The Marketing Bureau

By Brian H Meredith
From the NZBusiness Magazine "Marketing Maestro" Archive.
First published June 2006

Professor Merlin Stone is Business Research Leader at IBM Business Consulting Services at IBM in the UK. He recently spent a week working in New Zealand and wrote of his observations in “What’s New In Marketing”, a publication of the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

Professor Stone opined that “In New Zealand, the downside (to being a small business community) relates to weakness in the marketing infrastructure. By infrastructure I mean not only media, telecommunications and postal infrastructure, but also in skills and learning and in the network of suppliers – from agencies to fulfillment houses - needed to ensure quality.”

He added that “New Zealand marketers are great travelers and frequent visitors to peer companies in the US, Europe and other countries where marketing is advanced. So even where marketing is not up to the latest practice, managers are pretty conscious of what best practice is, but are often biding their time until the New Zealand market is ready for it.”

Now, my views on both the marketing infrastructure as well as marketing skills levels in New Zealand are well known to readers of this column. But the concept of a bunch of kiwi marketers keeping their best practice skills under lock & key in a desk drawer until New Zealand is “ready for it” is a tad bizarre.

New Zealand is already a player in the grown up world. We haven’t had any choice in the matter – our history of splendid isolation is well & truly over. If we are to make a half way decent fist of playing the adult version of the marketing game then we need to be playing by as many of the grown up’s rules as we can. So doesn’t that mean we need to know and act on whatever constitutes marketing best practice right now?

For those of you who may not be lucky enough to be fully versed in marketing best practice and what it constitutes (although Prof Stone clearly thinks most of you do but are just keeping it under wraps), I hope the following broad sweep of the topic will be enlightening.

Adoption of the “business as a marketing organism” philosophy.

Adam Smith said “Nothing happens until someone sells something”. Let that be the only guiding philosophy for your business. Customers are the only place the money comes form.

Market orientation from the CEO down

The past two decades have seen accountants in great profusion amongst the ranks of our CEOs. Now’s the time to cotton on to the simple reality that the future is about achieving growth, not cutting costs. CEO roles must now be filled by marketers.

Market Oriented organisational structures

There are many aspects to the implementation of this but a key one is doing something about structures where the strategy is done at the top of the pyramid whilst the customer is served at the bottom of the pyramid.

Investment in strong brands

So much more than a visual identify, a Brand is where the relationship with the customer exists – it defines it, articulates it and nurtures it. It is made up of one element of raw material – behaviour. The brand is the sum total of every behaviour, however small, in which a business engages, good & bad.

Rigorous & dynamic marketing planning

Almost unbelievably, many businesses in New Zealand still do not have any formal marketing planning process, let alone one that begins and ends with the market.

Business Plans that navigate the business

The “annual planning round” that results in a document gathering dust on a shelf and which bears little or no resemblance to what is actually done in the business is still disappointingly common. Bit like doing a flight plan and leaving it back at the airport.

A Culture of “Mini Marketing Directors”

You may well have a Marketing Director in an Italian suit who drives a European car and attends many conferences, events & functions. But if you also have front line and/or highly visible staff who have no idea what marketing is then you are missing a very big trick. Turn every member of your staff into a mini-marketing director and ensure that every little bit of exposure of your brand, through them, is as you would want it to be.

Market oriented remuneration

It is plain daft when a business lectures its’ people on the importance of long term customer relationships and then pays them based on achievement of this month’s sales or next month’s specials.

An integrated CRM Strategy

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) means precisely what the name suggests. Fifty years ago the corner dairy owner knew instinctively what this meant and carried it out with aplomb. Today, technology means that every business, however large, can and must apply the same principles of managing relationships with customers rather than leaving them to chance.

Deployment of IMC

Integrated Marketing Communications ensures that all communications with the market (formal and informal) are meticulously planned and integrated to ensure that consistent messages are delivered, thus ensuring greater communications effect, greater leverage of relationships and greater cost efficiencies.

A Culture of Celebration & Recognition

Truly market oriented businesses ensure their people have fun doing great things for great customers.