Marketeers renewal

Marketing today looks different from what it was early 1990´s. Planning direct marketing, print, tv, radio or outdoor has gotten way more complicated. Consumers lifestyles, values and behaviour plus media consumption have changed. Internet and globalization has changed our way of communicating, consuming and living. Values are now focused on life satisfaction, family, sustainability and self-actualization.

No wonder marketing as a function is changing drastically. Marketing has evolved from awareness building to understanding customer needs, finding opportunities, providing insights and linking customer needs to product portfolios, services, total offering and message. Marketing communications is the final link to optimize customer touchpoints and provide interaction.

Apart from understanding customers changing needs, marketeers follow up and even drive the changing roles of marketing, media and consulting agencies. Marketing has become a center for customer dialogue (Strategy & Business issue 54, 2009) - running activities to connect with customers on a daily or even nightly basis. New marketing positions now include "community manager", "customer dialogue specialist" and "marketing analyst".

What more, now that companies talk of social media, marketing has a golden opportunity to build its own relevance, knowledge and role. The current understanding and experiences can be extended to customer care, product development, logistics and sales. Anything to serve customers better.

Hanna Viita

Structuring for service and motivation

One of our classes recent visiting lecturers was Eltel Networks´s CFO. Listening to a finance-oriented presentation got us thrilled on how employees can be motivated by simple ways of organizing and structuring the company.

Eltel did a turnaround of its operations few years ago. What they focused on and wanted to value was internal entrepreneurship and thus serving customers better. The old matrix organization with functional responsibilities was tossed. Instead, Eltel organized its sub-units as independent sales teams, having full profit and loss responsibility. Each sales team was in charge of customer relationship and had resources accordingly. No central overheads were charged to these independent sales units. Within a few years results have spoken for themselves.

If the progress is similar in other companies, sounds like the old school scorecards will be dead. Corporate employees no longer are motivated by objectives set too far apart from their daily responsibilities. People find motivation in doing, participating, influencing operations and seeing the actual results. On a daily or monthly basis, rather than annually.

Recent study on Finnish students´ employment expectations was drastic: there is no ambition to succeed careerwise. On the contrary, young employees are expecting a nice balance between work and leisure. What they want is a life they can appreciate not just looking from company headquarters.

What Eltel realized was that they can influence the success of the company by looking into what really motivates people. Let the company objectives meet the individual ones – in an ethical, inspiring and human way.

Outside-in or inside-out?

Bob DeWit and Ron Meyer (2004) describe the competitive strategies of companies for being external vs internal driven. Companies having an inside-out perspective rely on their internal capabilities such as processes, technology and design – creating a competitive advantage that is difficult to imitate. On the contrary, an outside-in approach is more based on market sensing, bonding with customers and monitoring technology, not inventing it. Whereas an inside-out driven company might focus on order planning and generation, an outside-in driven company would focus on fulfilling customer demand, billing and payment.

Wouldn´t you think that a company can succeed only having its emphasis on external market conditions? Understanding what are customer needs and demands, how competition functions and what is the next consumer trend? On the other hand, if your company can offer something unique that customers cannot even dream of, customers would not even understand to build demand unless they see and try the product.

Considering that Apple and Google have built most advanced, easy-to-use and smart products (services) – don´t they show both technological and design capabilities that no-other company possesses? And haven´t they yet built their services purely on what customers are in need of, having the most active consumer dialogues asking for feedback and participation? Therefore, can there be inside-out without outside-in? One without the other?

Hanna Viita

It´s about perception

Our MBA class visited various sites downtown Helsinki on a Saturday to look into how brands are implementing their strategy. We visited Nokia flagship store with high expectations. And the experience was great: staff greeted us, was very helpful, spoke various languages. All products and applications were showcased, atmosphere was good. After the visit the group still felt that something was missing. “Where was the ultimate experience”? What caused most discussion was how the staff was dressed (in sweatshirts and sneakers). After all the discussion I felt that visit to Nokia store is not just about Nokia. A Nokia flagship store in Helsinki with its wooden design represents the whole Finnish technology knowhow and culture. It should be the ultimate experience that shows what our nation can do with the eyes of Nokia. I felt the sweatshirt discussion was just partly concretizing the customer experience for it could still be developed further. More than changing uniforms.

Another interesting notion was how Finland brand sounds. We discussed how in the morning train Finns prefer to sit in quiet and enjoy the peaceful moment they have before rushing off to work. The same sound experience – quietness – was experienced at Finnish design forum at Erottaja. No music in the background, great element for showcasing Finnish design, having its origins in our nature and culture, as plain as it is.

Hanna Viita

Marketing as a service

If there is any one dream a marketeer has, it is influencing customer behaviour by the activities a company offers. Marketing can offer activities as services and complement the actual product by making communications truly beneficial for the customer. The crucial thing is to base the service on company´s core values.

What customers wish for today is time, independence and convenience. An article by Trendwatching.com states many companies now are turning their marketing campaigns into broader services.

In Trendwatching.com article numerous examples of such services were iPod applications. Since mobile applications still reach a limited audience, my favourite case was one by Adidas with an actual physical service. What they created was a running store in Tokyo offering locker rooms and showers for customers who want to take a run. Anyone can use the store as their home base for an exercise. You also have equipment for rent. How often I´ve had time to spare downtown thinking where to go for an hours exercise that does not require a membership. Loved it.

What is crucial is to start from benefits the brand can offer. According to Trendwatching.com this could be related to information, saving costs, connectivity or simply getting healthier or happier. Plan what you can offer and select a channel where you best can support, help and guide your customer.

Hanna Viita