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Agility In The Marketplace. And so it is that we slowly grind our way towards the close of another year. This is the time that I usually take stock of what I've learned, who I've met and where I've been that made the year worth living. I must admit that the events of the year have been an education in and of themselves. The Election certainly pulled our chain to the vast differences in our cultural landscape and our perceptions of America's values. |
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The other aspect of this year's educational process has been the global erosion of Americas' goodwill abroad and the resultant impact on our so-called global branding practices. Scary stuff to those of us who are adverse to risk and concerned with change. But critical input to anyone charged with creating or driving demand creation activities. For me, this year changes everything. All of my assumptions on a local as well as global basis are now in flux. |
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How do you know so much about so many things?-Gladys L.. Pittsburgh Google.-HW |
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I see your posts on Adrants and I read your column sometimes. When do you ever get time to do any real advertising? that is for anybody other than your self? Jack, R. Duluth, MN I am my favorite client, but I never pay my bill and I may have to resign my account-HW |
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As far as 2005 is concerned, all bets are off. We will be learning as we go. In some ways these can be thought of as exciting times. Those of us who thrive on change, turn on dimes and adapt in milliseconds are now in our element. Those of us who are set in our ways, devotees of the tried and true, players by the book are now null and void. Change Management, that's the new world order. One of my current clients is a major player in enterprise level business process engineering. They didn't know that before we started working together. They thought they were in the IT Infrastructure business. They thought the CTO was their customer. They thought speeds and feeds were their competitive edge. Wrong. Business agility. That's what will ring their cash register. "When an enterprise is slow to respond to change, or fails to perceive weaknesses exposed by changing dynamics in the marketplace, it is referred to as a strategic failure." That's how biz consultants Booze, Allen, Hamilton put it back in September of 2000. Today the landscape is littered with the corpses and burned out shells of those businesses that were then considered "strategic failures," even while some posed as the darlings of Wall Street. E-Hobbies, Enron, WorldCom, Southern Pacific"gone. Did their marketing people have a clue that the writing was on the wall? Probably. Did anybody listen their warnings? Probably not. It's difficult to see change before it happens. It's even more difficult to see change while it happens. But strangely enough for some firms, it's impossible to see change after it happens. That's because to many people within the command structure have spent too much time denying that change was even an issue, so how can it already have happened. Demand forecasting, change management, futurism; all of these disciplines rely on a device called the cone of probability. The purpose of this devise is to aid in planning events based upon the known, the probable and the unknown. The premise being that if we attempt to surmise the unknowns, prepare for the probables and assess the knowns we will be more agile in dealing with all of them. Strange how such thinking never quite makes it into the creative process in advertising. Conventional agency thinking has it that the targeted consumer is standing right over there. Go out, build yourself a gun, machine yourself a few rounds, fire a few test shots, now draw a bead squeeze the trigger and hit her right between the eyes six months later. She'll hang out on that street corner waiting for you to get your act together. Ridiculous. Far better to say, our consumer goes here, here and here during her shopping day. Tag her with this GPS device to make sure she sticks with the program. Forget the gun, forget the bullets. Use your finger. Sneak up behind her and stick it in her ribs. Get the purse and let her go. Now you've got her address, drivers license with her picture, credit card with her data and you know what brand of lipstick she uses. That's agility in the marketplace.
Turning Japanese. And so the saga begins. Last week we went out and rented,begged and borrowed 12 Mitsubishi Eclipses. What were the Screenwriters, Directors, Producers, SFX Gurus and Cinematographers that make up that Ad Hoc ad group we call "DoubleThink" looking for? A reason to fall in love. Any reason. A paint color. A seat cushion. The tone of the horn. Something, anything that gave us a personal connection with a couple thousand lbs. of glass, rubber, sheet metal and plastic. Anything. We hired 20 cute girls from USC and UCLA and sent them out to the LA Car Washes. We asked them to intercept Mitsubishi Owners and quiz them about the one thing they loved about their car. Five of the braver members of our band went to three Mitsu dealers and just hung out in the Service Departments evesdropping on customer conversations in the waiting rooms. In
other words we went everywhere and did everything that any self-respecting
agency team would do to find an edge. Something to build on How did we know the nameplate was dead? Nobody we talked to loved their car. Nobody we listened to had anything great to say about their dealership. We were in showrooms on a Saturday and the salesmen would have made more money in a crap game then they could on the floor. I asked five salesmen to tell me about the new 2005 Eclipse. Five salesmen were only interested in convincing me about the great deal they could make me on a 2004 Eclipse. "DoubleThink" really has its work cut out for us. One thing that's great about working with people that don't make ads for a living is that they have no idea, exactly how much trouble they're in when they bring back all this bad news. And far be it from me to wake them up. Because the one ray of light that did come shining through last week, got us all jazzed. The owner of a beautifully polished black rice-rocket with electric-blue rocker panel lights told one of the guys. "I live for my car. If I'm not behind the wheel, I'm dead inside" This wasn't love.This was something more. Something much, much more. Stay Tuned. |
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MARKETERS
FROM OGILVY
& MATHER ADRANTS BANK
OF AMERICA DELTA
AIR LINES And
You. |