Chart the Uncharted...
"Today, as we take a look at the landscape, what we see is a very rocky terrain," the American Marketing Association's CEO, Dennis Dunlap, said at the start of his presentation this morning at the AMA's Mplanet conference in Orlando.
The economy is, well, what it is, and marketers now face challenges ranging from increasing globilization and a burgeoning competitive landscape to the convergence of old and new media and the growing need for marketers to prove their worth in their organizations. It's a wild and woolly world out there, and marketers sure could use some guidance.
Thank goodness for those adventurous marketers who've gone before us, who can serve as guideposts to help us navigate this new "marketsphere." This morning's Mplanet speakers shared insights, ideas, experience and best practices to help marketers chart their own courses.
Dunlap headed up the morning's sessions by presenting an overview of the findings from AMA research conducted last year by Decision Strategies International on a very consequential topic: The Future Role of Marketing in the Organization.
The research unearthed 80 different forces-- both trends and uncertainties-- that might shape marketing's future role and honed in on the two "key meta uncertainties" that will have a hand in shaping marketers' roles:
1. System-wide resources for marketers
2. Organizational structure
We'll have more on the findings later, but for now, let's touch on some key points made in two of the sessions that followed Dunlap's presentation this morning.
Anne Mulcahy, chairman and CEO of Xerox Corp., kicked off her presentation on "Getting Heard in a Sea of Information" with an appropriate nautical metaphor: "What we used to call the hurricane of information has now become a tsunami," she said. There are hundreds of emails in our inboxes, thousands of blogs created each day, hundreds of millions of Web sites vying for our attention. How can a marketer craft a message that will stand out?
Easy, Mulcahy said. Make your message personal. The holy grail of marketing-- one-to-one communication-- "is finally within our grasp," she said. Marketers have so many tools at their fingertips with which they can listen to their customers, understand their needs and solve their problems. And if marketers do listen, really listen, they can make every customer touch point count-- for both the marketer and the customer.
"We look at every customer-facing document as a potential revenue producer," she said. When a message is so personalized that it services the customer in a relevant way, "that is the kind of communication that's breaking through the clutter."
Mary Dillon, EVP and global CMO of McDonald's, followed up on customer-focused strategies in her presentation, "Building Strategic Advantage in Global Markets." McDonald's restaurants are located in more than 100 countries around the world and serve approximately 58 million customers each day, Dillon said, and yet McDonald's strives to make every single experience that global customers have with the brand relevant.
That said, McDonald's worked to create a consistent, well-defined brand identity and brand promise that it could make good on at every location around the world. "We put a stake in the ground and we crystallized what we stand for, our brand promise," Dillon said. Your brand promise needs to be a part of your company's DNA so that it's genuine, but also it must be aspirational, she said. ""It's your brand on its very best day."
For McDonald's, which measures success by how well it meets its goals of quality, service, cleanliness and value, the brand promise is this: "simple, easy enjoyment."
"Think about your brand promise as a beacon that guides your actions," Dillon advised.
I'll be back with more insights from Mplanet later today, but in the meantime, please feel free to chime in and tell us how you're listening to and connecting with your customers, and fulfilling your own brand promise.
