We are continually told that the customer has taken control of the buying process thanks to the Internet. We have never agreed with that notion. The customer has more tools to become smarter and savvy, but they are no more in control of the buying process than they were before the Internet and all the shiny new tools available to them.

At the same time, most businesses have gotten smarter in how to reach the consumer but lack the necessary tools and resources to bridge the natural gap between what the customers want and how to deliver their product or service to foster satisfaction that will lead to loyalists and advocates.

This week’s AH-ha! moment asks you to remember it was May of 1965 when the Rolling Stones released their still popular single “(I can’t get no) Satisfaction.” Most consumers feel the same way today, even as we slowly creep out of the Great Recession. According to Wikipedia, the lyrics focused on both sexual satisfaction and consumerism. While drugs like Viagra and others may have improved our sexual satisfaction, businesses have not found a magic pill that brings consumer satisfaction.

A new report from Forrester Research highlighted in the May issue of CRM magazine suggests that there are five primary drivers toward customer satisfaction:

• Price
• Quality
• Delivery
• Reliability
• Efficiency

The research says pricing decisions set customer expectations for the experience, which helps drive both satisfaction and loyalty. Forrester puts price as the lead variable to creating a positive customer experience. Therefore, we should not be surprised that in the latest Forrester Customer Experience Index, companies that position themselves as value brands, including Marshalls, JetBlue, Southwest airlines and Courtyard by Marriott, grabbed 10 of the top 13 spots this year.

While it is imperative to get the pricing right, the other satisfaction drivers are all equally important. The challenge for the marketing team is to piece the mosaic of drivers together to guarantee (yes, guarantee) a high and sustaining level of satisfaction. This requires that marketing set up systems to continually monitor consumer chatter about your brands. This is where all the shiny new tools can play an important part in the marketing process. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, or any of the other social media sites that let customers grade performance and comment, following those comments is a vital exercise toward knowing the pulse of the consumers’ satisfaction.

The Marketing Implications

Marketing’s challenge is to break down the barriers to the satisfaction drivers. This should be easy because nothing has really changed since 1965. The customer’s view of your brand has not changed. What has changed is that consumers expect more than they did back in the days of Mad Men. The same drivers back then are front and center today.

The wisemarketer.com posted an excellent article about what drives customer defection and abandonment. The article cited research commissioned by IT automation firm Redwood Software. Not surprisingly, the study found that poor customer service, redundant questions and disconnected processes are the key driving forces leading customers to abandon purchases, switch suppliers, or terminate contracts. Customers expect companies to deliver integrated and seamless end-to-end experiences. They also expect issues to be resolved quickly. They dislike automated call center phones and multiple prompts and being passed around to multiple departments to get a problem solved.

The heart of our Sixth Star Marketing philosophy is to MAKE IT EASY FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS TO DO BUSINESS WITH YOU. We continue to ask what are the dynamics that influence current customer behavior by asking business owners what one word best describes their customers and even last week, we hear the same three words multiple times: Busy, Stressed and Frugal.

While we are seeing a rise in consumer activity, frugality drives pricing perceptions. However, busy and stressed are equally importing in how customers shape their perception of quality, delivery, reliability and efficiency.

This week, ask your team to describe the business drivers for brand satisfaction as it relates to your brands and services and then identify those business practices that create barriers to customer satisfaction. You may find that what goes around came back around and maybe your customers are not loyal because they can’t get no satisfaction.

Have a fantastic week.

Bart Foreman and the Every Day Group 3 Marketing Team

This week’s AH-ha! moment suggests that we should carefully consider what forces are in play that really influence the next sale. Thanks to the techies with the shiny new toys, we focus on all the wrong things. We are enamored with everything social and digital to the point that we miss the people component. We believe that marketing revolves around the new holy grail – search. We’re not so sure.

Last week our home microwave gave us it’s last cup of hot java. It hangs under some cabinetry and size is an important consideration. Since it is a GE product, replacement should be no problem. So last Saturday, we measured the carcass and went back to the appliance outlet store were we bought it. This was going to be a 20-minute sale – that took four days. What started as a simple moment of truth turned into a long multi-channel journey. GE does not make that model or, more importantly, the size we needed.

On our way home, we stopped at Sears but had no better luck in matching the unit size to our space. Once at home and we had a brilliant idea that IKEA has upgraded their kitchen product line and they would certainly have a microwave. This time we went to the trusted Internet and found they carry a number of very expensive models that are all too big to fit in the space.

Then we did what every savvy customer does – we Googled it and found all the usual retailers. Upon investigation  we discovered no two retailers present the same products the same way. It was time consuming and painful.

We went to Lowes on Sunday and found a unit that might fit and bought it along with a shelf and mounting brackets. Mission accomplished? Not quite. By Monday morning, my bride decided it was too big. Monday afternoon she went to Target and found her dream microwave. Monday night, we went back and bought it. Tuesday night, I took the Lowes unit back.

In terms of current marketing thinking, we were engaged. We employed multiple channels and a lot of time to get a $137 unit to basically heat coffee and tea. Store personnel at the appliance store, Sears, and Lowes were very friendly and helpful. At Target, not one person spoke to us until we reached the checkout. Yet that’s where we completed the sale.

The Marketing Implications

In our buying spree, we discovered many moments of truth. We were helped by sales associates when we needed it. This is when we realized every sales process is different and it has gotten more complex as more channels of information have expanded into the process. What was a straight line is now shape shifting into new and different journeys. As marketers, we believe we have to be prepared to help at every junction of the journey. We are wrong.

Every intersection between your customer and your brand is at a different junction in the sales process. Therefore we should not be prepared to help but rather we should prepare the customer to navigate the sales journey to our brand.

Author Brian Solis has written a new book “WTF, What’s the Future of Business”. He says someone has to tell the story of the new customer journey, identify their way points, and how to reach them. He created a graphic representation of the Dynamic Customer Journey and it is presented below. One of his key takeaways that has been one of our recurring themes is that all the pieces of marketing have to work together.  Brian notes that it may be time to move away from social and into the broader realm of digital and make that the overarching strategy.

I had a unique opportunity last Friday to grasp a piece of Brian’s Influence Loop in a new business presentation. The business owner at the other end of the call said he wanted to create loyalists for his brand. Remembering this graphic, I suggested that Loyalists are fine but they are passive and then went on to suggest that the program we were proposing would create ADVOCATES. It immediately changed the tone of the dialog.

Understand that the sales loop or cycle has always been like this. Brian has enhanced it. Share it with your team this week and look at your marketing process to determine how it is impacting your customers’ decision making. Ask them if our microwave buying journey is typical, old fashioned or real-world 2013 consumerism.

Have a fantastic week.

Bart Foreman and the Group 3 Marketing Every Day Marketing Team

Marketing tries to rely on Big Data and census data to capture the essence of the new marketplace reality and in spite of all the technological advances, it is a slow process. This week’s AH-ha! moment suggests that marketing is all about evolution. The marketplace is not static. With so much hype around progressions of data and technology, it can be easy for marketers to overlook the transformations occurring at the very core of their relationship-driven craft: changes in people and their families.

One fact we can all agree on. The traditional nuclear family of the last century is gone. According to the latest census data, only 4% of households are now classified this way. Sparks & honey, a culture tracking agency, published the following data in its report, “Marketing to the Modern Family”:

• 12 million households (HH) are run by single parents

• 25% of U.S. same-sex couples are parents

• One in eight Americans between the ages of 40 and 60 head a “sandwich family” HH (taking care of a child and a parent)

• Given the strains of the recession and unemployment (and now sequestering) these shifts in family composition are changing and accelerating at a more rapid rate than ever before.

Looking at these statistics suggest an easy conclusion: what was the fringe is now the mainstream reality. In fact, maybe there is no longer a mainstream and marketing has to become more granular in targeting customers. Therein lays this week’s dilemma.

The Marketing Implications

We need to shift how we do business in the Age of NOW. We have Big Data, small data and data of every size. We have sliced and diced the consumer universe every possible way. And yet, with a few exceptions it’s BAU – Business as Usual. If your brand marketing is similar to what it was last year, you are already behind the curve. Changing shopper attitudes and technology are reshaping how our customers do business with us and it is happening quickly.

The follow-up AH-ha! moment is that we all need to shift our thinking. We (the brands) are not doing business with our customers. Our customers are doing business with us. Shopper behavior is being transformed by the digital and mobile revolution. This is the perfect marketing storm. The socio-economic forces we described above are being impacted by a combination of new evolving technologies and new sets of consumer expectations.

This is a collision of both old and new dynamics. It impacts both B2C and B2B marketing. In the Age of NOW, many of our customers’ needs remain unchanged, but their expectation of how your brands will fulfill them is being transformed. The traditional 4Ps of marketing (Price, Product, Promotion and Placement) are quickly being replaced by the new 3Ps – Profile, Personal History, and Preferences. Of course, we can reach deeply into statistics from Facebook and other social media sources to build profiles to better understand consumers. However, at some point we may experience backlash if we get too personal.

It’s complex. It is not going to get any easier for marketing teams to deliver successful results in the Age of NOW unless they focus on the customer. Our strategy is to focus on what your customers are doing in your business. What are they buying? How often are they buying? Who is High Value?

According to the Futures Company, a business think tank, shoppers and shopping are at a tipping point between the short term and the long. Our goal is to better understand how all these forces are impacting our businesses.

This week, ask your team if they remember the four Ps. Sadly, some won’t. Then ask them if they are aware of the new 3Ps. It’s a whole new way of thinking in a new dynamic marketplace. Hopefully, your team understands the challenges awaiting them with regard to knowledge building (3Ps) and how that impacts content creation.

Have a fantastic week.

Bart Foreman and the Every Day Group 3 Marketing Team

There is a business message here. This week’s AH-ha! moment suggests that we need to look at the marketplace as if it is filled with alligators. The marketplace is filled with predators and prey. How we plan our marketing strategy will determine whether our brands are predators or prey.

We are told that the lion is the king of the jungle, so it may seem odd that we are focusing on the lowly alligator. We may be enamored with the majesty of the lion, but we’ll put money on the alligator if they ever get in a fight.

Here’s what we like about using alligators as our wildlife marketing mascot.

1. They survive on land and in the water

2. They have thick skin, big teeth and powerful tails

3. They are quick and sneaky or, shall we say, stealthy

4. They are smart – they know when to avoid conflict, when to attack and never wander too far away from the lagoon

5. It’s not just the biggest that survive– even the smaller ones can control a lagoon

6. Even without analytics to guide them, their instincts are a combination of shrewd strategy and disarming tactics

Think of your marketplace as a lagoon surrounded by lush vegetation. The lagoon is filled with competitors and other foreign characters, like the government, the world economy and even Mother Nature – all lurking for the right moment to pressure your brands. Your customers and potential consumers fill the land and are difficult to describe because no two are the same, but often mimic many of the same traits as alligators. Your marketing world has suddenly gotten very complex.

Your brand must be able to survive across multiple “channels.”  This not only means e-commerce but other sales channels as well. It also means being able to connect and interact with customers across multiple communications channels. And, it means the brand message must always be relevant for the diversity of customers and consumers in your marketplace.

Your competitors are naturally sneaky and stealthy. Those non-competitive forces in the marketplace lagoon can cause as much havoc as direct competitors because you never know when they slither out of the lagoon. Therefore, your marketing team has to be quick and that requires multiple early warning systems.

Of course, you are smart. But so are your competitors and so are your customers. Technology has given every business and every individual the opportunity to be smart. It’s not that they are smarter than your team. But if you do not take advantage of all knowledge channels and others do, they will out execute your brand plans. Therefore, put your smart knowledge to work now.

Sometimes the big alligators move just a little slower and maybe are a little less agile. Sometimes the smaller, faster, more nimble alligators can get to the prey a little sooner and capture the prize. Translate this into marketing terms and it is evident that the marketplace is filled with prey and predators. Your marketing plans need to become enterprise plans that focus all the organization’s muscles together to be fast, nimble, and aggressive to retain customers and grow their business before competitors nip at your flanks.

It’s probably not politically correct to be shrewd and disarming, but we’re not in politics. We’re in business and the marketplace is filled with multiple opportunities for growth. If you believe competitors will not snap at the opportunity to capture new business from your brands, you are living in the Age of YESTERDAY. If you believe your customers are loyal, they are not. Therefore, be shrewd and disarming.

The Marketing Implications

Let’s learn from our new marketing mascot. Its tactics can teach us a lot about our marketing and enterprise plans. Every muscle in an alligator is honed to focus on one thing: staying alive. Your brand muscles are focused on staying alive, too. Where do you begin?

1. Your people. If you have weak team members, you have weak muscles. Some team members cannot keep up with the changes happening in the marketplace or continue to do business in the Age of Yesterday. Reassign them or phase them out.

2. Your processes. If they are not aligned with one focus – the customer – you have weak muscles not pulling their weight. Marketing is one of those processes. Marketing is not a muscle standing alone. Unfortunately, not all marketing teams feel they are part of the enterprise. IT is another muscle, along with sales, distribution, operations and all the other internal departments that make up your organization. Are they all part of the enterprise team or do some of them have other agendas that erode the organization’s muscle tone?

A stand alone, lonely muscle is a wasted resource. This week, step back and take inventory of all your brand and organizational muscles. The alligator can survive on land and under water. It has a wide range of vision and knows what are preys and what are threats. Your marketing challenge this week is to determine if your brand/organization can mimic the alligator we saw sunning itself (and plotting its next attack).

Have a fantastic week and start flexing your muscles.

Bart Foreman and the Every Day Marketing Team at Group 3 Marketing

Speaking of experience, it was quite a week for Ron Johnson, who after just 17 months at the helm of JC Penney’s, was sent packing. We give Johnson high marks for trying to turn around this dowdy, dusty, irrelevant retailer that was following a dying business model. Most of his changes, from a new logo change to every day pricing, were met with skepticism by just about everyone.

Business writers have all jumped on the bandwagon to point out the flaws in Johnson’s strategies. The consensus that is emerging is that Johnson didn’t understand the Penney’s customer experience and that was his downfall. This week’s AH-ha! moment challenges us to understand what is meant by the customer experience. It is our belief that there is no one customer experience.

Over the last 20 years, marketing thought leaders have moved from customer loyalty to customer relationships (CRM) to customer engagement and now, most recently, to customer experience. As marketing thought leaders, we have tried to move ahead of the current thinking of the time. We’re the ones who in 1994 boldly said, “Customer loyalty is dead and we killed it.” At the same time (in the same speech) we also threw cold water on the concept of the lifetime value of a customer (LTV) and eventually escaped from the concept of customer relationship management.

Today, we challenge marketers to consider what they mean when they talk about the “customer experience.” Johnson learned the hard way that there cannot be one vision of experience. Before we can describe the experience, we first need to describe and understand the customer. That sounds so basic that it seems like a waste of time to even write about it. Yet, that is the heart of our Sixth Star marketing strategy and is the center of our business model.

As we formulated the idea for this week’s Monday Morning AH-ha!, we had a vision. We have always argued that successful marketing begins by knowing your customer and understanding what are the customers’ needs and wants. Satisfying those needs and wants leads to a successful experience. The new realization is that customers are not looking for an experience – they are looking for and expecting multiple experiences depending on where they are in the buying process. Our individual needs and wants change and the marketing team has to understand what experience your customers want in your place of business.

The shopping environment shapes our experience and future expectations. Expectations are also shaped before the customer begins the buying/shopping process through social media and word-of-mouth. Someone told me that Sonic burgers rock. I haven’t tried them but I have high hopes that the experience will meet my expectations. I go to the Apple store that Johnson made famous, not because they sell computers, phones, and tablets but because of HOW they sell them and HOW they treat their customers. I expect a certain level of service and I always get it. When I go to Macy’s, I have a completely different set of expectations and I expect the store to meet those expectations that will result in a positive experience. Johnson’s critical mistake is he thought he could overlay the Apple experience with the Penney’s customers’ expectations and have a winning strategy.  He flopped and there is a lesson to be learned by all of us.

1. Do more than give lip service to knowing your customers. ENGAGE with them to UNDERSTAND what creates a positive experience – whether it’s in-store, on-line, through the catalog or in social media.

2. Take small measured steps and test where practical. In the Age of NOW, be prepared to listen, learn, engage and adapt.

3. Recognize that the consumer landscape is radically changing. But, in spite of what we are told, it is not all changing in the same direction. We are told that today’s biggest trends – mobile, web, social media – are empowering consumers and that’s what’s changing expectations. We do not subscribe to that thinking. Changing expectations comes from the shopping environment so every business has the obligation to get it right.

This week, ask your team if you are getting it right. Are you delivering an experience that matches your customers’ expectations? Can you describe the perfect customer experience your customers expect? If you claim to know the answers to these basic questions, we’ll ask you how you know. Unfortunately, no one challenged Ron Johnson internally to determine how he knew so much in so little time. Don’t fall into his trap.

Have a fantastic week.

Bart Foreman and the Group 3 Marketing Team

This week’s AH-ha! moment suggests that those of us in marketing have the same challenges as those college kids and their coaches. We just call it sales, market share shelf presence. And here’s an interesting thought – what if we pitted our brands against competitive brands in our own versions of Bracketology?

For all of us in the business of marketing it’s all about expectations, just as it is for the millions of fans cheering their teams. We come into the marketplace filled with expectations. We search for every small competitive edge in terms of our product or service offering. Our packaging has to outshine the competition. Our price points have to align with our target audiences, and the list goes on. Most importantly, the brand has to meet the consumers’ expectations across multiple levels.

Over the last 40 years, I have been involved with numerous product launches. Most were successful, but a few were failures from the beginning and a few others just plain fizzled. Going back to the age of Mad Men and through the 80s, the focus was on the product. Marketing was continually looking inward at the brand and while we did consumer research, it was always about what the consumer liked or disliked about the product – NOT ABOUT WHAT THE BRAND WOULD DO FOR THE CONSUMER. Marketing didn’t care about the consumer’s expectations. Marketing cared about its expectation of delivering a high volume (not value) brand.

In sports, expectations are surrounded by emotions and passion. The difference with sports expectation and marketing expectation is that in sports, the higher you rise, the harder the emotional crash accompanying a shortfall. As we watched the Big Three Detroit automakers market shares tumble year after year, there was little angst in the corporate towers. Management and marketing sat back and let foreign competition take center court.

The greatest challenge for marketing is to look outward, not inward. Doing business in the Age of NOW means being able to react to pattern shifts and set new expectations as the marketplace changes. Here’s a current case study:

If you have not noticed, men are shopping. Not long ago a guy in the grocery aisle would have been a sitcom gag of the bumbling dad who buys too much of the wrong stuff. Not anymore. According to a 2012 study, 40% of men identify as their family’s primary grocery shopper. In fact, supermarket guru Phil Lempert said, “I pick the top 10 food trends every year and male presence in grocery made my list for 2013.” It’s a game changer. The same is true in the professional beauty industry with more men focusing on personal grooming. The challenge is which brands are going to recognize this shift and bring their “A” games to the marketplace. The marketing team that brings its “B” game is not going to beat the brand team that brings its “A” game.

Your marketing team just has to do it better, not just with new product releases but with everyday marketing to keep the brand fresh and exciting for customers and consumers. That’s why our Sixth Star strategy is so important:

1. Focus on the customer

2. Monitor pattern shifts

3. Know your competition

4. Know your marketplace

5. Be proactive and ahead of the curve

This week, ask your team where your brand fits in the marketplace Bracketology. Is your brand in the national championship game or has it been left behind. The game of business is seldom a one and done situation but more like a lingering death watch. The good thing about death watches is there are often new cures that can save the brand but it takes a marketing team with high expectations and solid executional skills to make it happen. Is your team playing its “A” game?

Have a fantastic week and may the team I bet on end tonight standing on a ladder, cutting down the nets.

Bart Foreman and the Group 3 Marketing Team

This week’s AH-ha! moment suggests that what and how we “talk” with our customers is equally as important as where and when we do it. We wonder if this AH-ha! message is in conflict with the current vogue of engagement and experience. There are many new truths emerging in marketing today and the dialog is intense as marketing teams battle for the high ground.

We worry that marketers get too caught up with the new shiny toys and buzz words and miss the true connections with the consumer. We also have raised concerns that too many brands continue to rely on coupons and discounts and have not adopted a VALUE ADDED promotional model. We’ve learned that communicating value is much more difficult than communicating FREE.

Electronic media has given brands speed and dazzle. Thanks to social media, brands now claim they have a deeper understanding of their customers. Brands and retailers believe they have rediscovered the customer. According to a blog post by Ted Rubin last week, “the new pattern of engagement bears a striking resemblance to the grocery of 1900, but in some ways, it is better. The reach of a retailer is global, 24×7, and has a perfect memory for preferences and past transactions, and the ability to create relevant emotionally connected content at scale. The new retailer can manage a virtually unlimited number of conversations in exactly the same moment and offer something completely customized, individualized and relevant in a voice appreciated and valued by their customers.”

Rubin’s blog gets us excited until we realize that it’s the heart of the new shiny razzle-dazzle. It hypes speed and volume and misses what is most critical – and that’s the message. Of course we have to understand the customer but the truth is that we really don’t understand enough about our customers to really move them by just using the shiny new toys.

Last week, we were at a trade show in Nashville and had dinner with two very smart consultants outside of the direct marketing arena. They wanted to know how our in-depth data mining and database focused management differed from all the firms selling new media solutions. Without hesitation, we said, for the first time “We are DATA driven and they are SOCIAL driven.” That was a defining moment. It also got us thinking more about the message.

1.  Before the next sale, use a DATA driven model to market to customers. Remember our marketing definition is influencing the NEXT sale. That puts retention first to get them back in the door followed by up-sell promotional opportunities to get them to buy more.

And here is where the MESSAGE becomes so important. It’s the message we deliver that is going to influence the next sale, not the delivery. A social media post, a tweet and retweets is not going to be what drives the next sale. It’s the message that says were good, we’re better than competition and we offer a differentiation that sets our brand apart from our competition. This is the new heart of marketing in the Age of NOW.

2.  During the sale, know that showrooming is going to happen because technology has given the customer the power to evaluate choices right in front of the sales person. Our challenge is to keep the message alive and reinforce it at the point of sale. This means:

A. Having technology on the floor to keep up with the flow of information.

B. Improve the training of the front-line team to better engage customers and be as smart as they are.

There’s also a third part and that’s the critical after-the-sale connection. Remember that we call every one of your customers a FREE AGENT when she or he walks out you door or leaves your ecommerce site. The faster you re-engage the customer, the higher the odds that you might stay top of mind for a little longer. It all goes back to the message, which is the theme of this issue. Your message has to be compelling, relevant and timely. Your knowledge from your data has to be carefully married with your content strategy.

In the Age of NOW, when so many marketers believe brands and categories have become commodities, you can change that perception for your brand through a robust content and message strategy. This week, ask your team to evaluate your message strategy and then ask everyone in your company. It could be an exciting week and set a new course for your brand.

Have a fantastic week.

Bart Foreman and the Group 3 Marketing Team

This week’s AH-ha! moment suggests what we have been suggesting for the last 459 issues – focus on results because that’s what the boss wants to hear.

The marketing community was thrown into a state of mayhem last week when Ad Age reported that Coca-Cola finds no sales lift from online chatter. This is a brand with 61.5 million Facebook fans.  It is the #1 Facebook site. For their research team to admit what we have been preaching for years is more than somewhat astounding. Their study found that online buzz has no measurable impact on short-term sales. They further reported that online display ads work about as well as TV. The research noted that it only covered the buzz, not sharing, video views or other aspects of social media.

One of the challenges with buzz is determining whether it is positive or negative. In a 2010 study, Coke randomly pulled out more than 1,000 social-media messages and had human raters compare them to automated sentiment analysis and they found widespread differences. We always suspected this and now it’s validated. When human raters scored a comment as positive, the machine said it was negative over 20% of the time.

We decided to evaluate the Coke Facebook page and found it void of anything meaningful.  Many of its recent posts had fewer than 1,000 likes and very little chatter. Then, we looked at the All State Facebook page and while we found no links or references to the Mayhem commercials, there was much more informative and useful information than on the Coke site.

Wendy Clark, Coca-Cola’s Senior VP-Integrated Marketing and Communications, posted an immediate defense of Coke’s social media strategy saying social media is “at the heart” of Coke marketing. In an effort to protect her turf (and job) she conceded that social buzz or chatter does not generate sales lift. “And, taken in isolation, this is true.  But today’s progressive marketers know better.”

She then launched into a defense of social media tactics being the centerpiece of all Coke marketing, saying that social plays a crucial role “at the heart of our activations – that creates marketplace impact, consumer engagement, brand love and brand value.” Those are her words, not ours. This is marketing mayhem.

If you are in marketing you were hired because you’re a smart and able marketer and you have been entrusted to do what you need to drive results. Results mean tangible numbers that positively influence and impact revenue. Unfortunately, marketers are so busy drawing conclusions around themselves and the marketing process, they miss the point that the CEOs expected outcomes are not same as what is being presented.

Here’s a mayhem statistic that will haunt you all week. According to a Fournaise Marketing study, “70% of CEOs think marketers bombard their stakeholders with marketing data that hardly relate to or mean anything for the company’s P&L, which is what executives care about at the end of the day.”

This week, make sure your team is focused on what’s important to the business and not creating mayhem. Reconsider how you discuss results. Website visits, social reach, click-through statistics, and as Ms. Clark referenced brand love and brand value are nothing more than vague marketing terms that are not rooted in the real world.

Data from marketing databases and campaigns can quantity results that impact revenue. There may be mayhem all around the marketing team but it can be washed away if the team focuses on revenue building results and not what feels good.

By the way, we believe all those 61.5 million consumers who “like” Coke products already consume their products or they would not like them in the first place. Until Coke can find a way to influence these 61.5 million Facebook fans to each consume one more bottle or can every week, and prove it to the CEO, the Coke marketing team will be a classic case of Mayhem until it finds a new balance for using its marketing assets.

Have a fantastic week.

Bart Foreman and the Group 3 Marketing Team

The week started with news that the Green Beret killed in Afghanistan was the step-brother of our son-in-law. We first met him at Leah and Jeff’s wedding and spent time with him again after he graduated from West Point and was home for the holidays after his first tour in Afghanistan. He had matured into a fine young officer we were all proud of. Then, Wednesday, we learned that Rick Goldberg, a true icon and visionary in the beauty industry, had passed. It was Rick’s influence that pulled us into the beauty business.

Yes, life is a procession and sometimes it’s not easy. However, last week we got a wonderful email from a dear retired Episcopal priest friend who has been battling cancer and that set the tone of this week’s AH-ha!

Cory wrote this heartwarming story:

“Out in sunny California the choir, acolytes, clergy, etc. were in procession from the outside in. I was last in line and a sea gull put a full huge load directly on my bald head. I decided not to run for the john and try to beat the choir to the last amen. I wiped it off and went on.

At Sermon time I came out and said: “I’ve had a rotten week.” The congregation was quiet and stunned, cuz I was angry. I made up something for Friday that went wrong; one for Saturday; “and just now…..on the way in…a sea gull put a full load on my head!” There was a roar. The kids were in hysterics, especially the high school kids who sat together in the back of the transept whispering and passing notes.

I then launched into a message about “staying in the procession even when things are going bad.” I later used this as a sermon theme here at Christ Church Cranbrook a few years ago when there was a fight and the Bishop suspended the Rector. I preached the first Sunday he was benched and asked (after the sea gull story): Are you going to stay in the procession?” It went over well. I’ve asked myself the question any number of times when I got upset.”

This week’s AH-ha! moment asks if those of us in marketing are going to stay in the procession when the marketplace gods turn on us.

Marketing is a tough discipline. Most marketers mumble when asked what we do and to define marketing. We often speak in tongues that are not aligned with other department languages, especially IT and finance. While we deplore silos and can’t calculate ROI, we often build walls around our department to keep others out. We’re understaffed, underfunded and over worked. And we complain a lot because we are always blamed for just about anything and everything.

Cory’s right. We had a rotten week. Maybe it’s time to get out of the procession.

This is why we created our new Every Day marketing platform. We are leading the way in terms of building a better way to influence the next sale. We’re using many of the most modern concepts to execute Every Day marketing and our IT team gets high marks for its creative thinking.

At the same time we made a conscious decision not to adapt all the shiny new toys into this robust platform. Social media is on the fringe and not main stage. External data is limited to geocoding every address. We stayed with the basics of direct marketing principles that have kept the program affordable and best of all flexible. Can you tell we are excited?

Captain Andrew Pedersen-Keel was a brave leader of men not afraid to be in harm’s way. Rick Goldberg was a visionary who opened the door for us to become a leader in marketing for the beauty industry. Both led their respective processions.

The good news is that their “processions” have not ended. They are still in the procession and others will follow (not fill) in their shoes. After 25 years, we believe our procession is gathering steam and traction. That’s why we’re excited to come to work every day. That’s why our procession continues to move forward.

However, we all have to recognize that as marketers, we will get a full load dumped on us. We will be thrown under the bus and we have to have the strength to not only stay in the procession but to lead it. That’s our challenge.  Are we up to it?

This week, make sure all your team members are in the procession. Invite the other departments to join you to take command of your marketplace. Come to work this week excited to lead the procession.

Have a fantastic week.

Bart Foreman and the Group 3 Marketing Team

Unlike the time change that is forced upon us, rituals cause us to say NO many more times than we say YES. That’s why last week’s introduction to the PEST analysis not only has merit but creates a new framework for how we can analyze the forces that continually buffet our brands. If you recall, last week we said that the PEST analysis puts the S.W.O.T. analysis on steroids. It looks at the big picture and brings today’s dynamics into harmony. The four pillars of the PEST analysis are:

1. Political factors
2. Economic factors
3. Socio-Cultural factors
4. Technological factors

We spent much of last week traveling, observing and asking questions. In a very non-scientific way, we tried to put the PEST pillars into business context. Our clients had little trouble understanding the concept but as we offered specific dynamics happening in the world today, we saw a disconnect. The swirling PEST dynamics did not resonate with marketers. Our rationale is that marketing has gotten so focused on MARCOM (Marketing Communications) that they miss the strategy and forward thinking that comes from strategic rather than tactical partners.

Consider the government’s new sequester plan that quietly went into effect a few days ago. The response from Americans and the business community was a deafening HO-HUM. It won’t affect me and it won’t affect our business so why worry? Those of you that are not worried should be terrified. Several hundred thousand civilian military employees have been told they will be furloughed one day a week; the same is true for 60,000 federal workers responsible for securing borders. This is the tip of the looming crisis and it affects every brand. Just take 20% out of a few million paychecks and begin to think how consumer spending in a consumer-driven economy will be affected. Suddenly sequester has a whole new meaning. Ronald Reagan was right about trickle-down economics – he just never looked at it in the light of forced sequestered pay cuts.

This also demonstrates that political and economic factors are closely linked. This is a fact marketers should never overlook.

Consider new research that is continually redefining socio-cultural and technology factors. And consider that most marketing teams either don’t take such research seriously or don’t bother to read it at all. Two such studies were published last week. Alyson Shontell’s piece in Social Media ROI, “It’s Official: Teens Are Bored With Facebook,” describes how teens have become obsessed with Instagram and Snapchat. And if teens don’t think Facebook is cool, how long will it be before the rest of us think that way? Even Facebook admits it has a teen problem. “We believe that some of our users, particularly younger users, are aware of and actively engaging with other products and services similar to, or as a substitute for, Facebook… and we may experience a decline in user engagement and our business could be harmed.” This is an amazing admission by Facebook management in its 10-K report.

Time changes cause shifts. Another new research report suggests blogs outrank social networks for consumer influence. The latest findings from Technorati’s 2013 Digital Influence Report says consumers say that blogs rank higher than Twitter for shaping opinions and higher than Facebook for motivating purchase decisions. Blogs are now the third most influential digital resource (31%) when making overall purchases, behind retail sites (56%) and brand sites (34%). However, marketers are still obsessing over social media.

The Marketing Implications

Open wide – your eyes, ears and minds. Marketing teams have to rely on all of their senses to recognize pattern shifts. None of the examples cited above are exclusionary. They all impact every brand. Only the strong will survive. Because consumers are in a constant state of flux, time matters and change matters. We offer these suggestions to cope with changes in time and space:

1. Make an emotional connection as early as possible and stay engaged. That’s Every Day marketing.
2. Know your customers. That’s analytics and data.
3. Move beyond just content because it is not what you say but how you say it that keeps customers engaged.
4. Find the most effective ways to stay connected. That’s the hardest part of this assignment.
5. Continually re-evaluate your marketing to avoid stagnation.

This week, turn your marketing clocks ahead and ask your team to evaluate your latest marketing strategies in terms of PEST controls. The clock is ticking for all of us and only the strong will proceed to the next level.

Have a fantastic week.

Bart Foreman and the Group 3 Marketing Team