Friday, January 20, 2006
Integrated Marketing needs Integrated talent-Globally
The process of Integrated marketing has become inextricably linked with the ability to correctly and quickly identify the right talent. Globally.
This expertise based need was highlighted early last year when Omnicom was not successful in pitches against competitive holding companies. From last summer on, they have steadily defeated the opposition gaining more real revenue than the initial losses as well as a sharply honed set of battle proven best practices.
Omnicom, the largest communications company in the world has 80,000 employees.
But prior to the demand for Global pitches in the last couple of years, a formal process for identifying talent had not been necessary. Omnicom as a holding company is a small, simple organizational structure. The informal social networks have been reasonably effective at putting experts in touch with those who are in need of their services. As McKinsey says, "Around here, people know one another" is a common refrain. "If I need help, I know whom to call."
So the question appropriately asked by McKinsey was, "do you know who your experts are?"
(The title link requires a sign in so I have been fairly liberal with their content).
They advised that companies need a new approach to finding their elusive experts. Omnicom did just that.
"Expertise can be surprisingly difficult to find, even in institutions that have spent millions to attract and retain world-class experts. Take the experience of one manager at a biotechnology company.
Early in the project, it needed someone with deep technical knowledge of a particular protein. We spent weeks looking for an expert—calling HR, asking around the office, scanning personnel records. Finally, we concluded the expert didn’t exist. Three days later, I’m in an elevator complaining about this to a colleague, when the woman next to me turns and says, ’I wrote my doctoral thesis on that protein. What do you need to know?’"
Such inefficiency and reliance on chance would normally be unthinkable for corporate resources. Project managers don’t find cash lying around in elevators. Store managers don’t idly speculate on the whereabouts of their inventory. IT managers don’t spend weeks rummaging through offices for spare computer terminals. Companies, after all, follow well-established processes to connect valuable resources (cash, inventory, equipment) with the people who need them.
But the days of knowing whom to call may be over. Mergers, growth, globalization, and employee turnover have diminished the ability of informal social networks to ferret out experts. As a result, many companies are no longer willing to let serendipity dictate how their experts interact. A growing number of companies, including BP and IBM—afraid that their productivity may fall, their time to market slow, or their competitive position erode—have adopted more systematic approaches to both finding and leveraging expertise.
A large high-technology company spent tens of millions of dollars to develop a state-of-the-art expertise portal that it rarely uses or updates
Unfortunately, there has never been a good way to get the job done. Until recently, companies had two primary ways of capturing their expertise: document repositories and expertise databases. Neither can help seekers of expertise very much. Written documents reflect only a fraction of what an expert knows, while expertise databases suffer from inadequate classification schemes and tend to be out-of-date almost from the moment of inception. (One large high-tech company spent tens of millions of dollars developing a state-of-the-art expertise portal, which it rarely uses and even more rarely updates.)
Context is king
Expertise is difficult to find largely because it can be difficult to pin down. Suppose a colleague asked you to describe your expertise. How would you respond? If the question came from a stranger in a distant corner of your company, you might give a general answer such as "market research" or "clinical-trial design." But if the question came from the next desk, you would probably be more specific, giving your area of specialization within market research or mentioning the clinical trials you managed. To a colleague in another country you might give a geographic answer, while you would tell a local about your product expertise. And so it goes.
That is because the answer to "What expertise do you have?" depends on who is asking and why. The question, by itself, is too abstract to invite a meaningful reply. People looking for expertise are doing so within the context of specific problems. Cash, inventory, and equipment are always the same, but expertise is defined by its context. That makes it an unusually difficult asset to identify.
Moreover, in most cases, finding an expert is less about identifying the world’s leading authority on a recognized topic and more about reaching the person who happens to fit the demands of a particular situation.
Sometimes, the expertise wanted can be very narrow—the call might be for someone who has launched a product in a particular geography or worked for a potential customer. This type of expertise can be the most valuable of all. But it is often the most elusive because those who have it might not think of themselves as experts.
The problem of context befuddles most of the expertise directories that are in use today. Such directories contain short, context-free summaries of a person’s areas of expertise. These summaries have their benefits—especially in small companies that have relatively few experts, so informal social networks can complement the directories. But the abstracts generally are not up to the challenge of identifying the large amount of highly specialized expertise that is available in large companies with tens of thousands of employees.
What did Omnicom do?
We mapped out the specific business process and knowledge needs with the help of the Global pitch leaders. In addition to their counsel based on learning, they gave us a wish list of what they would liked to have had prior to the pitch and when they would like to have had it.
We also tested the process with 52 of the top CEO/COOs from Omnicom companies worldwide, as well as senior Harvard faculty from the Graduate School of Business.
If you can pass muster in this arena, you are close to a viable solution.
We were able to marry the business process and knowledge needs with an existing technology within Omnicom that was able to work around most of the problems articulated in the McKinsey article.
We were able to develop a unique method that functioned far more like the "Next desk" example than an expertise directory or experience database. The additional good news is that this system can not be duplicated by the competition as the information is unique to Omnicom.
This analysis not only helped identify a solution to a problem but opened up a better way to deal with broader talent issues that occur as an organization grows and matures. The technology also provides a better response mechanism for the broader aspects of integration, especially on a Global basis.
This expertise based need was highlighted early last year when Omnicom was not successful in pitches against competitive holding companies. From last summer on, they have steadily defeated the opposition gaining more real revenue than the initial losses as well as a sharply honed set of battle proven best practices.
Omnicom, the largest communications company in the world has 80,000 employees.
But prior to the demand for Global pitches in the last couple of years, a formal process for identifying talent had not been necessary. Omnicom as a holding company is a small, simple organizational structure. The informal social networks have been reasonably effective at putting experts in touch with those who are in need of their services. As McKinsey says, "Around here, people know one another" is a common refrain. "If I need help, I know whom to call."
So the question appropriately asked by McKinsey was, "do you know who your experts are?"
(The title link requires a sign in so I have been fairly liberal with their content).
They advised that companies need a new approach to finding their elusive experts. Omnicom did just that.
"Expertise can be surprisingly difficult to find, even in institutions that have spent millions to attract and retain world-class experts. Take the experience of one manager at a biotechnology company.
Early in the project, it needed someone with deep technical knowledge of a particular protein. We spent weeks looking for an expert—calling HR, asking around the office, scanning personnel records. Finally, we concluded the expert didn’t exist. Three days later, I’m in an elevator complaining about this to a colleague, when the woman next to me turns and says, ’I wrote my doctoral thesis on that protein. What do you need to know?’"
Such inefficiency and reliance on chance would normally be unthinkable for corporate resources. Project managers don’t find cash lying around in elevators. Store managers don’t idly speculate on the whereabouts of their inventory. IT managers don’t spend weeks rummaging through offices for spare computer terminals. Companies, after all, follow well-established processes to connect valuable resources (cash, inventory, equipment) with the people who need them.
But the days of knowing whom to call may be over. Mergers, growth, globalization, and employee turnover have diminished the ability of informal social networks to ferret out experts. As a result, many companies are no longer willing to let serendipity dictate how their experts interact. A growing number of companies, including BP and IBM—afraid that their productivity may fall, their time to market slow, or their competitive position erode—have adopted more systematic approaches to both finding and leveraging expertise.
A large high-technology company spent tens of millions of dollars to develop a state-of-the-art expertise portal that it rarely uses or updates
Unfortunately, there has never been a good way to get the job done. Until recently, companies had two primary ways of capturing their expertise: document repositories and expertise databases. Neither can help seekers of expertise very much. Written documents reflect only a fraction of what an expert knows, while expertise databases suffer from inadequate classification schemes and tend to be out-of-date almost from the moment of inception. (One large high-tech company spent tens of millions of dollars developing a state-of-the-art expertise portal, which it rarely uses and even more rarely updates.)
Context is king
Expertise is difficult to find largely because it can be difficult to pin down. Suppose a colleague asked you to describe your expertise. How would you respond? If the question came from a stranger in a distant corner of your company, you might give a general answer such as "market research" or "clinical-trial design." But if the question came from the next desk, you would probably be more specific, giving your area of specialization within market research or mentioning the clinical trials you managed. To a colleague in another country you might give a geographic answer, while you would tell a local about your product expertise. And so it goes.
That is because the answer to "What expertise do you have?" depends on who is asking and why. The question, by itself, is too abstract to invite a meaningful reply. People looking for expertise are doing so within the context of specific problems. Cash, inventory, and equipment are always the same, but expertise is defined by its context. That makes it an unusually difficult asset to identify.
Moreover, in most cases, finding an expert is less about identifying the world’s leading authority on a recognized topic and more about reaching the person who happens to fit the demands of a particular situation.
Sometimes, the expertise wanted can be very narrow—the call might be for someone who has launched a product in a particular geography or worked for a potential customer. This type of expertise can be the most valuable of all. But it is often the most elusive because those who have it might not think of themselves as experts.
The problem of context befuddles most of the expertise directories that are in use today. Such directories contain short, context-free summaries of a person’s areas of expertise. These summaries have their benefits—especially in small companies that have relatively few experts, so informal social networks can complement the directories. But the abstracts generally are not up to the challenge of identifying the large amount of highly specialized expertise that is available in large companies with tens of thousands of employees.
What did Omnicom do?
We mapped out the specific business process and knowledge needs with the help of the Global pitch leaders. In addition to their counsel based on learning, they gave us a wish list of what they would liked to have had prior to the pitch and when they would like to have had it.
We also tested the process with 52 of the top CEO/COOs from Omnicom companies worldwide, as well as senior Harvard faculty from the Graduate School of Business.
If you can pass muster in this arena, you are close to a viable solution.
We were able to marry the business process and knowledge needs with an existing technology within Omnicom that was able to work around most of the problems articulated in the McKinsey article.
We were able to develop a unique method that functioned far more like the "Next desk" example than an expertise directory or experience database. The additional good news is that this system can not be duplicated by the competition as the information is unique to Omnicom.
This analysis not only helped identify a solution to a problem but opened up a better way to deal with broader talent issues that occur as an organization grows and matures. The technology also provides a better response mechanism for the broader aspects of integration, especially on a Global basis.
Thursday, January 05, 2006
External and Internal Integration
Al Ries's piece in Adage sparked the e-mail correspondence below.
What Al is really saying is that there was no Integration between the Acura's apparent wish to build a luxury marque and the showroom/service delivery system.
Lexus on the other hand, understood the need for what Al calls internal and external integration.
This is a good example of two smart companies going at the same market differently.
Lexus really wanted to be a luxury car company.
Acura wanted to sell luxury cars.
Lexus, from day one has embodied perfect integration, very hard to achieve in the automotive industry where dealers at the point of service are independent owners.
Hal Riney helped Saturn do much the same thing by ensuring that the total ownership experience for Saturn was fully integrated.
John Wren, Omnicom's CEO said to me yesterday that you can not train people to do this level of integration. They need to be imersed in it and learn by osmosis. They believe in it and like Lexus, they become it.
Then they enjoy the momentum that one sees in a winning football team that is unstoppable because it believes it will win.
I remember working with AMC as they were sliding off a cliff, ordering lobsters from Maine to be flown in for lunch while we were talking about deals to finish off the Spirit and Concord brands. Moving deck chairs on the Titanic sprang to mind. I was asked to leave Detroit for shouting iceberg. They believed they could not lose.
GM then, and Google now, believe they can not lose. That is a very different attitude to believing they can win. Google's shares may well hit the $600 smart people are predicting. But being surrounded multi-millionaires does increase the will to improve and innovate.
Lexus did this at the outset and in typical Japanese Keizan fashion, continues to make small improvements today while copying all major innovations, especially from Mercedes-Benz. Very smart using Mercedes as a development vehicle.
To the enthusiast, the product remains copycat. The style soul-less. The drive feel antiseptic.
But for the luxury target who can live without the Mercedes badge, the product is reliable, smart, good value, and drives well for those wanting a smooth trouble free experience. The sales experience superior, women friendly and service remains as close to impeccable as you can get with complex mechanical machinery.
Every piece of communication, verbal, experiential, targeted, interactive or mass media is consistent with the above.
As McKinsey says, "The 'moment of truth' in customer service" finds that to win the loyalty of customers—and translate it to the bottom line—companies must boost the emotional intelligence of frontline workers.
Both the Internal and External positioning are consonant.
This is true marketing integration.
Those who pay lip service by connecting slogans. Those who focus on only one side of positioning are putting their brand at risk to be superseded by the Lexus of their category. Read about the search engine branding disaster in Al's article and remember a time when dot com brands were contrived in elevators.
Only those who have been immersed in integration can really prevent you from making the same mistakes as Acura.
Only those who have lived External and Internal integration can help you create the marketing equivalent of Surround Sound for your brand.
Dear Jeff:
Thanks for your long and interesting email about
the Lexus/Acura situation.
And I certainly agree with your comments.
One thing I should have mentioned in the article is
the fact that a strong "external" position also tends
to drive "internal" positioning.
Because Lexus was a true luxury car, they thought of
themselves as in the luxury car business and they handled
their customers and their showrooms in the same manner.
But over at Acura, it's hard to think of yourself as in
the luxury car business if you were selling the cheap Integra
line.
All the best.
Al
Al Ries
Ries & Ries
2195 River Cliff Drive, Roswell Georgia 30076
phone: 770.643.0880 fax: 770.643.0051
website: www.ries.com email: al@ries.com
laura's blog: www.originofbrands.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Schur [mailto:jschur@merkleyandpartners.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2006 11:34 AM
To: al
Cc: laura
Subject: Googling of the Marketing Industry
All the best to you and Laura for 2006.
Loved your article in AdAge.
One difference you did not focus on between Acura and Lexus was that Lexus
was a more single-minded brand that stood for a luxury product but also for
the no hassle, no haggle, female friendly, low jock factor sales, service
and ownership experience that the brand, Lexus, became famous for.
Acura on the other hand spent time and money promoting two brands,
attempting to differentiate the performance driven Integra and the Luxury
Legend.
The Integra, really a sporty Accord was hardly a premium priced car, nor
could it be taken as a serious alternative to a BMW as a performance
contender.
The Legend was really a more luxurious version of the six cylinder Accord
the Japanese refused to give Tom Elliott when he was the head of marketing
for Honda at the time.
So the two headed Acura Marque was indeed half pregnant and a brand not used
anywhere else in the world at that time. If memory serves me correctly,
Acuras were only available in the USA and were badged Hondas in Japan and
elsewhere in the world.
Whereas Lexus was singleminded in it's mission to give customers a luxury
alternative for a Mercedes- Benz at a better price, deliver it with a true
luxury experience and build a luxury brand worldwide.
Again taking the cue from Mercedes, they have only recently begun to pay
attention to the performance experience, but under the Lexus brand,
including racing sponsorship. Wise? Time will tell.
So perhaps it would be more correct to say that Lexus was the first true
Japanese Luxury brand.
Regards,
Jeff
What Al is really saying is that there was no Integration between the Acura's apparent wish to build a luxury marque and the showroom/service delivery system.
Lexus on the other hand, understood the need for what Al calls internal and external integration.
This is a good example of two smart companies going at the same market differently.
Lexus really wanted to be a luxury car company.
Acura wanted to sell luxury cars.
Lexus, from day one has embodied perfect integration, very hard to achieve in the automotive industry where dealers at the point of service are independent owners.
Hal Riney helped Saturn do much the same thing by ensuring that the total ownership experience for Saturn was fully integrated.
John Wren, Omnicom's CEO said to me yesterday that you can not train people to do this level of integration. They need to be imersed in it and learn by osmosis. They believe in it and like Lexus, they become it.
Then they enjoy the momentum that one sees in a winning football team that is unstoppable because it believes it will win.
I remember working with AMC as they were sliding off a cliff, ordering lobsters from Maine to be flown in for lunch while we were talking about deals to finish off the Spirit and Concord brands. Moving deck chairs on the Titanic sprang to mind. I was asked to leave Detroit for shouting iceberg. They believed they could not lose.
GM then, and Google now, believe they can not lose. That is a very different attitude to believing they can win. Google's shares may well hit the $600 smart people are predicting. But being surrounded multi-millionaires does increase the will to improve and innovate.
Lexus did this at the outset and in typical Japanese Keizan fashion, continues to make small improvements today while copying all major innovations, especially from Mercedes-Benz. Very smart using Mercedes as a development vehicle.
To the enthusiast, the product remains copycat. The style soul-less. The drive feel antiseptic.
But for the luxury target who can live without the Mercedes badge, the product is reliable, smart, good value, and drives well for those wanting a smooth trouble free experience. The sales experience superior, women friendly and service remains as close to impeccable as you can get with complex mechanical machinery.
Every piece of communication, verbal, experiential, targeted, interactive or mass media is consistent with the above.
As McKinsey says, "The 'moment of truth' in customer service" finds that to win the loyalty of customers—and translate it to the bottom line—companies must boost the emotional intelligence of frontline workers.
Both the Internal and External positioning are consonant.
This is true marketing integration.
Those who pay lip service by connecting slogans. Those who focus on only one side of positioning are putting their brand at risk to be superseded by the Lexus of their category. Read about the search engine branding disaster in Al's article and remember a time when dot com brands were contrived in elevators.
Only those who have been immersed in integration can really prevent you from making the same mistakes as Acura.
Only those who have lived External and Internal integration can help you create the marketing equivalent of Surround Sound for your brand.
Dear Jeff:
Thanks for your long and interesting email about
the Lexus/Acura situation.
And I certainly agree with your comments.
One thing I should have mentioned in the article is
the fact that a strong "external" position also tends
to drive "internal" positioning.
Because Lexus was a true luxury car, they thought of
themselves as in the luxury car business and they handled
their customers and their showrooms in the same manner.
But over at Acura, it's hard to think of yourself as in
the luxury car business if you were selling the cheap Integra
line.
All the best.
Al
Al Ries
Ries & Ries
2195 River Cliff Drive, Roswell Georgia 30076
phone: 770.643.0880 fax: 770.643.0051
website: www.ries.com email: al@ries.com
laura's blog: www.originofbrands.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Schur [mailto:jschur@merkleyandpartners.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2006 11:34 AM
To: al
Cc: laura
Subject: Googling of the Marketing Industry
All the best to you and Laura for 2006.
Loved your article in AdAge.
One difference you did not focus on between Acura and Lexus was that Lexus
was a more single-minded brand that stood for a luxury product but also for
the no hassle, no haggle, female friendly, low jock factor sales, service
and ownership experience that the brand, Lexus, became famous for.
Acura on the other hand spent time and money promoting two brands,
attempting to differentiate the performance driven Integra and the Luxury
Legend.
The Integra, really a sporty Accord was hardly a premium priced car, nor
could it be taken as a serious alternative to a BMW as a performance
contender.
The Legend was really a more luxurious version of the six cylinder Accord
the Japanese refused to give Tom Elliott when he was the head of marketing
for Honda at the time.
So the two headed Acura Marque was indeed half pregnant and a brand not used
anywhere else in the world at that time. If memory serves me correctly,
Acuras were only available in the USA and were badged Hondas in Japan and
elsewhere in the world.
Whereas Lexus was singleminded in it's mission to give customers a luxury
alternative for a Mercedes- Benz at a better price, deliver it with a true
luxury experience and build a luxury brand worldwide.
Again taking the cue from Mercedes, they have only recently begun to pay
attention to the performance experience, but under the Lexus brand,
including racing sponsorship. Wise? Time will tell.
So perhaps it would be more correct to say that Lexus was the first true
Japanese Luxury brand.
Regards,
Jeff
