Simon Sinek’s TED Talk has been haunting me for months… “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it”.
What is it that you believe? What drives you?
What does your organization believe? Does it drive how you do what you do? Is it inspiring, motivating, intoxicating?
If not, maybe you need a change. I did.
A friend forwarded me the video below, a must see from Dan Pink, author of Drive and A Whole New Mind.
Key takeaways for motivating knowledge workers:
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Capturing the promise of mobile banking in emerging markets a new article and work by Christopher P. Beshouri and Jon Gravråk of McKinsey talks about the promise of mobile to bank the unbanked populations of developing and emerging economies.
I completed a project in 2005 with RTI, First Data, Whirpool, Microsoft, Yum! Brands and Humana looking at the possible future business models for emerging markets. This was a novel project bringing NGOs and Private Sector together for a hybrid economic development effort. Mobile banking was one of our more interesting recommendations and a very real possibility to drive economic growth and create/open new markets.
The McKinsey analysis is interesting and puts numbers to a real situation in the Philippines by sizing the opportunity and describing mobile banking providers. Most important and interesting was the willingness and interest of unbanked consumers in mobile banking. Definitely check this article out.
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The IDC released a preview of their upcoming report, IDC’s 7th Annual Tech Mktg. Benchmarks Study. I was stunned at the marketing kingdom protection rhetoric and support of empire building for marketing leaders. Most of the trends were aspects that have been underway for some time — shifting budget online, focusing on sales and marketing alignment. Where is the insight?
On a related note, it has been a while since publishing a meaty post due to finishing a research project for CMG Partners called CMO 2.0: The next step in the evolution of the Chief Marketing Officer. The executive summary is out today and you can sign-up for the free full report to be released to the public on Oct. 26th.
It is the CMO 2.0 research that forces me to question IDC’s relevance. In speaking with 30+ CMOs in this latest round and 60+ to date, we propose an evolution is occurring in marketing leadership. CMOs of the future will be much more like what we have coined as a “Chief Transformational Officer”. This attainment is earned by demonstrating enterprise value not creating empires or protecting kingdoms as IDC suggests.
To earn the broader, more strategic role described above, lead marketers must accept accountability for business drivers and demonstrate impact. Three components include:
What are your thoughts? Which side of the fence do you support?
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This post is a tribute to a mentor of mine, Alan “Big Al” Johnson. Big Al should be credited for the idea of lust, fear and greed… at least that is how I remember it. Big Al was ahead of his time in understanding human behavior in the business world or maybe just too raw in his explanation, but that is what you get from a poet.
Lust, fear and greed are three of the most powerful drivers of people in business and thus business itself. If you are someone are trying to created action or movement inside an organization, this framework/theory may help. I will explain each component of lust, fear and greed and then describe how the conceptual framework could help.
Lust
Have you ever been in a meeting when someone says, “I love that idea” or “We HAVE to do this”. Well witness the lust of a business professional. The object of lust could be noble like a competitive advantage or differentiation or could be that my peer CEO has a corporate jet, so I want one too. What ever the object, one thing holds, this is a powerful force of human behavior and drives both rational and irrational business decisions.
Fear
Fear is most likely the reaction to competitive pressures like missing out on an opportunity or being trampled — “The competition is close to locking up an exclusive on a technology for 6 months, we have to move faster!” Fear can also be related to costs overruns as well — “costs are increasing faster than expected, we need to figure this out before it gets out of control.” Fear can also be personal, such as fearing that your management will see you in a bad light because of a recent failure.
Greed
Greed is the easiest to comprehend and see in action. Most of the time it is related to the accumulation of wealth either for the company or personally. There is also the greed of power, which can either manifest in infighting of business units or actual managers.
The bottom line:
The take away is that these are very power forces individually, but I have a theory that nothing really happens until at least two of these forces are at work in the same situation. As an example, for a project to get funded “greed” must be at play (ROI or positive NPV), but it will not be initiated unless either lust or fear are present. You might see this manifest with a competitive response to a competitor’s move or an executive that wants badly to be in a new market. What I have found helpful is in using the simple terminology of lust, fear and greed to understand and deal with a situation. If I am trying to drive action or change, then I know that at least two forces need to be at work.
What are your thoughts? Do you have a great example or story to share? Please comment.
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Recently, I have been speaking to lead marketers about growth — how they define it and what they are doing to achieve it. Through 13 interviews, not one lead marketer has mentioned pricing as a way to increase revenue or profits. Is price no longer a marketing function in corporations?
According to a McKinsey study, a 1% increase in realized price delivers the greatest improvement – a healthy 10% increase in operating profits. This is exactly why marketers need to be thinking about pricing strategies and price management disciplines. As an example, one industry that is ripe for a price increase is the aftermarket auto parts business like Carquest and Autozone. With sales of new cars at all time lows, people are trying to extend the life of the car they have. I recently spent $95 dollars to replace the battery on my car and would have easily paid another $5. It is these types of small increases that drop all of that incremental $5 to the bottom line.
Other price strategies exists, such as bundling or understanding “basket of goods”. When my wife and I go into Target we can not, for some reason, leave without spending ~$50. That is no accident. Are they the cheapest on everything? No, but we continue to pay because my wife believes certain categories of products are price competitively and we just can’t help ourselves buying other products due to convenience.
The Bottom Line:
Price is a big lever! Learn how to employ it and manage it. For further justification in how this works even in a down market please read my friend Sid’s post.
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This is the fourth in a series of short posts related to The CMO Agenda research. Informed by recent CMO conversations and CMG Partners‘ collective experience helping top marketers develop marketing strategy, we have compiled a list of seven ideas or jump starters for further conversation. These are meant to spark discussion, ideas, and action as we all enter a difficult 2009.
The transparency and accountability of brands is increasing as new uses of the Internet drive the democratization of voice — shifting knowledge and control from marketers to consumers. This trend is forcing marketers to adopt non-traditional methods of brand management to ensure the brand is consistent not only in communications but through all customer touch points. As one CMO put it, “everything we do communicates.”
If you beleive that the true definition of a brand lies with the perceptions of consumers not with the marketing leaders, then the extreme brand management practice would be for consumers to drive the expression of the brand. Well maybe not, but this is exactly what the maker of Skittles has done (knowingly or unknowingly).
In March, Skittles re-launched their website, which used social media tools for content: Twitter for “Chatter”, Facebook for “Friends”, Wikipedia for “product information” and YouTube for “Media”. This was heralded by some and refuted as a circus trick by others (see a previous post for my take). Unfortunately, I have not been able to find information on the performance of the campaign.
This example, whether good or bad, does provide a new theory for brand managers and bring to reality the old phrase “a brand is what others say about you, not what you say about yourself.” How will you begin to renew your brand management practices to align with consumer voice?
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This is the third in a series of short posts related to The CMO Agenda research. Informed by recent CMO conversations and CMG Partners‘ collective experience helping top marketers develop marketing strategy, we have compiled a list of seven ideas or jump starters for further conversation. These are meant to spark discussion, ideas, and action as we all enter a difficult 2009.
For many companies, innovation means creating a new product, but this is only one of many potential growth drivers. As a lead marketer, your job is to get close to your customers and find other ways to innovate and deliver value – through service, new methods of distribution or new avenues of consumption.
How can you achieve this level of innovation?
A consistent and constant review of your business model and practices can reveal many new opportunities. In other organizations, culture is the driving force which allows for employees to surface new ideas. I recently heard from Jeffrey Phillips, VP of Sales and Marketing for OVO and author of Make us more Innovative. Jeffrey focuses primarily on innovation processes necessary to build a sustainable innovation capability.
Some examples of innovation:
A recent example of a innovative concept I heard was at an HVAC equipment manufacturer. The company leadership decided that they are in the “refrigerated air” business vs. the air conditioner product business. This shift is thinking has many different implications from R&D to value delivered. One idea for commercializing this concept is to sell the service of refrigerated air like a utility. This would increase the number of touchpoints with customers and involves a deeper understanding your customers’ businesses to deliver on this new business model. While this is an innovative idea, it has not been commercialized yet which should be the yardstick for actual innovation.
You need creativity and invention, but until you can connect that creativity to the customer in the form of a product or a service that meaningfully changes their lives, I would argue you don’t yet have innovation. – A.G. Lafley, CEO of P&G in a recent BusinessWeek Interview
Another example that has been commercialized and can be seen in a grocery store near you — Red Box. Red Box has redefined the video store rental model and all for $1 per day per movie. (Disclaimer: I use and love Red Box.) Red Box has a great value proposition that makes it difficult for the troubled Blockbuster to compete and is now in the sights of the CEO at Netflix as he states they are the chief rival now.
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When we asked leading marketers about their roles and priorities during our recent CMO Agenda study, we heard a lot of commentary on the need to step up and drive major change inside their organizations. One CMO of a mid-sized CPG summed up these responses perfectly by describing his main priorities as “defining marketing as a verb rather than a noun” and “taking proactive leadership” that allows the brand and its main steward, the CMO, to be at the center of efforts.
Read more on the idea of how to make marketing a verb within your organization in our article “Marketing: Noun or Verb?” recently published on MediaPost’s Marketing Daily Commentary.
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This is the first in a series of short posts related to The CMO Agenda research. Informed by recent CMO conversations and CMG Partners‘ collective experience helping top marketers develop marketing strategy, we have compiled a list of seven ideas or jump starters for further conversation. These are meant to spark discussion, ideas, and action as we all enter a difficult 2009.
As one CMO I recently spoke with said, “We should define marketing as a verb rather than a noun. We need to be more proactive.”
Marketing should be a transformational change agent
Companies looking to grow are often in need of a new way to look at their business and a new vision to work toward. If your title is CMO, the job of creating this vision and pushing the organization to achieve it falls on you. More than any other function, CEO’s should look to marketing to lead the charge for change.
Why is marketing “right” for this?
Marketing is the most cross functional part of many organizations due to the customer orientation that puts them in contact with engineering to customer service. Would you really want IT to lead your customer centricity effort?
Marketers by definition should be driving better insight, understanding and motivating desired behaviors inside and outside the enterprise. Marketing should be driving the organization to capture value.
Now might be the perfect time to ask yourself whether you’re shaking things up enough.
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Alan’s Scoop.it
