Marketing's on a Roller-Coaster Ride: Are You Ready?

By David Shaw & Kim Faulkner 1 Jan 2010

Business today is in the eye of the perfect storm.  We are just rounding the corner of the worst global recession in decades; and thanks to the rise of social media, emerging with no control over the consumer.  Marketers therefore have to reinvent their role if they hope to stay relevant, and not be made redundant.

We are all leaders and followers at the same time.  As a marketing leader, do you have what it takes to inspire your team to make the journey of change?  As a marketing professional, are you prepared to step outside your comfort zone towards a destination yet unknown?

The 21^st century brand marketer will have to undertake a change journey to stay in demand and in sync with the jungle out there.

Companies today stand at the edge of a cliff.  Their position is precarious because brand marketing – the way companies create customers and enable sales – is being turned on its head like never before.  It isn’t just the global financial crisis bearing down on the pressures of quarterly reporting.  It’s not just the increasing emphasis on improving and measuring marketing effectiveness.  It goes beyond the fragmentation of media, and the proliferation of new social media channels, and even the fragmentation of customer segments.  As companies merge and reorganise in order to survive let alone thrive, there is an urgent call for clarity on roles and responsibilities, for consistency of brand expression across very diverse channels, target segments, and geographic markets.

Trust has become the new battlefield. Today, people build trust in a fundamentally different way than the generation before them. They increasingly distrust institutions they used to trust for a long time (think about recent unfortunate scandals involving banks, doctors and lawyers, to name but a few). They increasingly do trust their peers: someone who shares a similar experience (even if they do not know the person).   Trust is therefore the key objective for companies today because it underpins corporate reputation and effectively gives them license to operate.

Authenticity is the second salient trend. Where brand marketing used to be about creating a favourable image, it can no longer afford to be something that people do not believe the brand to be credibly able to deliver.  The new consumer has a point of view about your brand and how it behaves in the marketplace.

How and what you deliver is either appreciated because it ‘feels’ right, or it is viewed with skepticism and distrust because it feels contrived. Brand marketing is about leveraging your strengths, heritage and core brand competence.  It’s not cosmetic surgery.

The third, is the most drastic paradigm shift:  No longer can companies rely wholly on the marketing messages they send out – and the way consumers receive them: passively, co-operatively.  Consumers today are rejecting the notion of information forced down their throats, and assembling the reference points they want, from wherever they wish, whenever they like, in whatever form they choose.  The empowered consumer has more choices today – and the technology to enforce them.

All this will profoundly impact the way products and services are sold and business is done … forever.

Now you’d think this is reason enough for marketers to change their approach, adopt new practices, learn new skills.  Yet history has shown, time and again, that people resist change.  The reasons are many, but the result is the same: inertia born of denial, avoidance born of misinformation and fear.

Yet a change journey is precisely that: an odyssey of many small steps fuelled by a singular vision.  Think of it as a wagon train. The trip will take some time, so you’ve got to pace yourself for a long haul.   The destination may be broadly known, but the pathway is less clear and there are many diversions.

 So you will likely experience a whole gamut of emotions  –  from adventure to anxiety, a mix of hope and fear; daring to dream but weighing the cost.  Stories will be told around the campfire – by brand champions who are the glue on every change journey.  Even so, some will lose heart and drop out along the way -- they just don't share the same intensity of vision as the leaders do.  Others will ride up alongside and hitch their horses to the train - they are attracted to and inspired by the possibilities that have captured the hearts of the travellers.

 An organisation's leaders have the responsibility to share their vision and nurture it within the hearts and minds of their people (employees); to keep them energised throughout the journey; and to bring the group safely to their destination.  If executed with wisdom and sensitivity, the group's purpose, beliefs and attitudes will have been changed by the journey, not by the destination.

A look at the US automobile industry reflects how people and organisations can be caught up by emotion and engage in self-destructive activity.  An obscure, recently-published study reveals that unionised GM assembly line workers deliberately turned out sub-standard cars (deciding not to tighten nuts and bolts, consciously  omitting various quality checks and so on) to get back at management for pressuring them to accept wage cuts in the late 1990s. Less than a decade on, these same workers found themselves on the streets as GM closed down plants in a desperate attempt to trim overheads to address falling demand.

More recently, one can only imagine what could happen to Toyota and British Airways if they do not galvanise the people within their organisations to recognise the new world order in which they operate.  In Toyota’s case it is a recognition that their drive for scale and global market leadership cannot be achieved at the expense of what the Toyota brand is most trusted for – quality engineering and reliability.  As for British Airways, management needs to convince union leaders and staff embarking on strikes for better pay, that they are working on the same side in their quest to be “the world’s favourite airline”.

The need to embrace change, however, is just as acutely needed in small, medium enterprises and at the individual level  -- perhaps even more so. 

 At-sunrice, a culinary academy based in Singapore, came to Activiste with a conundrum: how to reposition itself and build a reputation as a respected, professional culinary academy on par with prestigious global academies boasting a much longer track record.  The solution involved a change journey to truly differentiate the brand by:

• its coverage of East-West, New World-Old World cuisines and an in-depth appreciation of differences in food sources, cooking styles and equipment ;
• a unique work-study program giving students a chance to concurrently intern at the best restaurants in Singapore and the world;
• the incorporation of the Singapore Spice Garden, located on the same grounds, into the curriculum, so that aspiring chefs can see, feel and taste fresh herbs and spices in their natural environment; and
• establishing a prestigious Global Chef Award at the annual World Gourmet Summit  to elevate the stature of the brand

For those who recognise a need to change the way their team or organisation goes to market – and have a desire to provide some leadership for the change journey -- may we offer a few guideposts to navigate by:

1. Create an interactive platform for the visioning of the destination. This should be both bold and achievable, and use the visioning process to engage stakeholders.  Remember the ingredients you’ll need for the change journey: Vision + Skills + Incentives + Resources + Action Plan = Change.  Apply them as needed to keep you on track.
2. Change your tune.  Most companies know their math (conventional, finance-related business metrics) and  think that benchmarking other organisations and borrowing their processes and practices is the way to initiate change. The irony, of course is that we’re telling our people our grand aspiration is to be another Apple, GE or Toyota.  Instead, try to be singular and great on your own terms, and strive to define the debate in your category.
3. Use soft power to engage stakeholders on where to go, and how to get there.  Some teams may feel a need to create underlying trust. Others might want to bone up on skills and capabilities.  Still others may need to clarify engagement principles and the goals for the change journey.  The point is, keep going in the general direction, but consciously consider holding areas along the way where new thinking can occur, and new skills can be developed.
4. Deploy your A-Team.  Your brand champions are your most critical asset while on a change journey. Equip them, then deploy them at critical customer touchpoints to communicate a differentiated message as you transition to the organisation you envision yourselves to be.
5. Improve your new IQ. IQ is good, EQ is better, but the new IQ (Influence Quotient) is best.  In the modern marketplace, you can’t go it alone.  Collaboration is key.  Learn how to achieve your goals by working through others.
6. Learn to sail.  Sailors know better than to stubbornly head off in a straight line.  Teams that learn to tack, making mid-course corrections without losing forward velocity, will carry the day.
7. Embrace change. Don’t psychologically unplug from your job. Don’t avoid new assignments. Don’t feel or act like a victim. Don’t play a new game by old rules. Don’t be afraid of the future, and remember that in the new world order, the journey is the destination too!

Other than images of our work and the illustrations, other photographic images used serve only to make a point. Should you have any concerns about any of these, please contact us directly.