Flawless Abandon

Going Kicking and Screaming into the Social Media Age

Finally a remedy for the agoraphobic, the stay-at-home moms who crave adult conversation, the corporate disgruntled Gen X and Gen Y-ers, and all the college students needing a study break from Eastern European Lit.  It’s called Social Media! 

Ok call me an old curmudgeon – I suppose I almost qualify.  But for those of us who don’t even have the time during the day to fill up our coffee mugs, social media is just NOT something I WANT TO EMBRACE! Yes I know it’s all the rage… it’s all the thing to do and saying this pretty much disqualifies me as marketer of the year.  In fact, I know marketers everywhere who are building their PowerPoint decks, pitching their expertise and even running to the bank to cash their checks after helping their clients get up and running on “social media”.

Let me clarify - you cannot blame me for just being ignorant. Oh contraire!  I am all TOO in the know. I have a blog, a Facebook page with gawd knows how many “friends”, Linked in and Plax profiles with 140+ contacts, and I even have two Twitter accounts.  Yes I’m there.  And I get it – it’s easy – it’s NOW and it’s viral.  It helps with SEO, it connects you to the world, and it even does your laundry.

 But really…  are we so distracted and suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder that we all need to get our news in 140 characters tidbits and constantly alt/tab back and forth 100 times a day to see what our high school friends are doing RIGHT NOW?

Marketing and Culture - How DO They Relate?

What exactly is the relationship between a company’s external marketing and its internal corporate culture?  Some would say it is like the chicken and the egg – aka nobody is ever quite sure which comes first or which causes the other.  Others may even argue (gosh I hope not) there is no relationship at all. 

Old school marketing purists would say that marketing drives – or at least layers a thick coat of public veneer onto a company’s corporate culture that is believable and sellable to the end user as a differentiator.  But as those of us on the inside know all too well, what is purported to the public as a company’s prime differentiator often has nothing to do with the internal realities the employees live on a daily basis. Yet, in today’s increasingly transparent one-to-one marketing world where a single angst-ridden customer can make or break your next quarter with one well-positioned You Tube video, and where disgruntled employees are free to vent company dirty laundry to the world unfettered, organizations are fast realizing it is high time to ensure their external messaging and internal realities are in sync.

Alex Frankel wrote a book Punching In, The Unauthorized Adventures of a Front-Line Employee, about which I recently listened to a podcast on the AMA web site.

MEASURING MARKETING’S PERFORMANCE

Marketing used to be simple. When there were just four Ps of marketing not 5 , and no R’s of marketing, and when success was judged by the punch of 30 second t.v. spots, the ROI on direct mailers, the leads from the trade show booth, or the buzz created by a (traditional) media story.  Oh yes, I remember the good ol’ days when measurement meant seeing sales move in a general upward direction, stock prices rise and the CEO and shareholders smiling.

That was life before transparency.  All this fun happened before companies figured out just how much extra the ad agency was making on the media buys …  before customers could make or break brands with blogs and videos and emails the company had no idea were even happening… and before marketing was expected to justify its existence with metrics like every other department in the organization.

Do Shifting Brands have to live in Marketing Purgatory During Transition?

My husband never went to marketing school.  In fact you could say he knows nothing about marketing.  But perhaps it is his innocence on the matter – combined with what he learns from my frequent musings that sometimes makes him the best marketing mind I know. 

Today over eggs we were discussing the rise and fall of Anne McDonald, the initially highly touted CMO who joined Macy’s to redirect the brand a couple of years ago who was removed just 15 months later, after her new marketing strategy proved to reduce sales instead of boost them.  If you are not familiar with her position, she was tasked with building global Macy's brand and eliminating the localized brands of Marshall Fields and Foley's.  This meant a move beyond the “sale” mentality to a new space up-market. I commented to my husband on how quickly after her arrival I had noticed the shift in television and print advertising away from “sale, sale, sale” to the image building campaigns… and how I noticed this holiday season Macy’s is definitely back to its discount tactics, or as my husband then blurted, “the red apple sale is back!”

I was indeed shocked that my husband had not only even HEARD of the Red Apple sale to begin with, let alone connect Macy’s to Foleys and also to a campaign that ended almost two years ago. 

I sat in silent disbelief for a minute, and while I was recovering, he added this gem.  “I guess you have to anticipate that your brand is going to live in Purgatory for a while if you plan to change it.”   

A New Year Salute to the Unsung Heroes of Marketing – the Small-to Medium Sized Business Marketing Leaders

In my holiday catch up reading frenzy I’ve found a number of articles about big brand marketers that seem to have found themselves behind the 8-ball navigating the new marketing landscape – aka the shift we’ve all felt with the proliferation of the Internet as both a measurable and boundless marketing venue.  I’ve found a certain sick pleasure in reading about this topic because I feel like those of us working in smaller companies and perhaps even in second tier markets saw this coming and are vastly more prepared to take on the new economy than many of the superstars who formerly filled the pages of AdWeek and AdAge just a couple of years ago.

As an example, take Business Week’s December 10 article entitled “The Short Life of the Chief Marketing Officer” which points to the increasing scrutiny CMOs face in the wake of increasing corporate governance across the organization.  They refer to the “strange new world” CMOs are increasingly being asked to manage which involves taking the brand message across a large and rocky landscape that includes not only managing the agencies of the past, but also managing web sites, overseeing SEO and pay-per-click programs, considering VOC issues as played out publicly in social networking sites, and even keeping abreast of emerging technologies such as Web TV.   The writer quotes Geico’s CMO Ted Ward as saying it is hard to choose marketing options “when the sands keep shifting.” 

Vision, Mission, and Purpose Statements…Puffery or High Priority?

I have on occasion found myself debating with CEOs (ok, well just my current CEO) how relevant and important it is for a company to agree on and promote a unified corporate vision to employees and stakeholders. 

On one hand, I concede the world went vision/mission crazy a few years back with laminated wallet cards featuring overly complex, over-edited, watered down Dilbertesque visions and missions. (check out Dilbert’s Mission Statement Generator for a good time)   Yet there is more to a successful vision than platitudes on the back of a wallet card, and I’m perplexed as to why getting my CEO to see my side of this is so challenging.

To build more ammunition for my argument, I began researching scholars on this topic. My journey brought me to a book by the name of Purpose, by Nikos Mourkogiannis.  As long as I was going to get to the bottom of vision and mission, I decided, I may as well consider how purpose weighs in.  My hope was to put a cogent argue together on the topic for once and all.

In the end, while I cannot say I’ve convinced my CEO of its merits, I’ve at least convinced myself.  Here is how I see it.

Mission, Vision, Purpose Defined

What is a Mission – Missions are typically seen as the existing product or services the company produces, connected to an often insincere “moralistic aspiration” about the future. For example, AOL’ boasts this mission on their web site: “To Serve the World’s Largest and Most Engaged Community”  … Hmmm.  Not only is this vague, but it seems to be missing something they really wished they could say like, “and make lots of money doing it!”   McDonalds has a similarly moral bent with its mission, stating they seek to “promote Diversity and Inclusion among our Employees, Owner/Operator's and Suppliers who represent the diverse populations McDonald's serves around the globe.”