Marketing a Level Playing Field

Michael Porter fingered the difference between pre and post Internet marketing when he said the customer's in charge. By giving customers access to so much information, they have become extraordinarily assertive shoppers, for everything from MRI machines to airline tickets. As a result marketers can persuade less and position more. Here are some of the implications of that transition.

Today's business environment is driven by productivity and profit margins. These goals demand that companies stick with core competencies and stay lean, using minimal employees and outsourcing specialized skills. In addition to efficient deliveries, today's businesses enjoy a range of new communication channels that engage prospects and customers in their brands prior to purchase. As a result, the business of marketing has shifted from entertaining prospects at a distance to engaging them directly and electronically.

However, because it is more direct, marketing is also more centralized. There is less reliance on traditional communications and more reliance on data base technologies and electronically delivered messages. With the hurry-up sales campaigns of the early 00s, marketing has focused on finding and cross-selling to ever more demanding prospects and customers. It is not surprising then that a recent study by the National Association of Advertisers and Booz Allen Hamilton found a gap between what C-officers wanted and what they perceived their overworked marketing departments were giving them.

At the same time, however, the study found that C-officers were howling about a lack of innovation, cross functional integration, and delivery on overall strategic business objectives that they expected from their CMOs. In other words, the study implied that C-officers thought all this short-term stuff was well and good (of course it was good, it contributed to profit), but what they really wanted their CMOs to be doing was to shape ideas, to evangelize, and to bring vision to the enterprise.

Marketing 2007 is remarkably different from Marketing 1999. Marketing has always been responsible for getting products and services out the door. In 1999, however, the product or service going out the door was often handed to sales. In 2007, contact with buyers and in many instances the sales process itself will already have begun by the time the product or service is ready to go. One effect of jamming these functions together is to forge different alignments between marketing and sales; another is to require closer integration of both functions across the enterprise. The most significant effect, however, is to demand greater knowledge and vision from everyone.

Thanks to data base marketing, CMOs already have a far greater understanding of their customers and prospects than they have had in the past. What they have had little time to acquire is a comprehensive view of their marketplace as well as an awareness of the opportunities created by the Internet, telecommunications, and other converging technologies. In addition, while many CMOs have an appreciation for brand strategy - the one practice that truly responds to today's brave new market - beyond identity or packaging they seldom have enough experience to assess their company's needs much less to implement solutions. What is true for many companies today is that they are overwhelmed by the day to day, and technology is plunging them further into that black hole, specifically into the past as it is described by accessible data. What they yearn for is a simple idea of where they might be heading so that at the very least when they create communications they are addressing not only the benefits of a particular product or service but the long term value of owning that product or service.

Enter branding. Branding is what your customers expect and experience when they do business with you. It can be reflected in your packaging, your corporate identity, your reputation, but it resides in your relationship with your customer. It begins with your customers' anticipation of a specific value when they buy your products and services. Interestingly, that value need not be a function of the product. A call for Grey Goose, for instance, is not a call for vodka, even a call for the experience of vodka. It is a call for style and wit, for whatever attributes Grey Goose customers associate with drinking only this vodka. Knowing this doesn't cause the Grey Goose people to change their recipe. The recipe has very little to do with sales. Grey Goose is a self-expressive brand. Yes, it has a function. It makes most people feel good. So do most vodkas. Yes, it has an emotion. It makes most people feel good. So do most vodkas. But Grey Goose lets people feel hip, stylish, and witty. Ahh, now there's something we can't find anywhere else.

Because it differentiates, because it positions products vis a vis all the other choices, branding is the ur practice of modern marketing. Marketers are no longer primarily involved in a media race - where do I place my message? Nor are they primarily involved in an attention race - which message is most entertaining? Marketers are primarily involved in a positioning race - how do I demonstrate that my product delivers head and shoulders above the rest? Branding is therefore the platform upon which they must build promotional communications to their audiences. Over time the platform will have to be remodeled, perhaps even rebuilt, but as long as a company stays connected to its customers, its branding will be its bridge from its past to its future.

To learn more about branding, give Fred Barson a call today.