Peter Fisk : Articles : SPEAKERS for BUSINESS

Peter Fisk

Founder and CEO of the Genius Works

Articles

“The Making of a Marketing Genius”

The best opportunities and biggest challenges for business are outside not inside. Yet the majority of organisations work inside out, rather than outside in, focused on improving what they do, rather than doing the right thing.

• Markets have tripled in competitive intensity over the last decade.

• Product lifecyles have shortened by 70% in the same time.

• Consumers are bombared with1500 advertising stimuli every day.

• 40 billion text messages were sent last year, in the UK alone.

• Kids can now typically do 5.7 things at a time (adults only 1.7).

• 50 billion RFID tags are now ready to track products and behaviours.

• Consumers on average take 2.6 seconds to make a purchase decision.

• Market-driven actions create 3 times more economic value than anything else.

• Market-thinking CEOs deliver 5.9% better returns.

In a fast changing world, incrementalism can lead to irrelevance as the world passes them by.

Business needs marketing, but not like today.

Marketing must provide the intelligence to make sense of complex markets and find the best opportunities, whilst also injecting the creativity to exploit them, by turning customer insight into radical innovation. As a result, marketing is the driving force of competitive advantage, and of sustainable, profitable growth.

However the old ways of marketing don't work anymore.

Markets are global and fast changing, convergent yet fragmented, with blurred boundaries and ever-changing regulation. Competition is intense, new ideas are quickly imitated and advantage is temporary. Technology accelerates the pace, whilst ethics and the environment rise up the agenda.

Apple watched the market for music fragment and blur into chaos, as new technologies disrupted the industry model and consumers began to rebel, new entrants challenged the economics and old formats quickly became obsolete. Apple brought together an innovative solution in the form of hardware and software - the iPod and iTunes - to offer a way through this turmoil, to redefine the industry dynamics, with a compelling and profitable solution.

Power to the customer.

We have moved from an economy of surplus demand to surplus supply. Customers now call the shots. They typically have everything they need, so we have to stimulate new wants. They are more different, and more informed than ever before. Their expectations are sky high, and their loyalty is rare.

The noise in markets is deafening, as we are bombarded with at least 1500 commercial stimuli every day, many causing resentment through the deluge of direct mail and intrusive telemarketing. A young person is likely to have seen around 150,000 different ads by their 18th birthday. Indeed kids have learnt to cope with more - research shows that they can typically deal with 5.2 activities at once, whereas adults can only survive with 1.6 - and men even less.

We surf through 300 channels of television, changing our behaviour patterns, and destroying the predictability that advertisers used to rely on. And neuroscientists have found that consumers typically choose which brand to buy within 2.6 seconds, not long to turn marketing promises into profits. Speed and timing, precision and clarity are today's communication imperatives.

Intelligence to make sense

Inside the business, this greater complexity plays havoc with traditional approaches. Strategies can quickly become irrelevant, competitors come from every angle, customers don't fit into simple segments, brands struggle to stay relevant, product portfolios bulge as we try to cater for everyone, messages are silenced by the noise and mass-market advertising campaigns don't work, competitors drive down prices, and priorities are not obvious in markets of infinite options.

The obvious questions no longer have simple answers - which market are you in, who are your customers, what do they want, who are your competitors, what is your difference, where to focus, what will happen next.

Kodak lost

Kodak used to know where it stood - the brand leader in photographic film. The markets and competitors, customers and products were all fairly predictable. For decades camera film came in many different formats and sizes, yet everyone knew that Kodak film was the best. 10 years later, Kodak is not sure what market it is in, who the competitors are, what customers want, or which products to focus on. Digital disruption has displaced traditional film, and previously separate markets of hardware devices, software and processing, imaging and printing have all converged.

Digital cameras come from Sony or Dell, images are stored on your hard drive, shared by email, and if you still want the physical images, then processing comes from Snapfish or Jessops, and printing from HP or Epson. Kodak have tried to respond in every direction. Kodak cameras, Kodak online wallets, Kodak printers, Kodak print kiosks. It describes itself as an imaging company, but neither its focus nor future is clear.In the past we have assumed a steady state, where markets are fairly predictable, where the future is an extrapolation of the past, where our plans are based on previous performance, and investments are low risk. Today the past is of little use in predicting the future.

Creativity to stand out

Strategies must be more directional and flexible, with stronger focus on the best opportunities, existing and emerging. We must work harder to find real insight from the mountains of data, to apply them in radically innovative ways, and ensure that they become compelling reality. Transactions should now start with the buyer, and we must learn to do business on his or her terms, when, how and where he or she wants.

Companies need to do business from the outside in, to sense and respond to fast changing markets, to search out the new opportunities and stay relevant and different. They need to be obsessed with their customers and competitors, and to be far more creative and commercial in their responses than ever before.

Marketing provides the unique capabilities to achieve this - working across the business at every level, to champion the customer, drive business direction and priorities, ensure that insights become innovations, promises become reality.

Look at the marketers in Coca-Cola, or Tesco, or Dell - they are the driving force of the business, bringing an outside-in approach, defining and shaping their markets, championing the customer and brand, and constantly searching for the edge over the competition and to exceed customer expectations. Indeed when the CEO comes from a marketing background - as over 20% do - then the impact can be even greater, recent research showing that such companies significantly outperform those led by people with an inside-out, operational perspective.

Need for new marketing

Marketing which is blinkered and conventional will not deliver the results needed in today's markets. Isolated, functional marketers with an obsession for advertising and packaging are part of the problem not the solution. Their reluctance to step up to these challenges, to lead and collaborate, to accept the responsibility, just frustrates their business leaders further.

Marketers must recognise their crucial role in business today, and rise above their old ways of working. An outside in approach to marketing doesn't start with the marketer - it starts with a buyer seeking a solution, probably made up of various products and services. It requires an outside in approach to brands and their communications, to channels and pricing, to products and innovation.

Marketing outside in

Outside-in marketing fundamentally challenges are traditional ideas about campaigns and channels. Indeed the blanket campaigns, targeting everybody when and how the marketer chooses is inefficient at best, a pointless ego trip at worst. Likewise channels, are no longer an extended arm of suppliers, by the trusted agents of customers, seeking the best deal and building relationships with them.

Amazon is a phenomenal example of the new marketing mindset, using its intelligence and customisation to anticipate and meet the needs of each customer. Not only did Jeff Bezos and his expeditionary marketers seize the new whitespace, but they created a retailer which harnesses customer power, and does business on their terms, whilst also making money.

Short and long-term

Indeed the demand for commercial success, short and long-term is more obvious than ever. That doesn't require marketers to become accountants, or even to become grid-locked in their spreadsheets, but it does demand a more rigorous analysis of opportunities and results, and in the language of the stock market.

Shareholders invest in companies in order to get a return on their money. They look at the future earning potential of a company, the increasing amounts of cash the company is likely to generate, the new markets and products which will drive it, and the strong brands and relationships which make it more certain.

Indeed shareholders look for the things that the forwards orientation of marketing provides: profitable growth through market strategy, innovation and relationships.

Yet in business, we spend most of our time focused on the quarterly results. Of course, these matter because they provide the cashflow to pay the bills, and provide some indication of future success. However the long-term matters too. Marketers, in particular, end up torn between the short and long-term, between sales promotion and brand building, delivery and innovation.

Blackberry connects

Blackberry is a technology that could easily have died before its time. Technology companies have an inescapable need to offer their latest capabilities as soon as they can - witness the rush of 3G services for example - yet the more effective marketer recognises that when and how they introduce innovations is crucial. Indeed the handheld email device has waited almost five years until marketers judged that the time was right to unleash it on the business world. When they did, it spread like wildfire, becoming an extension of our attire, rather than another unnecessary gizmo.

Marketers must reconcile these challenges, working in double time as Bill Gates once called it, delivering today whilst creating tomorrow. Customers are looking to marketers to do business on their terms, employees are looking to marketers to respond to fast-changing markets, and shareholders are looking for marketers to deliver short and long-term results.

The need for genius

You need to be a genius to do successful marketing today.

Marketing has always provided the creative fuel of business, and this is required more than ever. However marketing also requires more intelligence than ever. These can often be seen as competing forces - indeed some people have felt that a focus on analysis has paralysed the creative juices.

Left and right brain

Yet intelligence and creativity are richly complementary. Human beings were created with brains that can do both, and as result perform better. Analysis helps focus creativity on areas of most impact, creativity helps to break through data to find insight and direction. It requires the left and right brain to work harder together, to embrace the yin-yang opportunities.

Left Brain Right Brain

Intelligence Imagination

Focused Holistic

Logic Vision

Genius defined

Genius is defined as applying intelligence in more imaginative ways.

Marketing needs more genius. And business needs marketing like never before. Indeed every business manager needs a market orientation today. The biggest challenges and opportunities are outside not inside the business. And the only way to grow long-term shareholder value is through sustained, profitable growth.

Marketing needs to combine the scientific mind of Albert Einstein, with the creative touch of Pablo Picasso, in order to produce results that Warren Buffett would be proud of. Indeed how would such figures approach the challenges of marketing today? Perhaps Apple's Steve Jobs, designer Philippe Starck, or accountant turned marketer, Phil Knight of Nike can give us some clues.

Marketing Genius is about achieving genius in your business and its markets, through your everyday decisions and actions. It enables you to think more intelligently in crowded and non-linear markets, to act more creatively to cut through the noise and engage the sceptics, and do fantastic marketing that delivers extraordinary and definable results.