Insights Blog

One of the biggest threats to brands today is consumer indifference. With so much noise and clutter in the marketplace, how do you get your customer to pay attention? What creates brand loyalty strong enough to last for decades or perhaps even a lifetime?

Product Managers have traditionally focused on bringing new products to market, but their role is quickly becoming more complex. Our latest research suggests that the C-suite priority of driving profitable organic growth has begun to filter down into middle management. Heads of businesses and even product-line managers are being pressed for faster growth in revenues and even more growth in profitability. This margin leverage focus (i.e., profit margins growing at x% above revenue growth rate) is putting an end to “business as usual” and forcing many Product Managers to confront stark choices.

Here are some of the important shifts happening in product management today:

Here we are in the heat of the planning season. We thought this would be the perfect time to share our list of top mistakes made in marketing planning. In dealing with marketing leaders every day, we see the same mistakes across many organizations, and we’d be delighted to help you steer clear of them.

Apple is a popular example of customer driven innovation that wins the market. Nobody can argue with the company's exceptionally high market share, high profit margins, and deep customer loyalty. Nor do we think many would debate that Apple's focus on the customer is embedded throughout the company. It is a true marketing culture top to bottom.

Are you struggling to keep up with the frenzied pace of the changing digital landscape? Have you run a series of digital "pilots" on Facebook, Twitter, Mobile, and others but don't know how they all relate to each other? Are your digital campaigns smart, snazzy, and even productive from a demand gen perspective but one-off events rather than a scalable digital presence?

Every day in large corporations around the world, hundreds of decisions are made about products (what is offered) and marketing (the customer experience). Individually, these decisions may seem benign, but in the aggregate, they are bet the company decisions.

A high profile marketing mainstay was recently dropped by a well-known brand. Hawaiian Tropic has officially retired their famous bikini pageants. Considering Hawaiian Tropic’s target customer, this move was a long time coming. Even without detailed purchase information, it’s reasonable to guess that the majority of people purchasing suntan lotion are women in the 20-45 age range. How many of these women are big fans of bikini pageants?

This story got us thinking: Why do brands often wait so long to change when something is broken? Because an event is popular? Because they’ve always done it that way? Because they’re celebrating a significant milestone (5 years, 10 years, etc.)? None of these are good reasons, but we’ve heard them all. We’ve also seen brands make seemingly arbitrary changes to investments that are performing flawlessly.

No CMO will want to miss a recent report from The Economist Intelligence Unit entitled “Outside Looking In: The CMO Struggles to get in Sync with the C-Suite.” Based on a survey of nearly 400 executives around the world and in-depth interviews with leading CMOs and marketing experts, the report provides many insights into the challenges that CMOs face, but one challenge in particular screams out to us. In section 2, “CMOs Are Swimming Upstream,” the researchers note that “fully half of all CMOs say their ability to play a more strategic role is limited by the lack of relevant skills among marketing executives.” We aren’t surprised by this finding – we encounter this problem among our clients all the time.

In our daily conversations with marketing leaders, it’s amazing how often we’ve found this simple two by two matrix useful. Obviously, marketing budgets are allocated to help companies meet their revenue plans, but all too often the two fail to match up. This tool makes it easy to see whether your marketing investment truly makes sense.

By filling in details about your marketing budget and anticipated revenue in each of these four areas, you can quickly establish a clear picture of how well your investment is aligned with your business objectives. We have used this tool with clients at many levels, from the corporate entity to the business unit to the brand or product level. In most cases, companies have the information, but they have never connected the financial forecast to the marketing plan at this level.

Emerging markets clearly offer the best opportunity for growth in most business sectors. Since the 1990s, IMF estimated rates of real GDP growth have trended upward in emerging and developing economies while declining in advanced economies. Emerging markets are expected to be responsible for 76% of projected growth in global GDP between 2009 and 2025. However, most marketers lack experience executing in immature markets. This month, we discuss the common challenges we've seen and outline our proven strategies for overcoming them.