I spoke recently on “Cultivating a Strategic Perspective” at The CMO Summit sponsored by marcus evans. I spent most of my time on the B2B side, and there were a number of valuable sessions.
From my notes and “ideas” list, here are the first five stand out ideas along with related QTM’s (questions to marketers) from various presentations; we’ll have a second five from the conference tomorrow:
- Kevin Young from LandAmerica delivered a kick-in-the-head on solid business fundamentals that Jay Conrad Levinson introduced as “Guerrilla Marketing.” In developing leads, look at all the available free and low-cost tools you have at your disposal (click here for a set of questions to help target tools for your business). QTM: When was the last time you did a 6-degrees of separation exercise to identify how you can easily get to your hard-to-reach decision makers through a contact you both know?
- Stewart Stockdale from Simon Property Group shared a fascinating case study on how the company has turned marketing into a profit center, looking at its shopping center assets and visitors as media outlets and audiences, respectively. QTM: When is the next time (hopefully SOON) you’ll look at turning your business model on its head to find new growth opportunities?
- Marketing legend Dr. Phil Kotler made the point that a CMO’s chief role includes seeding strong marketing people and processes throughout the organization. QTM: Are we all investing enough time and effort on this and the related area of team development?
- My good friend, Nicholas de Wolff from Thomson used an intriguing audience participation exercise. He had one person try to name nearly 30 brands based only on their logos (he missed just two). Nicholas then challenged all of us to think about whether our brands could be recognized based only on our logos. QTM: Well, could they?
- Keith Pigues from PlyGem shared results of a new B2B trend study from the Institute for the Study of Business Markets. Keith heads the national Business Marketing Association; I was just selected for the national board. If Keith is representative of the passion, intellect, and drive of the other members, I’m even more excited about this opportunity. QTM: How are you giving back to our profession?
Check back tomorrow for another 5 take aways from The CMO Summit.
3 comments:
Congrats on being appointed to the BMA board!! I am sure you will be a great addition.
I'm wondering how you answered your question about being recognized by your logo and the brand strategy at YRC? I've been curious since we met why the various brands havent been rolled in under one brand to create a stronger brand presence and use marketing resources more efficiently.
Keri - Thanks for the question.
I think (nearly) all of Nicholas' examples were B2C. The question about recognizing the brand in the B2B world could / has to be narrowed to the relevant audience. When you're going after less than 5% of the population as your audience, that's where you look to your brand recognition and strength. The challenge comes when you have brands in your category that have both consumer and business dimensions; with heavier consumer brand building, the business side of such a brand gets a nice advantage.
Since this blog is from me (and not a company blog), I'd point you two places on your point of curiosity. A post from back in January looks at the general issues in M&A branding as I've encountered them. Specific answers to the issues in bullet one of the post will suggest one strategic approach or another. The link is: http://mikebrownspeaks.blogspot.com/2008/01/strategy-in-full-house-of-brands.html
The other place is a writer's view of my comments at the presentation referenced in the January post (which was a company-based presentation, not a Mike Brown-based one). The link to the article in the post's comments isn't live anymore, but the article referenced can be found at Zoominfo. The only thing is that he picked the wrong term to describe the strategy being discussed, since it's a “house of brands.” That link is: http://www.zoominfo.com/Search/PersonDetail.aspx?PersonID=-137665
Sorry for the long response, but let me know if you want to talk about it further.
Mike
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