Is your market research project just a crutch?

 Is your market research project just a crutch?

Every market research proposal must answer a duo of critical questions before it proceeds, if it is to be of any value.

What is it for, and how will it be used?

Market research is done for all sorts of reasons. Many commissioned projects have little to do with the examination of the critical factors in driving success.

They just provide a convenient crutch.

Several projects commissioned and paid for from marketing budgets I controlled would come in under the ‘what the F&&k’ category. However, in my defence they were usually quant studies designed to generate the numbers necessary to pass the accountants various thresholds. This enabled me to progress projects that qualitatively and ‘in my guts’ were winners. That is the way they usually turned out!

In the absence of clearly understanding how the research results were to be used, how they would add strategic, operational, or technical value, why should you bother?

There is a further tier of understanding that is required: Are you looking to define an objective outcome, or are you seeking understanding and insight?

In the case of the outcome required being quantitative, simple yes/no, black/white answers to a question are sufficient.

When you are looking for insight, there may be a few numbers, way below a level of statistical significance, but they can be reassuring. However, the value lies in discovering the connections, implications, options, and potentially hard to anticipate consequences.

Research is a critical step in successful marketing programs. However, in the absence of a very clear and compelling answer to the ‘What is it for’ question, it should not proceed.

The header illustration is the only AI used in this post.

How much has marketing really changed?

How much has marketing really changed?

 

 

If you asked a room full of marketers if marketing had changed in the last decade, you would get most of them telling you it had changed radically.

On the surface it has, the digital revolution has taken marketing by the neck and given it a great big shake.

There has been an explosion of sales, media, connection, and payment channels, customers are more wary, and do their own research before a marketer knows they are in the market. So called ‘content’ has almost infinite reach, but the frequency is rubbish, as there is so much digital noise, and so much competition for attention, that most of it is the digital equivalent of yesterday’s fish wrapper from the newspaper obituary section. The investment in marketing technology to manage all this has also exploded.

There is a welter of research and opinion that confirms the notion marketing has changed, some by very credible organisations.

I asked myself the question again, after stumbling across this report by Adobe, one of those credible organisations that supports the ‘yes’ vote, and came to a partly different conclusion.

Marketing has changed, absolutely, at the tactical level. The means by which marketers create and deliver a value proposition, then turn it into a transaction is unrecognisable from just 5 years ago. However, tactical implementation is just a small part of the pie.

Organisationally, marketing has changed a bit. Generally, it is still a function in a group of functional silos that reports to a CEO. A range of new titles have emerged, Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Engagement Officer, and so on, but that does not change the essential reporting and accountability of those in senior marketing roles. The marketing organisation in large enterprises has also siloed, now there is digital, customer service, technology, and a range of other functional roles within marketing not present 5 years ago.

Strategically, marketing has changed little if at all. The role of marketing is to tell the future and adjust the value proposition to customers ahead of the changing preferences and behaviour. That has always been the case, and remains so.

The only strategic change I can see is one of leadership.

In the past, marketing has generally been a passive corporate player, relegated to the role of managing one of the largest expenses in the P&L. Now the value of enterprises is so much more in the hands of intangibles, that marketing is increasingly demanding a seat at the big table. This requires that marketers are able to lead their peers and boss. Unless they can achieve this position of leadership, they will remain the simple gatekeepers to one line in the P&L, rather than being responsible for the future health of the enterprise.

Look at it from the top down.
Marketing has changed little strategically, but strategy is by far the most important component.

It has changed organisationally, and while it is important, in most areas, it is not a game changer.

Tactically, marketing is unrecognisable, but who really cares. Tactics are short term, able to be changed in real time as the situation evolves. Marketers need the organisational capability to be able to change in real time, but the impact of failing to do so is limited.

The marketing groups that will be successful into the future are the ones that are successful leaders of their organisation. To achieve this role of leadership, they must be able to identify the priority areas for investment and activity, as well as being able to remove the organisational constraints that operate in every enterprise, that are not directly accountable to marketing.

Well, they are not accountable until marketers are in the corner office, which should be happening more and more as they are the future tellers. Those who currently occupy that office are usually the engineers, lawyers, and accountants who are good at reading the past in the data, and hoping the future looks similar.

Who is next in your corner office?

 

 

Is Taylor Swift the greatest marketer of the last 20 years?

Is Taylor Swift the greatest marketer of the last 20 years?

 

 

There are many contenders from around the globe for the mantle of ‘GOAT”, or at least of the last 20 years.

The obvious choice might be Steve Jobs, whose single-minded pursuit of all the factors that coalesce into great, long lasting, and commercially effective marketing culture is unparalleled.

You might nominate Elon Musk. He reshaped the auto industry worldwide, made batteries sexy, and figured out how to create a reuseable rocket, before imploding by renaming Twitter ‘X’.

How about Jeff Bezos who figured we would buy books online and turned that idea into a retail behemoth that has reshaped markets.

Some might add the foul mothed Gary Vaynerchuck to the list, whose ability to promote himself while talking about himself is unmatched.

Then there is a small number of genuinely original marketing thinkers and academics: Seth Godin, Mark Ritson, Byron Sharp, Roger Martin, and Scott Galloway.

Add in a few hands-on practitioners like Angela Ahrendts, Richard Branson, Marc Pritchard, and a trio of Aussies who changed the world, Melanie Perkins, and the Atlassian duo of Farquhar and Cannon-Brookes (whose core values include ‘don’t F%@k the customer’) and you have a good list.

However, my nomination would be from outside the usual ‘who is the GOAT’ box. It is a 34-year-old musician, songwriter, entrepreneur, and publicity machine, who has added tens of billions to the GNP of the US.

Taylor Swift.

I could not identify one Taylor Swift song, and I do not know if she even has any musical talent, but she certainly is a truly great marketer!!

To have the world talking about you, (even a 72-year-old bloke in a blog post) to have massive fan clubs of ‘Swifties’ salivating over every new piece of iconography, hordes fighting to pay eyewatering amounts to get nosebleed seats in a 100,000 seat stadium, takes some talent.

What makes her so great? Indeed, what are the common characteristics of all those in the list?

  • Understands who her customers are, and applies relentless focus. Swifts core market is young women and girls. She has demonstrated mastery in engaging with that audience with the music, visual extravaganza, and personal storytelling that resonates. She is also a powerful role model, encouraging independence, ambition, creativity and determination, emotions to which those in her market all aspire.
  • Consistently creates value for customers, individually. It seems the ‘Swifties’ out there all see Taylor as someone they easily relate to personally, across a wide range of channels and media. She is consistently delivering experiences, based on the music and extravaganza shows, but supported by all sorts of adjacent activities, such as having Kobe Bryant, a superstar in his field, come on stage at a concert and wax lyrical about her kindness, generosity, and ‘grounded’ personal values. She tells Swifties what they want to hear, and even their parents have trouble arguing!
  • Is ‘the only one’. Marketing success is an outcome of meticulous attention to detail, and the communication of all those details in a package. It requires two types of activity that is an extremely difficult mix to get right. On one hand, you need to ensure ‘activation’. The calls to action that today generate the motivation to spend money to be a part of the party. On the other, it requires that long term investment be made that build a brand, an identity that engages and creates a long-term platform from which the activation and short-term revenue generators are launched. When done well, as in this case, there will be ‘only one’. Where else can a teenage girl find the excitement, engagement, communal vibe she gets from being part of a ‘Swiftie’ fan community?
  • Swift applies compounding leverage. Taylor has executed a masterful commercial strategy. Unlike almost all other entertainers, she has retained control of everything, and runs the whole shebang as the CEO of a large, volatile and very complex business entity. Her uncanny ability to generate ‘Buzz’ around everything she does, which is spread by wildfire word of mouth and unpaid media enables a continuous stream of ‘Swift-news’ which has fans hanging out for more. She provides the creativity, leadership, and alignment most CEO’s can only dream of across the diverse range of activity her business embraces.

Swift is touring Australia, starting later this month, with multiple sold out shows in Sydney and Melbourne. The hype is becoming all consuming: you even have to reserve a spot in the line to pick up your merch and get to the cash register at the exit of the ‘pop-up’ merchandise stores.

Header illustration is via DALL-E, everything else is ‘organic’

 

4 crucial questions to unlock the power of your advertising.

4 crucial questions to unlock the power of your advertising.

 

 

Last week I provided a template for a Customer Value Proposition. The template works well, but ‘Customer Value Proposition’ is a piece of marketing jargon which just means making a promise to your customers.

This presupposes that you actually know who your ideal customers are, and what sort of promise would be attractive to them.

In the January February 2024 Harvard Business Review there is an article called ‘The right way to build your brand‘ written by Roger Martin and two Co-authors. The article sets out research that proves the hypothesis that making a specific promise to customers is more attractive than a generic claim of some level of excellence. The specific promise is about the benefit a customer will receive with use of the product. A generic claim to greatness is just about the product.

It does not surprise that the first is more powerful than the second.

‘Your promise is your strategy’ is a sub headline towards the end of the article. When you think about it, the observation must be right. Strategy is a process of influencing factors over which you have no control in such a way that the subsequent behaviour of the customers benefits your enterprise rather than an alternative. Making a promise of performance in delivering an outcome desired by a customer is about the strongest driver of short-term behaviour I can think of.

Delivering on the promise, will build trust.

Right at the end the authors ask four crucial but simple questions that can be used to determine if a proposed advertising campaign is worth investing in:

  • Is the campaign based on a clear unambiguous customer promise?
  • Were customer insights used to identify a promise the customers value?
  • Is the promise framed in a way that is truly memorable?
  • Were product marketing, sales, operations, and customer service involved to ensure the promise will be consistently fulfilled?

To me, this sounds like a comprehensive framework by which to decide if a proposed communication campaign is a worthwhile investment.

 

 

 

 

6 words that drove a career.

6 words that drove a career.

 

‘Do not ever patronise me again.’

Those words are seared onto my brain, coming from the mouth of a new boss many years ago.

I had not long been employed and wanted to make an impression. Therefore, every conversation was a combative one, a conversation I set out to win, seeing that as a way to impress.

As the conversation which took place in my office ended, the new boss for whom I had quickly built a strong regard, stood up and walked out. He turned around just outside the door, and walked back a couple of paces, and uttered those words.

‘Do not ever patronise me again’.

He then turned on his heel, and walked out.

I was both astonished, and very concerned. It was only after a painful re-run and examination of the conversation that I realised he was right.

I had, completely unwittingly, patronised him.

What had driven that destructive behaviour?

It took a while for me to understand my own behavioural characteristics. In those days I went into every similar conversation with a point of view that I was prepared to defend aggressively. While I was always prepared to adjust my position in the face of good arguments, this was deeply hidden. In addition, I failed the most significant test of a good debater.

I failed to listen.

My ‘tin-ear’ did not hear a word that was said in any context other than: ‘with me or against me’.

No such thing as active listening, understanding the basis of a differing view, or reflecting on the quality of the foundations of my own.

Later that day I did go into the boss’s office and apologise, acknowledging my mistake, and thanking him for bringing it so painfully to my attention.

We worked together very productively for a decade after that incident in two different companies. We had many debates, and rarely was the outcome black and white, right, and wrong. It proved absolutely that two heads are always better than one, assuming the heads are aligned to the same objective.

 

Header acknowledgement. My thanks to Dilbert and Scott Adams.