In addition to the many blessings of family, friends, and health I’ll give thanks for this year, I’m excited to be welcoming back an old friend—marketing with a capital M. Only a year ago, the dark clouds of the economic storm had assembled to drown out the annual family trip to the west coast along with the plans and budgets of many a marketer—including those of my former company, a large financial services firm. The usual banter and debate about the role of marketing, the drudgery of annual planning, hot approaches to consumer insights, the latest social media trends, new ideas for building brand equity, dreams of driving growth, etc. was replaced by far more dire conversations about downsizing, reorganization, recession marketing, even survival. And, of course, the usual industry chorus about the importance of “spending into the recession” was largely ignored. Those were dark days indeed and it was difficult to see light at the end of the tunnel.
And while those dark days were followed by some even darker, a mere 12 months later the signs of the revival are clear. We’ve just returned from the ANA’s annual convention (a full report to follow in a later post) where the mood can only be described as “cautiously optimistic”. No one was ignoring the fact that many people are still suffering, the recovery has been somewhat jobless, and there are still rough waters to cross. But there was an undeniable sense of getting back to business which was fueled by the Marketers who never stopped despite the downturn. There were the brave Marketers from Kodak, a company assumed dead in the water, sharing their remarkable Marketing-led turnaround of this once and future great company. And there was Becky Saeger from Charles Schwab explaining how Marketing double-downed on Customer care and turned up the innovation to drive Schwab to record results in the third quarter. And then there were the Marketing Leaders from McDonalds and Wal-Mart sharing the inside story of how the marketing teams in not-so-great times had the vision and courage to drive great changes that put these companies in position to proper now. The economic cycle may favor these value players, but they never would have succeeded at this level without the visionary leadership of Marketing.
The common element across these inspirational stories was not brand, or advertising, or how they harnessed the latest trends in social media. It was about coming to grips with what they stood for, getting to clarity around the needs of their customers, and applying both focus and innovation to delivery against those needs. It was marketing as a force of good. Marketing with a capital M.