Once I read an article called the “The young guns and the old farts”. It was all about entrepreneurship and told a story of two totally different styles of managing innovation within the same company. One side was the owner-manager and the other, the subordinate. When I tried to take this concept to marketing, it was clear this works as well, except for a major difference: there’s nothing to do with age.
Many features are part of a successful marketing strategy, but some has a bigger impact than others. Everybody is talking about creativity, advertising, tracking results, and planning. I’m fond of planning, have always been and encourage it. But what happened to the initiative part? Who’s got the guts to trigger a project (and not to receive an orientation to start it)? In many cases even the senior management doesn’t actually command the process of new projects.
Many of my bosses have always told me to test. Marketing is a big lab of projects. There’s the risk assessment for all of them, of course, but trying different concepts is a good way to find THE concept one’s looking for. As I said in a previous article, marketing is not every time linear, but thinking straight and logically brings better results. Coming back to the point of initiative, pro-activeness is quite fashion these days. Unfortunately it’s something marketers are taking for granted for two reasons: 1) ideas are poorly based on their own realities, and 2) it takes them a lot of time and effort to be implemented.
Some interesting facts.
A few days ago I’ve heard about a simple project that could give a whole new perspective for a client. Time this idea has been in the drawer? 2 years. I participated on the revamp of a corporate website and intranet project a few years ago. Timeline of the project, from conception to implementation: 3 years. A fabulous blog research and survey by Backbone Media (www.backbonemedia.com) says 51% of companies who launched a corporate blog spent just 1 day up to 2 months between idea and implementation of the project. The average marketing project timeline in a marketing department I used to work for jumped from 45 to 60 days within 1 year. A job I had to manage with some co-workers to develop an idea to profit from 26,000 inactive customers: timeless. In this case it was also useless because the owner of the program saw no reason in dealing with these people. They are “dead” for good. How can marketers buy this sort of thing?
Do you see the point? People within a marketing project (clients, marketers, suppliers or whoever it is) are burying amazing initiatives using their pride and power of veto. As long as it makes sense and follow a rational conception, ideas for marketing projects should be worked out right away, really fast and furious if necessary. Marketers should constantly push towards innovation for everyone’s profit (not financially speaking). Once I’ve heard that 3M had a demand to generate 1 new idea every 3 minutes. Who knows if they’re going to be produced (or even if it’s true), but at least they have abundance of material to work with.
Yes, it is true marketers are full of work and priorities, but time is there to squeeze. Consider the fact of setting goals to develop projects in weeks, not months, even less years, doesn’t matter the size. Just try and you will see the benefits.
Many features are part of a successful marketing strategy, but some has a bigger impact than others. Everybody is talking about creativity, advertising, tracking results, and planning. I’m fond of planning, have always been and encourage it. But what happened to the initiative part? Who’s got the guts to trigger a project (and not to receive an orientation to start it)? In many cases even the senior management doesn’t actually command the process of new projects.
Many of my bosses have always told me to test. Marketing is a big lab of projects. There’s the risk assessment for all of them, of course, but trying different concepts is a good way to find THE concept one’s looking for. As I said in a previous article, marketing is not every time linear, but thinking straight and logically brings better results. Coming back to the point of initiative, pro-activeness is quite fashion these days. Unfortunately it’s something marketers are taking for granted for two reasons: 1) ideas are poorly based on their own realities, and 2) it takes them a lot of time and effort to be implemented.
Some interesting facts.
A few days ago I’ve heard about a simple project that could give a whole new perspective for a client. Time this idea has been in the drawer? 2 years. I participated on the revamp of a corporate website and intranet project a few years ago. Timeline of the project, from conception to implementation: 3 years. A fabulous blog research and survey by Backbone Media (www.backbonemedia.com) says 51% of companies who launched a corporate blog spent just 1 day up to 2 months between idea and implementation of the project. The average marketing project timeline in a marketing department I used to work for jumped from 45 to 60 days within 1 year. A job I had to manage with some co-workers to develop an idea to profit from 26,000 inactive customers: timeless. In this case it was also useless because the owner of the program saw no reason in dealing with these people. They are “dead” for good. How can marketers buy this sort of thing?
Do you see the point? People within a marketing project (clients, marketers, suppliers or whoever it is) are burying amazing initiatives using their pride and power of veto. As long as it makes sense and follow a rational conception, ideas for marketing projects should be worked out right away, really fast and furious if necessary. Marketers should constantly push towards innovation for everyone’s profit (not financially speaking). Once I’ve heard that 3M had a demand to generate 1 new idea every 3 minutes. Who knows if they’re going to be produced (or even if it’s true), but at least they have abundance of material to work with.
Yes, it is true marketers are full of work and priorities, but time is there to squeeze. Consider the fact of setting goals to develop projects in weeks, not months, even less years, doesn’t matter the size. Just try and you will see the benefits.
1 comment:
Good words.
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