Here’s To The
Ambitious Ones
Why marketing today requires the ambition and guts to venture forth into the unknown.
I’ve spent my entire career working with marketers. When I first got into the industry almost 2 decades ago as a fresh-faced marketing intern, the industry seemed challenging.
But also kind of straightforward.
Marketing had a clear function. Marketing research informed product and brand strategy. There were only 4 P’s to consider. And communications — mainly via advertising and PR — was the weapon of choice.
And then digital came along and changed everything.
In the past 5 years, the resulting evolution of marketing has been especially dramatic. At this point digital has created much more than a new set of channels and tools. It’s ushered in a whole new age.
“In the past decade, what marketers do to engage customers has changed almost beyond recognition. Tools and strategies that were cutting-edge just a few years ago are fast becoming obsolete, and new approaches are appearing every day.”
Succeeding in this new age isn’t easy. But despite the many challenges, it’s my contention that two traits in particular will define the next generation market leaders: ambition and guts.
Consider …
An incredibly dynamic environment
Marketers today face a much more challenging environment. These forces are rapidly disrupting the stage many businesses have been built on:
1. Higher Customer Expectations
Digital innovation, transparency, and data collection have raised customer expectations of brands across the board.
According to the Brand Keys 19th Annual Customer Loyalty Engagement Index, there remains a huge gap to fill between the rise of consumer expectations (up 28% from last year) versus the ability of brands to satisfy consumers’ expectations (up only 7%).
I heard Tim Hassed from TELUS Digital Labs speak at a recent event on the transformation of TELUS.com.
He noted that before they started on the massive undertaking of redesigning their entire website soup-to-nuts, they didn’t look to other direct competitors such as Shaw, Bell and Rogers for inspiration. Instead they looked to Amazon, because that’s where customers’ expectations were being set.
THE UPSHOT:
Today’s marketers can’t just afford to live, work and plan within the comfortable confines of their category or local market. Modern marketers must have find the guts to forgo the illusion of safety and the ambition to set their sights broader and higher.
2. More Choice
Consumers today have more choice than ever. In an article for Wired in 2004, Chris Anderson coined the Long Tail.
“In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.”
That was over a decade ago.
Today, we have access to more choices regarding goods and services than ever. We see more brands through advertising and branded content in our social networks. Our word-of-mouth networks have been extended and we can research and learn about brand through 3rd party and customer reviews.
Paid search allows brands to insert their relevance in organic and category searches. And global platforms such as Facebook, eBay, Amazon, and Yelp, and Alibaba, have made it much easier to learn about and acquire goods available outside our local neighbourhood.
The Internet has made the world your shopping cart — niche products, international goods, rare items or bulk items can be acquired in an instant.
THE UPSHOT:
In this landscape, modern marketers must have the guts and ambition to endeavour to build brands that represent something bigger than just the products or services they sell.
3. More Touchpoints
Today, the customer journey is more complex than ever. Aided by the forces mentioned above, customers turn to several digital touchpoint to research, compare, and evaluate brands and their products and services.
For example, when shopping for a car, it wasn’t that long ago that customers would talk to several dealerships or an auto mall to evaluate several brands and cars. Today, most take to the internet to start their research.
According to Google’s Digital Drives Auto Shopping Nov 2013 study, consumers research an average of 24 digital touchpoints alone while searching for a new car.
Digital has a tremendous impact on high consideration products in particular — think auto, airlines, utilities, software and insurance.
McKinsey recently released a study showing that the number of digital touchpoints on the customer journey can substantially increase the odds of converting.
Companies with greater digital capabilities were able to convert sales at a rate 2.5 times greater than companies at the lower level did.
And more thoroughly digitized brands also benefit from higher levels of positive word of mouth because they benefit from free “earned” media.
So in other words, the Internet can magnify the love (or hate) surrounding any brand’s products and services.
THE UPSHOT:
Today’s marketers must think about a holistic customer journey. To do their job well, they must be ambitious and gutsy enough to claim owernership of (or at least exert substantial influence on) the entire brand experience — irrespective of which organizational department or silo it traditionally touches.
4. New and Disruptive Entrants
And finally, digital disruption has allowed new entrants to build brands that disrupt entire categories. Uber is only 6 years old. AirBnB is about a year older and is currently valued higher than the Hyatt hotels.
These companies have taken advantage of a number of digital dynamics to reduce barriers to entry and create new ways to differentiate their products and services.
In 1958 the average lifespan of a company on the S&P 500 was 61 years. Today it is just 18 years.
Image from Innosight’s report — Creative Destruction Whips through Corporate America, Feb 2012
If current trends hold, about 75% of companies on today’s list will fade away or be acquired by 2030.
THE UPSHOT:
Modern marketers must make it their ambition to stay ahead of the curve, stretching into the unknown and creating new value and/or new capabilities.
Marketers have to wear many more hats
With a responsibility towards customer, brand and business, marketers have naturally been thrust into the spotlight.
The job was never just about communications, but the forces described above have expanded the responsibilities of a marketer to areas such as:
- social media, PR, media, and influencer management
- operational management across large partner ecosystems
- customer acquisition
- loyalty and retention
- CRM
- omni-channel experience
- corporate communications
- product innovation
- globalization
- data and analytics
- marketing technologies
Infographic from DMNews, “Hats Off to the Modern CMO”.
Regardless of background and responsibility, the study found that CMOs had a few things in common — mainly desire to make an impact on their company by influencing product and marketing strategy (56% of respondents), building partnerships between marketing and other functions (51%), and impacting corporate strategy (49%). And most of all the ambitious desire to create growth for the organization(92%).
THE UPSHOT:
Marketing’s new role is at the heart of the business. Today’s marketing leader must be gutsy and ambitious enough to rise to this challenge.
Best practices and bright shiny objects won’t save you
In case it wasn’t clear yet, there’s no such thing as a silver bullet or magic formula for building a successful modern brand.
The circumstances and dynamics facing each brand will inevitably be different. So best practices alone won’t do it. Sure, you can learn some lessons from the experience of those that came before you. But in an era where change is the only constant, it’s a safe bet that the way forward won’t be found by looking backwards.
Nor can the answer be found in the next, coolest social media platform, mobile app or gee gosh wow technology. That path — while often very alluring — is full of risks. And gains are often short-lived and fleeting. After all, there’s always a next next big thing waiting around the bend.
So what’s a marketer to do?
Here’s to the ambitious ones
When I look back over my years working with brands like P&G, Nike, Starbucks, and Disney and witnessing their transformation through the new age of marketing, two things stand out. Two powerful attributes that separate the winners from the rest:
Guts and ambition.
It’s about having the guts and courage to let go of the the past and step confidently forward into uncertain new waters. To forgo the illusion of safety. To push out beyond the confines of your category and your local market. To follow the changing habits and expectations of your customers wherever they take you.
And it’s about having the ambition to set your sights higher. To stretch out beyond the traditional confines of the marketing function and take your place at the heart of the business. To boldy pursue new capabilities and new value. To create a powerful, truly modern brand that transcends your products, even as it endows them with more power.
So here’s to the ambitious ones. And here’s to those who are ready to join them.
This new age belongs to you.
