Five Places Marketers Fail

When analyzing marketing catastrophes of all different kinds, for companies competing in wildly different industries, some fairly consistent underlying reasons for the failures begin to emerge. And surprisingly, the notion that marketing fails because the marketers in charge were morons is not one of the five. Though there are head-scratchingly bad decisions behind most campaign failures, more insidious reasons are the true propellant behind the epic failures we see in each day's newspaper (if there were still any being published, that is. But that's a marketing failure for another day).

Number Five: The Wrong Market. Sometimes the pressure to eke out just a bit more revenue from an existing but tapped out market drives marketing leaders to try to extend the product line just a bit further or to bring a marginally better solution to the game. All too often, the wrong market is the one in which we currently compete and draw the bulk of our revenue and profits. But in moving forward, a successful and winning leader will know when to make the jump.

Number Four: Bad Timing. Sometimes, however, a marketer's timing is off. Maybe by a little, maybe by a lot. But jumping into a new market too soon can mean years of frustrated "market building" activity while other technologies and approaches take their turns at being the "right solution at the right time". Jump too late and you'll face a nigh impenetrably entrenched set of competitors with too little firepower to shift the playing field.

Number Three: The Wrong Strategy. I often say that there is usually more than one way to get to the goal. However, not every path leads there. Some lead straight into the buzz saw. The number of ways in which a strategy might go wrong are legion. Wrong distribution channel for your product? You're dead. Run ads on billboards when a strong internet route is better? Toast. Doesn't necessarily mean the marketer in charge is a moron, but make enough egregious choices and it'll be tough to dodge the nickname.

Number Two: Disconnect Between Promise and Delivery. Imagine you've spec'd the perfect product for your customer's needs. You've built a demand generation strategy second to none. You've got leads pouring in from around the globe. You're a certifiable genius. But then the factory in China burns down. The contract coders from Russia stop returning your emails. Or perhaps operations disregarded your demand forecast because her bonus gets paid on a metric that has nothing to do with satisfying your customers. In any case, this scenario can lead to the very worst outcome for a company - jilted customers. Those whose passions were stirred and then left bitterly unfulfilled.

Number One: Serving the Wrong Master. This one, more than the others, will be likeliest to cause people on the outside to consider the folks at the wheel a bunch of morons. But chances are that the marketers were simply working to please someone other than the actual customer. Perhaps the CEO had a creative idea he loved and wanted to see executed or the senior management council thought they knew better.

The common element among these failures is a loss of focus and mastery of the customer's condition and needs. The ability to translate this knowledge into effecive action is quite common, but the knowledge itself, now that is an all-too-rare commodity. So while marketing groups quibble over effective SEO strategies and approaches to pricing, too few marketing pros are spending quality time with their customers. And that is why they will fail.

Today's WORD is Injunction

Today we learned that a US court has issued an injunction preventing Microsoft from selling uber-popular Office stalwart WORD after mid-January because the product violates patents held by others. Yikes! I would suspect that large sums of money will change hands prior to that date if MS can't get another ruling from another court overturning the injunction (perhaps they should appeal to the Brazilian Supreme Court). One way or another, I doubt that WORD is in any real, lasting jeopardy.

But the case does illustrate a problem that many marketers face from time to time. What do you do when your company management either breaks the law or does something unethical as part of its business practices? Just apologize, say oops and promise it won't happen again? But in Microsoft's case, it happens a lot. How can the MS marketers overcome this self-inflicted, never ending assault on the company rep?

Microsoft's current ad campaign depicting customers as saying they invented the new Windows doesn't really square with reality, assuming that their customers aren't unethical or anticompetitive or patent poachers. We are not Them. How closely do prospective customers want to align themselves with a supplier that's always in trouble? (Aside: Hey Microsoft, do you mean to tell us that in spite of a gajillion developers on your payroll WE have to come up with all the ideas? Maybe you need to pay us instead of the other way around?).

Microsoft is not a company led by marketers, clearly. The Sherman tank that is Steve Ballmer has never seemed overly interested in such vagueries as marketing. But if he were, he might take a bit more care with the company's very fragile rep and stop making it quite so hard for marketers to do their jobs. Then again, these are the guys who thought the Jerry Seinfeld commercials were a riot. Ugh. How did these guys come to dominate the world again?

Lord of the Pitchmen - Or When Your Brand's Face Goes South On You

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The Art of Introduction

I just received a new Apple laptop the other day and was again stunned with how well done Apple's packaging is done. Every element of the packaging is functional, elegant, and exceptionally effective. Even the cardboard corners of the box the machine came in. Just cool, from start to finish. Never mind the product inside, I like to unwrap the stuff because of the feelings the process evokes.

Introductions are important moments. Those first seconds where we find ourselves face to face with a new product, person, or whatever. We form important, lasting impressions that inform and color our reactions to this new element in our lives forevermore. Yet how often does anyone really give proper weight to this event? Most folks are concerned with cost and moving past formalities so they can "get to the good stuff". Why spend five dollars on packaging when you can do the same functional job for $4.50? Penny-wise, pound foolish. When spend another two pennies on a heater switch in a Chevy just to make the tactile interaction more pleasing?

Why? Because that stuff matters. Even Wal-Mart, kings of cheap where poor service is a badge of honor, has begun to come around, recently saying that they're going to spend more time and attention on service and on the way their stores look. Cheap prices can only sustain a consumer for so long. Less expensive is fine, especially in this economy. But there remain opportunities for real, lasting competitive advantage from implementing a more Apple-ish approach to product/service design, by the realization that the "product" includes everything that comes before and after the actual "thing", and by differentiating on dimensions other than price.

The King is dead! Long live the King!

Okay, calm down, nobody is dead. But my blog has undergone a metamorphosis, changing from High Velocity Marketing to Kinetic Spark Marketing. The reason for the change is two-fold. First, as I re-energize my consulting practice after an ill-advised return to a corporate position, I wanted to convey the energy and enthusiasm that I've regained from this change. Many of my clients are small start up scale businesses and it is becoming clear that many people are following the entrepreneur's path because they've been laid off (no euphemisms here, like "downsized" or "rightsized". puh-lease) or because they have little faith in the myth of stability within the typical corporation and have taken their fate into their own hands (bravo!). So for me, business is looking up.

The other reason for the change is that over the course of operating under the V~Squared (V2) brand I found that many people didn't get what it was supposed to mean (velocity squared...making things happen fast. Oh, never mind.) So like any good marketer, I embraced the lesson and made a change.

Of course, I also think that "Kinetic Spark" just sounds good, too. And as our mission changes slightly, now offering a full array of marketing services, in effect becoming our client's marketing department located someplace else, it was time to recast the brand. But like any good marketer, I'll keep an eye on the new brand's performance and see how it goes.

Our new site, www.kineticspark.com, should be up by the new year! Check us out when you get a sec.