Social media - time to implement like hell

Social media clearly remains a hot topic.

Not just among the evangelists - it crops up everywhere, in lots of conversations, presentations and meetings. Last week alone, I met with a guy doing his dissertation on social media, filled out a survey for social media for the marketing institute and fed into another survey trying to get an understanding of salaries for digital marketers.

Last September I outlined O2 Ireland's new social media strategy. Perhaps in another post, I'll explain in more detail what the strategy looks like - as we've some good stuff and an well-thought through structure (I think anyway).

From a practical perspective, the decisions we made included: (1) what activity we would do, (2) how we would do it, (3) who would do it (4) how much money we'd invest and (5) what success would look like.

I'm happy with it. It will evolve of course. And tactical mistakes will be made I'm sure. But the important thing for me is that we are clear on our strategy - thus no more lengthy discussions or time wasting debates on what we should or should not do. Rather, we're into execution.

In the words of Jack Welch "In real life, strategy is actually very straightforward. You pick a general direction and implement like hell".

Brilliant business books

Harvard Business Review posted an article last week about managing versus leading. They are often seen as different, with managing somehow coming out as tactical and less important. Robert Sutton disagrees. As do I.

As does Larry Bossidy. So nice to see his book here picked as the panel's favourite. Execution is well worth a read in you're in the business of leading (thus managing).

Only 3 reasons why advertising is not working.

Often when sales are not coming as planned, the first impulse is to advertise more. While this may be the correct action, it may not always be.

As a rule of thumb - there are generally only three reasons (in my mind anyway) why advertising is not driving demand. The action required is different for each.

1. Your consumers don't know about your product / offer / solution. This is an awareness play. The action here is actually to advertise more.
2. They may be aware but don't understand your advertising. This is not about doing more advertising. In fact more of the same will do little for you. You need to tweak or change your advertising, as they don't get it. The benefit (rational or emotional) may be hidden or badly explained.
3. They don't care. In this situation, they are aware and they understand, but couldn't care less. There can be lots of reasons here - wrong audience, wrong insight, wrong product, wrong timing, no clear reason to buy, no differentiation. Your job here is to find out what will make them care. Whatever the problem is, one thing you know is that doing more advertising here won't help you much.
   

If you don't know the problem, you can't really fix it.

Paint the big picture for them

When talking shop a couple of weeks ago, a friend told me she didn't see how her work was connected to her company's strategy. While this is a common complaint, I was surprised. She works in marketing - on some of her company's most important projects. In a critical role too.

If she couldn't see why or how her day to day work fitted into the bigger picture, what are the chances for the many others working on the smaller initiatives? It reminded me of a story Peter Drucker wrote in one of his many insightful management books:

Three stonecutters were asked what they were doing. The first replied that he was "making a living". The second proudly said he was doing the "finest work of any stonecutter in the country". The third replied "I am building a cathedral".

Peter Drucker explains that the first man knows what he wants from his job. He puts in his 8-hour day in return for a fair wage. That's fine. But the problem is with the second man. He may get caught up polishing the steps of the cathedral for weeks without understanding his job is to build the cathedral.

I've always felt this story was relevant to us marketing folk.

We can get caught up in how beautifully our ads have been executed. We fight for hours on how a line of copy reads. Don't get me wrong - copy is important. Very. (And we do fight for hours over words). I want our ads to be the finest they can be. I want to be proud of the work we do. I want to work with people that love what they do. But the work must always be connected back to the big picture. As the phrase goes, "Strategy without sharp execution is a dream. And execution without strategy is a nightmare".

As managers, our role is to make sure our teams understand the big picture. What it is. And where they fit into it. If they can't see it, we need to paint it for them. Regularly.

Advertising works best when you have a specific challenge.

Advertising works best when you have a specific challenge.

While brand 'awareness' as a measure is sometimes legit, it can also be lazy as a strategy. Before deciding that advertising is the answer, spend more time on the question. What exactly is the communication challenge? Try to get beyond "We want more sales". For example, do you want new customers? Or do you want existing customers to buy more of your current product? Or buy something else? Or, as in the Campbell Soup example, do you want them to use more of what they already have? Or use it at a different time?

The 'Got Milk?' campaign is a wonderful example of advertising strategy.

Faced with a steady decline in milk sales over many years, the Californian Milk Processor Board and their agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, devised a very insightful campaign, targeting teenagers and young people.

They realised that milk was boring. Everybody knew milk. Making people more aware of milk would hardly drive sales. What could they possibly say that was new or interesting?

Their used this insight - teenagers often have milk with particular food types, such as chocolate brownies, cookies and peanut butter sandwiches.

So, instead of promoting milk itself - they decided to market milk as a necessity for these other very desirable foods. They now had a very specific communication challenge - to remind their audience how delicious this combination of milk and cookies was. Remind them to have milk with their peanut and butter sandwiches. Get them to want a chocolate brownie. And make sure they have milk on hand so they enjoy it more. Above is one of their original series of ads. They went on to make a lot more.

The result? They stopped the decline. Milk consumption in California increased for the first time in over 10 years.

See full case study here and read more about it in Jon Steel's book.

Performance Management in practice

Anybody that has studied Southwest Airlines will know that devising a strategy can be easier than executing one. Many airlines have tried to copy Southwest. Few have succeeded. Southwest know how to execute.

I realise this piece may look like a deviation from my general posts about marketing communications. But getting high performance marketing is a team effort. You need highly motivated, talented and hard working people to deliver on any marketing strategy. It requires leadership and management.

I posted last week about performance reviews. These are critical to executing strategy. The most difficult part of performance reviews is getting the objectives right at the beginning of the year. In fairness, getting them right takes a bit of time and usually a few drafts.

I wanted to show the the process I use.

The starting place is clarifying what exactly you want done and how well you want it done. One way to figure this out is to ask yourself what would you do if it were you doing the work yourself. And to what standard would you do the work. When you know what you want, next step is to figure out an objective way to measure this performance. Involve your team member. Get very specific and agree (1) the output itself (2) how it will be measured (3) when this will be measured and (4) by who.

I'll use a typical 'Direct Marketing Exec' role as an example.

Let's say it is January and one of your team members manages your direct marketing activity. Let's assume you need 100 sales each month to hit targets. Assume also that you know from experience that your direct marketing activity needs to generate 250 sales leads each month to create these 100 sales. Finally, let's assume that you know you need to target 5,000 people each month to generate 250 leads.

Objectives for the Direct Marketing Exec might be something like this:

1. His overall objective is 100 sale a month. Often the big objectives are not fully under the control of the individual. He may be relying on the sales team to close the sales. This is why it makes sense to have a few other sub-objectives which would be fully under the individual's control. I believe it is important to include the overall objective though, as this the real output objective the business wants.
   
2. A sub-objective might be to get the actual campaign out, by a specific date each month, targeting 5,000 people.
3. Another sub-objective for him might be to drive up response rates to 7% by 31st March. So currently, 250 leads from 5,000 people is a 5% response. To meet this objective, he would need to generate 350 leads from 5,000 by 31st March.
   
4. Another sub-objective might be to drive down the cost-per-piece. So if it currently costs €3,000 to target 5,000 people, the cost-per-piece is €0.60. His objective might be to drive the cost down to €2000 per 5,000 people, costing just €0.40 per piece.
   

The performance-review is not for rating how your team did

Image courtesy of apfelbaum

For many years, my daily work activity and my yearly performance-review were unrelated. I saw the performance-review as a task that needed to be completed for HR once or twice a year. A bit of paperwork.

Don't get me wrong. I've had good managers who were genuinely interested in me, my work and my progress. And I worked hard. I had some objectives at the beginning of the year. But these objectives did not drive my performance. They sat in a drawer or were saved in a folder somewhere on my computer. And I'd go scrambling looking for them the day before my review.

As would my managers I suspect.

This disconnect between what I did every day and my how my performance was rated and reviewed is not unusual. James Kilts, Jack Welsh and Larry Bossidy have all written about this at the companies they ran. Many individuals and their managers see the performance-review as an awkward chore to get out of the way, so they can all go back to the real work.

This is a mistake. The performance-review is not there to rate how the individuals on your team did. It is there to drive the performance you need now. The rating of the individual is just one aspect.

This difference seems subtle - but is critical. It is not a task to complete once or twice a year. It is a method of regularly monitoring an individual's progress. So you can both agree what bits need more focus or less focus. If you had a sales target, you wouldn't wait till November to look at the figures and decide what areas need more work. This is no different.

Which is why I believe in monthly performance reviews. Yep, formal performance-reviews every month where you both review objectives against agreed measures.

This allows the manager and individual to (1) discuss the previous month's performance, (2) understand what is working well and what needs more work (3) agree what will be done about the poorer performing areas and finally (4) let the individual know officially what their performance or rating has been for the month.

I've written before about the link between strategy and execution. Reviewing performance regularly is critical to execution. Monthly reviews are not difficult. They do require some prep work but I think it is worth it. The hard bit is putting the right measures in place. I'll write a post about this another time.

Thoughts?

Guerrilla, Bypass and Flanking attacks

Image courtesy of Xabier.M

Entering a new market is not easy.

Before leaping in, it is considered wise to focus primarily on the market leader and how you position yourself against it. The market leader generally has the most resources, the most cash, highest profits, best relationships with suppliers and often the better reputation among customers. You need to know how it will react.

And market leaders can be the defensive types. If you look like a threat, you can assume they won't give up market share without a fight.

One way to tackle this is to not fight head on. Instead, start with a product, customer type or area that the market leader is less committed to. These types of attacks are known as bypass, guerrilla and flanking attacks.

While similar, these attacks are not the same.

A guerrilla attack is where you enter a segment where (1) the market leader is not competing and (2) you are not taking any of its customers. A bypass is similar except you might steal some customers from it. A flanking attack is one where the market leader is in the segment but this segment is not a major focus.

Volkswagen's Beetle is often quoted as a great example of a flanking attack on the big Detroit car companies in the 50's. GM, the leader, along with the other car companies, focused on big cars. So VW managed to steal some of the market by picking off a the 'small car' segment with their Beetle. This took everybody by surprise.

Looking at the definitions above, you can see that this was not a guerrilla attack - as VW would have stolen customers away from GM with the Beetle. And although it is often cited as a classic flanking attack, I think technically it is a bypass attack, as GM were not in the small car segment. Regardless, it was very successful.

This was executed with the wonderfully different Bill Bernbach ad campaign - 'Think Small'.

How has your manager rated you so far this year?

Strategy is invariably linked to execution.

World acclaimed CEO and author, Larry Bossidy, believes that poor business performance is often not the result of poor strategy. But from poor execution.

Peter Drucker is often credited with the quote "What gets measured, gets done". If you know exactly what is expected from you, exactly what needs to be done, exactly how it will be measured and what this means for your bonus, career prospects - and possibly job security - there is a pretty good chance you'll focus on it.

Sounds obvious. Yep. So is this what happens?

Well, given it is two months into the year. My question is - do you know exactly how your manager has rated your performance, so far, this year? And if you're a manager, do your team members know exactly how you have rated their performance? If they were asked today, could they confidently say exactly how their performance has been against defined objectives? And how their performance rates on the scale your company uses?

You should know. And so should they. It's not much use telling them at the end of the year that they've missed their objectives. It will be too late at that stage. Not fair to them. And your company may pay the price.

If you don't know - why is this? I think there are several reasons and will scribble these down for a later post.

What's your thoughts?

Strategy in the real world

Image courtesy of fabuleuse

Strategy is generally thought of as a linear process. Set and agree objectives. Work out strategy and execute. Job done. This understanding of how strategy works, is what we are comfortable with. It makes sense.

If only it were this easy.

Karl Weick uses an interesting story to explain how strategy might actually work in the real world...

During some military maneuvers in Switzerland, a unit of soldiers got caught in a snow blizzard in the Alps. They went missing for several days. Completely lost. Just when their lieutenant, back at base, was convinced that they were dead, they walked in the door.

How did they find their way back? One of the soldiers handed the lieutenant a map, explaining he'd found it in one of their bags. This had saved their lives. Looking at it, the lieutenant realised that it wasn't a map of the Alps, but of the Pyrenees.

When you are lost, any map might do.

As with strategy, when confused, any strategy plan will do. Surely not? Well, he suggested that strategic plans get people thinking and doing - "Once people begin to act, they generate tangible outcomes in some context, and this helps them discover what is occurring, what needs to be explained, and what should be done next".

The leader may know the map is wrong but he or she needs to instill some confidence in the team. Get them moving and at least understand where they are now.

Another case of losing focus: Coors

Pepsi is not the only good company that spread resources too thin and suffered.

In 1975, Coors was only available in 11 states. All in the west of the US. Despite this, it was the market leader in terms of share in 10 of these 11 states. All was good. But then Coors tried to attack a raft of other segments at the same time - light beer, dry beer, red beer, ice beer, non-alcoholic beer, extra-gold beer....

The result? They lost their No. 1 leadership position in every state.

More on focus here. Source and highly recommended book here.

When you break a golden rule of strategy...

Image courtesy of Fabio


A lot of business competitive strategy is derived from military and war strategy.

One rule is focus. Focus your resources. Don't fight too many battles at the same time. Don't spread yourself too thin. Makes sense. And really does sound obvious. Yet many smart companies have broken this golden rule and paid the price.

Pepsi did - and suffered.

At one stage, Pepsi was fighting three major battles at the same time; (1) Against Coca Cola in soft drinks. (2) In the snack food market, Pepsi owned Frito-Lay and was competing against both Proctor & Gamble and Mars. And (3) in the fast-food market, it owned Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and Kentucky Fried Chicken - so was competing against big players, McDonald's and Burger King.

And even though Pepsi was bigger than each of its main competitors, it performed worse. Of course it was able to sell Pepsi Cola and Frito-Lay snacks in Pizza Hut and their other fast food outlets. But the flip side is other restaurants preferred to buy Coca Cola as they viewed Pepsi as a competitor.

They may even have lost customers because they didn't stock Coca Cola in their fast food restaurants. I remember as a teenager, choosing McDonald's because Burger King served Pepsi, not Coke and I never liked Pepsi.

Eventually Pepsi sold off its restaurant business.

More on focus here. Sources here and here.

Lovely example of real advertising strategy

Image courtesy of pablo.diaz

We generally assume the objective of advertising is to drive sales. But if we can be more specific on what we want consumers to actually do, it can lead to better advertising.

Phil Dusenberry shared an insightful campaign on Campbell's Soup during the 1980's, which illustrates this well.

Sales of Campbell's Soup were flat and they couldn't figure out why. Campbell's was the market leader by a fairly massive margin and there was no evidence that other brands were stealing share. So why were they not selling quickly enough?

They commissioned some tracking research on how people were using the product and discovered that kitchens across America were full of Campbell's Soup. Consumers buy soup but don't necessarily eat it. They store it. They discovered that soup was seen as the default form of sustenance - "something you ate only when there was nothing else in the cupboard".

So the advertising brief was not to persuade consumers to go into stores to buy more, but to get them to eat the soup they had on their kitchen shelves. Get that right, and sales will follow.

This translated into the simple, yet successful ad campaign - "Reach for the Campbell's. It's right on your shelf".

Don't neglect Points of Parity

Image courtesy of nebe

Strategy can be confusing.

The word itself is a buzzword and is misused and abused. Many people confuse strategy with objectives or goals. I don't know about you, but I often come across strategy documents where it isn't clear what the end game is. They just have strategies.

John Kay, the economist and columnist, explained that strategy actually means 'expensive'. When you hear that something is a "strategic investment", they mean you "are going to lose a lot of money on this project". Or strategy can mean 'important'. In an essay published in 'Strategy Bites Back', Mr Kay translates the phrase "I'm in strategy". It means "I have a large office, large salary and the ear of the chief executive".

But not everything about strategy is complex, difficult or confusing. Some bits are so clear, obvious and easy to understand, they almost seem too simplistic to be considered strategy. But they are strategy. And worth understanding.

Understanding that you must not neglect 'points of parity' is one of these.

When figuring out how to compete, we tend to think most about how we can differentiate against competitors. Practically, we're talking about creating reasons for customers to choose you, over their other options. You're faster. Or you're cheaper. Or have the widest range of products. Or safest. Or most leg space. Or best built engines. You get the picture.

Because focus is critical and resources are always limited, the temptation then is to talk only about these points of differentiation in your communications.

And this makes sense. If you have the best customer service - and if this matters to customers in your industry - why would you not shout about this? Ries and Trout have written several books about focusing on the narrow point of differentiation.

So shout away. Be focused. But don't neglect your points of parity. These are the attributes that you choose not to differentiate on - but still need to be in the ballpark for. If not, they become barriers in the minds of your potential customers.

Kevin Lane Keller provides an interesting case with Subway sandwiches. In 2000, Subway wanted to compete on health. They planned to position themselves as a healthy fast-food option. They were pretty confident this would be a differentiating strategy, using Jared Fogle, a 22 year old spokesperson who had lost 245 pounds on a Subway diet.

But they also knew that people eat fast food because it tastes good.

They debated internally about whether they should be competing on this attribute of 'tasty food' instead of 'health'. In the end, they choose to position themselves as the healthy option. But at the same time, they ran smaller campaigns that talked about how tasty their Subway sandwiches were.

This allowed them to attack unhealthy fast food options like McDonald's while defending themselves against a possible perception that their sandwiches taste rotten.

Ultimately, as you have limited resources, it becomes a balancing act.

When it absolutely, positively, has to be there overnight

Ad found via Futurelab

New York Magazine recently listed this as one of Madison Avenue's most memorable ads.

The ad is outstanding....but the thinking and strategy that underpinned their advertising is better still.

When they launched in 1971, FedEx's original strategy was to be 'better and cheaper' than its competitors, focusing on heavy packages. But they couldn't compete against Emery Air Freight, a larger competitor. So they shifted their strategy to fight not on price, convenience or package size.

Instead they shifted the battlefield terrain and competed on speed.

This came to life, executed flawlessly with their "When it absolutely, positively, has to be there overnight". In addition, they focused on business men, instead of mailroom clerks. And they followed one of the most important rules in strategy - they decided where not to compete. They dropped their other '3-day delivery' service, as it didn't fit with their strategy.

Speed as a strategy worked beautifully for a long time. But then the environment changed. Most packages that needed to be delivered overnight were actually office documents - and everybody now had email.

FedEx had to move their battlefield terrain again. Speed alone was no longer a point of differentiation. I believe they started to compete on value-added services like package-tracking and high security delivery.

If you're interested in competitive strategy, check out these two great books here and here.

The most important word in strategy

Image courtesy of Ihtatho

If I had to name the single most powerful concept in business that I have learned, it would be 'focus'.

Al Ries and Jack Trout have been talking about focus in business for many years. Their 1986 marketing classic 'Positioning - the battle of your mind' advocates that the more narrow the brand focus is, the more likely consumers will remember what it stands for. They're clearly not fond of brand extensions - believing that brand stretching always dilutes the brand.

Al Ries later wrote another book called 'Focus - the future of your company depends upon it' with case studies on companies that lost their path once they strayed from their core business. While extreme in his views at times, Ries is onto something.

Of course, this is not new stuff.

War strategists have understood the power of focus for a long time. Ferdinand Foch, the french war strategist, said "He who defends everything, defends nothing". Carl von Clausewitz agreed - "In war, few things are as important as placing one's army so that instead of being weak in many places, it is strong in few".

Pareto, the 19 century Italian economist, discovered that 20% of our efforts deliver approximately 80% of the results. This 80/20 rule has many practical applications. For example, approx 20% of your customers deliver about 80% of your profits. This is probably the first rule that direct marketers learn.

If you're interested, Richard Koch wrote a very practical book titled 'The 80/20 Principle - the secret of achieving more with less' - not a marketing book, but has lots of business applications. And if you're involved in direct marketing, and have not already read Graeme McCorkell's 'Direct and Database Marketing' - I'd highly recommend it.

So what are the practical learning? Well, there are many. Identify the important stuff. Put most of your effort into the few things you do well. Compete in only a few places. Against only a few competitors at one time. Launch only one or two major transforming initiatives at any one time. Don't spread your budget too thin. Don't spread your team's efforts too thin. Look after your most profitable customers. And if you're advertising - just say one thing in your ad.

All sounds a bit obvious and easy.

Perhaps, but not so easy to do. Why? I think this may be because it goes against our human nature. We are opportunistic and have difficulty deciding what not to do.

I once read that the most important word in strategy is 'No'.

That aside, there is the real concern that is if we are too focused, we might miss the big picture. We miss opportunities. History is dotted with fading (or dead) companies that missed or ignored new trends and technologies to their detriment. But this should not stop us for actively choosing what to do and what not to do.

Long before Pareto, Confucius, the ancient Chinese philosopher, explained it simply - "A man who chases two rabbits, catches neither".

Brand warns us not to buy their product unless...

This tv ad might not be beautiful, but I bet it works. Apologies, I couldn't paste the ad here but here is a link.

The idea, as I see it, is to let us know that this is strong stuff. Potent almost. Not just let us know - to warn us about their drug. It is powerful, and they take this power seriously - "With all power, comes responsibility".

The bit I like is that they suggest Solpa-Sinus might be too powerful for some of us. "If you need something powerful, take Solpa-Sinus. If you don't. Don't".

This honest recommendation that we shouldn't take it unless we're really hurting adds credibility. We expect companies to try and sell their product to as many people as possible. But not these guys. So, we're left thinking - 'this stuff must be mind-blowing'.

And of course, mind-blowing is exactly what anybody with sinus wants. Of course we all want something powerful. Nobody wants mild, medium or gentle. Just hit me with the good stuff.

I like it.

TV + Online is better than just TV on its own

Research firm Advertiser Perception recently surveyed 25,000 people and found that consumers are more likely to buy if they are exposed to ads across more than one media channel.

So for example, TV + Online is better than just TV on its own. Nothing new, but it is always good to have recent research to back up our comms strategies.

Via Brandeo

How do you win in the bottled water market?

I like this ad. It is beautifully shot, the music track is great and I think the "Bodies never lie" sign-off works. It's good stuff. I'd be proud of it if I were involved.

But I can't help thinking that positioning a water brand is a tough gig.

My girlfriend buys a couple of bottles of water each week. When we shop, there always seems to be a 'Buy one, get one free' offer. One week is might be Ballygowan, the next it's Volvic. Either way, the brand on sale gets our vote.

So if the fight for market share is at retail level, why spend on TV advertising? Is it needed at all?

Well, the strategy may be to use advertising to keep the brand top of mind, and then run a promotion in-store to clinch the sale. Research by author, John Philip Jones, shows that this combination can work. Interestingly, his results show you don't necessarily need to talk about the sale in the TV advertising either for this dual strategy to work. So no need for Ballygowan to talk about their two-for-one sale in their brand building ad.

Also, the brand manager can use this investment in advertising as leverage when negotiating the best shelf space in the stores.

Perhaps Ballygowan and Volvic are happy to fight it out between themselves, as long they don't lose share to other, smaller brands?

Either way, building a premium water brand when there is nothing obvious in the product to differentiate it can't be easy.

"What management is"

The year was 1994, and 18% of Continental's flights were cash negative.

Aware that the fastest way to make money is to stop losing it, Greg Brenneman (their new president) recalls that he sat the scheduling team down and started asking questions:

"Why are we going from Greensboro to Greenvile six times a day when both customers who want to fly that route are on the first flight?"


"It's strategic" - somebody told me.


"When did it last make money?"


"It never did" was the reply.


"How strategic can that be?"


There was a silence. I asked "Does somebody's boyfriend or girlfriend live there? Why don't we just charter you a Lear jet? It would be cheaper".


This except is taken from 'What Management is', which I read this while on holiday last month.

Joan Magretta writes very well. She has mastered the very difficult job of writing a book that both beginners and veteran managers will find useful.

If you manage people or work on strategy, I think you'll enjoy this.