Archive for the ‘Marketing Strategy’ category

Anti-Marketing is the Anti-Matter Equivelant for Marketing and is Now Back in Vogue

October 13th, 2011

Anti-marketing is coming back into vogue. Anti-marketing is the anti-thesis of the flashy, emotional appeal. It is the lengthy, detailed, fact laden, and intellectual outline of the context of the problem, value proposition, feature and functionality comparison. In short, it isn’t short, but substantive. Not “anti” marketing where marketing is evil, but more like Anti-matter and matter. Marketing and anti-marketing cannot exist in the same space, but one cannot exist without the other. Anti-marketing is the long form of campaign marketing; not a “quick read”, but it is designed for those who want a more qualitative understanding of a solution to make an educated decision.

Look at ads pre-Madmen 1960’s where text was a large portion of an ad, but Madison Avenue changed and started to focus on eye candy to appeal to your emotions. Now, appeal to impuse purchase outweighs the educated, thoughtful, and careful deliberation.

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Social Target Marketing for Complex Sales – Evangelism, Advocacy, Justification

September 26th, 2011

As part of our process, we have built a three-part conceptual framework for social target marketing and the business impact that we believe is critical for managing the complexity of the buying process in today’s market.  The first, “Open Letter to CMO’s” focuses on the impact that social is already having on the purchase behaviors in your industry and established the foundation for the criticality of the business case. The second, “Social Target Marketing for Complex Sales” focuses on the right approach for your organization to take and that the timing is more critical than ever.

The third is understanding how to apply that process to internally developing the consensus around the business case for social target marketing.  Our recommended approach is to focus on building the business case as part of the evangelism and then allow the internal team to build the business justification based upon the available resources, budgets, market priorities, and timing factors. We schedule one-on-one meetings with each of the critical stakeholders to build consensus prior to a formal meeting. At the meeting, we then provide external social market research as validation and a checkpoint for the internal team to evaluate your organization’s readiness.  Our commitment is to manage the business case and evangelism processes, but transition the actual decision making process to the internal sponsor.

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Recent Social Executive Council Post: Open Letter to CMO’s

September 9th, 2011

It has been awhile since I wrote my last open letter to the SEC, but my goal with these is to summarize important trends that I see consistently across the executive members within the group in a way that helps highlight major strategic challenges. Continue reading “Recent Social Executive Council Post: Open Letter to CMO’s” »

Recent Social Executive Council Post: Open Letter to CEOs

July 1st, 2011

Several of you have shared with me this week that you have a meeting with your CEO in the next couple of weeks, next month, etc. The topic is “social”, what you are doing today and what you are recommending the company do next.

In this meeting you need to be able to articulate a business case of why you should be investing in this and how will it impact your business.

The top 5 questions CEOs ask in these meetings…

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The CMO’s Four Envelopes

May 18th, 2011

There is an old joke about CEOs, this is the CMO version…

A newly hired CMO arrives on the first day to find four numbered envelopes on the desk with a note that says “open in case of emergency” left by the last position holder. Bizarre, but soon forgotten in the hum of the first day and subsequently buried in the piles of stuff over the following months. Those months are a blur of activity, getting up to speed, assessing the team, evaluating the activities, working with the executive team, etc.

After a few more months, the honeymoon period wanes as things start to solidify and the CMO begins to feel the pressure to produce immediate results. Sales have been flagging, sales is complaining, the board is restless, and the CEO is less patient. The CMO remembers the envelopes and finds them buried under stacks of papers on the shelf.  Now, unsure that this point constitutes an emergency, but the CMO remembers the grilling in the last senior management meeting and thinks “now or never”. Upon opening, there is a single line, “Fire the Agency and Rebrand”.

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