One of the perennial dilemmas when approaching an organization’s marketing strategy is the type of appeal (e.g. factual/evidence-based, emotional, etc.) that should be made to the target audience. After all, the strategy can have a huge impact on the response. For example, in the early 80s Pepsi always seemed to win it’s head-to-head taste tests with Coke in its Pepsi Challenges. However, for as much as the anecdotal evidence suggested that Pepsi was preferred to Coke, it never could eclipse it in sales. According to Beverage America’s 2008 report on soft drinks, Coke has 12% more market share than Pepsi). Of course there are many issues contributing to Pepsi failure to overtake the leadership position in the Cola Wars, one of which is the wrong marketing approach.
According to Hall & Stamp’s (2002), studies suggest that facts are meaningful to left-brainers and right-brainers are best sold using energy, personal relationships and emotion.
Additional research of business executives found that left-brain people respond best to presentation where the salesperson was more serious, very knowledgeable, and highly organized, with clear command of the facts and specific recommendations…Right-brain people responded best to sales approaches where the salesperson was more humorous, animated, relationship-oriented, and focused on their personal needs more than their own company’s needs.
In a recent article published by Mediaweek, author Denise Lee Yohn postulated that the drive toward social media and analytics by CMOs was causing marketing to lose its creativity. Lee Lohn wrote:
All this focus on social media and analytics seems to be sucking the creativity out of marketing. Time was, brands developed big ideas and delivered and communicated them in unique and creative ways. Now it seems marketers are only interested in tactics and metrics…Certainly media and communications have changed, so a big TV spot or newspaper campaign probably isn’t the right approach for transformational marketing. But lately it seems the pursuit of breakthrough marketing creativity has taken a backseat to work on more predictable and achievable efforts.
While there is no question to Lee Lohn’s notion that creativity plays a vital role in the effectiveness of marketing, the concerning part about Lee Lohn’s article is that it positions creativity as the finality of the marketing process. Continue reading 'Marketing Losing Its Mojo? Not So Fast'»
A recent article in the Journal of Marketing (vol. 72) by Krasnikov et. al. finds a stronger correlation between marketing capabilities and firm performance (r = .35) than those for both R&D (r = .28) and operations (r = .21). The managerial implication is that “increase in marketing capability is associated with stronger improvement in firm performance than increases in operations capability and R&D capability (Hanssens, D, ed., 2009, Empirical Generalizations about Marketing Impact, p. 3).
About Correlation (r)
Correlation is a statistical measurement that determines the “goodness of fit” of a relationship between two variables. It does not determine cause. Correlation is measured on a scale from 1 to -1. The closer the “r” score is to 1, the more positive the correlation is between the two variables. The closer the “r” score is to -1, the more negative the correlation is between the two variables. The closer the “r” score is to zero, the less correlation exists between the two variables.
In a previous article about the genesis of strategic marketing, I explored the first several components of Tier II marketing, what we call the genesis of strategic marketing and the departure from Tier I or tactically driven marketing. Again the foundation of Tier II marketing is data-driven marketing where all media (e.g. brochures, web sites, advertisements, etc.) are integrated or are characterized by similar graphics and messaging. Where the previous article explored key performance indicators, market research, customer segmentation, and positioning, this article describes the remaining characteristics of the organization engaging in Tier II marketing. The remaining characteristics include:
In a previous article, I explored the difference between marketing tools and marketing strategy and described Tier I marketing in detail. This post continues in that vein by exploring the next step in an organization’s marketing sophistication, what we refer to as Tier II marketing. Where organizations engaging in Tier I marketing are tactically driven, Tier II marketing is driven by strategic goals and insights. The strategy drives the tactics. The characteristics of a Tier II marketing organization include the following:
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One of the perennial dilemmas when approaching an organization’s marketing strategy is the type of appeal (e.g. factual/evidence-based, emotional, etc.) that should be made to the target audience. After all, the strategy can have a huge impact on the response. For example, in the early 80s Pepsi always seemed to win it’s head-to-head taste tests with Coke in its Pepsi Challenges. However, for as much as the anecdotal evidence suggested that Pepsi was preferred to Coke, it never could eclipse it in sales. According to Beverage America’s 2008 report on soft drinks, Coke has 12% more market share than Pepsi). Of course there are many issues contributing to Pepsi failure to overtake the leadership position in the Cola Wars, one of which is the wrong marketing approach.
