Why marketing may need to fight the C-level for control of the brand!

Communications and marketing people have a tough job that much is sure. No department in the organization is faced with such a rapidly changing means of reaching out to their target audiences, thus doing their jobs, as the Marketing and communications teams. Still there is one group that makes our job extremely difficult. It is the C-suite's slavish devotion to short term gains with a full knowledge of how the long term results will produce nothing but harm for the organization.

One key example of this is that the C-suite often expects marketing and communications to produce immediate results, while all the time reducing the budget we have to work with and shortening the amount of time to allow a campaign to work. Imagine if we told a doctor that a certain surgical procedure needs to take only 4 hours instead of 6, they can only use 75% of their tools and we expect the patient to be functioning at 120% inside of a week. People would laugh because these conditions are the height of irrationality, yet we think nothing of expecting marketing and communications to work under these conditions.

The most egregious weakness in this scenario is usually found in public companies. It is almost laughable how in many public companies the sole audience the C-level is interested in is the investment community and in keeping them happy. I have seen C-level executives prance around like they are in a dog and pony show and do self destructive things all for some short term benefit which, like a sugar rush, is often gone before it's enjoyed. Hardly any degree of attention is shown to the customer or retaining the customer. I have found it mystifying that a C-level executive will often dodge a customer call, yet will happily speak to some freshly minted MBA from Harvard or Princeton to keep the stock rating positive and thus up a penny or two.

An intelligent C-level executive sees the brand as the key to organization survival and thinks in the long term. The best analogy I have ever heard is that running a company is like climbing a mountain. You keep your eyes on the peak but also focus on the next ledge. That's a great analogy for what marketing can do to help a C-level executive succeed. Rather than being a cost center or a prop shop, marketing and communications can help the C-level executives reach the next level of success as well as that eventual peak. In fact, we're the only group who can get the program off the ground.

Marketing and communications can only succeed if they are viewed as a long term, strategic tool. Seeing them as a temporary, tactical tool to be cut and expanded on a willy, nilly basis is not only short-sighted but it is self-destructive. Visionary leaders in marketing and communications need to take the lead and need to confront the C-level on the responsibility to defend the brand and ensure its long-term success.

Let marketing drive the company

This is a very obvious statement so please forgive me if I insult your intelligence. An automobile needs a steering wheel, accelerator, gear shift as well as brakes to operate properly. A bike, needs much the same things with the big change obviously being that it doesn't need the accelerator as that is the person riding. In the world of business, communications is what provides the acceleration and to some degree provides warnings of the course corrections and changes required as well as providing warnings about the crazy drivers in the other lanes and even the speed limits.

What's the reason for this automobile analogy? Well marketing and communications are far too often seen as entirely functional or tactical tools and far too few organizations see the value they bring as strategic assets to the organization. Can you imagine for a minute if you reacted when the person in front of you slams on the brakes or when the other driver runs the red light? Just like in marketing, a great driver needs to be in command of the situations, needs to know the course and needs to be able to predict, with a high degree of accuracy, what is likely to happen soon.

Now the key thing to see here is that accidents will happen and perfection is impossible. Sorry, C-Level executives seem to think we are perfect when in fact we are not, and that is nothing to be ashamed of. The fact remains however that the true guidance of the organization should be the domain of the marketing and communications department because we are the ones who understand how to chart an organizations long term voyage through the various ups and downs the organization will face. In addition, the marketing and communication team will be one of the few groups who do not live from quarter to quarter and have a more long term, strategic outlook.

So the long story short is that the guidance and acceleration of an organization who sees itself as a leader should be run through the marketing and communications group. Unlike most of the business world marketing and communications, when done properly, are long term strategic departments. That is necessary in order to help an organization survive the temporary hurdles which will come across its path from time to time. The organizations' who pursue other courses may succeed but it's like driving with a blindfold on. As long as there aren't any disruptions in the road, you will do fine. If you focus on marketing and communications as the leads for the organization, you should be able to avoid a number of pitfalls and in doing so, leave those organizations who choose another method of guidance well behind you.

Where do we set the bar on ethics?

One of my favorite shows is Mad Men. It has won the Emmy for best drama three years straight. Besides presenting an engaging and enlightening view into the early 1960's. It combines strong characters with intelligent dialogue and just a dash of dark humor. I particularly liked the most recent episode broadcast on Sunday night here. For those who don't wish to know the plot skip the next few lines. As we know, Don Draper, the head of creative for Sterling, Cooper, Draper and Pryce paid to have an open letter in the New York Times where he renounced any future intent to do advertising for cigarettes.

I find this interesting because it raises a rarely discussed part of marketing and communications and that is the aspect of where do we draw the line when it comes to marketing and communicating in an ethical setting. Now I will assume that no one believes that it is in anyway ethical to market a product which is illegal. The big gray area becomes whether or not it is unethical to design a marketing campaign for a product which is perfectly legal, but is certainly unhealthy.

Obviously the biggest market to consider is what Don Draper was considering and that was cigarettes. While they remain perfectly legal products, one has to consider if doing marketing for these products is unto itself unethical. While I do not smoke, and I am a huge proponent of preventing smoking, and it will kill you, the fact remains that it is a legal and highly regulated product.

Another industry to keep in mind is the fast food industry which sells meals which are extremely unhealthy and a leading cause of obesity today. But once again the fact remains it is a legal product and one whose risks, while not as sharply defined as cigarettes, are clear and distinct.

The final industry to consider is defense related industries. These people make weapons and let's be honest, weapons kill people. That is their purpose. If they fail to do this then they have failed! But having worked with that field the logic is that their products, if well designed, will save lives by making the other fellow less likely to start anything!

So now we're at the crux of the argument. Is is necessarily unethical for a marketing person to do their job in a field where the product is unhealthy. While some people may not like my answer, I believe there is nothing wrong with working for a company who is selling a legal product. Granted, there perfectly acceptable reasons to be upset with the products themselves but that does not render the product themselves unacceptable provided they meet the appropriate regulatory requirements.

Kudos to Don Draper for making a stand and deciding that his company will draw the line at cigarettes. Notice that the writers did not put McDonald's in the script. If someone wants to take a stand and would not wish to work for a company which makes a product or promotes a lifestyle they object to, that is their right to refuse. Just remember, as Don Draper learned, nothing happens in a vacuum and there will be ramifications. Stands are very brave and should be respected, let's remember the old quip that in physics, every action has an opposite and equal reaction while in business that reaction is 20 fold!

Time for hiring managers to exit the comfort zone!

As we all know there is a problem in the employment system today. No I am not speaking about the 9.6% out of work, but rather the fact that even with unemployment that high, companies can't find qualified people to do the job. I was speaking with a recruiter friend of mine recently and was told that many hiring managers are being so exact and so picky that it is making the job of finding a qualified candidate nearly impossible. Case in point, let's assume that the hiring manager wants a corp. comm person who has 5 to 7 years of experience in health care and someone comes along who has 8 in tech. Nearly every time that person will be rejected, despite the fact that the skills are there.

Similarly, managers can often hire someone and not fully fleshed out their position. I have a rule of them that when ever I am reading a job description if it is one paragraph or less, I keep looking. Granted there may be a gem in there but the fact is that if a company only describes a position in one paragraph then they haven't really invested the time in seeking the long term potential for the position and whomever ends up with it will most likely be going crazy in a very short amount of time!

Let me be clear on one thing, I do believe companies have a right and, to be honest, an obligation to construct a job description that works as much for the internal audience as for external candidates seeking to join. But that should be an ideal and not a straight jacked which prevents the hiring of a qualified individual for the role. While I can't claim to be an expert on other fields, I can be sure that a qualified and capable marketing or communications person has a set of skills which are capable of being used in any field. Speaking as someone who has worked in various industries I can testify that if you are a good marketing communications person for a software company, your skills will be equally useful in hospital setting.

The other too that hiring managers must remember is that we do not always get everything we want. When we were young children we wrote out lists to Santa every year. Now if you were a young boy like me, you weren't really happy when you saw clothes in what you unwrapped Christmas morning but what you may not remember is how those clothes were put to good use. The same hold true for hiring a candidate. Someone may not be an exact match for what you want but if they have the skills, and have experience comparable to what you seek then you should find the best way to make them fit. Your industry can be learned a lot quicker than the skill set necessary to do the job can be taught!

I may be preaching to the choir here but I do think we need to have organizations realize that by adhering strictly to a pre-defined list of qualifications they may be missing out on some individuals who have amazing skills and who can bring fresh perspective and make a strong, positive impact on the organization. I don't recall the exact story but I remember hearing that in either Chinese or Japanese the characters for risk and opportunity were nearly identical? Well even if the story is wrong, the sentiment is dead on. Look at the candidate who can contribute the most to the organization, not the one who can simply fit the bill of what you're looking for!

Time for marketing to learn from failure!

There is a well known and time worn statement which goes, those who can not remember the past will be doomed to repeat it. The worse are attributed to the poet and philosopher George Santayana. These words are as true today as there were when they were first spoken. In fact they seem to be even more relevant because our periods of remembrance seem to be drawing shorter and shorter with each generation.

I bring this up today because there are direct ties into business and specifically marketing and communications. Another cliche that is often used is that success comes from many fathers but failure is an orphan. Both of these statements define what is wrong about business accountability in this day and age. More often than not if something goes wrong, the first thing organizations try to do is look for a scape goat and eliminate that person to keep the baying of the legal wolves in check. This quite honestly is stupid and in many cases counterproductive. If there is a complete and total violation of a companies policies as seems to be the case with Hewlett Packard, then dismissing the head of the company makes some sense. However I am here to talk about the lesser examples that often times do not make a lick of sense.

Having been around the block in marketing a while, I notice that many times senior level executives will wonder why their initiatives are not producing the desired results. More often than not marketing and communications people will look for an excuse or a reason to give as to why they are not. In most cases there is a simple explanation such as marketing conditions or even lack of support from other elements in the organization. It is not improper or unprofessional to refuse to fall on your sword because some other party has failed to participate in the successful development of marketing and communications strategy.

So what's the point here? That is simple. marketing, corporate communications, PR etc need to OWN the communications function and the message. We need to let the C-level know when they are not being reasonable and we need to both educate other groups in the organization and help them understand what marketing and communications is all about and how to work. What is very interesting is that organizations who view marketing and communications as a strategic tool, similar to finance or sales, find the greatest return on investment for their marketing dollar. They tend to stay the course and spend their marketing dollars wisely.

Organizations who are struggling or failing tend to share a common trait as well. They see marketing and communications as purely tactical weapons. Elements to be used only in reaction to market condition and not as a strategic weapon. A perfect case is how McDonald's reinvented itself to offset negative publicity as well as changing marketing conditions. This required a difficult reappraisal of their operations from top to bottom and included a major revision to how they went about marketing their products.

The lesson to be learned from all of this is that in marketing and communications, as well as in any aspect of business, failure is an excellent teacher. This is not a call for everyone to fail, rather it is a call for us to stop treating failure as something that requires a quick trip to the gallows and then carrying on as if nothing has happened. Use marketing as a tool to build brand and build sales. You will fail along the way that can't be helped. What you can help is taking the setbacks, learn from them, and come back even stronger and assume an even strong position in your market.

And, if failure is an orphan then it can join, Nelson Mandela, Alexander Hamilton , Dave Thomas (who founded Wendy's) and Louis Armstrong. So being an orphan is never easy, but can lead to great things!