How Can Marketing Start Innovating?

George Colony’s keynote challenged Marketers to step up and innovate.  Perhaps it’s easier said than done.  So how can Marketing Leaders get to it?

Kraft’s Dana Anderson had the best advice, “everything is a pilot”.  Why?  Because no one gets in trouble if a pilot fails.  People don’t freak out about pilots.  Even better than a pilot project is an exclusive pilot, which just means you pretend it’s all very “hush hush” and “in the know”.  Soon people are asking to be a part of your exciting venture, not fighting it.

Dr. Pepper Snapple Group’s EVP of Marketing, Jim Trebilcock partnered with Ross Martin of MTV Scratch and reinvigorated the Sun Drop brand.  The results are phenomenal both in revenue and brand awareness and reach.  It was the partnership of an old brand with a young MTV agency that provided the oomph of the campaign.  The take away is look for partnerships outside of the norm.  Bring in fresh ideas from outside your company and industry.

Mary Beth Kemp presented a session titled “What Is The Secret Sauce Of Marketing Innovation . . . And How Can You Get Some?”.  Some take-aways:

  • Distribute learning, give everyone a stake in innovation
  • Build an innovation team to develop the innovation “how” processes and culture
  • Lead change by challenging the status quo
  • Recognize and reward innovation

Here are Mary Beth’s “Top 10 behaviors which distinguish the most innovative marketing orgs”

  1. Marketing team members use social technologies to connect to customers
  2. Innovators are rewarded at our company
  3. Enable and empower innovators
  4. Budget sufficiently for marketing innovation
  5. Identify and access innovative capabilities
  6. Marketing team members use internal social technologies to share information
  7. Monitor customer input and share ideas across the company
  8. Know who the most innovative people are
  9. CMO and the rest of mgmt demonstrate they value innovation
  10. Encourage all employees to participate in innovation

March poll wrap: social influence measurement _IS_ an indicator of influence

Last month’s poll asked, “What is the best use of social influence measurement?”

The results were as follows:

  • Quick take on an individuals influence (44%)
  • Track Marketing campaign efforts (22%)
  • It’s completely without merit (22%)
  • “First pass” metric used to discover potential influencers (12%)

    • It’s early days on social influence measurement and the consisent thought leadership centers around the fact that the available technologies fall well short of the needs of Markters.  For example, social measurement tools do not measure offline social activities and everyone innately understands the value of face to face.

    I tend to think that the majority of responders were right, social influence measurement is a good way to get a sense of an individuals level of influence.  It’s a starting point, not the end result.

    Marketing, It’s Time to Innovate

    George Colony did a great job at the 2011 Forrester Marketing Forum describing what CEO’s want from their CMO.  I was really encouraged by his presentation, because it’s what I want too.

    George’s keynote presentation was titled, “5 Counterintuitive Things CEOs Want From CMOs”

    1. Be a champion for innovation

    Don’t allow the innovation process to be linear and closed. Build innovation networks that empowers employees.

    2. Mediate the cultural conversation

    Definition of culture – what people do when no one is looking.  CEO’s are looking for CMOs to create stories and demonstrate the transformational power of innovation.

    3. Translate and illuminate technology

    Forrester says the web is dying and it will be replaced by purpose-built apps.  Customers are reporting that the app experience is far better than the web experience and companies are responding by investing more resources into app development.

    4. Prove that marketing is worth the investment

    CMOs have it hard here and there are no easy answers.  Unfortunately there are few (if any) standard measurements that can be applied.  CMOs must set goals and measure outcomes.

    5. Take me out for a beer talk

    CEO’s look for their CMO to provide brutal, honest truth.  This requires the CMO to have the courage to “speak truth to power”.

    If the future of Marketing looks like this, innovative Marketers have reason to be optimistic.

    Where does group messaging fit in?

    Okay, the last post was a lame attempt at an April Fools joke.  I don’t think group messaging (aka group texting) will replace email, but it is an interesting development.

    In thinking about how to use group messaging I created this diagram.  In order to know where group messaging fit in it was useful to map out other forms of communication including email, blogs, phone, texting and open and closed social networks.  I mapped communication technologies on the X axis as either Private or Public, knowing that the lines can blur quite readily.  On the Y axis I mapped out the intent of the communication accounting for short and long messages as well as timely communication – again, the model isn’t perfect, but I hope it’s roughly right.

    You can see group messaging is a form of private messaging best used for providing timely communication.  I see it as similar to phone calls and texting (obviously) due to its interruptive nature, so I view it as Private Timely Communication. 

    I expect the use of group messaging will be niche.  The technologies it could replace have a solid purpose and the interruptive nature of the technology makes it unlikely to displace email or Facebook as alternative private communication methods. 

    Who might use Group Messaging?

    In thinking of how group messaging might best be used, the following comes to mind:

    • Sales territory management – it gives one the ability to marshall resources and share important info
    • Event management – its a great way to communicate in real time to a team managing an event
    • Teens – be it college or high school, teenagers have adopted text messaging as their primary communication so group texting will make sense to them
    • Traveling with a group – let you keep in touch with everyone simply and easily, For example, “I’ll meet you at the Hard Rock at 2:30“
    • Loyalty program? – this one is a bit of a stretch for me, but could a brand use a form of group texting to foster a community?

    So why might group texting fail?

    1. Ettiquette – it may take time for people to recognize that not everything should be a text, again it’s an interruptive experience for the recipient
    2. Too many cooks – At least with Beluga, anyone can add a new member to the pod.  I don’t know what the right number for a group is, but my sense is that its below 10.  Once you get too many people in the group, it can become too noisy and unfocused and lose its sense of purpose
    

    It will be interesting to see how Facebook incorporates group messaging into its core application, but my guess is that teens will take the greatest advantage of the technology.

    April Poll: Is your Facebook account open to the public?

    Do you limit your Facebook account to family and friends or is it open to the public?  Where do you draw the privacy line?

    [poll id=”5″]

    photo credit renjith krishnan @ freedigitalphotos.net

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