SVP, imc2Interactive marketing agency
Overcoming economics issues to succeed.
How would you characterize the marketing industry in light of today’s economy?
Today’s economy is pushing the marketing industry to embrace change and find new approaches more than ever. It’s placing additional pressure on companies to be accountable, especially through measurable results. Because of this, (and the underlying meta-trends, including consumer control, technology enablement, content access, collaboration, and mobility) we’re seeing a shift in marketing like never before. Digital happens to be the most measurable and flexible marketing channel, creating greatness for business and making now an excellent time to be a digital marketer. Change is inevitable and today’s economy is going to force change, whether marketers are ready for it or not.
What strategy do you implement when recommending distribution or communication channels to your clients?
Although we use a proprietary strategic process, it is highly customized based on each client’s unique needs. One of the unique inputs/insights we leverage is based on the concept of trust—the most important factor in any relationship—including a brand’s relationship with consumers. Through our process, we are able to shift trust from a passive measurement of brand health to an active driver of strategy and performance. We evaluate 12 factors in our Strategic Trust CompassSM to develop a quantitative measure to help marketers understand areas of strengths and opportunities. Then, we determine which digital channels are most appropriate to meet our clients’ goals.
What challenge within your firm had to be overcome recently?
Over the last three years in particular, digital has become an undeniable force in marketing, and CMOs are challenged to quickly and fully integrate this relatively new channel. These C-level executives recognize digital marketing as significant to their entire business strategy and look to us to help their companies make the transition. We’ve had to focus and retool our organization to play at this higher level of sophistication. We accomplished this by investing in multiple areas. First, we developed a dedicated strategy practice—adding MBAs from top schools and hiring consultants with backgrounds from traditional strategy consulting firms. Second, we recruited senior executives that could sit at the table at cross-channel agency meetings and provide incredible value at the CMO level of our client organizations. And third, we’ve increased our game with regard to measurable results through our Business Analytics group. Through these focused investments, we are building better models to advance relationships and measure trust. Overall, we’ve made great progress as we find ourselves having to fill bigger shoes.
Any last minute tips or advice for other striving marketers?
As hard as it is to admit sometimes, consumers are more sophisticated than we are. It’s tempting to become complacent and keep doing the same things because they worked before, but that’s dangerous. Every day there’s a new tool, a new technology, a new channel that consumers discover—at the expense of something tried and true. (Think about it: in the not-so-distant past, we all had to actually watch our favorite shows when they aired, including the commercials…and we had never heard of TiVo.) If you don’t pay attention to what consumers are doing, you’ll lose them before you ever realized they were looking somewhere else.
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