The Innovation Formula

Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg are often cited as the true innovators of our times, but behind these big thinkers are a series of steps companies use to become successful innovators. June Archer, former Senior VP, Global Innovation and Business Development at Godiva, and Tom Kempisty, Managing Partner and Chief Innovation Officer at BIG, shared the steps they have used to develop and implement innovations on behalf of their companies and clients with the New Jersey Meng chapter on September 16th. The innovation steps they highlighted are:
• Big Ideas – most big ideas are born out of rigorous market and situational analysis, competitive intelligence and trend watching.
• Assessment & Planning – does the company have the internal skills, competencies and resources to bring the innovation to market and if not, is there someone they can partner with who does.
• Support & Development – are both internal and external partners fully committed to supporting the innovation.
• Implementation – have the details of the implementation been painstakingly planned for and communicated to all parties involved.
• Maximization – is everything being measured regarding the implementation of the innovation and can we maximize what is working and course correct or abandon what is not.

So beyond just coming up with new ideas, there are other critical steps required to make a company truly innovative.

David Montfort

When I Started, Volvo Didn’t Even Have A Website

Rich Ullman, Senior Vice-President, Marketing for Ripple6, Inc., a social marketing platform, recounted his history in digital advertising from the time when companies simply scanned print content online to create their websites. Rich has seen a lot of change in the digital space along the way and says the pace of it keeps increasing, “Things have changed more in the past nine months than in the past nine years and social media is at the center of it”. Rich shared several compelling statistics to prove his point.
• 1 out of 8 people met via social media
• If Facebook was a country, it would be the world’s 3rd largest
• YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine
According to Rich, the power of social media overcomes the advantages of scale. Large companies or political parties for that matter no longer control the dialogue, giving the little guy the ability to succeed as well. In this digital revolution, companies need to learn to harness the power of digital marketing much like riding a horse. You need to guide it, but you can’t fully control it.
Rich summarized his talk be saying that social media is big and getting bigger. It has changed the way people live and behave and has given us the ability to connect like never before. For marketers, it’s now a conversation rather than a campaign.

David Montfort

Four Important Rules for Key Account Management

Key (or Strategic, or Global) Account Management is a complex process managed by highly skilled professionals in many industries. Here are four rules that I have learned are essential to a successful account Management Program.

1. Treat your customer as they want to be treated, not as you want to be treated, or as you want to treat them. This requires that you understand their drivers, culture, and needs.

2. The customer is not always right … that may be why they hired you.

3. Don’t do something for, or sell something to a customer if you know it’s wrong for them.
• Don’t let your sales teams ruin a long term relationship to win a deal for this quarter.

4. Be accountable to your customer and hold your customer accountable to their organization and your relationship.

• When you have to go to the contract, recognize you are in a problem zone. Not that you shouldn’t, but understand it is a red flag. When you are assigned a new customer, read and thoroughly digest the contract, and build some crib notes on key SLAs, billing information, and governance plans. Then put it in a drawer and work hard to never have to bring it out in anger.

• It is personal. Saying "it’s just business" doesn’t cut it. All strong business relationships have a personal element… some more than others. We don’t deal with companies or departments, we deal with people. Success and failure reflect on the people not the department. If you intend to keep your customer for a long time … for life, you have to keep the best interest of your customer at the forefront of your thinking.

MENG forms social media council of advisors

Another terrific MENG initiative

http://www.mengonline.com/visitors/newsroom/MENG_Social_Media.pdf

We Don’t Live in a Linear World

Paul Kulavis, Managing Partner of the Sterling Park Group, shared the latest developments in Marketing ROI with the NJ chapter of MENG early Friday morning, February 5th. According to Paul, Marketing ROI is a rapidly evolving discipline which more and more companies are using to quantify the impact of their marketing spending. Paul highlighted the following analytical tools being used to measure and evaluate marketing activities.
• Media Mix Modeling: determines the optimal mix of media activities
• Market Mix Modeling: similar to Media Mix Modeling, but goes further to include external factors such as distribution, PR, trade promotion, etc.
• Test Marketing: In-market testing
• Simulated Test Marketing: less expensive alternative to Test Marketing which includes historical testing norms (e.g. BASES)
• Statistical Regression: workhorse of marketing analytics
• Genetic Programming/Neuronet: looks for relationships among all of the available data
• Structural Equation Marketing: derives variable importance based upon its impact to surrounding variables
• Simulation: conduct what if scenarios (e.g. Monte Carlo simulation)

According to Paul, there is no silver bullet and the best tool to use in a particular situation depends on the project’s objective , available data, time, budget, and any previous research that has been conducted. Paul cited examples of how this methodology has been used to determine the most effective marketing activities for Navy recruiting and the optimal circulation for a direct mail catalog.

David Montfort

Shocking Edelman Survey Results Reveal Less Trust in Social Media Referrals

A must read.

jeff

Delegating - Sounds So Easy

Recently read a concise article about delegating on BNET Insight. read article
The author makes it sound so easy....My two cents: One can easily delegate if the right people are in place and on the team, otherwise, delegating means failure. To steal from real estate world, i.e. Location...when it come to management, its "PEOPLE, PEOPlE, PEOPLE".