I once had a client that increased traffic to its remodeling services home page by adding, “BBB approved” to the meta description. For brands that are not household names, phrases such as “since 1975” and “more than 10,000 clients served” may strongly influence searchers to click.

Make it specific. The meta description examples above are powerful because they are specific, concrete and, therefore, meaningful. Empty words and phrases like “innovative” and “world class” are a dime a dozen. They do not inspire confidence and can even be counterproductive in terms of conversion. Make sure you speak to the real benefits that your content provides to readers, in terms of what they want — not what you want them to do.

Keep it short and sweet. Avoid your natural inclination to use all 155 characters. By virtue of its novelty, a short meta description may attract more attention in the sea of lengthy, keyword-stuffed descriptions that are out there.

Other important considerations

Speaking of keyword-stuffing, there are other important things you should be thinking about when you create and execute your meta description strategy:

Keywords and SEO. While it’s a good idea to include keywords in the meta descriptions you create for pages that are optimized around high-volume terms, recent changes in search engine algorithms are making this a less important consideration. In many cases, Google and other search engines pull text from the page itself based on the search query, rather than displaying the meta description. Given this fact, along with the more consistent and controllable display of meta descriptions on social media sites, focus on persuasiveness over keywords.

Uniqueness and SEO. Every blog post and site page should have a unique meta description or none at all. Duplicate meta descriptions influence Google to ignore them globally on your domain.

Create “default meta descriptions.” As we’ve seen, Google and social media sites sometimes pick up the first lines of content on a web page in lieu or in the absence of a meta description. For that reason, it is helpful to write those first lines of content so that they can double as a strong meta description, if necessary. For example: Take a look at the first two sentences of this post, which were written with this idea in mind.

Rewriting meta descriptions. Here are some final tips:

There is no harm in rewriting or adding meta descriptions to previously published content. If you come out with an exciting new offer, consider adding it to the meta descriptions of your high traffic pages.
It’s also helpful to add persuasive elements to meta descriptions on pages with high search rankings but low traffic.

You can recirculate old blog posts and web pages on social media with new meta descriptions — this will make them fresh to old and new connections alike.

About the Author: Brad Shorr is Director of Content & Social Media for Straight North, a Chicago marketing agency. Specializing in B2B, the agency has clients in niche industries such as cold weather clothing and truck tracking software. Brad is an experienced content strategist, respected blogger, and SEO copywriter.

Syndicate Partner: Content Marketing Institute

Image Courtesy: Content Marketing Institute

How to Join the Ranks of Best-in-Class Content Marketers

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 03:39:56 +0000

What sets best-in-class marketers apart from average marketers? For starters, the best content marketers spend more, align with the buying cycle, and secure executive buy-in, according to the B2B Content Marketing: 2012 Benchmarks, Budgets & Trends report, published by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and MarketingProfs.

Let’s review a few of your options for going from average to marketer par excellence.

Put your money where it counts

The 2012 B2B Content Marketing Study found that best-in-class marketers invest 31 percent of their budgets in content marketing, while the least effective marketers only allocate 18 percent.

This should come as no surprise, since content has largely taken the place of interactions with sales reps early in the buying cycle:

Forty-one percent of respondents to the 2011 Inside the Mind of the B2B Buyer survey said they engaged with a sales representative only after their initial research was conducted on various options, and 24 percent said they engaged with sales after a preferred list of vendors was already established.

UMB TechWeb’s 2011 Purchase Process Study research found that 70 percent of purchases are at the request-for-proposal (RFP) stage by the time vendors are contacted.

Savvy marketers recognize the shift in how buyers self-educate until they’re ready to talk to a sales rep. As such, they understand the need to spend on content that engages prospects throughout a buying cycle that can last months. After all, providing the information that prospects are seeking is critical to moving them from curious researchers to interested purchasers.

It takes an investment to create this content, but this isn’t about requesting a higher budget — it’s about shifting how marketing money is spent to focus dollars for the highest return. To paraphrase Heidi Cohen in her article on being more efficient in content marketing, prospects are increasingly using web-based information to research purchases and vet suppliers, so allocating money to connect with prospects where they’re spending time is a wise investment.

Figuring out where to prioritize content spend starts with understanding prospect and customer information needs and preferences at each stage of the buying cycle — each buyer concern or question represents an opportunity for content. You can gain this insight by developing buyer personas and mapping your content.

According to Goal Centric, a company that originated the development of buyer personas in 2002:

“Buyer personas are archetypal and fictional representations of your buyers derived from qualitative research…[that] provides powerful insights into buyer goals and motivations…[and] arms selling teams with the information they need to understand how and why buyers buy and to connect with buyers in their own language and terminology.”

In the simplified table below, the marketer has developed buyer personas and charted the prospect’s (and customer’s) concerns by role in the buying cycle. These are then mapped to the types of content the vendor can provide to address the issues. (In a real-world mapping, the content list would include the content titles, not just types.)

Increase your relevancy quotient

According to the B2B Marketing survey, best-in-class marketers are more likely to segment their content based on the buying cycle (45 percent, compared with 39 percent of industry average and 29 percent of laggards). Doing so allows them to deliver the information potential customers need, at the right time, to influence the purchase decision. Achieving that requires marketers to conduct the research and mapping exercise outlined above — and to address audience concerns through the content they provide.

Research from Genius.com and DemandGen Report revealed that almost 95 percent of recent buyers said the solution provider they chose had created ample content to help them navigate through each stage of the buying process.
Moreover, 66 percent of respondents said that consistent and relevant communication provided by sales and marketing was key to their choosing a particular company as their solution provider.

Unfortunately, some marketers rely too heavily on the prospect’s title and role as the key means for shaping content. But you can’t consistently deliver relevant content if you segment only by those characteristics. After all, how much do you know about a potential buyer based solely on what’s listed on his or her business card? I like to use the example of three archetypes featured in CIO Magazine’s State of the CIO 2009 report. Each of these CIO types was focused on in different goals. That means if a marketer produced content for CIOs under the assumption that all CIOs are the same, its white papers, reports, case studies, and other content would not be relevant to any of them.

By conducting the mapping exercise noted above, marketers can create content that accompanies buyers along their purchase path from beginning to end, delivering the right information at the right time.

Lead the charge

It’s tough for an initiative or strategy to succeed when it lacks the backing of the company’s top executives and decision makers. According to the B2B Content Marketing survey, “best-in-class” marketers are less likely to lack this executive buy-in for their content marketing efforts than those marketers who self-identified as industry-average or industry laggards.

So how do you gain this buy-in and increase your content’s chance of success? Consider these ideas:

Share case studies that highlight the successes that other organizations have realized with content marketing.
Evangelize the idea by explaining the benefits you hope to achieve. Check out this article by Rachel Foster, who provides specifics on Sun Life Financial’s marketers achieved buy-in.
Audit your content and see how well it addresses prospects’ needs and pain points, and ask your executive team to view the results. (For more on this, see Take the Visual Content Audit.)
While you’re at it, audit your competitors’ content to gauge how well they’re satisfying prospects’ information needs and preferences. If they’re doing a good job, your company can’t afford to sit on the sidelines. If they’re failing miserably, it’s a prime opportunity for your organization to take the lead.

Blast past the competition

In the 2012 B2B Marketing report, best-in-class marketers were defined as those that deemed their own content marketing as “effective” or “very effective” compared to that of their competitors. In other words, content marketing helped them stand apart from the competition and achieve their goals, whether that was to boost brand awareness, generate more site traffic and leads, or acquire more customers. Who wouldn’t want to join those ranks?

About the Author: Stephanie Tilton is a content-marketing consultant who helps B2B companies craft content that engages prospects and customers, nurtures leads, and advances the buying cycle. You can follow her on Twitter @StephanieTilton or read more of her posts on Savvy B2B Marketing.

Syndicate Partner: Content Marketing Institute

Image Courtesy: Content Marketing Institute

The Online Marketing You Need to Kick Start Your Business

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 02:55:58 +0000

As a start up, it can be difficult to know where to begin when it comes to marketing your business online.

If you’ve managed to secure investment then your marketing will be a whole lot easier as you can work with specialist companies who can manage your marketing for you. If however, you are looking for investment then raising your company’s profile online is vital to both finding new customers and also gaining the interests of potential investors.

Marketing online is much more cost effective than traditional offline marketing as it’s far easier to reach a large number of people and engage with them. As the costs are lower, this also means there’s less financial risk involved in online marketing. Time is the biggest expense for marketing online so this article is designed to ensure your company is starting off on the right foot and that you’re putting your time and energy into the most effective online marketing channels.

An optimised website

Even if you don’t actually sell products online, a website gives potential customers and investors the opportunity to find out more about you and your company. For a website to be effective and bring new customers and investors to your doors it needs to be seen. Search engine optimisation can help position your website on the first few pages of the search engines which means it’s much more likely to receive visitors.

As well as ensuring the copywriting on your website is optimised with keywords, you need to make sure your web developers or designers have created an SEO friendly website.

There is a plethora of information online which will give you the background needed to be able to ensure that the company you use to create your website is doing all it can to optimise it. Leading SEO companies such as SEOMoz and Site Visibility have a multitude of free blogs, videos and podcasts on their website to help people understand the basic (and more advanced) SEO techniques. Google also has SEO guidelines which cover what you should and should not be doing in order to create a well optimised website.

Active social media channels

Having a profile set up on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn (plus the numerous other social media networks) isn’t enough. For your social media campaign to be a success you need to continually interact with your network.

By being active on your networks you can monitor who is talking to you or about you and respond to questions about your company. You can also seek out influential people to interact with and comment on, share, like or retweet what they’ve posted. You can ask them direct questions, answer questions or share links to content they might find useful. Another way to engage with these influencers is to write content which refers directly to them and their peers. For example, you could create a Facebook Note or blog post listing the top 10 blogs, podcasts or books related to your industry complete with links to their websites. When you upload your blog, update your social media profiles with a link to the blog and mention the companies or individuals included in it. Below is an example of how this would work on Twitter...

“Top 5 ecommerce software providers featuring @example1, @ example2, @examplecompany3, @example4 and @example5 www.insertlinktoyourblog.com”

It’s very likely that some, if not all, of the companies mentioned in your tweet will retweet or reply and therefore raise your profile with their followers. Better yet, you can ask your followers for their feedback on your blog post and encourage them to share their opinions, therefore further engaging customers, companies and even investors in your field.

An up to date blog

Blogging is one of the quickest and easiest ways to forge an identity for yourself online. Blogs allow you to share your expertise with your visitors and it encourages them to see you as a leading authority in your industry sector. As you build up your blog with opinion pieces, news stories and reviews you will create an online resource for your blog visitors.

Writing blog posts is also a great way of encouraging your visitors to interact with you as they will be able to leave comments or link back to your posts. You can answer any comments or questions they leave and open up a conversation with your visitors. You may also find that feedback from your blog readers inspires new blog post ideas or even new products or services that your company could offer.

Blogging is a key factor of a successful SEO campaign as when blogs are shared online they generate links back to your blog and website.

Multiple, quality links to your website can help to improve your website’s position in the search engine rankings as search engines see websites with plenty of quality links pointing to them as more authoritative and relevant. Blogging also adds regular fresh content to your website which can also help with SEO. Constantly updating your blog will encourage the search engines to come back often and ‘crawl’ your content which can improve your website’s position in the search engines, especially if you’ve used keywords to optimise your content.

About the Author: Sarah Evans is joint owner of the UK copywriting company Pure Ink, which she co-founded in 2008. She specialises in search engine optimisation copywriting, developing tone of voice for clients and also crafting headlines and taglines for projects.

Syndicate Partner: The NextWomen Magazine

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Creating a Powerful Global to Local B2B Brand Impression with Video: 5 Steps

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 04:44:46 +0000

Check out this 40-second web video - (refer to the video below the article)! As far as B2B content goes, this video made a lasting impression on me. With most well done web commercials, I vividly remember the story, the actors, and even the last minute twist, but I am unable to recall the brands. But for this video it’s easy to recall these elements, as well as the humor, the products, and the brand.

The Brand Content Challenge: Global to Local

I’ve been asked how to create global content with minimal localization and translation while taking into account local needs. This video is a great illustration of how to approach the task. Unlike conventional B2B content that focuses on products, this video puts storytelling and emotional connection first, and then weaves the products into the story in an organic way.

The 5-Step Brand Content Solution: Identity to Broadcast

1. Discover the brand identity: At a macro-level, marketers need to understand why the brand exists, and then communicate that to the audience.

Logitech is a well-known computer peripherals brand. Chad Thompson, Worldwide B2B Marketing Director at Logitech, and Joe McCormack, Creative VP at Doremus, tried to unearth the new spirit of the Logitech B2B brand in their campaign.

With ubiquitous connections and on-the-go mobile devices, work and personal boundaries no longer exist; any place can now serve as an office. Logitech identifies itself as offering products that are designed to help business users work in offices, wherever they may be; thus, the idea for “The New Office” was born.

2. Start with crisp strategy: Three marketing strategies were in play here to bring the Logitech brand persona to life.

Reclaim relevance: Showcase Logitech products’ compatibility with new technologies to solve “office anywhere” challenges.
Cross-promotion: Focus on the usage models. Here, Logitech redefined the categories not by devices but, rather, by the concept of “workspace”. Four workspace categories are relevant to the Logitech brand: larger/open workspaces, smaller office spaces/cubes, home offices, and to-go workspaces (e.g., a café; the airport). This strategy of focusing on the category, rather than on a specific product, also allows for cross-selling of multiple products.
Engage customers: Redesign websites and customer-facing interfaces or collaterals with new creative to reflect the new brand promises.

3. Create stories to scale: Once they identified the “why” (brand essence) and the “what” (marketing strategies), Logitech and Doremus created the “Welcome to the New Office” campaign.

From the get-go, they set their minds to creating video content that could easily be distributed throughout different regions. Because of this, the creative content could not heavily tie into rituals, local customs, cultural differences, or too many dialogues. Yet, the story framework needed to be familiar and understood by all audiences, regardless of where they live. This video, featuring a dad making dinner for his kids and attending a meeting, is something that small business owners or working professionals, like me, can relate to.

4. Find a great director: Once you have a good story and script, the next step is to find a director who can bring the story to life in a visually compelling way.

Given that the budget was tight, it was even more essential for the Logitech team to find a director who would be attracted to good storytelling. They were very lucky to find Eric Steinman, who loved the script and was willing to work astutely within the tight production budget.

5. Make it happen: The original script had more dialogue. To make it work more globally, the team worked hard to find visual ways to “show” the dialogue without words. They also made casting global. The shooting took only one day in Los Angeles, using non-union talent. The whole process from planning to production took three months.

A good product markets itself. A good story idea attracts collaborators who want to be part of it. The secret is to find the humanity.

Really take the time to pinpoint scenarios that highlight your audience’s pain and present the solution in a very human, simple, and universal way.

(Special thanks to Joe McCormack of Doremus, who shared his insights and thoughts for this article.)

About the Author: Pam Didner, selected as one of BtoB’s Top Digital Marketers in 2011, is the Global Integrated Marketing Manager for Intel. She has led Intel’s Enterprise product launches and worldwide marketing campaigns, and she has managed Intel’s main proprietary event, Intel Developer Forum, across nine countries. Didner is an expert in creating successful global marketing plans that meet local marketing’s needs. At Intel, Pam develops and manages Intel’s worldwide Enterprise and Small Business Strategies. She also provides strategic guidance on audience development, messaging architecture, editorial planning, content creation, media buys and social media outreach on a global scale. Pam is also a guest blogger for BtoB Magazine. Follow her on Twitter @pdidner

Syndicate Partners: Content Management Institute

Video and Image Courtesy: Content Management Institute

How a Portfolio Approach Can Help You Develop Better B2B Content

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 06:30:51 +0000

Companies that target business buyers rely heavily on the white papers, articles, books, and other documents they publish to position their products or services as effective solutions to those critical business problems their customers face.

But in creating this content, B2B companies often face a common, two-fold dilemma: first, determining which topics they should focus their content development efforts on given limited marketing resources, and second, how to stage those topics over time to keep the content pump primed.

Portfolio Framework

A simple framework like the one below (Figure 1) can help companies create a portfolio of short-, medium- and long-term activities to both focus their content development efforts and fill their publication pipeline. This framework enables marketers to understand what they have to work with: Which ideas should be pursued and published right away, which should be developed over time, and which should be left unpublished. Armed with such insights, B2B marketers can create a content development program that supports demand generation not only for the current quarter, but for well over a year or multiple-year period.

This framework consists of two evaluative axes: The maturity of an issue or topic is on the Y axis, and the depth of expertise the firm has with the issue or topic is on the X axis. By comparing potential topics a company could write about along these two axes, B2B marketers can quickly get a picture of where they should be investing their time and money — and how.

Expose

An emerging issue with which the company has much experience would fall in the lower-right quadrant, or “expose.” An “emerging” issue is one that target buyers are just beginning to address — think the early days of social media, when companies were struggling to understand this new medium and how it would affect their business.

With deep knowledge about an emerging issue, a company should look to capitalize on first-mover status and define the market to its advantage through early, insightful publications that clearly position the firm as the leader. In other words, a company should get its insights to market as quickly as possible to capture business opportunities immediately.

Sustain

A mature topic on which a company is well-versed and deeply experienced would land in the upper-right quadrant, or “sustain.” Here, the guiding principle should be ongoing attention. With plenty of experience to draw on, a company should use a steady flow of new publications on the topic to generate as much revenue from the market before the issue is no longer relevant.

For example, customer relationship management is not a new topic. However, consulting firms and CRM software companies with a long track record in helping organizations implement and use CRM principles and technologies can still provide value by adding their latest insights on the issue to the conversation. Conducting content-rich webinars, publishing in-depth case studies on CRM implementations, and writing a comprehensive book on CRM best practices are some of the ways such firms could draw on their extensive experience to educate prospects and clients.

Cultivate

A topic that’s just beginning to get the market’s attention and is also new to a company would fall in the bottom-left quadrant, or “cultivate.” A company should approach such an issue as a long-term bet. Provided the issue represents attractive growth potential and is not progressing so rapidly that it requires urgent attention — and no other company has already staked a solid claim on the topic — a company can take a measured approach to penetrating that market.

One example could be new governmental regulations set to take effect in a particular industry in, say, five to seven years. In this case, a company has time to develop its point of view on how the regulations will affect the industry and what organizations should do to prepare for them. The return on that investment will come down the road, as the deadline approaches and companies get serious about being in compliance.

Ignore

A mature topic on which an organization has little experience would land in the upper-left quadrant, “ignore.” As the quadrant’s label implies, the company should pay little attention to this topic, because it offers scant return on investment. Because it got a late start in the game and the market essentially has already passed it by, a company likely will find it extremely difficult to create content that can attract the attention of business buyers who have, for years, been using established providers that already meet their needs. Thus, developing such content would be a waste of time and money, not to mention an exercise that could damage the company’s brand image.

When following this framework, marketers should take care to avoid putting most of their eggs in any one of the four baskets. For example, focusing too much on the short-term basket can meet immediate market needs but fail to position a company on critical emerging issues that offer significant potential growth. Conversely, emphasizing the medium- and long-term baskets can establish a company’s competency in an up-and-coming market but compromise the ability to capitalize on current opportunities. Short-term ideas must be marketed to keep the inquiry pipeline full while the bigger bets have time to develop.

And whatever the mix, the ideal portfolio must align tightly with the company’s targeted growth areas. In other words, marketers should avoid producing content on topics that are of little strategic concern to the company. This can be a challenge in professional services companies, where a consultant, for instance, may want to produce a white paper or article that boosts his own image but covers a topic that has little relevance to his firm’s business. Such vanity projects waste time and money and dilute a company’s market position.

As the competition for buyers’ attention becomes more intense, a B2B provider that produces great content stands out from the crowd. A portfolio approach can help B2B companies create content that is more relevant to buyers and that positions the company as the provider best suited to solve buyers’ business problems. And it can enable marketers to keep the pipeline full of compelling content when it is needed to help the company capitalize on short-, medium- and long-term growth opportunities.

About the Author: Bernie Thiel is a partner with Alterra Group, a thought leadership marketing firm in Cleveland. In his consulting role, he helps professional services firms develop compelling, high-quality marketing content, including white papers, books, case studies, bylined articles and research reports. His clients include global and boutique management consulting companies, as well as major IT services and solutions providers.

Syndication Partner: Content Management Institute

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The 5 Types of Content That Grab Attention

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 06:27:47 +0000

Do you want to engage people’s attention, provide them with useful information and, in the process, change the way they think about your organization? In my experience, there are five types of content that can help you do this.

You can use them for print media, such as business and consumer magazines, as well as for websites, blogs, podcasts, videos – virtually any medium.

The Trend: “You can count on us for results that work in your world”

Think of a changing situation that’s affecting your customers. It could be a societal or political change, a change related to technology, or anything else that bring about problems or opportunities – or both. Then, write out your thoughts on these points:

What’s causing the trend, and how has the situation developed?
What is the current situation?
What are your own views, as an informed observer, about how the trend will develop (listing your reasons for thinking so)?
What are your recommendations to the reader on how to avoid harm or achieve a benefit?

The “trend” type of content positions you as someone who understands your customers’ world and cares about helping to provide a good outcome. It’s particularly relevant if your success depends on coming up with new solutions to match your clients’ situation, rather than doing the same work on a repeat basis.

The Meteor: “We’ll be there for you if you have a problem”

While a “trend” may be slow moving, a “meteor” is a sudden change (like the meteor that hit a few million years ago and supposedly wiped out the dinosaurs). It’s life changing and fast. The events of 9/11 were a “meteor” for many industries, particularly security and travel. New legislation or regulations can be equally life-changing, as can the introduction of new technology – for example, the advent of Amazon and the e-reader have caused huge, sudden changes in book publishing and retailing.

For good “meteor” content, you’ll need to keep your eye on the sky, so to speak, and watch for news of sudden changes that will affect people in your market. Then, be prepared to move fast to create content along these lines:

Describe the event itself and give some background on it.
Make recommendations on how to avoid problems and/or achieve benefits.

If you can write engaging “meteor” content, you can probably position it in several different media – and it will get pickup from others, as well as plenty of retweets. A “meteor” piece positions you as someone with a finger on the pulse of things that affect your market, and demonstrates your interest in being supportive of your market’s needs (i.e., “We’ve got your back”).

The How-To: “We care about your success”

How-to content tells, well, how to do something. A good how-to can embody the best spirit of content marketing – providing information that helps people accomplish their goals — and positions you as someone who cares about achieving a good outcome for your clients.

A how-to is effective only if it’s about something that people in your market care about. Say, for example, you want to reach lawnmower buyers through content on how to maintain lawnmowers. A post on a website for condominium dwellers wouldn’t be helpful or relevant, because landscaping is usually taken care of by the condo corporation. But the same post in a forum or publication that is read by landscaping companies and professionals would be a good way to persuade potential customers you’d be a supplier who will care about them. Some steps to prepare this type of content include:

Choosing a process that you know well, and which will be relevant to your market
Writing out the steps involved in achieving the intended outcome
Listing any equipment or supplies that will be needed
Discussing pitfalls and problems, and how to deal with them

The How-to-Work-With: “You can trust us to meet your needs”

This is a how-to with a twist – it gives the reader or viewer practical advice on how to achieve the best results from a chosen service provider (i.e., the one providing the information).

Consider a home renovator who writes an article or post on how to work with a renovation professional – including what work homeowners may be able to do on their own (maybe, some of the demolition) to save money. Wouldn’t you be more willing to trust that renovator? Some points of this type of content should cover:

List the factors and circumstances that are likely to lead to the best outcomes for clients
For each major factor, describe how clients and your firm can work together to achieve those best outcomes
List the roadblocks and problems that can get in the way, and provide suggestions on how to deal with them

This type of content works particularly well when you’re promoting a commodity and when it might be difficult for a customer to tell the differences among your products or services and those of your competitors. In such a case, having trust for the service provider may be the only way to stand out – and the how-to-work-with type of content excels at conveying this vital information.

The Case Study: “We can meet your needs – we’ve achieved success already”

Many business and professional magazines, and their associated websites, are filled with case studies.

While they can be as gripping as a good detective novel to those in the field, they can also be boring and irrelevant if they aren’t properly developed. This happens particularly when readers don’t often face problems that closely match those in the case. In too many situations, the only people interested in the case are the competition, eager to vacuum up all the competitive intelligence they can. So, case studies help you only if they actually help your readers learn something they can apply. Some steps to cover here include:

Describing the original situation faced by your client or customer
Listing the steps that you followed, including how you resolved problems along the way
Describing the outcome that your client received
Outlining the lessons you learned that will benefit the reader

A case study needs to be relevant to your reader’s situation and provide insights that they can use in their own reality. It works well to show your character (or that of your organization) and demonstrate your resourcefulness, caring, skill, and diligence in a given situation. It also functions as an illustration that shows how you’d work with the reader, if given the opportunity.

All of these content types can be used to great success – if they are chosen wisely. Remember to base your choice on your ultimate communication goals, the information you have available, and the needs of people in your market.

By the way, if you would like a video version of this article, you can find it on YouTube.

About the Author: Carl Friesen uses his background in journalism to dig for “the story” to develop content that will show his clients in their best possible light. Many of his clients are business professionals who need to show their expertise to people in their market. Carl is Principal of Global Reach Communications, based in the Toronto, Canada area. You can follow him on Twitter @CarlFriesen1.

Syndication Partner: Content Marketing Institute

Image Courtesy: sxc.hu

5 Tips for Injecting Personality into Your Online Presentations

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 05:14:06 +0000

At the heart of every great presentation is a skilled presenter. Great presenters are storytellers. And because audiences need more than slides, they tell stories with powerful interpersonal communication tools, like gestures, posture, and facial expressions. Great presenters know we’re wired for body language.

But in the digital age we have fewer opportunities to connect with our audiences on a personal level. We increasingly use online presentations, webinars, and meeting tools, which often fail to capture the body language and personality of the speaker.

The result? They fall flat, failing to take full advantage of the power of personality and storytelling that a good presenter offers to a live audience.

So what’s a content marketer to do?

1. Fully exploit video

The “disembodied voice” approach to online presentations needs to evolve. Audio-only online presentations — from webinars to online meetings, from voiced-over sales decks to screen-sharing tools — are popular. But this popularity comes at a cost: Most online presentations lack personality and effectiveness.

An audio-only online presentation is handicapped right from the start, as the medium robs the speaker of many of the visual communication tools that are available to a live presenter. No eye contact. No smile. No confident stance.

Put your best foot forward and deliver more “you” with online presentation tools that use video, not just audio.

Take a look, for example, at this online presentation from Australis Aquaculture. Pairing the CEO with an energetic product manager to tell the story of sustainable seafood, and sprinkling it with b-roll video, helps move the story along and personalizes the message.

2. Plan your presentation with online distribution in mind

So often, presentations are designed for a live event with digital capture and distribution as an afterthought. Of course you’ll send the slides after the presentation… but with no presenter, will your message seem out of context and your points be lost on your post-live audience? Capture your presenter live alongside your deck in all their hand-waving, storytelling glory and you’ll increase your chances that your audience will connect with the on-demand version of your insight.

Once the multimedia team at Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise started looking around, for example, they quickly found that potential content marketing material was all around them. This keynote address by President Tom Burns, for example, was quickly turned into enduring online content that continues to work well as a demand generation and lead nurturing effort long after the live presentation has faded into memory.

3. Understand your goals — and the goals of your audience

By attempting to satisfy both your organizational goals and those of your audience, you can dramatically improve the effectiveness of your online presentation. Think about all your possible objectives for creating an online video presentation — and why your audience would sit through it. You may be looking to establish thought leadership and capture leads, or it could be that developing a fabulous online presentation is the key to your viral branding strategy. But what’s in it for them? Your audience has no interest in becoming your lead, but would love to evaluate your expertise and learn something new. When you hit the jackpot and exchange value, your presentation naturally becomes more personal.

International consulting firm Parthenon Group, for example, produces a series of thought leadership presentations by its chief economist, Roger Brinner, that directly addresses key client and prospect anxieties about the state of the economy. Brinner’s quiet authority comes through clearly in these video presentations, in a way that it simply would not using audio-narrated slides.

4. Move beyond PowerPoint by including a range of existing digital content types

Adding video to your online PowerPoint presentations will transform their effectiveness. But consider all the other great content you already have. Online video presentation tools that are on the market allow you to also pull in rich text, animations, ads, JavaScript applets, images, and more for an unique interactive experience. Your audience will thank you for not boring them with the same old flat slides. Just about anything you can render on your website can now be incorporated in an online video presentation. Get creative, save time, save money, and extend the life of all that content you worked so hard to develop.

New online presentation platforms allow live web pages to be synchronized into a presentation or webinar, for example. This is perfect for taking polls and displaying real-time results, or even for taking orders right in the presentation window.

5. Look for powerful, flexible online presentations tools, but start with what’s simple

Luckily, today’s most advanced online presentation platforms don’t stop at video synchronization. They further enhance the experience by providing just-in-time footnotes, virtual handouts, calls-to-action, forms, quizzes, surveys, interactive transcripts, and other tools as part of the entire interactive experience. And they augment that experience with powerful analytics that show how the presentation material is being interacted with. We’ve built all that capability into KnowledgeVision, but other platforms will undoubtedly be adding some of these features in the future, as well.

Most importantly, don’t get overwhelmed by trying to do too much, too early. Start simply, getting your bearings with basic, on-demand video presentations and adding powerful features and even moving to live streaming later on. It really is easier than ever to create video presentations for an online, 24/7, anytime/ anywhere world.

About the author: A 20-year pioneer in online content, Michael Kolowich is CEO and founder of KnowledgeVision, a platform for creating interactive video marketing assets from PowerPoint presentations. A former Emmy-winning TV news reporter, he went on to be Chief Marketing Officer at Lotus, founded ZDNet and NewsEdge, led AT&T's new media initiatives, and was CEO of Individual Incorporated, the first internet content IPO. You can follow him on Twitter @MichaelKolowich.

Syndication Partner: Content Marketing Institute

Image courtesy: sxc.hu

Demand Generation - Top Picks for 2011

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 07:51:44 +0000

Get your hands on the top articles on how to improve your demand generation efforts, handpicked from www.paulwriter.com and compiled for your convenience.

Registered members can download a copy of this collection on subjects ranging from lead generation, website conversions to qualifying leads and driving results.

Registered members can download the attachment given below.

5 Step Plan to Writing Better Website Content For Your Business

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 08:03:50 +0000

The search for funding is a major concern for many start-ups but your website could be bringing in cash for you whilst you’re hunting for investment. Website copywriting is one of the major resources you need in order to make your business a success online as it helps improve search engine optimisation and helps to convert your website visitors into customers.

However, copywriting is often one of the last areas of a website to be completed as business owners often choose to spend more of their budget on their website design rather than on copywriting.

If you want to write your own website content but don’t know where to start then this five step plan will ensure your content is selling your products or services for you 24/7.

1. Find your keywords

Without optimisation your website is unlikely to bring in the customers and cash that you need it to.

By having optimised content on your website from the moment it goes live, your website has a greater chance of being noticed by the search engines and listed in the search results. Choosing keywords can be tricky, especially if you sell multiple products or services as this can mean you have hundreds of different words to choose from.

Start by thinking about what it is that you sell and the kinds of words that your potential customers would use to find your website. For example, if you sold bridal wear it’s likely that visitors would enter phrases such as ‘wedding dresses,’ ‘designer wedding dresses,’ ‘bride dresses,’ ‘bridal gowns’ and so on. Once you’ve made a note of these you can then check out competitors’ websites to see what they’re optimising their web pages for. To find an indication of what the website is optimised for right click on a web page and click ‘View Source’. This will open a separate page which features the website’s source code. Most website source codes will include a list of keywords that the website is optimised for near the top of the code. When you note these keywords down you will begin to get a better idea of what words you should be optimising your own website for.

There is free software available which will tell you how many searches are made for each keyword, such as Google’s keyword tool, and this will enable you to see which words are worth optimising your website copywriting for.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is not necessarily a difficult process but it can be time consuming and it does take a while before you see results, which is why many companies choose to use SEO companies to optimise their websites. Google has a great guide on choosing a reputable SEO company which will help you to decide whether outsourcing your SEO is the right move for your company.

2. Find your voice

All writers have a voice; you can tell the difference between a Danielle Steele novel and a Stephen King novel without looking at the cover as they have their own unique way of writing. Your website content should also have its own voice and this should reflect your company’s brand. For example, if your website sells services which are targeted to people over 60, then this will have a very different tone of voice to a website created to appeal to teenagers.

When you write your website content you need to find a voice which reflects who you are as a company and which engages with your target audience.

To help define who your target audience is you can build up a profile of a typical customer. How old are they? What job do they have? What’s their annual household income? What hobbies do they have? What do they spend their disposable income on? This may seem as though you’re generalising your customer base but it’s far easier and more effective to write with a specific ‘type’ of person in mind rather than trying to write to appeal to your entire customer base. When you have defined your ‘typical customer’ you can then tailor your copywriting to appeal to them.

3. Decide what content to include

Creating content for an entire website can be daunting, especially if your site has numerous pages, such as with ecommerce websites.

Be selective about what content you want on your website as people tend to skim read online so overly long pages and too much information could easily put people off. It can be easy to go off on a tangent when you start writing and include reams and reams of information on why you think a product is great for example.

Plan out your pages so they include a short opening paragraph to set the tone of the page, a couple of paragraphs to cover your main points and a final paragraph to sum up the page content. If you find yourself going off on a tangent then use any ‘off-topic’ content as the basis of a blog post or create a separate website page for it.

4. Break up the content

When you have the information you want on each page you can then format the pages so the content is easy to read. Start by checking the length of your sentences and see if any can be shortened. If any sentences contain three or more points, break these up into separate sentences or use bullet points. Check the length of your paragraphs too and break these up with subheadings to introduce new points so visitors can clearly see what each section of content is about. Don’t forget to include links within the copy to take visitors to different pages on your website which contain further information. This helps to keep the content on your main website pages short and sweet.

5. Sell the benefits

The internet is an incredibly competitive marketplace so you need to convince potential customers that they should buy from you and not your competitors. A classic copywriting tip is to backup each feature you describe with a benefit to the customer. An effective way to do this is to list your products or services, then list the main features of each of these and then list at least three benefits for each. An example of copywriting which describes the features of a dress reads like this...

“Slip style, knee length dress in blue.”

Copywriting which describes the features and benefits of a dress reads like this...

“The vintage inspired slip cut of this knee length dress is right on trend for this season’s party wear. The unique design and stunning silk fabric means you will look stunning whether you’re out for dinner or hitting the dance floor, making it a superb investment. Available in deep sapphire blue, the rich colour and delicate drapes of this party dress will complement any figure.”

As you can see, the first description merely describes what the product is. The second description enables customers to clearly see the benefits of buying this dress which are that it is fashionable, will suit their shape, is versatile and represents good value for money.

By telling customers exactly what you’re offering and how it will enrich their lives it’s far easier for customers to visualise how your products or service will benefit them directly.

Once you have your copywriting basics in place you can then add fresh content to your website using the simple guide above.

Syndication Partner: The NextWomen is the female business brand, publishing the award-winning women's internet business magazine. Focus is on early stage and growing businesses, be it in the media, service, retail, communication, or any other industry, with a tech or internet angle - from Silicon Valley to Europe, Latin America and Asia. A key mission is to interview and profile female business heroes, making them notable and quotable, whilst connecting women-led companies with each other, investors and experts.

Image courtesy: The NextWomen

The Dinosaur Agency & the Ice Age

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 06:22:23 +0000

There has been much said about how specialization and splitting up into micro-agencies is causing the demise of the traditional agency. Sure, that’s part of it. But the underlying problem is deeper. The heydays of the agencies were when companies were selling products. The Agencies came into their own in the 1900s when, for the first time, mass production and improved distribution systems allowed mass, standardized products to be sold on a vast scale. So the main task of an agency was to build awareness for those products, and communicate their virtues. They had to build a brand or “trust factor” in the firms producing these goods as consumers were no longer buying direct from the manufacturer but from a distributor. (For example if you buy milk from a milkman you trust him, if you buy a carton of milk from a shop you have to trust the brand on the carton.)

Today the supply chain evolution continues and most products now

a. have a service component built into them eg cars

b. rely on a content ecosystem eg computers, phones, most smart devices

c. are customized/customizable eg shoes, T-shirts, mugs, apartments

d. offer after-sales service eg cars, water purifiers, airconditioners

e. are tending towards an economic order quantity (EOQ) of one eg banking services, music downloads, videos

What matters to buyers is the total customer experience, not just the brand or the product attributes. Yet, most agencies don’t talk customer experience.

They don’t talk about supply chains, CRM systems, customer contact centers, returns policies, recall alerts, crisis communications. They continue to pride themselves on beautiful campaigns that enrapture people. And distance themselves from customer interactions.

For example, like many others I love the new Airtel HFZ campaign - but speak to users and they will complain about poor service, long hold time, call dropping etc. So while you like the ad you may not actually buy the service because there is the vast ecosystem of your peers telling you another side of the story. Much like how Vodafone’s (Hutch) doggie created the image of warm friendly customer service which again wasn’t necessarily reflected in true life. On the other hand I didn’t quite like the second Indigo airlines ad. But because the overall customer experience continues to be good I will continue to choose this airline.

Firms that want good advertising but also want a good customer touch program tend to use multiple firms. One for regular advertising, and others like Sapient Nitro for the digital experience piece. Causing yet more revenue leakage for ad agencies already bleeding from the separation of media buying and the consequent loss of the 15% commission.

There are a few firms that do talk the language of customer experience design - Ideo, Frog Design and Wieden & Kennedy to name a few (and I am not endorsing these). And which do it under one roof. These and others like them which are customer-centric are ideally situated to emerge unscathed from the Ice Age. Many have a design arm which currently doesn’t do advertising but that’s an easy piece to add on to their other capabilities - and then they can really change the agency landscape.

After an MBA I wanted to do advertising so much that I turned down my campus placement and took the agency job at half the salary. I learned so much in my 3 years there that it was a solid investment. But in those days (1995-98) - under one roof - I got exposure to all the channels that were then prevalent, whereas today, an AE would have to go to multiple firms and even outside the firm to learn about all the ways in which customers interact with brands. Unless this changes, the Big Agency as we know it will continue to freeze.

Recalls Plus from SAP: The Digital Supply Chain is getting real

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:46:26 +0000

On February 15th SAP launched its first consumer app, Recalls Plus. The app lets you know in real-time what product recalls are taking place. You can customize it for product category - eg food, toys and even for the age of your child. While Recalls seems an unusual choice for a first app, for concerned consumers - eg parents of children - it is a hot button topic. The app also allows social sharing of these alerts, so get prepared to get a lot more information on which baked treat had to be withdrawn for forgetting to label the peanuts.

But why this is an epoch-making app is because it allows manufacturers to share valuable product information directly with consumers. They can now bypass the distribution channels like retailers and dealers. They also do not need mass media or advertising to reach their subscribers. And through the social sharing options, the news will spread.

Sure, today, it’s only recalls of a specific type. But the same format would work well for frequent use-high-engagement products such as medications, babycare, airlines, food, cosmetics. If you can customize the kind of information you consume from the makers of these products many would be quite happy to receive it directly from them.

Ah, and what about trust, you say? Well, companies can’t legally tell lies so the communication would be as honest as their ads and more pithy. At the same time, since the success of this model requires the customer to opt-in, the more engaged, trusted brands would have an advantage. And social sharing would bring in feedback.

If a number of producers came together on a platform and also enabled purchases through that platform, it could change the consumption landscape. Imagine reading that your favorite cookie was now available in a low-cal variant, being able to add that at a click to your monthly e-shopping list and having that reach your home. Or that Apple had just launched iPort a timetravel device, and being able to get that without queuing for a light year.

Wonderful for the customer, and, when hooked to the supply chain system, great for just-in-time production. And when 3D Printers become a reality, that’s when we’re really going digital.

In the meantime, if SAP succeeds in customer sign-ups for its app, it could provide a valuable and differentiated media asset as an added carrot to its customers

Davos Debrief: Data, Power, Happiness – It’s Getting Personal

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 03:19:08 +0000

Following a year in which “people power” was the rallying cry from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street, the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting 2012 in Davos, which ended last Sunday, might seem like an elitist anachronism, but it is worth noting how the WEF over the past few years has tried in earnest to include voices from civil society as well as younger generations – from new, very active communities within the WEF such as the Young Global Leaders and the Global Shapers to – this year – even Occupy Davos. The result: As a “platform for multi-stakeholder dialogue between business, society, and politics” (in the words of WEF founder and executive chairman Professor Klaus Schwab), the WEF is more relevant than ever (full disclosure: I am a member of the WEF Global Agenda Council on Values in Decision-Making).

That said, the Annual Meeting in the luxurious Swiss ski resort remains the “the world’s most exclusive gathering,” and it is hard not to be star-struck by a cast that this year included the likes of Bill Gates, Timothy Geithner, Christine Lagarde, David Cameron, Angela Merkel, the CEOs of most Fortune 500 companies, our very own Doreen Lorenzo, the president of frog, and – yes – Mick Jagger.

This year’s theme was The Great Transformation (borrowed from Karl Polanyi’s seminal 1944 book), inspired by the urgent need to explore new models of leadership and value-creation in the wake of a fundamental (identity, confidence, moral?) crisis of capitalism (sovereign debt crisis, lack of trust in business, growing inequality, etc.). Consequently, Professor Schwab remarked in his opening speech: “Davos is the world’s sanatorium,” referring to the local facility that rose to world-literature fame through Thomas Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain. The mood was definitely somber, at least in the beginning, and lightened up only a few days into the conference when the intense debates and working sessions brought forward more optimistic approaches to solving the world’s pressing problems.

The main topics in Davos were the Euro crisis (of course); the Network Economy; Big (Personal) Data and its implications for our concepts of privacy, productivity, and collaboration; and Values (converging several strands such as Michael Porter’s more integrative “Shared Values” notion of corporate social responsibility, the rise of social entrepreneurship, or the quest to explore happiness as an alternative metric for measuring economic progress, both at a national and company level - more on that later).

If there was one overarching theme for all these tropes, then it was the dialectic relationship between the potential and the risks of technological innovation. One the one hand, optimists were bullish about the digital revolution that has given amateurs unprecedented access to technology, as Neil Gershenfeld, Director, The Center for Bits and Atoms, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), noted: “Technology is allowing ordinary people to change and improve the world.” This becomes manifest in digital literacy, grassroots innovation movements such as Maker Faire, 3D printing, the mobile apps developer ecosystem, open data, and hackers-for-good communities. And the emergence of cloud computing means than anyone can quickly launch data-intensive businesses, which is accelerating innovation, product cycles, and competition.

On the other hand, the gap between individual understanding and technological progress seems to be growing. People’s fears about misuse of personal data, which led the European Commission to propose rather draconian data protection laws for Internet service providers and other data collectors, is creating a “huge barrier to progress,” observed David Blumenthal, Professor of Medicine and Professor of Health Policy at the Harvard Medical School, and a member of the WEF Global Agenda Council on Digital Health. The general public needs to better understand science and technology, he urged.

Public Parts-author and digeratus emeritus Jeff Jarvis sees the digital revolution disrupt every single industry and institution, and believes that technology is leading to an “efficiency over growth” paradigm, with far-reaching implications: “Productivity will improve. Companies will be more profitable. Wealth will be created. But employment will suffer.” Jarvis acknowledges that great wealth can be created by serving millions of people with relatively small staff – see Google, Facebook, Amazon, and other icons of the digital economy – but he cautions that this might just further widen the income and capital disparity, which is “just wide enough today to cause unrest around the world,” as he writes on his blog. “That’s much of what #Occupy_WEF et al is about. That’s what is causing such tsuris and uncertainty on the stages of the world (Economic Forum). That’s what is causing the institutions represented here to fear, resist, and regulate technology in the hopes of forestalling the change it is bringing. There is the root of the disruption we’re witnessing now even in Davos.”

The Arab Spring exemplifies the ambivalence societies presently face when it comes to technology. Yes, technology has given ordinary people, particularly the youth, a voice to question the status quo and the power to even topple regimes. It has created and amplified (a sense of) urgency, and it has opened the door to being part of emerging governance, but as we witness in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, it has not necessarily enabled the creation of stable, truly inclusive governments and economies that produce the kind of steep job growth these countries so desperately need.

Technological innovation is also overshadowed by widespread pessimism and a credibility deficit that have resulted from the failure of institutions to effectively deal with a number of the recent economic and environmental crises. Trust in government and business has further plummeted, reports the Edelman Trust Barometer 2012, and there appears to be a fundamental loss of confidence in decision-making, with large parts of society – particularly young people and the majority of the impoverished – feeling that they’re being left out of the process, despite the democratizing effects of social technology and media. Some in Davos therefore called for a new “social covenant” that mandates fairness and mutual benefit for all, but not only by redistributing wealth more evenly, but by including all parts of society in the creation of wealth (“inclusive growth”) and the decisions that drive it.

But here’s the problem, as far as business is concerned: While there is broad consensus on corporations’ means (and responsibility) to positively impact society (the leadership role of business, so to speak), business leaders themselves may no longer be the right people to spearhead it. Sure, corporate bosses still hold considerable sway over creating a meaningful experience for their employees (they can “create and kill meaning,” asserts the McKinsey Quarterly). But although CEOs are undoubtedly held more accountable than ever, they are facing not only an erosion of trust but also an erosion of their power. A recent Economist article describes these "shackled CEOs" as Gullivers who are tied down by Lilliputian forces – whether these are powerful boards, empowered employees, or a public that demands radical transparency. Consequently, among the world’s 2,500 biggest public companies, the average job tenure for departing CEOs has fallen from 8.1 years in 2000 to 6.6 years today, according to consultancy Booz & Company. In light of this trend, buzz words such as “humble leadership,” “servant leadership,” “open leadership,” and “bottom-up leadership” make the rounds, and Doreen Lorenzo, the president of frog, contends that the increased complexity of decision-making will lead to a “post-CEO world” where companies must move “from a guru model to one based on team leadership.”

Ironically, at the political level, the most inclusive model, democracy, is losing its halo, as it becomes pressured by ever-more demanding citizens whose frustration with their elected representatives and more publicized cases of corruption, nepotism, and decision paralysis is nowadays quickly amplified by social technologies. The Euro zone may be on the brink of disintegration, and the democratic legitimacy of the European Union, with so much policy-making power delegated to supranational authorities in Brussels, remains questionable.

The potent alternatives were on show in Davos, but not everybody may 'like' them: For one thing, there is state capitalism, which can claim credits for driving recent history’s most remarkable economic success stories: Singapore, Russia, Brazil, the UAE, and of course China. Over the past three decades China’s GDP has grown at an average rate of 9.5% a year, and over the past ten years its GDP has more than trebled to $11 trillion. This makes it the world’s second-biggest economy, and the world’s biggest market for many consumer goods.

A digital governance alternative is Facebook, arguably the world’s most powerful transnational organization, with a network of users that would count as the world’s third largest country. It already stores more data than any national government alone, and with its popularity, network effects, and comprehensive analytics, it holds significant deterministic powers: it can mobilize communities, influence constituents, predict trends and events, and draw a possibly discriminatory line between inclusivity and exclusivity (“weblining,” as law professor Lori Andrews calls it in her NY Times article “Facebook is Using You”). Like Google, it is inevitably evolving into the “The Matrix” or the uber-stream of what David Gelernter prophetically anticipated in 1990 as “Lifestreams” – albeit with little to no space left for ambiguity: the vision of a data-centric universe is one where human decision-making will be binary, with targeting so chirurgical that every '(life)stream of consciousness' will end with a clear ‘yes.’

Conversely, optimists herald the same personal data as a potential source for human development (e.g., through e-philanthropy or open-data initiatives such as the Worldbank’s) and refer to the rise of social innovation, social entrepreneurship, for-profit activism, and the concept of the Social Enterprise (as in Marc Benioff’s “Speedy-Open-Collaboration-Individuals-Alignment-Leadership” line). All of which are all fueled by the “new oil” data, if only it is put in the right hands.

And data can propel happiness, which has emerged as the buzzword de jour in business circles, also in Davos. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh has established it as his mission and primary business objective (shoes are just a means to an end), and his book Delivering Happiness was a national bestseller. Virgin, Coca-Cola, and other consumer brands have made it their core brand promise. Healthcare companies, and other industries, are looking into social products and services to promote it. After the King of Bhutan pioneered a Gross National Happiness Index in 1972, initially subject to much ridicule, NGOs such as the New Economics Foundation have been promoting it, and more and more corporations and governments (UK, India, France, etc.) are now exploring happiness as a holistic metric for economic progress and effective governance. And the Harvard Business Review, in its current issue, even devotes a special report to the "Value of Happiness,” arguing that employee well-being can boost productivity, customer loyalty, and ultimately profits. Two years ago, who would have thought that this publication had a cover on happiness! It seems as if the tougher the times, the harder the soft topics become. This is encouraging.

About the Author: Tim Leberecht is the CMO of frog and the publisher of design mind.

Image Courtesy: The Globe and Mail

What I Learned About Networking When I Asked a Stranger for a Kidney

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 07:52:36 +0000

It was June of 2006. I was on home-based dialysis because both of my kidneys had stopped working the previous summer. Every night at around 9:00 pm I would head to my bedroom for the night, hook myself up to a dialysis machine via a tube in my stomach, and stay there until 6:00 am. Every night.

When it had become evident that my kidneys were failing my family started the process of “getting checked” to see who could donate a kidney to me. We were not surprised that it was happening to me – there seems to be some flukey gene on the maternal side of my family that makes some women in the family lose their kidney function for no apparent reason that some of the best doctors in the country can determine.

My dad had always said if my sister or I needed a kidney he would give us his in a heartbeat. And I knew he would. And he turned out to be the wrong blood type.

After the devastating news that my dad was ruled out, and then the rest of my family for genetic reasons, I literally had 10 friends go through the process of getting checked in order to give me their kidney. The thought of this alone is staggering – 10 people who were not related to me were willing to give me their kidney. One even got all the way to the end of the testing, at which point they found a kidney stone.

I was beside myself.

I knew that being on dialysis is extremely hard on one’s body and that the sooner you have a transplant the much better outcome you have. I also knew that the waiting period in Chicago for a kidney is currently 6 years. That’s a long time to wait – and a long time to put your body through dialysis – and some will die while waiting.

So there I was in June of 2006, my family and friends had been ruled out as donors, I was already a year into dialysis and I. was. scared.

It was at that point that I knew there was only one option – an option that I was horribly uncomfortable with but knew was my only hope for a healthy life and brilliant future:

I had to ask a stranger if they’d give me a kidney.

I can say with absolutely certainty that I have never had to ask a more difficult question in my life than when I wrote a letter in my church “bulletin” and asked fellow parishioners to consider giving me their kidney.

My letter ran on Sunday, June 25th. No one called.

One Sunday later, on July 2nd, I got a call from a woman named Rose. She said she had been driving to church that morning and realized she had the bulletin from the previous week still in her car, unread. She had been about to throw it away when she decided to flip through it just to make sure she didn’t “miss anything important.”

She said, “I have Type O blood and if I am a match you are more than welcome to have my kidney – I only need one.”

That’s really how it happened. On Tuesday, March 27, 2007 she gave me her kidney, and we forged a bond that can never be broken. She got married a few weeks ago and I had the enormous pleasure of being there with her for her special day.

So, what did I learn about networking through this experience?

People truly, genuinely, in their heart of hearts want to help other people. You should never doubt this, no matter what you need help with in business or how vulnerable it makes you feel to ask for help!

I have learned through my experience consulting to 2 networking organizations (The Marketing Executives Networking Group and the CEO Connection) that the foundation of networking is giving to others. The golden rule of networking: you should absolutely always be looking for ways to help others without expecting anything in return, and then when you do need to ask for help people are much more likely to make the effort to help you.

But in my situation I asked for the ultimate favor without ever having given anything first. And the answer I still got was “yes, absolutely.”

Once you have asked a stranger for a kidney and received a “yes” in return, you are never afraid to ask for anything ever again. Please read that twice.

As leaders we are often uncomfortable admitting what we don’t know, allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, and asking for any type of help. Sometimes when executives are in transition they are afraid that other executives will be uninterested in helping them or feel put-out by a request for time or help.

STOP. JUST ASK. Someone might actually say “yes,” and it just might just change your life.

About the author: Lisa Petrilli is CEO of C-Level Strategies, Inc., Chief Relationship Officer for CEO Connection and Chief Operating and Marketing Officer for the Global To Be a Woman Platform.

How an MBA Course Changed my Perception of Marketing

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 03:13:20 +0000

Marketing for most MBA students who don’t have a business background is a mystery. To me, Marketing conjured up the following concepts -- creatively promoting existing products, new products being launched, brands, and advertising. Our International Marketing course at the Hult International Business School (HIBS) in fact covered these facets of marketing – and quite a bit more. I found Marketing to be much more strategic and critical to a company’s success than I had expected.

Being basically a “creative person at heart” and “a big technology fan”, I was so fascinated with the marketing function and the roles and responsibilities of a marketer that I took another course on marketing the first chance that I had – during the third term of my program when we were allowed to sign up for electives. I frankly didn’t know much about what I was getting into when I signed up for my next marketing course, which was Solutions Marketing. I had only heard of the concept, and couldn’t find much reference about this relatively new and emerging concept. Since I was somewhat familiar with the concept of solutions through my marketing course at Hult , I decided that it was worth the risk. As it turned out, I unwittingly introduced a fascinating new dimension to my understanding of marketing, which altered the way I would look at marketing in the future.

Getting my Head Around the Concept of Solutions Marketing

I have to admit, it took a couple of class sessions to figure out what "Solutions Marketing" was, and why it was worth learning. Probably the most important concept that I picked up early in the course was that solutions marketing is not just about marketing tangible products, but also services and a customized experience. The official definition of a “solution”, in the context of B2B businesses, is a combination of products and services that focuses on a particular customer problem and in the end provides measurable business value for customers.

Though this type of marketing is more suited for a B2B environment, we also learned that the principles of marketing solutions can also be applied in a B2C context. In fact, since I’ve taken the course, I’ve observed that more and more B2B IT companies are keeping solutions at the center of their approach in the B2C side of their operations. Not just that, in my current role as a consultant to a FMCG major, solutions strategy (which I independently define as “solutions blocks” model ) is at the core of understanding the consumer landscape and defining the WHO, WHAT & HOW approaches of the product and service offerings.

The concept of solutions was fascinating for the whole class. Given it’s practical application amongst many technology behemoths like IBM, Avaya, Siemens, Juniper Networks, EMC, Cisco to name a few, students like me were benefited to understand the theoretical concepts being applied in real life business situations in such organizations. This was aided by a special project which was crafted to be an integral part of our course.

During this project we had to work with a solutions leader (generally a Director) in one of such (amongst many other) organization to understand the solutions concept end to end. In my opinion this was the highlight of my learning experience given it not only gave me the opportunity to interact with a real life solutions expert but also address queries, understand the current challenges and learn first hand how solutions is working its magic in winning and retaining client relationships.

At the culmination of the course we (an International team of 5-6 fellow students) had to present back to the client on what we understood of their solutions strategy, current challenges and recommendations to overcome those challenges. This gave me incredible confidence in the subject given all of us had been through an immense learning experience with highly practical immersion. I found this experiential approach to be extremely useful on the way to becoming a solutions expert.

Taking my Knowledge of Solutions to the Next Level

It’s probably useful to understand that my background was in the financial sector. I worked closely with IT function, launching new initiatives, systems and processes inside a major bank prior to entering HIBS. Learning about marketing was somewhat similar to learning to speak Chinese!

As a result of being so inspired by the Solutions Marketing course, I convinced my professor to agree to be my academic advisor for an Independent Study course on a Solutions Marketing topic. This allowed me to learn by conducting rigorous academic research (a first in my life) on a very emerging subject in marketing world.

The topic that I agreed to research was “Defining the Solutions Creation Process”. The scope of the project really was to come up with a model which large organizations (mostly technology-based) could apply to create and offer solutions to their customers. No such standard model yet existed in the academic world.

What started out as simple curiosity about what Solutions Marketing resulted in an unexpected journey into a detailed aspect of one type of activity that Solutions Marketers engage in. Regardless of the topic, I would suggest that all MBA students take the opportunity to immerse themselves in a “deep-dive” research project which would force them to understand how academic principles are actually applied in the real world of business.

Well after 3 gruelling months of juggling with module C studies, the research and my wife’s shopping list, I did come up with a standard approach to Solutions creation and call it the solutions blocks model, which provides any organization to approach solutions creation in a step by step approach called blocks. (Refer the illustration of the solutions blocks model).

Learning about Solutions Marketing – Was it Worth it?

Any management course taught at business schools has its due worth when the academic learning finds application in the real world. Solutions Marketing course at Hult has been one such experience of idea to execution application, which was worth the time and energy for a future marketer like me. It not only helped me dwell into real life solutions offered by current tech biggies but also helped me observe various industries where solutions are (and have been) in application albeit in hindsight and still continues to evolve, especially financial services. If we look around solutions driven approach is all around us. Telecom firms offer it through value added services to its customers, Fitness centres offer it through customized plans and so on so forth. All it needs is an immersive experience in Solutions Marketing to understand the underlying fundamentals which drive organizations to solve consumer problems through the solutions approach.

Today as an Innovation Consultant specializing in brand management in the FMCG space (which is traditionally B2C), I find application of multiple tenets of Solutions Marketing on a day to day basis. Be it Consultative approach, Offering creation or Solutions Execution, I am truly living a solutions marketer life applying the solutions block model and loving the fact that this puts me at the cutting edge of an emerging marketing domain ready to dominate both the product and services world of the future.

Author: Sumit Sood, MBA, Hult International Business School

Syndication Partner - Solutions Insights

SOPA and Indian Internet Censorship: 5 Quick Takes on How It Impacts You

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:24:17 +0000

1. SOPA attempts to prevent piracy of content. The problem is that it requires very little proof that the content has been pirated before it expects the host website to remove the offending material. Just a formal complaint could be enough. Effectively a large company could shut down an overseas content aggregator site just by raising sufficient number of frivolous complaints against it.

2. SOPA primarily aims to target non-US sites by cutting off their revenue streams by making their sites inaccessible to US visitors, removing their listing from Google search results, and stopping payments through services like PayPal

3. The Indian Internet Censorship efforts are intended to target messages deemed to “offend” religious sentiments or which are considered depraved. It also can be used against online material that would be deemed defamatory if it appeared in traditional media.

4. The Indian rules would make it the onus of the website host to prevent or remove such messages from appearing on its site. Effectively, unmoderated posts would become impossible, and self-censorship would throttle freedom of expression. While noone would knowingly want to host “offensive” material on their site - and most have regulation in place to prevent the obviously offensive - what offends one person could be another person’s art, as the persecution of M F Husain and Salman Rushdie have proven. For business content websites, the difficulty would be in deciding what was legitimate criticism of business strategy versus defamation.

5. How do these initiatives impact you? Most popular sites (including this one) tend to rely on user-generated content, usually unmoderated. This would be risky in the new scenario both in the US and India. Secondly, many people use sites like Twitter and Facebook to vent against companies, bosses, society, and poor service. They may now be targeted legally by these firms for sullying their reputation. Neither of these initiatives has become a reality yet. It’s your time to take a stance and voice your opinion, yay or nay.

More on SOPA at http://gizmodo.com/5877000/what-is-sopa

A recent interview on the Indian Censorship attempt with lawyer Sajan Poovayya

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/five-questions-india-and-online-censorship/221322-11.html

Push to Pull

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 07:28:31 +0000

In light of the Arab Spring and the rise of India and China, and propelled by social technologies, the concept of ‘soft power’ (the phrase was coined by Joseph Nye in his 1990 book, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power; defined as “the ability to obtain what one wants through co-option and attraction”) is ever more relevant. Or, in marketing terms, Push is out, Pull is in. If an idea, aspiration, product, goal, ideology, culture, narrative, or national identity is attractive to its constituents, it minimizes the need for constant reinforcement and regulation – whether that is advertising, promotions, and other persuasive efforts, or bureaucracy, command-and-control, and coercion. Pull is powerful (as John Hagel illustrates in his riveting book The Power of Pull). It has a lot of Pull (pun intended) because one doesn’t have to push. It saves energy that can be invested otherwise, for example, in whatever “it” is that creates Pull. No surprise then that individuals, organizations, societies, and entire nations wish they could rely on it more.

But how does one create Pull? Even the most ardent Pull apostle will admit that Pull doesn’t just emanate from nowhere. How much hard power do you have to leverage to create soft power? How much Push is needed to generate Pull? I conducted a mini-poll on Facebook asking that exact question, and the responses ranged from “the answer to this you can only feel” to “a lot.” I sketched a diagram for myself to better understand the forces at work between this power couple, and I came up with three Push-to-Pull ratios that may help you get your “Pull-Push balance” right.

- Positive push-to-pull ratio: If you deploy more Push strategies than the Pull that they generate, then you over-invest in Push and inevitably create an undercurrent, a backlash that can even decrease the current amount of Pull you have. You risk dissolving the entropy of the overall system. Your idea, your narrative, your brand will be seen as intrusive, and in the worst case, as spam.

- Neutral push-to-pull ratio: If your Push and Pull energy levels are in balance, then you achieve the perfect equilibrium. You don’t generate any incremental Pull but you also don’t lose any. You need to be vigilant not to overdo your Push efforts, or you compromise your Pull. One could also say that the very point at which Push threatens to exceed Pull is the demarcation line between ‘cool’ and ‘uncool.’

- Negative push-to pull ratio: The last and ideal state is have Pull exceed Push. This happens after a long period of Push when the scale of Push needed to create Pull decreases. Or when the idea, aspiration, narrative, and culture is so strong that it sustains and amplifies itself. If that’s the case, your job is to simply enable connections for the “idea” (in this case, refering to brands, you can speak of “brand ideologies” or “intrinsic brands” such as IKEA, Nike, Apple, or Starbucks).

These three relationships sit along a continuum, and perhaps it makes sense to consider them to be stages in the evolution of organizations. Fledgling start-ups will rely more on Pull (for they often lack resources to invest in Push), but as they mature, they will inevitably explore means to amplify their intrinsic Pull with Push. Eventually they are so established that they can rely solely, or mainly, on Pull, however now with far bigger impact than the one they were able to achieve as start-ups. There are two critical junctures on this continuum and corresponding decisions: When exactly, in the early stage of an organizational or brand development, do you start to invest in Push? And at what point do you decrease the level of Push so you don’t “push too hard,” over-reach, and jeopardize the valuable Pull you’ve generated? (Ever come across an ad from a brand that you adore and disappointed that the company had to advertise in the first place?)

Pull is a function of cultural power, of the routines and rituals, of the energy that is flowing through an organization. Energy here translates to intensity: not only the level of activity (knowledge flows, productivity, social interactions), but also the tension between actors, the battles between conflicting ideas. If your organization experiences tension, then it is “intense.” An intense organization is always stretched, intellectually and resource-wise, and it is constantly operating at capacity of what it is able to imagine and execute on – it is in a state of emergence, a permanent crisis, with a heavy dose of ambiguity, uncertainty, and even paranoia. This is a good thing: the fearful are paralyzed, the paranoid are proactive (and creative).

Pull comes from an original idea, a compelling story, a contagious meme. Astrophysicist and philosopher David Deutsch defines a meme as "an idea that is a replicator." “A rational meme replicates because people find it valuable,” he writes in The Beginning of Infinity. “An anti-rational meme replicates by disabling its holder's rational thinking so that one has no choice but to spread it.” That’s the difference between Pull and Push, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, empowerment and enforcement, creativity and bureaucracy. Brands, countries, and movements that are built on rational memes have real Pull – and almost infinite staying power. The others will be pushed out sooner or later.

About the Author: As frog's Chief Marketing Officer Tim Leberecht oversees frog’s worldwide marketing, including product and solutions marketing, brand, corporate communications, marketing communications, and public relations. He is also the publisher of frog’s award-winning design mind thought leadership platform.

Image credit: timmonsandcompanyblog.com

Key Account Management: What the Best Companies Have Done to Improve Their Programs

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 05:36:40 +0000

Based on research conducted on over 20 of the best Key Account Management (KAM) programs, globally, this study outlines what leading companies have done in the past year to improve their programs. It identifies what the best programs have done to maintain their leadership position.

The Focus of our Research

In a previous blog post, we introduced 8 Critical Success Factors for Protecting and Growing your Best Accounts based on a recent study completed by Solutions Insights and Hult International Business School. In that study, we conducted primary and secondary research on over 20 of the best Key Account Management (KAM) programs in many global industries. In addition to what we consider “baseline” critical success factors reported in our earlier post, we also identified what leading companies have done in the past year to improve their programs. Our goal was to determine what the best programs were doing to maintain their leadership position – and two big trends stand out.

The Two Biggest Trends

As a result of our extensive research, we were able to aggregate all of the important KAM trends into two categories:

Category #1: Greater Operational Autonomy

There seems to be a significant trend in how KAM programs are structured and positioned within their respective companies. The best companies have created unique KAM organizational units. Rather than having the KAM activities sit within the sales function, these firms have created a standalone KAM team with roles and responsibilities that are solely focused on the key account.

As a standalone team – which in some cases were set up as separate Business Units -- these KAM programs have honed their focus with dedicated top account reviews and tools, strong processes and separate internal accountability and support. This organizational independence for the traditional sales force also meant that many of these programs had their own budget and financial incentives, separate from the other regional and named accounts. This allowed some of the largest accounts to be run as their own P&L, with significant influence on R&D, supply chain, account negotiations and customized account support.

The move towards greater operational autonomy even stretched to talent management, mandating that elite account managers and support teams have dedicated training and development separate from the general pool of sales training and enablement activities.

Of course, with the increased investments and dedicated resources, we also found that there was often an expectation of higher performance and greater returns. The bar was set very high for long-term performance and excellence. To be clear, the key accounts that are the most valued strategically, or have the best opportunity for growth have always gotten the most attention. The difference that we observed, however, was that the leading companies have concluded they need to give the KAM program managers more autonomy and freedom in how they manage their accounts.

Category #2: Increased Marketing Support

The other major trend that we observed was that Marketing—a key resource in all the programs studied—had more than just a seat at the table in the higher performing KAM programs. By better leveraging marketing activities, these companies were able to significantly elevate their relationships within their respective KAM account. This heightened engagement took many forms, from highly customized and dedicated account intelligence initiatives to more focused campaigns. In effect, marketing was driving fully loaded, resource intensive programs aimed at discrete key customers – each individual KAM account.

Leveraging Greater Marketing Involvement to Attain “Trusted Advisor” Status

This enhanced role of marketing in managing the key accounts has helped a number of the programs either establish or significantly expand their “trusted advisor” status within the account.

What were some of the top programs doing to achieve this? A few key program activities stood out:

Executive Matching -- Some programs had built interesting programs matching solutions provider and customer managers. By pairing up the top executives between the two companies, the solutions providers were able to deliver greater value—in the form of subject matter expertise and experience—and in return get a better understanding of the business challenges within all of the executive suites within the KAM accounts. Armed with the knowledge of the customers’ detailed challenges, the companies could then provide valuable industry and operation insights and ultimately better focused solutions to their customers.

Account Loyalty -- Many of the top programs had instituted a “ensure key account satisfaction at all costs” policies. One notable program that we described in a previous blog post was the Client Advocacy Program that was established by Dimension Data. This program assigned a senior manager to act as a true advocate on behalf of the key account. These advocates were trained and fully responsible for ensuring that Dimension Data always acted in the best interest of the key account.

Collaborative R&D – We also saw in many of the best KAM programs a trend towards real, tangible investments in research, development and other activities that were outside the boundaries of the type of projects and activities that the company would normally engage in with the key account. These investments, while providing some benefits to the company providing the solutions, were primarily addressing a business need that the key account had. One of the companies we interviewed, for example, sponsored a series of major studies that provided their customer—a large US state agency—with important insights into the real needs and problems that the state’s residents were facing.

Keeping Pace with the KAM Leaders

In short, these top programs are giving their KAM program managers the autonomy and flexibility to act quickly and decisively in the best interest of their key accounts. In addition, they treat each account as a market of one—and some, as a business of one—that deserve the full palette of resources and activities with marketing squarely in the drivers seat. We recommend you consider some of these better practice approaches for your KAM program – your key accounts will thank you!

A blog by Matt Leary, Principal, Solutions Insights
email: mleary@solutionsinsights.com

Syndication Partner: Solutions Insights

Image Courtesy: Solutions Insights

Paul Writer Poll: Marketers Vote for Big Things in Marketing in 2012

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 10:27:49 +0000

‘Tis the season of hope and promise. And of new, improved, 20% extra marketing budgets. Marketers around the world work on their plans for the next year, and decide which are the new trends they want to invest in. I’m running a poll on LinkedIn to figure out what everyone else is thinking.

So what are the key takeaways?

1. If you haven’t already got a social media strategy in place, 2012 is your last chance to not be considered a laggard.

Paul Writer Tip: Look at your digital strategy as a whole, not just the obvious social media choices like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube. Options like slideshare.net, building your own community, co-branding a portal with a media site could result in disproportionate benefits

2. Analytics is being seen for the valuable tool it is

Paul Writer Tip: There are lots of great tools at various sizes and price-points. Crowdsourced options are great for small firms, but if you’re a big firm with big data, do consider the many enterprise products in the market.

3. Augmented Reality is not a focus area

Paul Writer Tip: If you can get this right - and I admit given the paucity of an eco-system it will be difficult - you could have a huge marketing differentiator on your hands

4. Marketing Automation is not considered the next big thing

Paul Writer Tip: True, the idea has been around for a while, and many firms have adopted some form of it. But the technology has progressed a lot in the past few years, so if the last time you looked at your automation strategy was 3 or more years ago, do take a relook this year.

The leader, rather predictably, with 41% of the vote (at the time of writing) is Social Media. As Sandeep Sanwal says, “ Marketing Campaigns is about creativity and getting along with society. Looks to me that it will be social media”. Many in India have not yet embraced Social Media, and with increasing adoption, 2012 is a good year to get started. But I also think that many of our firms are not ready to go social yet - they do not have the internal systems that can withstand the level of interaction, transparency and responsiveness required by customers on this channel. Advice to those going big on social media is to also invest in marketing automation and systems.

Only 14% of respondents opted for Marketing Automation and Systems as a big play in 2012. Possibly it is because those systems are already in place. But it could also be that marketers are still late adopters of IT. There are some wonderful tools out there that could make marketing efforts way more productive, but they are undermarketed gems which not many CMOs are aware of. The number of firms which still run on antiquated custom-built mailing software of CRM tools is always surprising! Kiran Veigas of L&T Infotech says “ My vote is for marketing automation and systems. Advanced workflow based marketing systems will be effective and efficient, resulting in streamlined marketing operations.”

Analytics earned 35% of the vote as the next big thing in marketing. That’s very exciting. Social Media generates masses of data about customers and a good analytics solution is required to massage this data into meaningful marketing insights. Analytics does not often come up as a topic of conversation among marketers, perhaps because it is still early in its adoption cycle, but clearly forward-thinking marketers are ready to adopt it and benefit from it. Curiously enough, most of the comments are from marketers endorsing Analytics.

Many see it as the necessary adjunct to a good social media program. As Harish Kumar of Emergys says “Social media is "the way", gives you visibility and nothing more but what you do next is really the key. Analytics is "the tool", driving factor behind the success/failure of a marketing campaign; assess the impact/effectiveness of a campaign be it Social Media, BI for informed decision making - data intensive industries, Segmentation.”

Anna Wintour of Vogue says she doesn’t follow market research. With good analytics, many others can follow suit. As Ayoshmita Biswas of Aegis comments, “ Media is already a key component in any marketing plan today and the trend will continue in 2012. However Analytics will be the player in determining the predictive planning for future planning. No more following MR blindly or trends and figures on Social Media. It'll be informed decisions.”

I was hoping 2012 was the year of Augmented Reality. But with less than 5% of the vote, I guess I’ll have to wait. In my view this much misunderstood concept has huge potential for marketers, and it goes much beyond QR codes. Though I have to admit that finding good case studies in India has been a difficult task, as is finding an agency with a good solution portfolio in this space.

About the Poll:

Conducted in November-December as an open poll on LinkedIn

189 respondents, with a mix of Managers, CXOs & VPs and Owners.

Disclaimer: The views expressed by individuals in this survey are their personal opinions and do not necessarily represent those of their organizations.

IT + Marketing: Innovation Through Collaboration in B2B Software Companies

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 05:56:14 +0000

I’ve read a lot of articles and posts that have discussed various aspects of the uneasy relationship (in many cases) between IT groups and Marketing groups. The people and process side of this ongoing situation puts me in mind of the obstacles and needs for the adoption of a collaboration culture in software companies. For the purpose of this article, collaboration means: talking to each other, listening to each other, analyzing and planning in concert, presence of mutual respect – no silos, no turf wars. Good intent, good communication -- bi-directional and legitimate. The kind of enterprise collaboration where teams work together for common cause: business success, growth, innovation, getting the work done well.

Whether it’s dubbed “IT working with Marketing”, or “Enterprise Collaboration”, upper management has the same responsibility to encourage and sponsor all types of necessary and differentiating collaboration to achieve business goals in ways that are better, faster, and smoother. Unfortunately for many software companies, upper management is not stepping up to enable and empower useful collaborations, particularly cross-departmental. Upper management in this context means CEO, CFO, COO -- all too often, the CIO and the CMO are not accorded power over the decisions coming from these other roles.

Ben Horowitz on the ‘Innovation Business’:

The technology business is fundamentally the innovation business. Etymologically, the word technology means “a better way of doing things.” As a result, innovation is the core competency for technology companies. Technology companies are born because they create a better way of doing things. Eventually, someone else will come up with a better way. Therefore, if a technology company ceases to innovate, it will die.

Collaboration frequently is a very good way for software company teams to not only work for company success, but to better innovate. Innovation in software companies should not only be about products and solutions; it should be about how the company itself works as a thriving and growing organism, how it empowers staff to be successful on the company’s behalf.

Neither IT Nor Marketing Is A Monolithic Being Calling Its Own Shots…

Contrary to popular belief, the “modern” IT group did not spring up fully formed as an autonomous entity that makes decisions in a vacuum. Obviously an exaggeration, but I think a lot of people have this notion in the back of their minds when considering the role of IT. With a startup, the IT team may be more focused on digital infrastructure: hardware, telephony, internet, internal systems. As the company grows and different kinds of employees are added, IT grows too. If the software company IPOs, then the IT group is heavily involved in compliance, security, ensuring always-on performance, and so on. Internal systems may become more complex and numerous, employees more virtual, hardware and infrastructure demands more sophisticated.

Frequently the result is that IT groups become silo’d, but usually not by their own design. Upper management sets the agenda for IT groups and usually holds responsibility for the positioning of IT as separate from the rest of the company. In recent years, most IT groups have suffered through significant staff cuts while more has been piled on the remaining staff. Upper management then expects instant change from IT to better support the business -- without sufficient resources – and particularly without a strong collaboration culture in place.

Marketing groups are in the same boat as IT regarding who decides their destinies. Software companies in startup mode have a history of adding Marketing functions in haphazard fashion. Many startups still look at “marketing” as something to slap on when the sales team needs more help finding buyers. The reality is that for most software companies, Marketing is an important component of the Business, just as IT is. But too often, upper management misses the strategic opportunities to do it right – to build teams working together, instead of separately and frequently in conflict.

Strategy, Business and Tech

IT has been the target over past several years in companies that rightfully want IT to be more aligned with the strategic needs of the business. IT has received black marks for not moving quickly, not feeding innovation, and so on. Balance this criticism of IT with the reality that upper management usually has a big hand in the current state of IT affairs.

Eric Brown frequently addresses the future of IT with a strong dose of reality:

What’s missing in most of the articles I’ve run across about reinventing IT or changing IT is the effect the Business has had on IT. You can’t really reinvent or change something unless you know the how and why behind the creation of that entity in the first place.

…at the end of the year, the grades are handed out. Sometimes IT fails. Sometimes IT over-achieves. …most times, IT gets a barely passing grade.

Is this barely passing grade (or failing grade) due to incompetence or mismanagement? Most times it’s not…most times it’s due to changing priorities that aren’t clearly thought through and/or communicated throughout the organization

And who creates the constantly changing priorities? Upper management.

Harvard Business Review also weighs in on the future of IT:

The authority and responsibility for IT-enabled business outcomes needs to be aligned. The CIO's dilemma…is the challenge of promoting innovation while increasing efficiency. IT is in the untenable position of being held responsible for this even though their business partners control the decisions that impact their ability to do so.

IT governance is really business governance. In many organizations, IT has led the way in implementing governance over critical decisions related to strategy, business architecture, investments, change, programs, risk and sourcing. Over time, organizations have realized that decisions in these areas need to be coordinated across the enterprise and have elevated and consolidated these activities outside and above IT.

This isn't your grandmother's technology. "Technologies for collaboration, business intelligence, and customer interface all require experimentation and iteration" and a hands-on relationship between workers and their technology. Increasingly, the technology necessary to assemble, deploy and operate technology will be provisioned by external providers freeing up internal IT resources to focus on the meaty issues of coaching users on how to exploit the technology and ensure horizontal integration, security, continuity, and performance across the extended enterprise.

Marketing + IT <> Business + Tech

For many B2B software companies, Customers are now Buyers, many of whom want to drive the relationship and buying cycle, moving sharply away from the former sales-team-focused cycles. The customer experience with the company has gained importance; many company-centric processes must give over to processes with a strong customer focus. Both Marketing and IT have important roles in customer engagement, with marketing technology growing in sophistication and variety. But in most companies the IT group carries the additional responsibility of working with multiple disparate internal constituencies, with priorities determined by project portfolio management, internal politics, and by decisions from upper management.

When IT resources are not easily available to support time-sensitive initiatives, marketing groups have frequently implemented their own technology solutions as a form of Shadow IT. New approaches to effective customer engagement lean heavily on cloud/SaaS based technologies that are fast to set up and use by non-IT staff. Unfortunately a significant side effect of not including the IT group has led to problems: new data silos, separate operations and analytics – lack of integration with other systems in the company.

As cited in a recent post by Cheryl Burgess, the current and frequent state of finger-pointing and lack of mutual respect between IT and Marketing is summed up by Chris Murphy of InformationWeek:

IT sees marketing as looking for shortcuts, shortcuts that will come back to bite the organization. Marketing, meanwhile, sees IT slowing them down, not delivering on the operational basics, and not understanding marketing needs.

Burgess also points to an Accenture-sponsored study involving over 300 CMO’s and 300 CIO’s that presented this view of Marketing + IT:

The CMO Council believes there is a global imperative for marketing and IT organizations, which too often have been polarized and adversarial, to find common ground around the business of innovating more efficient, effective and measurable ways to target, acquire and stay intimately connected to customers. The need for greater synchronization, partnership and collaboration between these two groups has never been more critical to their mutual success.

The Marketing Technologist: Success More Likely With IT and Marketing In Collaboration

Frequently, companies gain better paths to innovation, collaboration and competitiveness with the presence of business-technology hybrids who span departments and leverage cross-team expertise. The demands of innovation, meeting customer needs, and rapidly changing solution markets are challenging software companies to work much more quickly and collaboratively than ever before.

An important hybrid is the marketing technologist. Scott Brinker has published an extensive and well-crafted piece on the rise of the marketing technologist, describing “technology-powered marketing” where “Marketing must take ownership of the technology in its domain”. Some of Brinker’s observations on the marketing technologist hybrid:

As marketers, you're already responsible for the outcomes based on such technology. The accountability so widely promoted in digital marketing has you in the hot seat for results. It's only sensible that you should have full control over the means and mechanisms to deliver those results.

You must be the driver of marketing technology, not merely a concerned passenger. But if you don't have technical depth, who can help you navigate? …I propose a new role in the marketing department: a marketing CTO or chief marketing technologist. The mission of the marketing CTO is to provide that technology navigation.

Brinker makes the case for highly functional collaborations between IT and Marketing:

..technology decisions and marketing strategy are intertwined. You can't address one without impacting the other.

Brinker also profiles the ‘3 Spheres of Marketing Technology’: “All these technologies — the ones we buy, the ones we build upon — can be categorized into three overlapping spheres”:

Customer-Focused / Technology-Driven Marketing: Attract More Buyers

In 2008, Booz & Company published its view of the growing integration of marketing strategies with technology, “Not Your Typical Marketing Campaign – The Next Wave of Technology-Driven Marketing”:

Next-generation direct marketing demands a front-to-back rethink of the overall IT architecture, with the ultimate goal of better understanding the customer... In the past, each channel would feed customer information individually into the back-end customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems that processed transactions and held much of the customer data. Using the new architecture, all of those channels now connect to a central integrated engine. This engine, available throughout the network, mediates between channels and the customer data and back-end processing. The central campaign engine also contains the business rules that govern every interaction with every customer.

The single most critical innovation, however, lies in doing away with the typical siloed, channel-specific architecture on which most current direct marketing and campaigning technology depends. No customer-centric marketing effort can be truly successful if the technology is still organized around interaction channels, rather than those all-important customers who naturally interact with the business through multiple channels.

Each step of the way will require the willingness to rethink your overall marketing strategy, the tactical processes by which you plan and carry out each campaign, and the IT tools you need. You must develop the skills required to design and execute analytic campaigns and, of course, you will need to build the technologies to enable those campaigns.

Most important, from beginning to end, the CIO and the CMO must work together as partners to design, build, and test the necessary infrastructure, and to expand it, step by step, throughout your company.

Marketing Technology + IT: Marketing ERP?

Looking at the transition from channel silos to a more integrated marketing technology platform brings up the notion of Marketing “ERP” to provision, manage and analyze initiatives supported by marketing tech. Egbert Hendriks @ephendriks introduces this notion (whether seriously or tongue-in-cheek) in a recent exchange on Twitter with

Kevin Cochrane @kevinc2003:

@ephendriks RT @niels_goossen: Why Marketing Should Run Its Own Technology -- InformationWeek http://bit.ly/dRaLSs

@phendriks: I agree- marketing is becoming a technology-driven discipline. #wcm #dam #vms #bpms integrate in a marketing "ERP"!

@kevinc2003: @ephendriks what do you see as being a marketing "ERP"? Interested in your perspective / insights

From the Booz & Company paper: the diagram to the right below could suggest a path to a Marketing ERP platform. Also be sure to note the transition from channel silos on left, to a more integrated marketing technology platform on right.

http://www.booz.com/global/home/what_we_think/reports_and_white_papers/ic-display/47189813

Indeed, marketing has been increasingly technology-driven, relying on marketing management platforms, analytics (multiple), various software systems for content (WCM, WEM, DAM), BPM, VMS (vertical marketing system), social media, lead gen, mobile/multichannel management. We could also throw in MDM, CRM, data/application integration processes, other reporting.

BUT – at this point, the answer to building out highly effective marketing technology systems incorporating the best of Marketing and IT is not found in throwing more tech at the situation. Nor is creating a new software category going to help.

A better approach is the enablement and empowerment of IT and Marketing working as true collaborative partners, where upper management fully supports the elimination of silos and frees up IT to work on strategic initiatives. Software companies still have lots of people and process matters to figure out first. Innovate how the company works together as teams with common purpose. Collaboration culture can lead to and encourage innovation culture, both of which can lead to business success and competitive agility.

Julie Hunt is an accomplished software industry analyst, providing strategic market and competitive insights. Her 20+ years as a software professional range from the very technical side to customer-centric work in solutions consulting, sales and marketing. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategic Product & Market Intelligence Services

Courtesy: jhcblog.juliehuntconsulting.com (Reproduced with permission)