The following video was sent to me and like most agency folks right now it's nicely summarizing the types of conversations that are happening in the real world. I guess we may even be accused of doing the same thing with our publishing partners as we squeeze them for more value.
Thankfully since we don't do creative work we are probably not being hit as badly as some agencies as regards the very final comments - they are priceless though and very apt right now.
Hats off to the creative team that did this work. The very fact they did it and it resonates with so many in the industry is somewhat telling I think.
BTW has anyone esle noticed there seems to be more black humor around at the moment. Idle hands are obviously still finding things to do (and yes I know this is my second blog of the day)
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Why some tech CMO's succeed and others don't
There is an interesting article just been posted on the Forbes site once again noting that the most dangerous C suite title to carry is that of CMO. The article notes that the average tenure for a CMO is just 28 months compared with 38 months for CIO's and at least four years for other C titles.
This got me thinking. Since we have dealt with literally hundreds of tech companies over the years, is the situation any different in our space and what might be effecting that.
Well we are different in some ways. Tech companies are always looking at innovation as a core business driver and culturally this infuses the marketing department with a feeling that they must always operate on the cutting edge of what is available as a communications vehicle. The hasty move away from print and the current obsession with social media are two classic examples of tech marketing trying to force the issue. But there's more to it than that.
The more I consider this, the more I realize there are basically two forms of tech company marketing department. Stable and dysfunctional.
We have some incredibly good clients with staff who have been present for a considerable time and who one might even suggest are "stable". This stability though exists in two completely different forms.
Firstly there is the version where marketing is a culturally defined function of sales support and where the marcom professionals place is to provide assistance to a sales program through somewhat monotonous but consistent marketing activities such as events management, collateral production, lead generation and product related marketing support which may sometimes include the odd media campaign. Stability is delivered by the simple fact that no one has time to think long term and indeed there is little compunction or will to do so. Budget management is only done by quarter and no sooner is one activity completed than the next is underway. The relentless treadmill turns and the marketing team, in order to be successful, must function as a well oiled machine.
In the second type of stable tech marcoms set up, the client usually operates within a relatively strict set of brand guidelines, creating campaigns within defined parameters and with a longer term corporate communications goal in mind. This works well, forcing the alignment of the different marketing components together and allows for more consistently integrated campaigns. Sure it has drawbacks - mostly in the stifling of the more radical creative ideas but even here, with some leeway and the right "adult supervision" things can still get interesting.
Both types of stability have drawbacks. The first tends to be staff burnout. Only certain types of marketing professionals accept relentless grind and one might argue that the real talent will tend to move on to organizations presenting more of a challenge and greater opportunity. This is perhaps unfair - some CMO's simply enjoy building extremely functional departments and should be applauded for doing so.
In the second scenario the real problem is maintaining the consistency, especially in the short term. It typically requires other C level functions - mainly the CEO - to be very supportive of the brand vision and not feel inclined to tinker with it. If they buy in, then they will often move on to focus on other aspects of the business and allow the CMO the leeway to run with the vision and mould it over time. They must also accept, that while marketing should be measured, not all of marketing's objectives can be simplified into a spread sheet. Carrying a brand vision into the market is as much about tone, feel and emotion as CPC and CPL's.
So what makes a CMO bound to fail? Sadly dysfunctional tech marketing departments abound. In many cases the CMO is responsible themselves. They come in and immediately engage in radical overhaul without necessarily taking the time to leverage the good that exists. They "throw the baby out with the bathwater" and can actually inflict more harm than good - especially if they don't stick around long enough to complete the task. This approach can be due to a radical difference in their vision as to what marketing goals should be or simply a wish to stamp their creative/message vision on the company at the expense of any historic work done. Again a CEO is probably behind much of this as they look for marketing to "reinvent itself" to help a struggling company position or diminishing bottom line.
However the most common problem I observe is often an organizational infrastructure that's just designed to kill any CMO's good intentions. Field marketing, corporate marketing, lead generation, events marketing, product marketing, web team, regional marketing, PR, etc, etc. Any company with this many departments, often with private agendas and rarely coordinated, is a disaster waiting to happen. If I meet any CMO who tells me "oh that's not something I control" I know they are doing the job with both hands tied behind their back. It's simply impossible to rally the troops if some think they are Indians and others think they are the cavalry. It never ceases to amaze me how often one marcoms function appears to be taking pleasure in screwing up the actions of another.
Oh the stories I could tell.......
This got me thinking. Since we have dealt with literally hundreds of tech companies over the years, is the situation any different in our space and what might be effecting that.
Well we are different in some ways. Tech companies are always looking at innovation as a core business driver and culturally this infuses the marketing department with a feeling that they must always operate on the cutting edge of what is available as a communications vehicle. The hasty move away from print and the current obsession with social media are two classic examples of tech marketing trying to force the issue. But there's more to it than that.
The more I consider this, the more I realize there are basically two forms of tech company marketing department. Stable and dysfunctional.
We have some incredibly good clients with staff who have been present for a considerable time and who one might even suggest are "stable". This stability though exists in two completely different forms.
Firstly there is the version where marketing is a culturally defined function of sales support and where the marcom professionals place is to provide assistance to a sales program through somewhat monotonous but consistent marketing activities such as events management, collateral production, lead generation and product related marketing support which may sometimes include the odd media campaign. Stability is delivered by the simple fact that no one has time to think long term and indeed there is little compunction or will to do so. Budget management is only done by quarter and no sooner is one activity completed than the next is underway. The relentless treadmill turns and the marketing team, in order to be successful, must function as a well oiled machine.
In the second type of stable tech marcoms set up, the client usually operates within a relatively strict set of brand guidelines, creating campaigns within defined parameters and with a longer term corporate communications goal in mind. This works well, forcing the alignment of the different marketing components together and allows for more consistently integrated campaigns. Sure it has drawbacks - mostly in the stifling of the more radical creative ideas but even here, with some leeway and the right "adult supervision" things can still get interesting.
Both types of stability have drawbacks. The first tends to be staff burnout. Only certain types of marketing professionals accept relentless grind and one might argue that the real talent will tend to move on to organizations presenting more of a challenge and greater opportunity. This is perhaps unfair - some CMO's simply enjoy building extremely functional departments and should be applauded for doing so.
In the second scenario the real problem is maintaining the consistency, especially in the short term. It typically requires other C level functions - mainly the CEO - to be very supportive of the brand vision and not feel inclined to tinker with it. If they buy in, then they will often move on to focus on other aspects of the business and allow the CMO the leeway to run with the vision and mould it over time. They must also accept, that while marketing should be measured, not all of marketing's objectives can be simplified into a spread sheet. Carrying a brand vision into the market is as much about tone, feel and emotion as CPC and CPL's.
So what makes a CMO bound to fail? Sadly dysfunctional tech marketing departments abound. In many cases the CMO is responsible themselves. They come in and immediately engage in radical overhaul without necessarily taking the time to leverage the good that exists. They "throw the baby out with the bathwater" and can actually inflict more harm than good - especially if they don't stick around long enough to complete the task. This approach can be due to a radical difference in their vision as to what marketing goals should be or simply a wish to stamp their creative/message vision on the company at the expense of any historic work done. Again a CEO is probably behind much of this as they look for marketing to "reinvent itself" to help a struggling company position or diminishing bottom line.
However the most common problem I observe is often an organizational infrastructure that's just designed to kill any CMO's good intentions. Field marketing, corporate marketing, lead generation, events marketing, product marketing, web team, regional marketing, PR, etc, etc. Any company with this many departments, often with private agendas and rarely coordinated, is a disaster waiting to happen. If I meet any CMO who tells me "oh that's not something I control" I know they are doing the job with both hands tied behind their back. It's simply impossible to rally the troops if some think they are Indians and others think they are the cavalry. It never ceases to amaze me how often one marcoms function appears to be taking pleasure in screwing up the actions of another.
Oh the stories I could tell.......
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Google gets a dose of media reality
I sometimes joke with the Just Media team that media planning could be done by a bunch of trained monkeys. It's one of the reasons clients are always trying to pay us peanuts for our services!
Indeed in this modern economy of cost cutting and service justification it's often the impression that agencies like ours that only do media planning and buying (no creative work) are a luxury item that can be replaced, in many cases by clients doing the work themselves. Well for once I have to send my thanks to Google for proving to all that it's simply not possible to replace hard working media professionals with automated systems and algorithms.
The news Google has pulled out of trying to sell traditional media like print and radio was somewhat of a surprise to me I have to say. I was quietly concerned that potential cost savings offered by media bidding models would attract significant attention and dollars out of the hands of professional buyers, like us. I thought, foolishly it seems, that human input into this process was so devalued by many that a new "agency" model was being created - indeed that was the stated goal.
However the reality is it's actually getting harder than ever to be in this business. The knowledge required is so much greater than just 15 years ago when I started on the agency side (where I moved for ad sales). Obviously the web has lead to much of that - it's a media vehicle with almost unlimited options and the ability to combine pretty much every other media type within it (print, radio, TV, events, face to face meeting, out of home - all is replicated in the digital world). However as we have seen even radio, a media format that offers so many similarities with online as regards buying (small standardized ad units, solid audience demographics, calculated values of spot rate based on target reached) it's really not that simple. Especially complex is the evaluation of the performance metrics so beloved by Google algorithms and also the "human effect" of bias ingrained in most radio advertisers who like to speculate on what times and stations their target is listening rather than using simple mathematics to calculate a reach/impression/value matrix that builds a plan based on desired response.
So thank you Google - for once you have helped prove we still do have a place in this world and that my team is not in any immediate danger of being replaced by chimps and gibbons.
Indeed in this modern economy of cost cutting and service justification it's often the impression that agencies like ours that only do media planning and buying (no creative work) are a luxury item that can be replaced, in many cases by clients doing the work themselves. Well for once I have to send my thanks to Google for proving to all that it's simply not possible to replace hard working media professionals with automated systems and algorithms.
The news Google has pulled out of trying to sell traditional media like print and radio was somewhat of a surprise to me I have to say. I was quietly concerned that potential cost savings offered by media bidding models would attract significant attention and dollars out of the hands of professional buyers, like us. I thought, foolishly it seems, that human input into this process was so devalued by many that a new "agency" model was being created - indeed that was the stated goal.
However the reality is it's actually getting harder than ever to be in this business. The knowledge required is so much greater than just 15 years ago when I started on the agency side (where I moved for ad sales). Obviously the web has lead to much of that - it's a media vehicle with almost unlimited options and the ability to combine pretty much every other media type within it (print, radio, TV, events, face to face meeting, out of home - all is replicated in the digital world). However as we have seen even radio, a media format that offers so many similarities with online as regards buying (small standardized ad units, solid audience demographics, calculated values of spot rate based on target reached) it's really not that simple. Especially complex is the evaluation of the performance metrics so beloved by Google algorithms and also the "human effect" of bias ingrained in most radio advertisers who like to speculate on what times and stations their target is listening rather than using simple mathematics to calculate a reach/impression/value matrix that builds a plan based on desired response.
So thank you Google - for once you have helped prove we still do have a place in this world and that my team is not in any immediate danger of being replaced by chimps and gibbons.
Monday, May 4, 2009
We know what you think!
A friend of mine sent me a link to an interesting company who have recently won a marketing innovation award, called Neurofocus.
This technology of scanning brain patterns is not new and I recall hearing about it several years ago, based on the interesting results of studying subliminal messages as part of an academic study.
For obvious reasons this is both fascinating and completely scary. Being able to predict what messages will be most effective in creating reactions and response offers huge potential to the advertising, branding and marketing communities (not to say sales). It's especially intriguing to think about reactions to messages that are not necessarily driven by logical thought patterns but our emotional ones (the ones we have so much trouble controlling that is).
Like all new advances there are two sides to this. In adults one feels this is perhaps somewhat less contentious - we are all free thinking and emotionally stable right? But what about other groups like kids. Groups that are driven far more by emotional reactions and who are less able to adjust for those subtle nuances being produced by brain induced research? Should this technology be banned in it's application to those groups and who's going to police it (I should state here and now that I am not a fan of deliberate advertising and targeting to anyone under the age of 16).I have absolutely no faith in our industry to self regulate.
Like I say fascinating stuff and without doubt open to producing some spectacular results when applied correctly to the industry in which we operate. However just as the original research showed, use of subliminal content and brain reactions need to be carefully managed before things get out of hand.
This technology of scanning brain patterns is not new and I recall hearing about it several years ago, based on the interesting results of studying subliminal messages as part of an academic study.
For obvious reasons this is both fascinating and completely scary. Being able to predict what messages will be most effective in creating reactions and response offers huge potential to the advertising, branding and marketing communities (not to say sales). It's especially intriguing to think about reactions to messages that are not necessarily driven by logical thought patterns but our emotional ones (the ones we have so much trouble controlling that is).
Like all new advances there are two sides to this. In adults one feels this is perhaps somewhat less contentious - we are all free thinking and emotionally stable right? But what about other groups like kids. Groups that are driven far more by emotional reactions and who are less able to adjust for those subtle nuances being produced by brain induced research? Should this technology be banned in it's application to those groups and who's going to police it (I should state here and now that I am not a fan of deliberate advertising and targeting to anyone under the age of 16).I have absolutely no faith in our industry to self regulate.
Like I say fascinating stuff and without doubt open to producing some spectacular results when applied correctly to the industry in which we operate. However just as the original research showed, use of subliminal content and brain reactions need to be carefully managed before things get out of hand.
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