Marketing Muse

Marketing Muse has shifted

2010-01-19T22:57:00.000-08:00

Folks - you will now find Marketing Muse at
http://marketingmuse.posterous.com/

Back to the Consumer

2009-11-17T22:44:00.000-08:00

Between a number of disparate activities - planning our annual global meet, a positioning articulation for our consumer services vertical and a number of customer conversations, I am beginning to find numerous sparks blending into the light at the end of the tunnel. The thought is complex - but its a marketing muse task to simplify it. So lets have at it.
I have referred in the past to the fact that the recession was brought on us as a consequence of developed world consumption fuelled by unreal feelings of wealth. The bubble burst - taking all that wealth with it, and the tailspin began. An interesting piece of research by the team shows that a year ago, in the S&P 500, 80% of companies were used to positive revenue growth. In mid 2009 this reversed to 80% actually demonstrating negative revenue growth. However, the story does not end here - the best analyst estimates indicate that by mid 2010, 80% will be back on the growth path. Then what's the New Normal ?
The New Normal is simple. In the old normal - 50% of the S&P 500 were used to > 10% growth rates. This will halve to 25% - meaning that the world of business will either have to reconcile to a hindu rate of growth; or truly engage in disruptive business model innovation to buck this. How will they do this ? This is where I want to ramble and talk about a number of disparate stories.
Facebook will soon become the largest country in the world. Coca Cola is today the third largest music retailer in the UK. 95% of music downloaded last year was free. Bottom of the pyramid market facing innovation has driven India to the top of Nokia's global agenda. The US will not recover without the chinese consumer. Blockbuster vs Netflix has demonstrated that real estate is now digital and not physical anymore. The rockstar status of micro-finance has demonstrated the power of business lies in empowerment. Governments want to control salaries in the financial sector. Google buys Gizmo5 and takes position in the telco race. Amazon becomes one of the largest retailers of diapers. Noble intentions win the Nobel prize - more importantly, the prize becomes a blot on the Obama escutcheon. The world's going crazy - but in a nice way.
Thats because its back to the consumer. It's over for the middleman. Bucking the growth trend will mean finding new consumers and developing a new kind of business to entice them with. And all business value will lie in the relationship between the business and the consumer - intermediation (for instance the financial services industry in the old normal) will no more be a source of value. The world is going 1on1 and obfuscation is out. The simple truth is - if complex derivative products had not concealed it, you and I would have known that the house which was bought at $100K could just not be worth a half million. If all housing purchase was done only for the purpose of living in - it is very unlikely that speculative bubbles could be so easily fuelled. In essence, the game is with the consumer - and not the customer. Businesses which smell the coffee will realise that there is no value in inventory (which is where intermediation plays a role) - all value lies in the act of consumption.
Lets call this the 1o1 Business. Its that old mom and pop store - which continues to battle giant retail quite well. With one fundamental difference. Technology has suddenly made the 1o1 business scaleable. And 1o1 is happening first through content. Economic theory has historically focused on transactions between the producer and consumer as individuals - the concept of the firm / organisation was not allowed to complicate further an already complicated subject. Theory has suddenly become reality - when what is produced and consumed is content. People who like books go to Amazon and exchange content. Out of this a phenomenal business was built - and the story is not over.
The 1o1 business is a platform. One that brings together like-minded indivuals globally in a content sharing experience that is compelling. And then proceeds to convert the content sharing experience into a social interaction. And then proceeds to monetise the experience. Facebook has already done the first two - it is best not to dwell too long on what will happen when they crack item three.
Just imagine the power in the 1o1 business. Pun intended. Energy is becoming a passionate subject amongst people. A power company that focused on bringing together a community around the concept of smart energy - could then become a mart for all kinds of green products. Now think photography, music, sports et al. I-tunes is wildly successful - but has yet do all three 1o1 items. The rug can still be pulled out.
Because its back to the consumer. And the producer.
And they are 1o1.

The business of creation

2009-09-23T01:09:00.000-07:00

William Blake wrote " I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's; I will not reason and compare - my business is to create."

Marketing is the business of creation. Sometimes we forget this in the hurly burly of transactions. The world of reason, fact and measurement needs to subsume itself as the operational leg of what is primarily a creative function. This is easy to forget - because operations come easier to us than creation.

The question is - once we realise we are losing the creative edge; how do we snap back on course. I believe Blake has the answer. Creation is not a system response - therefore, the only way for an entire function to tread this path is through individual choice. Each member of a marketing team has to believe their greatest individual value lies in creation - not "being enslaved by another man's system". The following are some of the behaviours I find creative people exhibiting - consciously adopting some of these can help a great deal.

1. Pleasure in work : creation is an act of joy and celebration. Musicians enjoy making music more than making money. You can see this joy in how they interact with their work environment - in Ideo's Palo Alto office, one employee brought a van into the office and redid its interior (with a desk and stuff) so that it became his office. To top it off (literally) the top of the van has a mounted drum kit and the office band does concerts off it.

2. Intense focus on detail : this sounds counterintuitive. However, creators are perfectionists. They are presenting something new to the world with a stamp of their identity. They tend to focus down to the last brush stroke and painstakingly repeat small things again and again till they are satisfied. The creators eye is the most critical of them all. Prabuddha Dasgupta is one of the finest photographers India has produced - I have seen him take the same shot for 5 hours till he was satisfied. To my untrained eye - every shot looked equally good.

3. Envelope Pushing : not being enslaved by another man's system literally means creative people use role definitions merely as guides - not as boundaries. The photographer who shoots a movie, the film maker who becomes a singer, the musician who writes a book - how many of these instances have you come across ? Role descriptions become limiting factors to operational minds - the creative mind devotes itself to bringing its own unique x factor to many things. Its just so much fun.

4. Experience vs Transaction : Creation vs Operations = Human vs Machines. This is why increasing levels of automation across businesses can always generate operational redundancies. When a process is seen as a string of transactions - its easy to automate. Conversely, when a process is seen as a series of experiences delivered through multiple touchpoints - the empathy which goes into experience designing each touch point becomes the critical differentiator. The creative mind devotes itself to converting the transaction into an experience - and this ensures that obsolescence is never possible.

5. Easily bored : The Hyde side to the Dr. Jekyll of the creative mind. By nature the creative mind quests for new thought and experiences. The minute the job being done starts smacking of the operational or the comfort zone - the creative mind starts shutting down. This is a truth we have to recognise whether we are creative minds ourselves, or manage such people. As Morrison put it - variety is the spice of life.

6. Inner directed : creative people tend to set their own benchmarks. By definition they deal in things that do not exist at present - and therefore potentially have no acceptable measurement mechanism. Good or bad is defined by the creator - consequently creators do not depend greatly on external recognition to drive their sense of self worth. Van Gogh had to die before the world discovered his value.

The business of creation. Its hard work.

The treasure within...

2009-07-13T23:48:00.000-07:00

I frequently look at data to gauge source of business - and every time the answer is the same. The biggest source in our industry happens to be references - we get new customers if the existing guys are happy. Clearly, the corollary to this is - if proactively done, there is potential to create demand from existing engagements and relationships. If this hypothesis is true - and I will come back to it, lets look at some math.
In Indian IT, the typical sales : delivery ratio is in the region of 1:100. The typical sales productivity ranges from $5 mn - $ 10 mn. Assuming that proactive steps taken by the delivery organisation can have an impact even fractionally correlated with sales productivity - the implications are fairly mind boggling.
I recently had the privilege of conducting a workshop on demand creation with a talented bunch of delivery leadership. We actually used an interactive case study methodology to generate the learnings from within the group. Interestingly - as many as 15 ways of thinking came out of this workshop. If we club these 15 items into a Demand Creation "Hat" - this will be a richly rewarding hat for delivery teams in our industry to wear. Impact is only achievable when the engagement team in totality kicks in. My definition of the engagement team includes the sum total of account management and delivery for the client.
1. Reposition : Indian IT today is roughly comparable to japanese auto in the 80's. The japanese crept up on American Auto with 100 cc bikes. American auto laughed them off and got blind sided while Japanese auto repositioned into high end cars. Indian IT comes from a commodity labor background - and needs to do a similar switch. I have previously written about the three components of positioning - target segment, frame of reference and point of difference. There is little option in the first two - we have to target the business audience (there is play available here in terms of which function / level of business to target) and the frame of reference has already shifted to global mnc's (the global majors are increasingly becoming rate competitive). The engagement team needs to focus on finding the right point of difference in one of the three axes. It could be a unique relationship, unique commercials or unique solutioning. What's your point of difference ? I need one answer.
2. Relevance : Having made a positioning choice - the engagement team should leave no stone unturned to use this to demonstrate relevance to the client. This can only be done if significant effort goes into understanding and living the client's business. Frequently, the client can be a very good participant in this process - you just need to ask. Every proposal should be able to enumerate relevance, every employee should know his or her own relevance, every workspace should visibly manifest relevance etc. Those who soak in relevance build great relationships with clients - the rest grimly hang on to the engagement till they mercifully get consolidated out.
3. Applied Frameworks : In the services business, IP typically manifests itself in frameworks. For instance - we now have a Business Aligned IT framework in HCL which is exceptionally powerful in aligning IT to business process with the express intention of minimising process cycle time. I am sure most firms in the industry have invested in such wonderful frameworks. Unfortunately, I find when the time comes to expose IP / frameworks to clients; most engagement teams call upon the central team responsible for the framework and showcase it in an as is / where is state. Those engagement teams who choose to internalise such frameworks - and present it in the context of the clients specific situation and problems create tremendous impact. The rest just send their clients to sleep.
4. Situation Analysis / Problem Definition : Do look up Bill Bradley in Wikipedia. At one time America's best (white) basket ball player - who more interestingly went on to became a Senator. One of his really neat tricks was the ability to throw the ball over his shoulder straight into the basket while facing away. Whenever asked he used to say it had to do with a sense of where you are. Bill's sense came from complete knowledge of the basket ball court - while maneuvring in a client's business a "sense of where you are" is critical. It makes a lot of sense to put together all data and information we have about the client (including the use of secondary research) to come up with an incisive analysis leading to a very clear definition of the problem/s we seek to solve for the client. If you dont understand the problem clearly - there is no way you can offer a solution. And as they say - if your not part of the solution, then your part of the ........
5. Sizing the addressable market : I think - therefore I am; sounds pretty close to - I have solution, therefore I will sell. Given that I am primarily looking at delivery organisations addressing the task of demand creation - since teams are mostly in the back-end, its quite easy to get lost in the outside in trap. Imagine, a team handling a manufacturing client offering everything but a supply chain solution, a team handling a financial client offering everything but a regulatory / compliance solution, a team handling a retail client offering everything but a POS / CRM solution.... It's only by accurately sizing markets that demand can be created in the most amenable territory. Else you may be selling ice to eskimos.
6. Dimension : This is one of the biggest problems I find most delivery teams struggle with in communications - the inability to appropriately dimension. Statements like -"we saved operating expense by 20%" - can create enormous confusion with clients. Without any qualification - most business people interpret operating expense in P&L terms (not IT operations cost - or as was meant in this statement, IT Operations for a specific business unit in the client's organisation). If this case study refers to a $ 10 BN enterprise - a client who understands this statement to mean an over $ 1 Bn saving is not interpreting the statement incorrectly. When he finally figures out that it actually translates to some measly $ 10 mn the fallout can be awe inspiring.
7. Best Practice : Most of us forget that one of the strongest value propositions in outsourcing is the service provider MUST be working with other firms in the same industry, and with leading firms across industry. Both translate to best practice. When I look back at the last 4 HCL global meets - the biggest value realised by attendees was networking and experience sharing. If this is the case - and engagement team that continuously strives to find best practices (could be within the same client organisation, industry or across industry) will over a period both build confidence, as well as engage really well in cross sell.
8. High impact customer touchpoints : Any marketing person will understand the investment and sweat that goes behind creating a new customer touchpoint. With existing customers these are freely offered - in visits, negotiations, new projects etc. Every such touchpoint offered should be treated with the value it deserves - there needs to be demonstrated thought leadership (leveraging all the previous 7 points) in converting that touchpoint into a delightful experience. Remember, your customer will only hang with you if your company is valuable and refreshing. Else you can hang alone.
9. Hypothesise : Do you remember the Hitch Hikers guide to the galaxy ? The answer to the Life, the Universe and Everything was 42. To get to this answer the worlds best brains spent about a billion years aided by unbelievable computing power. Perhaps a lot could have been saved with a little hypothesis ? Assuming that a good situation analysis is done and problems are clearly identified - remember one thing. Usually nobody has the answer. And if the client does not have the answer it is always best to work off a solution hypothesis - and let the client accept, bounce or improve with this as a starting point. It's incredibly important to have a point of view.
10. Reason to Believe : Unfortunate as it sounds - skepticism is today deep rooted in humanity. And I must confess - IT service providers have not really been the poster boys of governance and integrity. Actually - let me not be unfair. This is the case for most big business. Consequently, gone are the days of the deal sealing handshake - especially in the B2B environment. Communication needs to be couched with reason to believe. This will require the discipline within the engagement team to avoid statements which they cannot prove. The unfortunate reality is - truth is perception.
11. Solution NOT Capability : beyond a point an engagement needs to mature to see itself as a set of solutions. As the engagement team aligns itself to solution-speak ; it doesnt matter if the engagement is largely T&M / Labour oriented - the engagement language will start changing to cover techno / functional domains and increasingly the relationship will genuinely head towards solutioning. Each individual in the engagement needs to recognise the technical or business solution they are part of - if they can do this, and if the problem identification stage has been well done the engagement will start climbing the value chain like Tarzan of the Apes.
12. Length of Answer : A-ha. How scared are you of a scorpion bite ? Small things can have big impact. This is one of them. This is especially true when westerners deal with Indian teams (its a culture thing - please dont bash me up on any other count). During interactions a client asks a simple question. He expects a simple answer. I have seen interactions where the answer goes round the world like Phileas Fogg and reaches a zone which bears no resemblance to the answer asked for or (in some cases) to the original question. When engaged in a discussion - answer a question in less than a minute (even that may be too long).
13. Measurement of Value : Too much is never enough. Every engagement needs to measure the value it delivers the client. Assuming it does deliver such value - this needs to be communicated every opportunity in an ingestible form to the client. Again. And again. And again. Measurement is crippled without appropriate and adequate broadcast. So equal emphasis - measure and communicate. For a quick lesson on how to communicate refer point 12.
14. Thought Leadership : Trusted Advisor. Two words that are achieved the other way around. First comes the thought leadership necessary to be seen as an advisor - only then can the relationship be worked into a level of maturity for the service provider to reach this status. While who plays the trusted advisor role as an individual can be up for debate - the overall engagement team has to be actively involved in thought leadership relevant for the client. There are many routes to this - the problem definition and best practices pieces lend themselves well to it.
15. Thematise : When the time comes to integrate all of the above into one holistic and consistent experience for the client - it is important to thematise the engagement. This serves as a vision and guide for the engagement as it progresses on relationship and value parameters. Themes should be very relevant for the client. For instance - a theme I quite like is one we had built for a major luxury hotel chain - "Mission Critical Luxury". Having established this as the overall theme for the relationship, specific engagements / touchpoints could be rendered to fit to this - Failproof operations, Top end customer experience etc. Remember, most people have low attention spans - especially in things outside their immediate domain. For a client to make sense of the relationship an integrated thematic approach can serve as a very powerful glue for the entire engagement.
Engagement teams that manage to do these 15 things well will come across to their clients as relevant, aligned, engaging, visionary and trustworthy. In essence a commodity relationship will translate to a value centric one. From here it does not take much effort to get a happy customer to generate many more. The best part of the treasure within is its impact - it ripples and multiplies.

Honesty – it’s such a lonely word

2009-04-28T04:36:00.000-07:00

Years ago, I used to take great pleasure in reading westerns. The “Sudden” novels were a standout along with Louis Lamour – and there were a diverse list of authors I enjoyed in this genre. One thing that was common amongst all was the importance of a person’s word. The raw economics of the wild west meant most deals were consummated through a hand-shake. To doubt a person’s word spelt economic death – therefore, calling somebody a liar inevitably led one of those famous gunfights. Hidden in the morass of legal and commercial machinery – today’s businesses seem to have forgotten a simple truth.
A business is much like a social platform. It organizes the interactions between multiple communities – customers, channel members, employees, suppliers, shareholders etc – in a manner that optimizes resources held by all these participants. The optimization is a system outcome – and therefore, in many cases will operate to maximize the larger good. The corollary to this is that the individual has to trust the system enough to subsume individual interest in the cause of the larger system. The operative word is Trust. Imagine a traffic cop managing a four way crossing. If motorists did not trust the cop – and took decisions to maximize their own interest (trying to force their way through the crossing as soon as possible) the resulting traffic snarl would lead to each individual being delayed significantly more than if they had trusted the system. The question therefore becomes – what should the traffic cop be doing to inspire individual trust ?
The Management of an enterprise are much like a super traffic cop. Multiple lanes carrying customer preference, employee talent, shareholder capital etc are all at the crossroads represented by the Enterprise. When Management loses the trust of one or more lanes – the snarl starts. The most obvious way to do this is to be partisan to a particular lane. The quarterly quest for growth in revenues and profits (in short greed) traditionally panders very specifically to the investor community. Other communities obviously start focusing on self interest exclusively – and the business goes into decline.
This is where Ethics starts making very sound business sense. Ethics deals with a code of conduct that distinguishes right and wrong basis a set of clear rules that are acceptable to all communities involved. In our traffic cop example – these would be traffic rules. The violation of ethics is not getting caught (as many who apply this superficially believe) but in breaking the rules. A drunk driver may get home safe, or may get caught, or may kill a child in an accident – in all three instances, the driver has acted unethically. Ethical business is a buzz-word today – though I get the feeling it is still a bit like the blind men and the elephant (everyone sees it in parts). Lets take a look at the parts and try and bring them together.
Green Mountain Coffee has deliberately built a reputation as a socially responsible Enterprise. A majority of their Coffee varieties carry the Fair Trade Label – in consumer perception, they dominate this niche. Green Mountain’s fiscal 2009 first quarter sales represent a 56% growth year on year – where’s the recession / depression ? Today Sara Lee, P&G, Nestle and even Dunkin’ Donuts are jumping on this bandwagon – and let’s not even talk about Starbucks. Ethical business works with consumers.
HCL Technologies follows the well known Employee First Customer Second philosophy. In the latter part of 2008 (as the recession became imminent – and no-one knew the ramifications); CEO Vineet Nayar announced a “No HCLite left behind policy”. The policy was announced with key caveats requiring increased flexibility from employees (in terms of location and nature of work). HCL has stuck to its promise – and in the first quarter of calendar 2009, announced 18% YoY revenue growth and 20% YoY operating income growth. That’s not all – in this quarter HCL was rated as the best employer in India across all industries and among the 25 best employers in Asia by the prestigious Hewitt survey (which primarily uses employee engagement scores). All this at a time when compensation was frozen, variable components were increased and the entire industry was shrinking. Ethical business works with employees.
Infosys has built a strong reputation with shareholders on ethical business. Infosys also has the largest p/e multiplier of all Indian IT stocks. Satyam went the other way – and saw its entire market cap erode in a matter of days. What is interesting is – the Satyam incident drove down share prices of all Indian IT companies. Except Infosys. Their share price rose. Ethical business works with shareholders.
Many more such interactions can be examined – relationships with Suppliers, Policy makers etc. In my book – no single one of these examples truly represents ethical business. Given that a business is an integration platform for multiple stakeholders to plug into to maximize system resources, the only way ethical business can be run is through transparency. The platform is the same for all – the rules are clear, what other communities are doing and experiencing are clear, decisions are accepted by all as greatest good maximization etc. The entire system operates on elightened self interest. This to me is ethical business. Right and wrong is the same for all – and known before hand.
How would I go about spotting (or building) an ethical business. I can hazard some guesses around the following symptoms that would define an ethical business for me. I believe these can be scaled both ways – as leaders of functions we can adopt them for our specific unit and they can also be applied to enterprises at large.
1. Transparency : there is nothing to hide. The management is open and speaks with one voice to all stakeholders.
2. Fairness : In all decisions, the interests of all stakeholder groups are carefully considered. If a decision favors any one community – it is done in a fashion where it is understood and appreciated by all others.
3. Risk Management : The only areas the business accepts risk is in core business / competency areas. Risks are taken basis consideration and scenario planning. An ethical business does not gamble – especially in areas which are not part of its own business. Ethics break down with stress – risk is the source of stress. It is best to play with risk in areas best understood and within control.
4. Argument : any organization that promotes healthy debate is a healthy organization. Within and across various communities there should be forums and permission to interact and debate. The best example I have seen is the HCL global meet. In the last meet we had 500 customers, 200 employees and over 40 investors / analysts meeting each other in open discussion and debates. Stamping out argument in an enterprise leaves the sycophantic “obeying orders” syndrome.
5. Self Awareness : we need to have a very strong sense of our strengths and weaknesses – unclouded by rhetoric and insularity. Ethical management would have the ability to step into the shoes of any community linked to the enterprise and “see” the enterprise through someone else’s eyes. The knowledge of right and wrong is closely dependent on unbiased self realization.
6. People Development : the fundamental reason for ethical break-down is self interest overcoming system interest. This is directly triggered when an individuals desire outstrips their capability. For instance, greed is not necessarily a bad thing – it can be the motivator for great human endeavor. Greed is bad when it leads to management subverting the principles of transparency, fairness, risk etc in order to narrow the gap between want and have. This gap requires bridging only if an individual believes that existing capability cannot close it. This is a problem that needs tackling at an individual level – and can only be handled if the system continuously invests in people development, setting up a virtuous progression of capability creation – whose velocity convinces the individual that no want can remain out of reach for long.
7. The present and the future are equally important : leading on from the previous point, the dimension of time clearly has an effect on ethicality. An ethical enterprise will place equal weightage on present as well as future implications of decisions that are made.
8. Spirit of the law NOT compliance : forgetting this can destroy the very foundation of ethics in an enterprise – as this behavior can potentially spread like wild-fire through employees. For instance, many organizations skirt the law in things like employee compensation. To save tax – certain aspects of compensation fall under “reimbursement” and the fact that employees may be fudging bills is handled with a nudge and a wink. Unfortunately, the management has clearly indicated to the employee that in certain kinds of self-interest can take precedence over system interest (in this case the system is governmental). Once this is endorsed, it is but a small step to put self interest above other forms of system interest – like that of the enterprise itself. At the end of the day, ethics is grassroot oriented.
9. Dealing with the powerless : The junior most employee, the smallest shareholder, the most inconsequential customer. Ethics is about a set of transparent rules applied uniformly to all. It is ok to discriminate treatment to the less powerful in any community if this is so stated and agreed to in that set of rules (an airline frequent flyer program will clearly distinguish between low and high frequency flyers). It is unethical if different rules are arbitrarily applied to such segments (a store which refuses a goods return from a small customer, though the customer has brought it back on time as per the policy).
Why is ethical business becoming so important ? Why will we not survive if we are not trusted ?
The best answer to this is here : http://www.trendwatching.com/trends/generationg/
Generation G (Generosity not Greed) where giving is the new taking and sharing is the new giving. That’s what the internet is rapidly doing to humanity. As online becomes “the culture” the world is rapidly being transformed by Wikipedia, Facebook, Flickr and so on. The trendwatching article gives a number of excellent suggestions for how an enterprise can participate in the Gen G world. However, we can only do that after……
As Generation G takes over the world – sustainable organizations will be ethical ones. For an unethical business, jumping on the generosity band-wagon will create a backlash like no other. Whatever your generation alphabet – hypocrisy will remain universally detested. Remember the other Gen G problem – information spreads rapidly and aggressively.
If employees, customers and shareholders of tomorrow are Gen G – its time to pick up that ethics tome, dust it off, roll up your sleeves and wade in. It makes sound business sense.

Only the poor can save the rich.

2009-03-10T00:57:00.000-07:00

It’s interesting to note that I have not posted from the time the “recession” ballooned into the full blooded “depression” we recognize today. The world is now awash with comparisons back in time to the 1930’s. Debates are fiercely raging from politics, to sociology, to economics et al. I have managed to get off my seat and start thinking of a marketing view. It’s interesting that most of us will not live through such an economic crisis again – however, if we do encounter it we should at least have a point of view.
Lets segue back to why it happened. Through the morass of analysis and diagnostics being thrown in me – the only reality I can distil is a macro economic one. The poor have been subsidizing the rich. To make it sound even funnier – the poor have been subsidizing the future lifestyles of the rich. This is not an intra country statement – it is a product of globalization.
In 2001 a Goldman Sachs economist coined the term BRIC. By 2008 end – the BRIC nations held over 40% of global foreign exchange reserves. In what currency ? – you guessed it. The US Dollar. The US GDP today is about $ 13 trillion. Global forex reserves are today at about $ 5 trillion. Imagine your situation if half of your income at any point in time was money you owed other people. This would be pretty good if you were using that money in prudent and productive investments – so that when asked for, you could return it and pocket the gains. The US actually used this to make the cost of money (interest) almost nil – and fuel speculative bubbles not just in domestic housing, but in global markets as well. The rich felt richer and spent like kings. This drove the global economy and the BRIC started winning – both in income (GDP growth) and wealth (equities, housing etc). Across the developing world benefits accrued like poverty reduction – though income inequalities rose as the wealth mechanisms (eg the stock market) were accessible only to the rich in the developing world. These benefits however were massively outweighed by the huge burden of the consumption imbalance. Consumption creates investment. When consumption is driven by a feeling of wealth - it creates investment in the wrong areas. Thats why we live today in a world of food scarcity while automobile capacity is many multiples of demand.
Today, both the rich from both developed markets as well as developing markets are hurting. Their realization that they are wealthy no more – has made their consumption pattern more realistic. For the real poor in the developing nations this has two implications :
1. Reduced consumption globally by the rich leading to lower demand for their production – therefore having a negative impact on jobs and income.
2. Reduced consumption by their domestic rich leading to lower inflation – and therefore making life a bit more affordable.
I have a feeling both of these probably cancel out. Today the poor are not hurting – certainly not in any comparison to what the rich are going through. My neighbouring kirana store owner is doing alright – and is blissfully unaware of the investment banker turned janitor in New York (who probably still enjoys a quality of life superior to the kirana owner). But the former is happy – the latter is devastated. However, I seem to be trailing into philosophy; so I shall get back on track.
If the world has to recover – someone has to start consuming. The rich do not appear to be in shape to drive consumption any more. By elimination, it is clear that we will not see global economic recovery unless the poor drive consumption. Without doubt, the BRIC countries will have a large role to play in putting the world back on track, economically speaking. Is this going to happen in 12-18 months ? I do not believe so. It sounds to me like something which will happen very slowly – 5 years or more. Is this what the world is expecting ? I do not think so – most businesses seem to be operating on an assumption of recovery in a certain number of months.
So lets move the subject to marketing. Basis the thinking above, I can derive the following 10 hypotheses :
1. Luxury industries are in trouble – and will remain so for a long time to come.
2. Businesses in the developed world will be in trouble for a significantly longer period of time than they think.
3. If the developed world does not actively participate in improving income and consumption levels in the developing world – global recovery may take longer. Such participation will of course be political suicide – and is unlikely to happen.
4. The Glocal world will start talking Local again.
5. Every single business buy will require significant internal justification – every single buyer will be on the hunt for value whether buying a toilet seat or a company.
6. Trust will not be an easily available commodity – who you are buying from will become very critical.
7. All business cost will come under the scanner and will be approached zero based / from first principles. No spend will remain a “must have”.
8. On the supply side – price wars will become debilitating to all parties.
9. As things get worse – the political influence of the BRIC countries will expand.
10. The third world war could break out.
In at least 9 of these scenarios – marketing can help. Specifically in the context of B2B marketers I would derive the following areas of focus :
1. There is a new business model (for your business) waiting out there. The first to find it and invest and execute well will get so far ahead of competition that they will be running a completely different race. Marketing needs to wear the strategic hat.
2. The current customer mix is probably wrong. Re-examine the mix and establish whether the winners of tomorrow outweigh the guys in trouble today. Refine and re-balance the target segment. Marketing needs to wear the sales excellence hat.
3. Every single customer is important. Those who focus on customer segmentation, feedback, experience and delight will be able to generate the unique value required today. Marketing needs to wear the Customer Intimacy hat.
4. Concentrate with intensity on the local market. In the IT industry specially we have not done this well. Winning in the local market will become important both from a business perspective as well as value proposition development. Marketing needs to wear the local hat.
5. Rexamine , re-align and re-invest in the product / service portfolio. Commodity offerings will spell death for the business. Less will be more and vice versa in what we take to the market. The ability to bring depth of execution and outstanding ROI assessments to each offering will make a real difference between success and failure. Marketing needs to wear a product management hat.
6. Sweat every single dollar. Tear the budget up – and go back to first principles. Ask if each dollar is contributing value. Ask if the dollar in each spend area is contributing value comparable to other areas of spend. Measure everything. Marketing needs to wear a finance hat.
7. Intensely focus on the employee. It is difficult to maintain above-the-line branding spends in this environment. Nor is it necessarily a good thing to do. People will trust references and experience – not advertising. Creating employee delight and converting employees into evangelists will have a large impact on brand. Marketing needs to wear the employee hat.
8. Make the engine efficient. “Enough opportunities are coming into the funnel – only a small proportion are being converted”. Statements like these indicate a poor front office engine. Or – “We took a loss leader deal – because of lifetime value. However, we have not managed to make it profitable”. Statements like these indicate a poor back office engine. Find out whether the engine is working – and where is the problem. There is no point bringing footfall in – which either does not convert, or converts and gently bleeds away. Marketing needs to wear the Analysis hat.
9. Think digital. Not merely for customer acquisition – but knowledge, customer retention and probably as part of all the above 8 suggestions. There is a complete digital strategy out there – we need to find it. This is not one element in the marketing mix – it is a different way of thinking, performing and spending.
Just because there were 9 scenarios I managed to think up 9 focus areas. Obviously doing 9 things mean you have no focus – pick and choose what you wish to do . Do it well.
I just put in the 10th scenario because economic distress and war go hand in hand. In its own turn, war and music also seems to have some correlation. If 10 comes to pass, there is clearly only one thing to do.
Sing.

The New Deal

2008-11-26T14:22:00.000-08:00

The industry continues to be stressed and challenged. In this environment – a bird in the hand is truly worth many in the bush. From a marketing context, while we remain segment and campaign aligned – the trick is to leverage our competencies to improve deal win probability. If good campaigns are run – the pipeline should be healthy. But pipelines need to convert and the time has now come to bring the marketing engine to the party to make this happen.
Lets take a look at what a Category Manager can do to improve deal winnability. We have begun calling this the “Win Theme Custodian” role.
1. Bid Qualification : Large RFPs land up on our desks for many reasons – not all of them with a view that we are the party who can deliver. Does more the merrier work in large deals ? Not really. A large deal pursuit is not only a significant cost – it also saps organizational energy with high quality professionals dedicating themselves to winning a deal. When a deal comes in, it is important to do some secondary and primary research – including speaking to relevant analysts and influencers to gauge if it is the “real deal” with a fair win chance. Marketing needs to bring market intelligence into play in a bid – no bid decision.
2. Bid Discovery : The better the situation analysis of the clients industry, environment and business performance – the better the chance of hitting the right win theme. This is the stage where the CM should create a bid primer for all involved. The Bid primer should marry primary and secondary research to detail the clients industry, environment, competitive reality and business model. It should create deeper understanding through P&L and balance sheet analysis, news and earnings announcements and investor briefings. The situation analysis should lead to a deep understanding of the client hot buttons, sourcing problem statements and criteria for final provider selection. I cannot downplay the importance of this stage – in a large enough deal, it makes sense to bring in an Analyst / Advisor to help in this activity. The input is now ready to design the win theme.
3. Bid Solution : At this stage, it is critical that a solution team for the deal is in place. The CM and the solutioning team need to go into a brain storm involving the sitanal and study all documents relevant to the deal. All solution components should be put on the table in a holding framework so that there is an overall solution hypothesis and not a jumble of discrete pieces. The CM needs to marry the solution and the hot buttons into a high value win theme for the deal.
4. Bid Response : This is the stage at which output starts going back to the client – in the form of an RFP response etc. This is really the time the custodial part of the role kicks in. Every single output going to the customer – including the exec summary and relevant solution documents; need to be run through the WTC to ensure synergy with the win theme.
5. Bid Engagement : Post response, there are typically some facets of engagement. These may include client visits, bid defence etc. What is interesting at this stage is it offers interaction and an experience for the buyers. The WTC role becomes crucial in thinking through experience “wows” and keeping every element of the experience aligned and value adding to the win theme.
6. Bid Closure : There may be certain things which can be tactically / opportunistically done when the buyer team goes into a huddle to close the decision. At this time the WTC should be on call to provide appropriate responses. More importantly – there must be a communication plan put in place for either eventuality of a win or a loss. Both are opportunities to expand the relationships which would have been formed during the bid lifecycle.Focus on deal conversion is good stuff. It is actually reminiscent of the retailer who focuses more on conversion rather than footfall. This is good strategy – especially in a downturn. If the business engine is a healthy convertor – investment can easily be made at any appropriate time to increase footfall. That my friends, seems to be the new deal.

Mind the Gap : The time for solutions is here

2008-11-06T09:04:00.000-08:00

I just finished attending the ITSMA (that’s the IT Services Marketing Association) annual conference in Boston. This was actually the first such event I have attended – in marketing we create and attend a lot of events relevant for the business; we largely tend to ignore those important for us. This was important. Representatives from most leading companies in the industry came together to share learnings and best practices – and the theme that held all of them together was the slowdown and its impact generically on industry and on us as marketers within IT services. However, what fascinates me is a clear thread that seemed to emerge as a response to the current situation – we need solutions like never before. Capabilities, services and labor will cut ice no more.
An interesting CEO study from IBM brought home one important point – customers are facing challenging times; no question. But what CEO’s seem most exercised about is that the gap between existing capability and current challenges is widening at an alarming rate. As a consequence, business model innovation is taking CEO centre stage – but where’s the capability ? With the increasing emphasis on outsourcing vendors being asked to take partner status – clearly the opportunity is ripe for us to use the slowdown to turn inward and build the kind of solutions which will enable gap bridging. However, how to build a quality solution in IT services is clearly a problem to which different firms have different answers – I am now going to attempt to cobble together stuff I heard from various organizations, plus a bit of marketing muse opinion into a possible approach.
1. Identify the Lighthouse : there are a million problems out there – which one do we try and solve ? While there seems to be lots of sources, the overall consensus appears to be Customers. This is a services business and we will not end up with a tangible product to show. We will however, if done properly, end up with a customer who can be referenced. It makes a lot of sense to go to key customers and collaborate – join hands to find key problem areas. Agree on a specific high impact area and agree on a co-investment model. I do not mean co-invest only in monetary terms – it could be basis an agreement on Go to Market responsibilities etc etc. The Lighthouse stage is the one when the solution plan and budgeting needs to be done – simply because we need the customer to agree and contribute to it.
2. Identify Partners : With the lighthouse in the pocket – it is important to play out a partner stage. You can decide not to invoke this – but take a look at it. Typically a services solution will require IP – I believe services firms should focus on IP in the service delivery space. Product related IP is ideally sourced from partners (on a best of breed basis). The plan in stage one should now be rolled out to identified partners and they need to be integrated into the plan. This is give to get – they should put skin in the game as well.
3. Constitute the team : Without the prior two stages this would be impossible. A homogenous team needs to be constituted which should have marketing and solutioning skills – ideally this group should include members from the lighthouse customers and the partners as well. A social networking platform should be put in place – accessible only to this team on which the development should happen. The team needs to clearly articulate timelines, responsibilities, gates and a mutually acceptable interaction schedule. Each interaction should definitely be gated with a positive outcome.
4. Deploy : With the solution getting built out, it needs to go into implementation in the lighthouse. Extraordinary care needs to be taken at this stage – because the customer participation till this point is probably on the IT side. The guys who will now engage in it will typically be from the business side. As a consequence the launch, rollout and management of the solution in the client side needs to be thought through from a benefits based buy in, adequate planning and change management and post go live support. Remember – this is the ultimate proof of concept. Only if it is wildly successful will the next part of the program really happen.
5. Evangelise : Once deploy passes it’s planned gates, that’s when the solution should emerge from the Product Development (PD) box and get into the Business Development (BD) box. The first part of the BD process has to be pre-position. Even before the sales guys hear about it, which definitely means before the customer hears about it ; something needs to be done to set up the market in a way that it will believe it when it comes out. Significant engagement with analysts to bounce hypotheses etc is one good way of doing this. The core team needs to deliver a set of people who will act as the evangelists and start engaging with influencers, customers (through Advisory councils and such like) , consultants and anybody else who can have the dual impact of sharpening the solution as well as impacting pre-position in the market as a whole.
6. Commercialise : The good thing about a well done evangelise stage is that the E-Team will have built an extremely good understanding of the value the solution can offer. This is the time the finance team needs to be brought in and work needs to commence on finding one or many (context specific) commercial models with which the solution can be taken to the market. In many services solutions – the key source of competitive advantage can get built here. The point to remember at this stage is – if the solution is new, a number of assumptions and hypotheses will go into commercializing it. The team needs a commercial director at this stage whose role will be to construct the deals that come along – as well as to monitor impact and outcome to build a learning curve into the solution commercials.
7. Sales Excellence : Solutions selling is not easy. This is the stage which can derail the solution completely – if the sales team is unable to articulate it, find the right customers or negotiate the deal. This is the time to go back to step 1 – unearth the sales team responsible for the lighthouse and build them into the process of making the solution palatable to the rest of sales. Key components that need to be built in are Collateral, Training, Reference Management , Playbooks, qualification processes, sales analytics (therefore systems and data), incentives and very high quality pre sales support. There is absolutely no point generating a marketing campaign around a new solution without going through this stage.
8. Collaborative Improvement : The original networking platform which began with the core group now needs to expand to the larger universe of people who are now engaged (including all sales). This platform will now require dedicated management so that enough discussion and sharing starts on it for capturing areas for improvement.
9. Marketing Campaign : Finally we are ready to spend some big bucks on a high impact campaign. I have written extensively about how campaigns need to be put together so I will not repeat this. However, segmentation and targeting will become of enormous importance in the solutions world. If the partner stage was invoked it makes sense to bring the partners into the campaign as well.
10. Centre of Excellence : Having done all of the above – chances are the business has started moving. It is now time to make the provision of the solution effortless and sustainable. Setting up a COE which will now drive this solution and its derivatives can ensure both continuous improvement as well as legs to run for a long time.
The big question – who is going to do all this. My opinion – marketing is the only unit which can cut across as many silos as the 10 steps require; and has to drive and program manage this whole effort. As a consequence, it is clearly time to get a robust New Service Introduction team into the marketing force. If we mind the gap well enough – the gap itself becomes opportunity.

No Midas touch - the rules of marketing spends

2008-07-25T22:40:00.000-07:00

At a very fundamental level, marketers create and sell dreams. This is good. The danger lies in getting sold on this themselves. In business - marketing represents the tip of the iceberg. 9/10ths have to be below the surface. If there's nothing down there, its a hollow dream we sell and this can backfire like crazy. Here are some simple rules to prevent this from happening :
1. Impact focus : continuously examine strategies from the perspective of impact - but that's not enough. Having envisaged the impact of strategy - it's very important to work back from desired impact through all required actions and dependencies. This will give a clear reading of the probability of converting strategy to impact - only focus on the high probability strategies. The most common mistake we make in this area is in strategy that under rates the competition - after lots of spend, we realise headway is not being made because the other guys are too strong in the supply chain, are too well entrenched perceptually etc. Another common error is over estimating the market potential - and spending the marketing $ on this estimate. High probability strategies need to be disproportionately invested in.
2. Never listen to "If-then" : Lets invest in a campaign for that new business, if they create a sales force they will need it. Do not fall into this trap - when they create a sales force we will certainly do it. There has to be certainty below the surface for the dream to survive above it. This tends to happen a lot in organisations that mix up product development and business development functions. It is very advisable to create BD campaigns (which is where most marketing $s go) on offerings and channels that are available on ground. This is really where test marketing comes in. Test marketing is only partially to do with getting the mix right - in which case people who have complete confidence (misplaced though it may be) in the existing mix would just avoid testing. The importance of test marketing for the marketer, is to know that offering / channel really is solidly on ground.
3. Clearly demarcate controls : Who spends the money - and how; is often more important than why the money is spent. It makes great sense to align spend control by competency - and not by business. Business understands what is required, but does not have the channel or content competency to decide how to manage necessary resources. Give your media buyer the accountability to control the spend - and you will have a better control job. Alignment of controls by competency also paves the way for item no. 4 .....
4. Create dummy P&Ls : many functions in marketing appear to be support - and not directly business impacting. This should be changed - and the best way is to generate a notional p&l for each function with a clear output ask. Lets take research as an example. My research team has created a notional rate card of all research products they churn out for the rest of the business. When a research project completes, the notional value is updated. The team has a mandate of generating 10x on spend as their outcome. Last year, we spent $ 600 K on procuring research - the team generated over $ 6 million worth of notional outcome as per their rate card. The p&l approach makes the most inward team business facing - and squeezes productivity out of every dollar spent.
5. Choose who you spend on : Any marketing organisation is spending on a portfolio of offerings embracing some form of production and sales. There are leaders involved in bringing product / service to market and selling it once it reaches. Not all such leaders are good at leveraging marketing investments - whether branding investment in a specific product line, or promotional investment for a specific sales team. While keeping overall strategic considerations in mind, it is crucial to bet on horses that really run - those leaders who show best utilisation of the marketing $ should get more of it.
While these 5 rules appear fairly common sensical - it is by flouting one or many of them that I have seen some of the most wasteful marketing expenditure in my career. It becomes more interesting when you realise - just adopting a few of them is not good enough. Some of them are at cross purposes - if you think for a minute you will realise it is very easy to get into trouble by flogging rule 5, if rule 1 is not in play. If you do manage to adopt these - profligacy is one thing your marketing outfit will never be accused of.

Unstructure @ HCL

2008-06-12T02:23:00.000-07:00

About a decade ago, the world of business jumped on the process and best practice bandwagon. In technology terms, this was the age of ERP. CEO's started discovering as they achieved greater and greater process efficiencies, they wanted better decision making visibility. The era of business intelligence was born. Along came a small company called salesforce and put a new spin to the defunct asp model - giving rise to the software as a service phenomenon. Lo and behold - Saas democratised the temple of process. All businesses could now access the same levels of process efficiency irrespective of size - because Saas takes away the pain of capital investment, and serves functionality back to the business on a web based, subscription model. In fact, given the larger enterprises discomfort with security issues in this model - smaller businesses would on average start accessing better process technology. At least in the world of enterprise technology - the advantage of size was over.

So what's become the buzzword for business today ? You can see it on every news stand. Innovation ! Who innovates ? - The process ????

Because the process oriented business model pretty much commoditised people, the new world of business is desperately trying for innovation - and unable to achieve it, because the best thing going is the process itself. The traditional structure of business is unable to deal with this challenge, because it has effectively managed to lock up curiosity and creativity in people and thrown away the key.

So what do we do ?

Unstructure.

What if the only focus of business process and technology were to empower the people who are in business ? What if the highest control resided with the person closest to the market or customer ? What if every individual at work had the opportunity to maximise their own professional development ? What if we as people were able to marry our self interest seamlessly with our employer's business interest ? What would such a world be like ?

To begin with - the holocaust would never have happened. No one would have the "following orders" excuse. True work life balance would become achieveable - with work contributing to our sense of achievement. We would leave our stamp in each organisation we worked for - and many other such utopian things would become possible. And ....

Revenues would grow. Profits would improve. The happiness capital in society would expand. We would do less and impact more. All sorts of good stuff would be happening all around.

Let's Unstructure !

Let's seamlessly bring Business, Technology and People together to unlock thought leadership. That's what will happen starting this year as HCL's initiative towards thought leadership. There is no thought leadership without a question - the most fundamental one being "Is there a better way ? " asked by all of us as individuals daily in our professional lives. Unstructure blows this up with a major question asked by a globally recognised thought leader (the Global Mentor). For example, a Global Mentor could ask - How are the businesses of today changing to cater to the unique needs and dynamics of generation Y ?

There are lots of people in lots of different businesses very exercised about this question - it impacts employees, customers, partners and every aspect of doing business today. Many have opinions and thoughts - and possibly a few have practices as well to deal with this question. I believe many such people would rally around the Unstructure platform to answer this question - and ultimately drive it to actionable thought that business can put in practice. Imagine 15 such questions being addressed every year. In future, a business should be able to access Unstructure for a compilation of responses to relevant questions which can immediately become a manifesto for them. As more people participate, the Global Mentors should be born out of natural thought leaders who may be leaders in their own professions - and now don a thought leadership hat. Each batch of global mentors actually infects and energises new people to come forward to take their place. New streams of thought, new visions start emerging - in an inclusive, democratised, fearless and creative environment; populated by professionals and practitioners who understand context and subject the best. I am not even able to envisage right now how far this can go ....

How will this happen ?

To find out - you need to participate. Enjoy Unstructure.

Perception - The battle that cannot be fought.

2008-04-23T20:40:00.000-07:00

I'm not much of a gamer - however I have played quite a bit of Prince of Persia. The interesting level in the game was the one where the Prince meets his mirror image - they are equally matched and fight each other to a standstill. Only when our Prince withdraws and sheaths his sword - does his alter ego merge with him ; and he moves on. This is an exact parallel to the perception battle.
Most of us think inside out. "I do all these things - therefore I must be doing a good job." Things change when you start thinking outside in - "If I could not see all these things being done, would I still think I do a good job ?".
Big Difference !
As producers we are exposed to all we do. As consumers, we are exposed to only the things that cut through the noise. Here lies the mystery of perception. Very few things are good enough to cut through the noise - therefore, only uniqueness builds perception. If what you do is benchmarked, best practiced and extremely thoroughly thought through - you have probably already failed. This is difficult to swallow.
Therefore, when we are presented with research and feedback that shows we have made no impact on the consumer - we promptly move into denial. To the consumer we are irrelevant, but we refuse to believe this and attack the research, question the sampling and find numerous intelligent and analytical excuses. We have joined the battle of perception - and the more we fight the more we lose.
Suppose for a minute we were to accept. What relief !!! Now we can actually do something about it. What should we do now ? The best option is to think through customer scenarios using an experience walk through model. A team member of mine recently created a framework which I thought was exceptional in doing precisely this.
1. Describe the experience stage : Broadly any marketing activity would generate experience stages for the intended consumer. These would typically bucketise into initial connect, awareness, interest, engagement, participation and closure. While these would be the buckets, thought needs to be applied in generating the right experience stage description.
2. Decide Messaging for each stage : When we interact with the consumer at each of the stage, we need to develop clarity in the messaging available to us for that stage. If a stage has no message, it will not have any noise cut through - and therefore should be dropped. If enough stages have no message, the whole activity should be dropped.
3. Create the implementation mechanism for each stage : Typically the experience will be provided by an artefact created by us. This could be a website, a demo zone, a promotion et al. Without an implementation mechanism, the experience degenerates into a communication exercise - typically without a call for action. This hurts the most at the engagement and participation stages of the experience walk through.
4. Communication Vehicle : For the consumer to actually have an experience, there has to be a communication vehicle - whether an Ad, a direct mailer, a telephone call or any other. Typically, such vehicles will add to both cost as well as noise. The more frugal we are in allocating vehicles to a stage - the better the probability of impact.
5. Desired Response : This is the final and most important variable. Without this you cannot focus or measure. Typically, each experience stage should have a unique call for action - and that should be the desired response. As an example, if you run a webinar - the desired response at the interest stage should be registration.
Now that this exercise is done - the job is well begun. Now you can start the question stage.
Question 1 : Is my messaging uniquely designed to generate the desired response ? If No - revisit, pare, change etc so that it is.
Question 2 : Will my implementation mechanism create a unique experience ? This is where benchmarking becomes key.
Question 3 : Is my communication vehicle the best suited given the message ? A message in the high fashion zone renders poorly in standard newsprint. Problematically, communication vehicles have large impact on unconscious perception - how many times have you disregarded a premium brand because the brochure was printed on poor quality paper ?
Question 4 : Is every element tuned to - and only tuned to - generating the desired response ? Anything which does not pass this, is additional cost with no incremental perception value.
Question 5 : Will my desired response move the consumer effortlessly to the next experience stage ? If not, the experience will become disjointed.
Question 6 : If I forget who I am - and try this whole thing on myself (a good trick, change brand name for this) ; what would my perception be ? Would I say "Awesome" - or "Dont hassle me".
This is an indicative (and not exhaustive) list of questions. The point is - sit down with the complete map of experience stages and keep questioning, probing, asking unconnected people - till you find that you are convinced. Being sceptical before is better than being defensive after.
This thinking can be applied from the smallest campaign to the largest. By and large - it is best applied in the following situation.
I've got the research. My brand perception sucks. Lets go back to the drawing board and start again.
You realise the advantage above - you at least have the humility to ask the questions. And you have at least built the knowledge to design the experience stages. I can tell you thats a lot more than you will have in a new exercise.
"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern." - William Blake.

Leadership - the art of self redundancy

2008-04-04T03:05:00.000-07:00

Knowledge is power - right ?
Wrong.
A colleague asked me this question today (in different words). "Krishnan - I have spent years picking up these skills. What happens to the time I spent if others learn it easily ?". One question which immediately throws the spotlight on the leaders role in teaching.
The wikipedia entry for leadership has an interesting spin - "One of the differentiating factors between Management and Leadership is the ability or even necessity to inspire." I disagree - In my opinion there can be no management without leadership - lets look at why this is so.
In professional lives there are two kinds of roles - clerical and managerial. A clerical role (whether blue or white collar) involves the diligent execution of a repetitive task ad nauseum. These are the roles technology / any form of optimisation threatens - witness the rise of the Union. A Managerial role by definition therefore has to do with unanticipated, higher risk, "grey zone" tasks - requiring specific skill development and the application of intellect. Assuming most human beings are born with largely similar intellectual capability - the role adopted depends on choice. Why do we choose one over the other ?
To me - roles requiring the application of intellect are "scaleable" roles. The individual grows as they perform this. Such roles would typically be chosen due to an individual's desire for scaleability - in designation, function and remuneration. As a consequence, managerial roles are played by people who desire to move on and grow. But hang on a minute !! - was'nt this role being played by an individual precisely because they had developed specific skills and intellectual capability. In which case - how will the organisation allow the individual to scale ?
Which brings me back to the interconnectedness between Management and Leadership. The two go hand in hand. A Manager's aspirations cannot be met if he does not become a leader. So what does being a leader entail ?
Purely from the self interest of the manager - the key leadership trait required is the ability to replicate skill and knowledge in the team the manager leads. This has two implications - recruiting the kind of people who can absorb this, and training and mentoring to bring them upto speed. Lets take these issues individually.
Recruiting - I always look for scaleable people by default. There are 5 things I see in such people which set them apart. They are passionate about things they have already done (easy to check). They have already demonstrated the acquisition of some unique knowledge and skill (however small) in what they have done in the past. They have a clear point of view of what they wish to do in my organisation (though this may be wrong - its about having it, not about being right). They are direct and do not obfuscate - what they do not know they say they do not know; because they are strengthened by the other things they do know. Finally, they ask questions - of the interviewer, during the interview. A questioning mind is a scaleable mind.
Training and Mentoring - I think you need to do this at three levels. First - as a leader, share your own unique skills and knowledge. Do not just share - drill it into the teams head. They need to be as good as you. Second - focus significantly on the individual's strengths and have extremely high expectations from it. While on one hand communicating your abilities - demand and keep demanding new abilities from the team member. Third - drive the individual to self learn / think on their weakness. Our weaknesses are usually best sorted through self intervention. This is also where training / talent transformation programmes from the organisation itself become important - with the individual exercising the choice to participate and attend. Allow this freedom.
Voila ! - Not only are you replaced. It's with a better model.

Blurring the line - Account Based Marketing

2008-03-14T22:44:00.000-07:00

I often ask people - what's the difference between marketing and sales ? And once you dig past kotlerian noise - you figure out both do about the same stuff ; with one key difference. Marketing focuses on segment, while sales focuses on account. Fortunately - as accounts assume gigantic proportions in the world of IT services, the line starts blurring. My team has been battling for some time now to lift off the concept of account based marketing - but blurred lines take time. This to me is the next battleground for the much beleagured Category Manager.
In my business, some accounts can be treated as segments by themselves. The F 500 can have 200 relevant decision makers spread across the world - and a highly effective sales team may be able to canvass about 15% of these. In these accounts - there are three objectives which should be treated as key. The most obvious is to gain entry and start leveraging cross sell and upsell. This is not enough. If there is a 15% coverage situation amongst key decision makers - there has to be genuine focus brought to relationship penetration and coverage (think above the line). And all of this is for nought unless positive impact is brought to Disposition - demonstrated by active participation in references, customer meets and such like. Caveat 1 - this is impossible unless there is strong account management already in place. ABM is not a crutch, it is a multiplier. Caveat 2 - this is impossible unless the larger organisation rallies around to the cause. Account Based Marketing in reality has little do with the marketing department.
There is a 5 step process - which done well and with sincerity can lead to success. These are - Situation Analysis, Program Setup, Proposition generation, channel creation and action and measurement. Needless to say - a large group has to take responsibility to drive these , in the following fashion.
Situation Analysis : In most accounts, you will find it is difficult to have reliable and timely intelligence. This is dependent not just on intelligence gathering ability, but also on ownership in monitoring and updation - and the knowledge management capability to share. There are six pieces that need to be owned by various stakeholders in the process and updated in a weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual fashion. Let us call these - Client Industry Information, Client Business Information (tracking the clients business performance) , Client Insider view (primarily structure, role and influence related), Client Engagement (record of RFPs, responses, meetings and even unstructured conversations), Client Delivery details (like case studies) and an evolving Account Development strategy. If done well - this is really 50% of the job done.
Program Setup : This is the tough part (not from doability - but from buy in). This is the part where all stakeholders discover that you cant just mouth off - you need to invest resource and time in the effort. Sales needs to build an Inside sales engine to reach into the account, create a multi level contact beat plan, convert the account into a Global Account Management setup (if required) , generate a reporting framework which can touch the multiple KDMs and get a senior management sign off on the account plan and budgets. The delivery organisation needs to start building account specific competencies (an example being the account centre of excellence), and deriving the metrics necessary to communicate delivered value to the client. The pre sales organisation needs to build a proactive proposaling engine to carry account specific value propositions. The marketing team needs to configure communication channels into the account, and build a campaign plan. Realise - without yet actually doing anything, this is 80% of job done.
Propositioning : This is magical. Once you put your mind to it - there are so many ways to build propositions. Cross sell propositions (basis experiences with peer group clients) are easy. Case study based propositions - done on the same customer in a different department / location become interesting, especially as the client can get involved in marketing it to other parts of their organisation. Existing horizontal propositions are also easy - mostly they would require larger marketing campaigns to be customised into the ABM organisation. At the bleeding edge, we would have thought leading propositions which can be used to generate visibility, credibility and respect. These were not so difficult - the most important and toughest is the client centric proposition. This is where the delivery client innovation capability has to kick in.
Channel Creation : How do you carry all these propositions into the ABM organisation ? There is a significant channel setup process required. Sales calls, collateral (newsletters etc), Steering committee meetings, relationship milestone celebrations, joint case studies - there are 31 channels we have already identified. The ABM program should be built leveraging 5 identified most effective channels - these would require investment.
Action and Measurement : There is not much to be written about action. It needs to be done. However - doing is not good enough. Measure and communicate are important. Measurement needs to be dealt with objectively - the SFA needs to measure impact on cross sell and upsell. Relationship penetration needs to be measured in terms of new touchpoints created in the ABM organisation. Disposition needs to be measure through customer participation in our activities - and their championing of us through these and referencing.
Clearly - this is not a quick fix solution for targets. It is strategic and intense - not for the faint hearted. But - can we survive without it ?

The Category Management Function in IT Services

2008-03-05T01:07:00.000-08:00

Today at lunch a few of us were chuckling over the latest pepsi campaign - an inane piece of advertising involving 3 film celebrities (at an obnoxious cost) purportedly selling a new world called "YoungIstan". It is sometimes distressing to think of the quantum of marketing and creative talent being invested in creating meaningless and trashy communication. Is there no meaning to "meaningful marketing" any more ? In an earlier post I had talked about quality marketing processes involving identity, positioning, propositioning etc - but there is a larger question around the business impact of marketing that keeps getting asked; precisely because of profligate marketing expenditure.
Therefore - it may be the right time for me to record my thoughts on the Category Management function in HCL. The term is borrowed from Retail - and essentially stands for Brand Manager +. In HCL's Business Marketing function which I lead, this is the battery and the driving force - and I happen to be quite proud of the team playing this role.
It is sometimes difficult for product marketers to grasp the complexity of marketing IT services. To begin with - there is no defined product. But (and more worrying) is the fact that organisations in this industry operate in multiple geographies with services delivered in unique vertical (industry oriented) and delivery (operations / technology oriented) structures. Value propositions peep out of a 3 dimensional rubics cube with 100's and 1000's of individual cells. Strategy automatically becomes a key weapon in the Category Manager's hand. Using strategy, a category manager has to generate sufficient influence to bring material changes in service offerings, alliances, IP investments and the like - while at the same time impacting the demand side through right focus.
At this stage - it may be wise to explain the meaning of Category in our context. It's simple actually - a category is a vertically or horizontally defined unit of business (typically upwards of $ 200 mn) which has direct go to market. While Financial Services would be an example of a vertical category, Enterprise Applications (including SAP and Oracle services) would be an example of a horizontal category.
It has actually taken us years to bring this function to a level where it approaches maturity. We finally have clarity on the 4 things a Category Manager needs to do to convert marketing activity to business impact.
1. Campaign : Campaigns are wild cards in this industry. In a product company - the entire marketing team may run 4 campaigns in the year (and that's a lot). This year alone we will have run over 60 campaigns across the world - a daunting task indeed. It becomes critical to think in terms of effort ROI for each campaign - and this comes from sufficient analysis (not just market but also sales goals) to focus on the right segments. But by itself this is not sufficient. Campaigns need to be "effort right sized" basis their objectives, target segment size and organisation competency. This is possible to do by placing all campaign areas in a 2x2 created from axes representing Market opportunity and Competitive Capability. There are 6 approaches to campaigns that can be identified in this grid. In the high opportunity and capability zone lies proposition based (clear proposition to limited audience) and power positioning campaigns (able to touch a wide audience). In the High Opportunity but low Capability section lie Innovation based (thought leading campaigns allowing development of vision and capability) and Partnership based campaigns ( an ecosystem solution to bridge the capability gap). In the low Opportunity but high Capability zone status quo campaigns are required - Cross Sell campaigns focused on existing customers or Sales based campaigns with primarily a collateral focus. Unfortunately when a category manager does manage to do all this strategy work (phew !!!) he then has to implement it as well.
2. Business Strategy : unfortunately, the above piece only had to do with marketing aspects of strategy - there is a larger piece left. Though it is clear that sufficient market, competitive and internal knowledge is required to be able to influence business in the direction of creating new services, partnerships et al - the path of doing this is a thorny one indeed. A Category Manager needs to engage with the various arms of the business leadership in creating and moderating strategy workshops. The workshop model covers four areas - an outside in approach to problem definition, an inside out approach to solution identification, a detailed Go to Market section and the business case creation. As if this were not enough, the category manager has to be the custodian of the service articulation exercise - another (proprietary ?) model we use to convert competencies into high value services basis customer insight. As part of the strategy ask - Category Managers need to be au fait with initiatives planned for the year, track business performance and create necessary escalations. Over and above all this - from an annual planning perspective the CM uses a Neo modeler methodology to work with business owners to define plans and initiatives.
3. Opportunity Support : This is an industry with deal sizes upwards of $ 100 mn. Deals like these cannot be handled by just a sales organisation - typically extended organisations come together to work on them. Category Managers can be sources of immense value in such deal situations - bringing research and creative capability to the table to create unique differentiators and positioning strategies for the deal - while playing execution roles in creating differentiation out of technical content. This is also a very strong area for a CM to build the influence over stakeholders he so desperately requires to run his strategy ask.
4. Brand Visibility : Yes. This is the last thing to do. Amazing - is'nt it ? It needs to be understood that in specific target segments, campaigns generate significant visibility - however, there is a task in making the entire category visible to analysts, media and customers. But - this is not an area where an advertising agency gets briefed and lots gets spent on media. The best form of visibility in this industry comes through thought leadership - the Category Manager needs to be able to don the mantle of a thought leader for the segment and thus position his business appropriately while creating salience.

Just 4 things. Should be easy right ? - Wrong. And I havent even started talking about Account based marketing yet ....

Perhaps that will be the next subject.

The Employer brand

2008-01-29T02:45:00.000-08:00

Amazingly - this is not a subject I have yet touched upon. Though it is probably the most important application of marketing in the IT services industry. It's also an area I have done a fair bit in - but I think I have always seen it as ancillary to my role ; never really core. A few days ago - in london, I was fortunate to be part of a communication meeting happening between a vertical sales leadership team and a set of employees who had become quite critical (acquiring rare skill in a customer engagement). The engagement brought home why it was always important to put the employee first - these were highly intelligent people who understood their own value, respected the organisation they worked for and wanted to maximise their own contribution. They truly represented the "Transformer" - something I had played a role in creating but (I now realised) still had to internalise.

How does the employer brand differ from the brand itself ? Clearly they cannot be different - one has to resonate with and feed the other. The Transformer branding was a consequence of an insight that concluded that the HCL identity was best described in the words "The extraordinary individual". The ad shown became a part of a recruitment campaign - and this position went on to become part of a massive organisation transformation resulting in the much talked about "Employee First" phenomenon at HCL Technologies. Does this work for the customer ? - Perhaps not. This is why I did not treat this area with great relevance.

Whats the problem with that ? - the answer hit me when I met that team of talented employees in london. Through effective use of strategy (blue ocean etc) it is possible to create unique areas where customers find you - therefore, in this industry, the customer franchise cannot truly be described to be highly competitive - the supplier and the buyer maintain a balance. Witness HCLs enormous success in Remote Infrastructure Management - a position created more through strategy than marketing communication. The story is exactly the opposite on the employee end - while effective strategy can convert the employees output into unique solutions, the employees output still remains standard. The truly competitive market becomes the employment market with employees on the supply side and companies on the buy side. For some time now this is a market which has been in imbalance with power residing on the supply side. Current recessionary conditions may swing the see saw in the other direction and re establish balance.

There is no doubt in my mind that true competitive advantage in a services industry can only be established in the employment space.

I want to be part of the journey - not part of the scenery at the destination

2007-11-27T21:38:00.000-08:00

While I have been focusing on writing a lot around marketing, there is merit in capturing my own beliefs and values as a professional. I realise that this is an area where definitions come through random thoughts and perhaps I keep thinking of stuff and forgetting in the conscious (while retaining in the unconscious). Beliefs and values built over a career may not be easy to forget or set aside - but I don't want to take that risk. Therefore, I shall capture what I remember today in this post - and possibly come back with a few more on this subject.
If there is one approach I have adopted - its the path of "enlightened self interest". I do not have much to say about this other than the three words - so I won't. Suffice to say it tends to the self centred - not the selfish. I very strongly believe we need to enjoy our work life - it is important to extract stimulation and enjoyment from what we spend most of our time doing. I also believe work is not about the number of transactions - but the impact created in each transaction. Each thing done has to be approached with passion and pleasure, to generate tremendous quality and impact in the output. Another value I hold very close is uniqueness - there is no point having a career being one amongst many. This may be safe - but it is not rewarding to the individual. Those who strike out in unexplored directions (typically the entreprenuer) create superb positions for themselves while having a ball at the same time. If this thinking goes into employment (i.e. uniqueness) - you can have the pleasure of entrepreneurship without the risk and the heartburn. Stress - a bugbear of modern professional living. I think it is overrated. Stress to my mind is more self induced - genuine stress only results when life is imbalanced. I think today's world makes it far more possible to find balance in life - as an example, I am genuinely stressed if I have to turn up at office everyday and cannot make exceptions for intrusion of personal life (child's illness, family tragedy or just a plain old holiday on an off day). In yester years this was difficult to achieve - work meant presence in the office. Today with automation and communication technologies our productivity has become location independent - this is genuine destress. The true aspect of stress we experience today is self induced - this is silly. You only agonise over missing a train if you are running to catch it - so chill for a while. Plan well and be prepared for the occasional roundabouts and you'll be fine.
When you start thinking like this - an automatic extension is the thinking on self sufficiency and the absolute scale. Two things here - I believe I can add value ; and I will. I do not require external sources to enable my journey to contributing in my professional life. Leading on from this - it is foolish to index own achievement basis other's - many other people will do better and worse than me; this should make no difference to me. Run the race against yourself.
I remember, when I left ITC to join HCL Technologies, a lot of my well wishers were aghast. According to many I was attacking my own career with a triple pronged assault. Moving from an established leader in the CPG industry to a fairly fledgling IT Service player (industry assault), that too joining the No. 5 player in this fledgling industry (company assault) and moving into marketing - seen as an also ran support function in this industry (functional assault). In hindsight I can say it was the best move of my life - you see; I want to be part of the journey, not the scenery at the destination.

Coldplay's Yellow - The Quest for Erudition ?

2007-11-07T20:05:00.000-08:00

While driving into office in the morning I was listening to Yellow. 5 years ago a friend introduced me to the song and to Coldplay - and I admired him for his erudition. More so because I think of myself as a bit of a musician. The thought just struck me however - at this time Coldplay was already very big. My admiration was only account my not knowing them - if the same were to happen today, I would treat the incident with some contempt. I already know them - and you think it a big deal ?
Question therefore - what is erudition ? There is no doubt that human beings admire it - and the greatest brands in the world represent it. But is it about what the erudite entity knows or about what I don't know ???
The puzzle - I don't know; and you tell me. Now I know. In this lies the mystery of brands dying. There are two parts to this puzzle - in this world of hyper-knowledge how do I know what you dont and how am I supposed to keep ahead of what you know. I do not have answers - but I can hazard a guess. If brands have to be ahead and brands need to continuously reinvent (in a relevant fashion) the answers would lie in thought leadership and society.
Mere scholarly pursuit of knowledge (dictionary meaning) cannot lead to erudition admiration. Insight is key. I remember an article in HBR I read years ago that gave some meaning to this. The hypothesis - society continuously evolves in a certain direction in a mass fashion, but secretly desires a different state. If a brand spots this discontinuity and adopts it in positioning, brand character or world - it appears to create new thought while actually resonating with secret desire. Two interesting examples the article took related to post world war 2 America. This was the time the US start white collaring - and a society which till then was outdoor centric started heading into offices to earn livelihoods to good to give up. In this cusp - two brands were born. Marlboro with the iconic cowboy and Mountain Dew with the grassroot hillbilly picked positions that perfectly fit the discontinuity and became gigantic.
I know it is dangerous to attribute post facto causality to successes - but treating this as a mere intellectual exercise, I believe I have a similar example from my ITC days (not that I was involved in it). In the mid 80's ITC took the Wills Navy Cut brand to India's most powerful tobacco brand. This was a time when traditional India was emerging to modernity and beginning to question the current mores of the man-woman relationship (quite inequal at the time). The "Made for Each Other" advertising campaign broke with shots of a man and a woman reading "The Polish Joke Book" together and sharing a good laugh. I believe at a subconscious level - viewers understood that the demonstration of an activity we believe to be individual and personal (i.e. reading a book) suddenly being shared was a demonstration of intimacy and sharing in the relationship which was absolutely new. I did'nt know you could have that kind of relationship at that time - I admire the brand for this new thought.
Which brings me back to Coldplay's Yellow. There is no sustainable basis on which I can admire the mere posession of knowledge. To admire erudition - I need insight. Tough, No ?

Are'nt brands about Confidence

2007-11-02T01:24:00.000-07:00

Just came across an interesting Gartner article on the "Confidence Index" in outsourcing relationships. While I explore this a little further in the context of my business - it is interesting to put this in the context of brands.
In 2001, a Gartner study on trust and business relationships asked IT services customers to rate the relative importance of "trust" in their business decision making. It became evident that, while trust was of overriding importance, there were no definitive views on what constitutes trust. Put simply, people know trust "when they see it" ; but are unable to define it. Sounds familiar ?
Gartner goes on to establish that the confidence both parties have in a business relationship is determined by the level of trust and the perceptions of how good or poor are the controls that govern the relationship. When this thinking is applied to brands - specially in consumer products, the results become interesting.
Lets take a look at trust first. Trust is acquired through a combination of right functionality, meeting expectations, consistency, meaningful communication, responsiveness, cultural fit and reputation. I am not very sure that marketers focus on all these parameters. Product development rarely understands right functionality from a consumption point of view, advertising typically raises (and mismatches) expectations, consistent quality is part of a sourcing / manufacturing process, communication touchpoints get meaninglessly used, few brands have customer service departments in place etc etc. A lot of thought and investment goes into cultural fit and reputation build. There may be merit in viewing the other aspects as part of marketing investment.
When we approach Control - it becomes a lot more iffy. Specially in mass marketed consumer goods - what sort of control should be presented to the customer ? - Wrong question / answer.. As long tail thinking has clearly begun to demonstrate - the customer wants , and will cast a vote for control. Some mix elements which can deliver "right control" to the customer / consumer would be feedback mechanisms (which are actioned), decision mechanisms (for rapid resolution), setting standards (and clearly communicating them as well as adherence), advance change management mechanisms (have you ever been through a packaging design change ?) , interactive loyalty solutions, financial clarity and responsibility, continuous improvement, benchmarking (visibly) and effective demand management. Once again a number of things that get done in bits and pieces.
If brands are about confidence - thinking on trust and control is a must in any marketing plan and budget. Arguably - its a cheaper and better area to spend than much of media.

The Value Proposition

2006-10-19T05:24:00.000-07:00

Whoof - what a term. Its driven me nuts - trying to figure out what it means, and how to usefully deploy it in the job. The nightmare is worst for the services marketer - as there is nothing tangible to package, the whole offering looks superficial. Interesting things like economics also interfere when least required. For example, scarcity creates an illusion of value. When the only television channel India had was Doordarshan - a once a month late night program that carried international music videos used to keep me awake, viciously rubbing gritty eyes. I dont think I have looked at MTV in the last 1 year.

Clearly sustainable value propositions cannot be built just due to demand supply imbalances - in the modern age these seem to sort out pretty rapidly. Which pretty much means - whatever you have to offer will without doubt be offered by lots of others. Hang on - then how do you create value ? My opinion - value can only be created through a clearly targeted composite offering which differentiates across service delivery, commercial models and customer experiences. In short - there is no one magic factor that creates value.

I'm currently trying out a sequence of steps which appear to be managing this complexity and generating some output. The first step is what I am calling Targeting and Intelligence. This discovery process is probably the most crucial one in finally delivering a robust proposition. This is the part where you figure out the customer segmentation methodology, name the segments and live the customer's business. The target segment's business value chain, competitive reality and as many other things as possible need to be internalised. Nothing could be better than clearly identifying business problems / goals encountered by the segment. At this point the clever marketer has a discovery / sitanal document in hand

Basis clarity through a robust situation analysis , I will call the next stage Scenario Building. This is a diagnostics stage during which hypothetical scenarios need to be constructed regarding the reason for existence of the business objective / problem the proposition being built should address. For example, if the problem being targeted is companies whose IT intensity is off benchmark - one possible scenario could be due to heightened M&A activity. Once a set of such hypothesis are selected (let us assume only one is) - we reach the stage of Solution Articulation. This is where extremely specific definition needs to be brought to the nature of the solution being proposed to a problem caused by the selected hypothesis.

We are still nowhere close to making a sale on this solution. This will only happen when a very good ROI Model is in place. An important tool that should be developed at this stage is a ROI / TCO calculator - which can put a price value equation to the solution. The additional requirements of this stage are quantification of risk and proposed mitigation. A strong commercial model needs to be put in place so that ROI / TCO can be measured across Time / Cost, Efficiency, Quality and Revenue / Profit.

We're pretty much ready now to hit the road - and the next two stages of the proposition make this possible. The first - Sales Enablement - ensures the presence of custom collateral and collaborative tools that backend a consultative sales approach. The second is the campaign plan - the Awareness and Demand Program.

We're done - almost. The proposition should include a mechanism for Value Measurement and Reporting, so that post implementation the perception of value keeps increasing.

With this I think we will have built a sustainable value proposition - inshallah !

The Participation Economy

2006-09-28T01:16:00.000-07:00

In the history of mankind – technology has always enabled transformation ; leading to a paradigm shift in the way humanity and human beings live. I believe we stand today at an interesting cusp – technology is now engineering transformation around us that is faster and more pervasive than any the world has ever encountered – replacing the physical world with the virtual. The forces of transformation are almost limitless choice, collaborative niche networks and individual value creation.

Lets take a look at this some more. The limitations of the physical world translate not so much to aggregation as optimization – leading to a limitation in choice. We all listen to the same hit songs because the record store can stock only so much, we were educated in the same fashion because career options were limited etc.For a moment, lift these constraints – supposing a record store could stock infinite tunes , supposing we could successfully create a career out of an interest area – however arcane ; what happens ? This is the phenomenon of the long tail as written about by Chris Anderson - combine enough nonhits on the Long Tail and you've got a market bigger than the hits. Take books: The average Barnes & Noble carries 130,000 titles. Yet more than half of Amazon's book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles.

Now lets look at this world of infinite choice – a world where economies are ruled by what we choose to participate in. This is creating a transformational force of collaboration – leading to a complete reconstruction of business models. Lets look at some of the business transformations in the last few decades. The biggest rival for Microsoft's dominance of the market for operating systems is Linux, a system developed collaboratively by perhaps 140,000 computer users, with a core of about 2,000 programmers, who gave their time, ideas and effort for free. IBM gave up the PC highground to Dell – who managed to get customers, suppliers and partners to collaborate in engineering their success. The most breathtaking example: Wikipedia – 5 million people making 1.5 million entries a month in 200 languages to oust the supremacy of the Encylopedia Britannica. At Amazon.com, thousands of volunteers write buyer's guides and lists of favorite products. In India, the e Choupal is bringing together farmers and ITC in a collaborative network creating value for both.

Every business needs to understand the impact of collaboration – where the only scarcity is the individual choice to participate. Our employees will refuse to participate if we cannot create a compelling employee engagement experience. Our customers will refuse to participate if we cannot create value for them. Our shareholders will refuse to participate if we cannot create wealth for them. At the same time employees, customers, shareholders are all in multiple ways indicating their desire to be active participants in our business. The enormously successful Grameen bank is famous for a transformational microfinance model where the poor borrowers of the bank also own it and operate through self help groups – with a 98 % loan recovery rate. The new organizations of tomorrow will find canny ways to convert self interest into social benefit and real economic value – using an “architecture of participation”.
How do we live and flourish in the participation economy as individuals ? If our sphere of influence can only be sustained by being part of one or many collaborative networks – the participation economy will not allow for identity to be derived from the social, cultural or political system that we may be part of. American teenagers have already made this discovery through MySpace.com – where individuals build personal identity expressing interests, tastes and values. MySpace.com has more page views per day than Google or MSN. Today a new blog is created every second of every day – with over 95% of them enjoying no readership. Identity by itself is not enough – without it generating value we will be unable to invite participation to our sphere of influence. The new economy is based on endless originality – and marks the transformation from mass customization to mass innovation.

The challenge in this is profound – we have already experienced people who successfully engender participation in their spheres. These are typically entrepreneurs and stars. In the transformation we are faced with today – all of us will have to become entrepreneurs and stars ; all enabled by a paradigm shift in technology it is difficult to fathom today. I made a personal career change in anticipation of this – from Retail to IT Services. Hopefully, it will be possible to be a part of this wave. Marketers watch out ! – how we handle our brands is about to radically change ; because our audience behaviour is profoundly changing.

How do I spot a marketing organisation ?

2006-09-22T23:59:00.000-07:00

Its tough to understand what marketing does - everyone has their own take. As you get through working life as a marketer you start seeing a little bit of light; and it becomes important to have some definition - if only to tell other people what you do. I've got a very simple definition - marketing creates sustained value. Since value is really an intangible, perception is really the main "p" marketers should be talking about. The question of sustainability is really important because, in the larger consciousness, perceptions are neither formed quickly - nor retained easily if they are cluttered and noisy. More on the aspect of value later...

Marketing is not really a function - its a discipline. It cant be done by a department - great marketers are not individuals , or even groups. Great marketers are entire organisation. They create a unique value perception that sustains with audiences over time - being reinforced across all touchpoints the organisation has with multiple stakeholders. Great marketers break the blind men with the elephant myth - all participants in the organisations success (employees, customers, shareholders, partners et al) see the entire elephant.

How do you spot the great marketers of our time. To me, there are 4 aspects - whenever you see them coming together salute. You are privileged to meet the rare marketing success - somebody who is being able to do it right, almost all the time.

The first of these is identity. An organisation may represent a single brand or a portfolio of brands. The trick is - does each brand represent a clear identity across time and touchpoint. Does it represent a single unique essence that resonates with its audience ? Do physical characteristics (colour, sound, taste..), values espoused, cultures demonstrated all work to this single essence ?

Lets move on - once you get the sense of identity; look for positioning. This I believe is one of the most abused terms in marketing. Few people seem to have a really clear definition of positioning. This is primarily because it is derived - it forms as a mental picture in the consumer mind; but that is not a definition using which any kind of position can be created. Strongly positioned brands demonstrate in their behaviour and communication an extremely clear articulation of three things - who are they targeting, in what competitive frame of reference they operate and whats their point of difference. Actually, any of these three variables can be used to create unique positions. Credit cards can be differentiated by targeting working women in India. 7 UP differentiated by setting the cola category as a frame of reference. And everybody who cannot differentiate in these two need to articulate a clear point of difference to avoid becoming me too.

So where are we now - we have seen a brand which looks, talks, feels and tastes the same every time we encounter it. The brand is either relevant or not to us because it is sharply positioned. Will this change our perception about it ? Not really because to form a true perception we need to participate in the brands journey in some fashion. This we can only do if it has a relevant Proposition for us. This is fairly simple to identify - and you can pretty much do it just by looking at the advertising. Does every communication contain a specific and actionable proposition - designed to get us to participate in the world of the brand ? If yes, whew - this is somebody doing a real good job.

But hang on - we cant seal the deal yet. Its a difficult world out there and 75% aint good enough. Where's the last mile ? - you guessed it. How good are these guys at campaigns ? Are they taking these propositions we spotted and running them across multiple media and touchpoints to create efficient and effective impact ? Are they running a feedback loop to make in course corrections ? Do they drop a campaign quickly enough if its a bum ? Do they spot winners and flog them the extra mile ? If they've kept the metre ticking till this moment and are doing this as well - maestro ; take a bow.

Have you spotted a marketing organisation yet ? I think I have - but I cant tell. I will - when its mine.