Resources on reinventing marketing

Happy Valentine's Day!

Prompted by a discussion in the comment thread of a recent post, I figure it's time to revisit the idea of reinventing the marketing organization.  However, before we get into that, let me make a couple of things clear:

• This is my personal blog - all of the content here is my personal opinion.  I pay Typepad's annual fee out of pocket.  I blog "officially" for work somewhere else.
• I don't receive any compensation (commission, credit, or otherwise) for Forrester reports purchased from the forrester.com website.

I've been fortunate to be able to share my research on reinventing marketing to many public and private audiences since the report was published in July 2006.  Here's a compilation of content related to my work that you might find useful (some subscriptions may be required):

• The original Forrester Reinventing The Marketing Organization report (July)
• My post on the Forrester marketing team blog about it (July)
• Ben's take at Church of the Customer (July)
• An archived Forrester client teleconference (August)
• A podcast and discussion from Forrester's Consumer Forum 2006 (October)
• My post on the Forrester Consumer Forum EMEA blog in response to questions after my speech (November)
• Josh Hallett's summary of my speech at Mplanet 2006 (December)

And links to others who are thinking in the same direction:

• The ANA's Bob Liodice
• ANA Marketing Maestros Will Waugh and Michael Palmer
• Ed See at MMA
• McKinsey & Company

I'll be extending the research into discussion of agency relationships and building internal credibility in the upcoming quarters.  Would love to hear thoughts on where this can/should go.  For example, how does this apply to B2B marketing?  My Forrester colleague Laura Ramos will move the ball forward in that area.

[BTW the picture has nothing to do with reinventing marketing - it's a picture of what Cambridge looks like today outside my window.]

Comments

[Chris Kenton]

In regard to customer-centricity and agencies, I think there's a missing part of the equation that is highly relevant to what's driving social media. It's not just about "customer-centricity" per se, but about what that actually means to an organization. Businesses can be customer-centric in ways that are predatory, empowering, manipulative, supportive, exploitive, collaborative, opportunistic, or even just utilitarian.

People are engaging in social media to directly inform purchasing decisions like never before. I researched this for Yahoo! and the CMO Council, and the trend is remarkable. What's driving it? Distrust of marketing spin. People feel manipulated and exploited by advertising and marketing, and they want to see behind the spin before they invest their trust in a business or product.

I won't cast specific aspersions, but much of the guru literature on customer-centric metrics highlights the depersonalization of customers in ways that run in direct opposition to the trends driving social media. If you look closely at specific metrics, they are cast in the mold of Corporate Strategy--internally focused metrics that highlight efficiency. You can be incredibly efficient at doing the wrong things, a truth that is hammered home every day by mercenary marketers that drive relentlessly toward a 1.5% campaign conversion rate, while antagonizing the other 98.5% of their prospects--people they'll go back to again and again in the future, but couldn't care less about if they don't convert today.

If you're truly going to be customer-centric, you need to define what that means to your organization. If you want to be customer-centric in a way that resonates with today's highly networked customer communities, then you better define it in terms that actually have meaning for the customer.

[Pete]

Thanks Will - looking forward to seeing more from the ANA.

Becky - any suggestions on how an organization should breakup the metrics logjam when attempting to move from product- to customer-centricity?

[Becky Carroll]

There are other organizations who have been talking about customer-centric marketing for some time, including the Peppers and Rogers Group (where I was previously), Patricia Seybold, as well as companies who are doing it today (for example, HP is doing it for both B2C and B2B).

One of the biggest challenges is marketing metrics. When product managers are focused on increasing the sales for only their products, the customer loses.

Additionally, I do not agree that marketing should be in charge of customer service. They are two very different functions in many ways. I have been on both sides of the house, and there are different skill sets as well. That said, they need to coordinate much more closely, in most organizations, in the areas of messaging, branding, and communication strategies.

Thanks for bringing the discussion back up to the surface! I look forward to engaging more in the future.

Becky

[Will Waugh]

Pete

Thanks for the mention. This is great work you are doing. Let's discuss soon as I have just started the T-O-C for our Marketing Organization report.