Do Better Marketing by Jim Holbrook

I recently had a wonderful, lengthy, wide-ranging conversation with one of our clients.  I don’t do this nearly enough, and it’s always a top new years’ resolution for me.  Anyway, upon reflection, I think our conversation covered the five universal truths in marketing.  I submit them here for your consideration:

1.  Good ideas come from anywhere.  Having good people and supporting
resources, along with the right environment, fosters innovation.

And last year’s good ideas may not be so good this year, which is what’s so darned much fun about this business.  There’s a ’shortage’ of good ideas, and filling the pipeline is critical.

2.  Companies are perfectly organized to get the results they get (ok, I
borrowed this from John Galbraith), and that goes for marketing departments,
too.  Centralized vs. decentralized.  Generalist vs. specialist.  Control
vs. influence. Strategic vs. operational. Plan vs. opportunistic.
Hierarchical vs. matrixed.  The smart folks at Booz completed an in-depth survey of marketing operations and found many different structures in use.  I lump them into four groups – 1) Kinko’s, for the fast-turn, activity-based marketing style; 2) the fire department, for the always-on, fast-response marketing style; 3) the architect, for the big thinker grand strategizer; and 4) the NASCAR team, for the high-performing, well-trained, very focused marketing.  #’s 1 and 2 account for over 70% of all marketing organizations.  #4 is in less than 10%….

Not enough truly good ideas, in organizations sub-optimally organized….
3.  Invest enough in order to be meaningful.  While this is generally a
budget issue, it can also translate to management time and attention as
well.  An appropriate budget allows for full marketing mix optimization
(versus the ‘or’ mentality we’ve all confronted).  Especially if you want to
grow.  For every Virgin (and Richard Branson), who gets by on bravado vs.
budget, there are many brands starving for better support.  We always ask the toughest budget question first- ‘how LITTLE do we have to spend to get the results we’re aiming for?’  And we follow that up with, ‘what resources do we need in total?’

4.  Go big or go home.  Throwing a brick in the pond is far more impactful
than throwing handfuls of sand.  Make a splash. And using more marketing
levers is more impactful than using fewer- because consumers are harder to
reach and harder to motivate.  Advertising is necessary but often not
sufficient when moving beyond the low hanging fruit.

It all comes back to the idea, the organization, and the resources!

5.  Measure the total effort; learn from the diagnostics. Success should be
measured cumulatively, with aggregate measures (the cumulative GPA).  Then,
the involved parties can learn from the tactics in order to optimize them
next time.  Grading overall success on a line-by-line basis is frustrating
and counter-productive.  Do your specific SAT scores (yes, I remember mine) tell everything about your academic prowess, or your career success?

So, how about an idea machine, organized to nurture and execute the ideas, with the right resources properly deployed, and the right methods for executing, all measured so as to learn and improve?  Now that would be a killer app marketing eco-system!

Do you know of any companies that are pulling this off?