Whew!  What a year it’s been.

Over the past year, my brain has pumped out 1778 tweets, 81 brand as business bites blog posts, 17 videos, 11 published articles, 11 brand as business brief newsletters, 10 podcast interviews, 8 QSR Magazine columns, 8 Slideshare documents, 7 speaking engagements, 3 guest blog posts, and countless random thoughts – not to mention all the client work I’ve been blessed with this year.  No wonder I’m tired!

Here are 10 of the best bits from this seemingly-eclectic but definitely-strategic collection of content:

1.  Marketing Myopia – a brand as business bites blog post about whether marketers should try to increase the marketing function in the organization or whether they should try to increase the marketing capability of the entire organization.

2.  Build Your Brand by Operationalizing It – a guest post on the MENG blog, MENG Blend in which I suggest that instead of thinking about brand-building as an externally-oriented activity, we shift to more internally-directed efforts.

3.  The Sharp Experience All-Staff Assembly Highlight Reel – highlights from Sharp Healthcare’s  re-commitment of its 20,000+ people to the organization’s vision and values (see accompanying blog post for background and my key takeaways).

4.  Maslow, Emotion and a Hierarchy of Service – a guest post on Roger Dooley’s fantastic Neuromarketing blog about the Maslow-like hierarchy which exists when it comes to meeting consumer needs and motivations with customer service.

5.  Six Best Practices in Retail – a brand as business bites blog post outlining what extraordinary retailers like The Container Store and Wegman’s do best

6.  Not Just a Punchcard — one of my columns in QSR Magazine which argues that most quick serves don’t understand that building loyalty takes more than handing out punch cards and promotions.

7.  Brand Promise:Reality Gap – a post about the average of 48% of people who say there’s a big difference between what fast feeders promise in their advertising and what they experience at the chains’ restaurants (see accompanying video).

8.  Marketing Is Losing Its Mojo – an article published by Adweek in which I explain that it seems the pursuit of breakthrough marketing creativity has taken a back seat to work on more predictable and achievable efforts.

9.  Notes & Quotes from Seth Godin – insights and soundbites from a talk Seth Godin gave at a LinkedOC event about his new book Linchpin:  Are You Indispensible?

10.  Ben McConnell on Employees as Brand Evangelists — a podcast interview with Ben McConnell, one of the most influential online marketers, about employees as brand evangelists and other developments in today’s participatory culture.

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Thanks so much to all of you who read, share, and comment on my content.  I learn so much from you and I’ve enjoyed meeting people from around the world.  Looking forward to a great 2011!

Have a blessed holiday!  (brand as business bites will resume on 01.04.11 — in the meantime, check out more best bites!)

Sometime in the next year or two, I predict U.S. companies will undergo a human resources crisis. As businesses stabilize and people become accustomed to a certain degree of economic uncertainty, a high level of turnover is likely to threaten companies’ recoveries.

Employees who survived multiple rounds of layoffs over the last couple of years have become burnt out from taking on more work for lower pay and reduced benefits. They’ve likely developed some battle wounds as they’ve conflicted with managers over scarce resources and under-funded projects and fielded complaints from customers who’ve been dissatisfied by the less-than-stellar service that’s resulted from staffing shortages. Many of the folks who were laid off have taken on jobs they don’t really want at companies they don’t really want to work for, just to secure a steady paycheck. As soon as people suspect there are other options, they’ll start looking for the first opportunity to leave.

I am not alone in my prediction. In a recent New York Times Preoccupations column Jon Picoult, founder and principal of Watermark Consulting, wrote, “Layoffs, cutbacks and stress inflicted on employees in the economic downtown have left many of them discontented and disengaged…A turnover storm is looming.” And I’ve heard similar remarks from recruiters and human resources consultants. People are itching to jump ship. It’s not a question of ‘if,’ it’s only a matter of ‘when.’

Companies need to prepare for this crisis by shoring up their human resources capabilities — ensuring their recruiting efforts are primed to attract new talent and their on-boarding and training is ready to smoothly integrate a wave new people into the organization. But they also should try to offset the crisis, turning their attention from workforce reduction to workforce retention.

Companies should invest in employee engagement now before it’s too late. Back in 2009, the Gallup organization determined that less than 30% of the corporate workforce is truly engaged in its work.  That figure has probably only gotten worse as pent-up frustration has kept pace with pressures to post signs of recovery.

Employees’ intellectual and emotional fulfillment from and commitment to their employers needs to be strengthened. Not only is an engaged employee less likely to leave their company, they’re also more likely to support the company’s interests and contribute to its success.

According to another report by Gallup, firms with high employee engagement levels enjoy 12% higher customer advocacy, 18% higher productivity, and 12% higher profitability. Best Buy provides a great case study: for every one-tenth-of-a-point increase in employee engagement, each store increased profits by $100,000 a year.

So there’s a strong case for making employee engagement a priority now more than ever – and I would go one step further to advocate for employee brand engagement.

By employee brand engagement, I mean the positive, multi-dimensional connection between employees and the company’s brand. This is more than what typically results when companies do internal marketing or “invertising” and employees are considered an audience which must “buy” what the marketing team is selling. Feeling good about the organization and having a positive outlook on its future are important, but they’re not likely to address employees’ more deeply rooted needs for personal significance and reward.

When employees are truly engaged with the brand, they are involved in the development and delivery of brand value to customers. They are informed, inspired, and well-instructed on how to support the brand in their daily decision-making. Employees who are engaged with the brand play a critical role in the way the brand is experienced by all stakeholders. They see themselves as “brand operators” who develop, maintain, and activate the brand across all of their activities — and this serves as a point of pride and reason for increased commitment to the organization.

Instead of generic or disparate initiatives to increase employees’ engagement, companies should use their brands. A brand is the strongest engagement tool a business has because of its power to connect. Employee brand engagement connects:

1. employees to customers – A brand helps people understand how the company serves customers. It defines the unique value the company delivers to customers and why that value is so important. When employees understand how what they do ultimately impacts the customer, they have a clearer understanding of what is expected of them and how they can be most effective. And satisfied customers are an immediate, obvious, and tangible reward.
2. employees to each other – A brand also defines the unique way a company interacts with all of its stakeholders – from front-line employees to the executive team, from vendors to buyers, and between business partners. It unites people with a common objective, drives the values and culture which determine how people treat each other, and sets a high standard of work for everyone.
3. employees to a higher purpose – A brand gives more meaning and importance to a person’s work by speaking to the broader mission of the organization. Just as consumers’ expectations of companies are rising, so are employees’ – most want to know the company is about more than making money.

Employee brand engagement isn’t a cure-all – some well-engaged people will still choose to leave. More money, for one, can be a strong draw to leave. But for many, experiencing the connections the brand provides is a more powerful motivator to stay.

Of course, none of this is true if the organization views the brand merely as an expression of what it does. Employee brand engagement requires that the company uses the brand as a tool for driving the business.

Here are some of my writings on that topic:

• gaining the competitive edge
• missing the brand boat
• operationalizing brands with new technologies

In a post earlier this week, I started to address why some companies don’t operationalize their brands.  I suggested that there are 3 kinds of business leaders who fail to leverage the full potential of their brands.

The first are Naives:  “Naives simply do not understand the full potential of their brand.  That the brand is the core of the company is a foreign concept to these business leaders.  They don’t know what they don’t know.”

Then there are Aspirers:  “These people are knowledgeable about brands and definitely interested in leveraging them more broadly and substantially, but they don’t know how or they’ve run into roadblocks in their efforts to do so.”

Today we come to Emperors.

The last group of business leaders is comprised of people who think they are leveraging the full role and value of brands, but they really aren’t. Just as the emperor in the popular children’s tale foolishly wore clothes made of “invisible” cloth, these “Emperors” fool themselves and others into thinking that creative ads and clever marketing programs are enough to build a brand.  They spend a lot of money and energy on promoting their brand externally, but they don’t consider or they even ignore the internal, operational changes needed to actually deliver their brands’ value.

Unlike Naives whose omission of a brand-driven management approach may be attributed to their lack of knowledge, Emperors’ resistance is the product of skepticism.  They choose imperial nakedness out of distrust and cynicism about brands.

They think of operations and brand as two separate things.  In Emperors’ minds, the operations of the company fulfill the purpose and objectives of the business – i.e., making a product, offering a service, etc. – while the brand is the icing on the cake.  But when you operationalize the brand, there is no such distinction.

Emperors are often entrepreneurs who thrive on launching new ideas but who are less skilled at driving an operational system in a focused, integrated, consistent manner.  In an effort to propel their new business, these entrepreneurial Emperors often develop creative ideas on a one-off basis and disregard the disconnect between their aspirational vision of the brand and the stark reality of a fledgling operation.

Leaders of image-oriented businesses such as fashion and automotive also tend to be Emperors.  Because their customers’ purchase decisions seem to be based primarily on style and status, their focus tends to be on what the company says (the image it projects in advertising and marketing) vs. what it really does (the value it delivers in daily operations.)

And some retailers and restaurant leaders are Emperors because they are so preoccupied with pricing and promotions that they overlook many of the opportunities to build their brand through the in-store customer experience.

Really Emperors can be found in all sectors of business.  Most company leaders don’t operationalize their brands because they are skeptical of the brand’s role as a business driver.  They wrongly resist putting stock in something they consider to be too conceptual or qualitative to pass muster in an analytical or performance culture.

An intervention may be the only way to challenge an Emperor.  Only when forced to be thoughtful and honest about the way they currently view and use their brand will they discover the gap between delusion and reality.

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If you’re on the client side of the business, I’m curious to hear whether you see yourself in any of these 3 descriptions – Naives, Aspirers, or Emperors — or perhaps you’re someone who “gets it?!”  If you’re on the service provider side of the business, what kind of leaders do you most commonly encounter?  Please let me know!

My intent in outlining these categorizations is not to judge or criticize people – in fact, it’s the opposite.  I hope this might be a helpful step on everyone’s brand-building journey.  If we clearly understand the challenges before us, there’s a greater likelihood of surmounting them.

related posts:

• why not operationalize brands? part 1
• what’s a brand for?
• express vs. operationalize

Over coffee the other day a colleague asked me a question I actually get asked a lot:  Do you find that people “get it?”  By “it” he was referring to operationalizing the brand, the approach I teach and help my clients implement.  He asked because he’s found, as have I, that although many company leaders claim to understand the difference between expressing and operationalizing a brand, the fact is, most don’t put their brand in the driver’s seat of their organization.

Our talk prompted me to think about why this is the case.  Most business leaders are eager to leverage the full potential of their brands, but they’re not following through. 

I concluded that most are held back by holes in their experience, roadblocks in their organizations, or their own blinders.  I would say business leaders fall into one of three categories when it comes to the subject of operationalizing their brands.  (In today’s post, I’ll outline the first two, and later this week, I’ll conclude with the third.)

Naives.  Some business leaders can be described as “Naive” — those who think of brands only in literal terms.  To Naives, a brand is simply a logo or perhaps at most an advertising campaign.

The buzz that brands have received in recent years has piqued the interest of Naives but they’ve been misled by misinformation from so-called experts.  Many agencies, consultants, and even authors talk about “branding” in terms of slapping the company logo on everything, or using a particular color or tagline consistently, or working the social media circuit.  As a result, after researching how to build their brand, Naives usually end up with a long list of things they think they should be doing, but they remain unconvinced that any of them are going to have an impact on their bottom line.

Not surprisingly, executives with technical or financial backgrounds usually fall into this group.  In these leaders’ experience, brand development has usually been something relegated to the marketing department — so their exposure to what a brand really is and how to use it properly has been limited.

Salespeople are also often Naives, because of their relentless focus on the sale.  Brands may serve as fodder for a great sales presentation, many salespeople believe, but they’re unsure of their value beyond that.  And leaders of B2B and technology companies may not recognize how a strong brand can impact their relationship- or innovation-based business models.

Naives simply do not understand the full potential of their brand. That the brand is the core of the company is a foreign concept to these business leaders.  They don’t know what they don’t know.

In order for Naives to operationalize their brands, they need to learn to think about brands differently.  An open mind and a willingness to test a new approach are the required first steps for these folks.

Aspirers. Another category of business leaders are “Aspirers.”  These people are knowledgeable about brands and definitely interested in leveraging them more broadly and substantially, but they don’t know how or they’ve run into roadblocks in their efforts to do so.

A typical Aspirer is a former Chief Marketing Officer who has taken on line operating responsibilities – a common occurrence at packaged goods companies.  Having worked with brands throughout their careers, these Aspirers see the potential brands have for creating value throughout the organization but they lack the internal traction to implement the brand-driven approach.

Other Aspirers may have previously worked at or heard about other companies which have opertionalized their brands and are interested in engaging a similar one in their organization.

For Aspirers the key needs are instruction and equipping.  They need to learn the specific tools and methodologies and examples which make a solid business case for operationalizing the brand.  They need help in conveying the importance of the brand to every stakeholder of their organization and persuading them to adopt the brand as the driver of the business.

I hope this has provided some good food for thought so far.  Please check back on Thursday for my description of the final group of business leaders who aren’t operationalizing their brands.

related posts:

• brands vs. branding
• gaining the competitive edge
• missing the brand boat

A couple of months ago I gave a workshop on my topic “Brand as Business:  How Companies Drive Business Growth by Operationalizing Their Brands.”  Feedback was so positive I thought I’d get a brief video of excerpts made to share with my readers here.    Please check it out and let me know what you think (run time:  approx. 8 minutes).

denise lee yohn brand as business workshop from Denise Yohn on Vimeo.

Attention:  fast food marketers – you’re wasting half of your advertising!

But I’m not talking about the waste that John Wanamaker was referring to in his famous quip about not knowing which half of his advertising was being wasted.  I’m talking about the average of 48% of people who say there’s a big difference between what you promise in your advertising and what they experience at your restaurants.

This gap between your brand promise and your brand reality is one of the findings from research I recently conducted on QSRs*.

It’s no surprise that the everyday fast food experience doesn’t measure up to the fresh food, friendly service, and fun environment depicted in category advertising — but a disconnect of this degree is disturbing.  Even more troubling is that up to 66% of customers report a gap between the brand promise and brand reality for some chains!

I’ll keep the names of the worst offenders confidential, but I will reveal that the list includes a company which recently undertook a “rebranding” effort (i.e., new logo and visual identity) and another which recently announced plans to roll-out a value promotion.  While these changes might have been important, I can’t help but wonder if the effectiveness of these efforts will be limited because their in-restaurant experience isn’t delivering on the brand promise.

The findings from my research have serious implications for marketers in the fast food category and beyond.  Given that 64% of CMOs and brand managers at a wide range of organizations say their brands do not influence decisions made at their companies (see a previous post of mine on this shocking finding), it’s likely there’s a disconnect between the brand aspirations and operational reality at most companies.

The brand promise:reality gap suggests that instead of fretting over brand campaigns, companies’ brand-building efforts might be more successful if they were directed toward the actual customer experience.

Sure, the company’s ops department is responsible for ensuring operational excellence in the customer experience – but for most chains, competitive advantage is largely dependent upon the values and attributes which differentiate the brand.  So, operations must be about more than delivering efficiency and quality.  Aligning the customer experience with the brand vision is critical to establishing and sustaining a strong brand.

Furthermore actions speak louder than words and the research findings make it clear companies need help putting brand values and attributes into action.

One way to do this is to use a brand toolbox to inspire, inform, and instruct everyone in your organization how to interpret and reinforce your brand.

A brand toolbox is a collection of tools such as:

• a brand strategy users’ manual which explains the brand essence and positioning and the rationale behind them
• principles and guidelines for delivering brand values and attributes in day-to-day situations
• decision guides and process outlines to facilitate on-brand decision-making and behaviors
• virtual reality platforms which enable employees to practice using brand principles to deliver customer experiences consistent with the brand promise
• a forum through which employees can share their insights about how to bring the brand to life

Importantly a brand toolbox isn’t some yay-rah-rah feel good “invertising” effort which simply promotes the brand to employees. Nor is it a dense training manual which collects dust on a shelf.  It’s a dynamic resource integrated into the company’s standard operating procedures.

It requires active engagement and consistent updating – and an investment of time and money.  Come to think of it, developing and managing a brand toolbox is similar to developing and managing a brand campaign. But instead of simply promoting an image, it helps translate that image into remarkable customer experiences.

In today’s resource-constrained environment, a company cannot afford to spend its precious marketing dollars on a brand campaign only to see them wasted when the customer walks through the door.  Closing the brand vision:promise gap needs to be a top priority.

p.s.  A brand toolbox is only one of several ways to close the brand vision:promise gap.  Please contact me to learn about others:  mail AT deniseleeyohn DOT com.

* survey was fielded among over 200 moms with kids

related posts:

• invertising
• what’s a brand for

I read with great interest an article in SmartBusiness about Red Mango and the yummy yogurt chain’s founder, president, and CEO of Red Mango, Dan Kim.  I’m fascinated by the frozen yogurt chains that have emerged on the cultural landscape in last 5 years.  Pinkberry has probably gotten the most coverage in the press, with its high design aesthetic and celebrity fans, but there are plenty of others in the game including Red Mango.  The category is very crowded with operators of all sizes competing in a relatively small niche with punch cards and discount days.  Building brand awareness and shoring up a loyal customer base are particular challenges, which is in part why I’m so interested in the category (liking fro yo also has something to do with it too!)

In the SB piece, Dan explains his thinking and approach to building the Red Mango brand.  Clearly, this is a guy who gets it.  He believes in the power of his brand and he actively nurtures and protects it.  Here are my reactions to his comments, along with some suggestions for how he might ensure his brand-building efforts continue to be successful as the chain grows.

Good stuff
Dan’s commitment to the Red Mango brand is remarkable:

• It’s his primary focus. He says, “We always start with, ‘Who do we want to be when we grow up and who are we as a brand?’…We always keep that top of mind in terms of everything we do.”  And he keeps his focus on it.  “If you constantly change who you want to become, the strength of your brand goes away.  If you try to do too much and address too many things, you stretch yourself too thin and really can’t accomplish anything.”
• He’s clearly articulated what the brand stands for and has documented it in a digestible, memorable form.  Unlike many entrepreneurs, he didn’t just assume that his employees would know what is in his head – nor that explaining it once is enough. He created a “brand trifecta” that outlines the brand’s core values and there’s a “MangoFesto” in the form of a poster in each store that explains to employees what the goals and philosophy are.  Dan says, “The thing that you can do that’s not cool is you write [a brand manifesto] once, and you never come back to it, and it gets lost.  You have to make that part of the cultural fabric of your organization.”
• He also uses the brand as a filter for decision-making.  In other words, he operationalizes the brand platform in key decisions about what the company should or should not do.  Frozen yogurt in cones didn’t pass the brand test but papaya as a new topping did.

The next level
Dan’s brand-building efforts have paid off.  Last year, the company received a $12 million cash infusion and they’ve been successful enough to recently launch an aggressive franchise push with the goal of opening 550 locations over the next five years.  That kind of growth will present a host of challenges, not the least of which is maintaining the priority on the brand.

It’s a common problem.  When a company is smaller, there are fewer players who need to “get” the brand.  And as long as the founder (or whatever role the brand champion might play) is actively involved in the daily operations of the business and as accessible to employees, it’s fairly easy to stay on track.  But issues arise as growth inherently brings more people to inculcate, more opportunities to assess, and more touchpoints to align.

A couple of tools and approaches will help Red Mango and other companies aspiring to grow their brands and their businesses:

Competitive positioning. I’ve found the best brand strategies are actually brand platforms comprised of a brand identity (what the brand stands for) and a competitive brand positioning (how the brand compares).  The brand identity is based on the key values and attributes of the brand – including the brand essence or core belief.  The competitive brand positioning outlines the target, the competitive frame of reference and how the brand is optimally positioned in that frame, and the unique benefit of the brand.

Some companies only outline one part of the brand platform but both are important.  You must understand the defining values and attributes of your brand (brand identity) but without a competitive positioning, you aren’t indicating how you will use those core elements to establish competitive advantage.  And you must outline how you compare with other options, but without a solid brand identity, you won’t have the foundation that drives consistency and focus.  Furthermore, the brand identity should remain constant; the competitive brand positioning might change over time as the target audience or the competitive landscape changes.  The two parts of the platform are complementary and symbiotic.

The Red Mango brand essence is outlined in the SB article:  it’s the convergence of health, taste and style.  The piece, however, didn’t speak to the chain’s competitive strategy.  Perhaps a competitive brand positioning exists, but if it doesn’t, I would encourage Dan to clearly articulate one.  And in particular, getting the competitive frame of reference (i.e., the mental file folder that the target puts your brand in) is key.  I’m guessing it’s not simply other fro yo brands (although carving out a unique position in that category is important) – but also other quick serves as well as buy/make at home options.

Empowering stakeholders. In explaining the aforementioned no-go decision on the cone idea, Dan relayed that it was a franchisee who suggested the idea and it was Dan and his executive team that assessed the opportunity.   As the chain grows, it will become increasingly important for others including franchisees to be able to make their own assessments.  Otherwise the executive committee will become a bottleneck for decision-making and a barrier to growth.

I suggest an effort to inspire, inform, and instruct everyone about the brand and how they should interpret and reinforce it in their daily decision-making.   A brand toolbox is an effective way to do so. The collection of tools in a brand toolbox:

• relays the brand identity and positioning along with the background and rationale to increase understanding and buy-in, and outline principles and examples to guide appropriate brand execution
• connects people to a purpose and values bigger than themselves, get them excited about working on the brand, and motivate them to adopt behaviors which support it
• helps people make decisions and take actions that are “on brand” through interactive exercises and decision guides

A brand toolbox can take a variety of forms – workbooks, videos, website, downloads, or a combination of these – the important thing is to develop one that engages everyone who works on the brand.

Aligning stakeholders. A brand toolbox can also be helpful in aligning all stakeholders and their expectations.  At one point, Dan laments, “…you have a lot of outsiders or board members or executive managers who don’t understand how the strategy is executed in regards to having the right resources, then you’re in a situation where you just constantly want to do more and more things without people understanding why you can’t do them.”

He’s talking about brand stakeholders and the real need to align them in order to garner their support.  Board members for example significantly influence the value the organization delivers and the way it does business through their strategic, high-level guidance on things like resource allocation and M&A activity. The businesses a company works with to develop, make, distribute, and sell the product — vendors, strategic alliances, distribution channels, service providers, franchisees/affiliates, etc.– are stakeholders in the brand. The number and range of stakeholders only grows as your business grows.

By fleshing out what the brand is and how it is used, a brand toolbox facilitates brand understanding among these audiences.

Imagine your brand as a source of light. In an ideal world, the light of your brand would shine strongly and directly on its intended target. However the current marketplace is far from ideal and so your brand’s light becomes quite diffused and unfocused in the clutter and competition that exists between your brand and its target.

Brand stakeholders actually function as filters for your brand light. Essentially your stakeholders are situated between your brand and its target. Each stakeholder bends and directs the light in their respective roles.

Problems arise when different stakeholders bend and direct the light in different ways. The result? A mess of light rays all pointed in different directions and none focused on the target.

Your stakeholders need to be aligned so that you end up with a laser-like beam of brand value delivered to your target. While it may seem that the people and groups who comprise your brand stakeholders are independently-operating entities fulfilling a specific function or playing a particular role, a more accurate picture is that they are linked together in a brand value delivery chain.

A brand toolbox is a great way to reinforce this linkage.  Sometimes there is a need to protect or segment some parts of a brand toolbox, but generally speaking the more transparent you can be about what your brand is all about and how you’re operationalizing it, the better.

I hope these suggestions are helpful not only to Dan and his team at Red Mango, but to all business leaders who are passionate about their brands and about growth.

related posts:

• simple brand tools
• if a brand has something to say, say it

Last week’s Ad Age featured an article called “Why It’s Time to Do Away With the Brand Manager.” The piece, and the Forrester research report which inspired it, argues for “changing the name ‘brand manager‘ to ‘brand advocate,’ and fundamentally changing marketer organizations in response to the onset of the digital age.” It reminded me of an article I wrote several years ago.

Outlining my thoughts on the key roles needed in any marketing department, I argued for the creation of a position called “brand operator” — someone whose role it is to drive brand operationalization. I thought I’d share with you the full article now. I considered updating it to acknowledge the new marketing and communication tools that have arisen since I wrote the piece, but the more I thought about it, I realized that wasn’t necessary. The tools may have changed, but I believe the fundamental marketing roles I outlined are evergreen:

A CMO’s Dream Team

The 1995-96’s Bulls. The 1992 Clinton election team. These are dream teams. Extraordinary individuals who come together to accomplish extraordinary results. Marketing, like sports or politics, requires highly skilled people at the top of their game, working together seamlessly to compete and win.

Chief marketing officers, like coaches and other leaders, who seek dream teams must assemble remarkable individuals to generate remarkable results. In the past, CMOs knew who they needed on their team – some smart brand managers and some functional experts in research and media.

But the marketing landscape has changed dramatically and the skill sets and experiences needed on a CMO’s marketing bench have changed just as dramatically. New media, market fragmentation, and brand proliferation have given birth to new ways to go to market and new challenges in doing so. Today CMOs need to rethink the types of marketing expertise they need on the team.

Here are 6 types of players that can help produce winning results in today’s marketing environment:

1.  A Brand Operator – This isn’t just a fancy new label for the old brand manager function – a Brand Operator contributes a whole different perspective, skill set, and expertise. While brand managers manage activities to promote the brand, Brand Operators operationalize brands throughout the entire Company. Brands represent a way of doing things that should drive business strategy, define operating processes, and impact company culture. As such, a CMO needs someone to activate the brand in all of these areas – working with senior management, operational teams, and human resources. A Brand Operator is someone who truly understands the Company’s business and who can overcome organizational barriers to get things done.

2.  A Connections Planner – With the proliferation of new media options and the fragmentation of traditional ones, a CMO needs someone who understands the impact of different touchpoints on how customers make purchase decisions. A Connections Planner is savvy about search marketing, branded entertainment, and weblogs as well as traditional media – and is always on the lookout for emerging opportunities. He or she combines knowledge about customers’ lifestyles and media usage/exposure with data-based analyses of the efficiency and effectiveness of the different avenues to communicate with them. The result is strategies for making relevant and salient connections between the brand and its target. Until and unless agencies demonstrate the ability to plan and buy media agnostically, the responsibility for Connections Planning must remain an internal function.

3.  A Creative Leader – Far too often, CMOs leave leadership of the brand’s creative expression up to the advertising agency. In rare instances, this may come to make sense over time — but generally speaking, there is too frequent turnover of creative directors and/or agencies themselves to maintain consistency and explore the richness of brand understanding that develops only through many years. Furthermore, a Creative Leader provides inspiration and direction for the expression of the brand at all touchpoints — from tradeshow booths to corporate headquarters to salespeople’s collateral. He or she does this through an intuitive understanding of the essence of the brand and a vision for the brand’s ambitions.

4.  Customer Experts – A CMO needs a Customer Expert for each segment of the Company’s existing customers/prospects and at least one dedicated to uncovering new sources of business. While market researchers have historically been tagged as the “voice of the customer,” this approach falls short of the marketing need. The team needs someone who is more interested in customers than in methodologies — someone who synthesizes insights from all sources of information (database analyses, store audits, cultural scanning, syndicated shopping data, and even “grandmother research”) along with primary consumer research to develop a rich profile and deep understanding of the target customers.

5.  An Investment Analyst – Today’s boardroom requires a CMO to prove the return on marketing investments – and so a CMO requires an Investment Analyst on the team. This person implements the infrastructure and process for collecting the necessary marketing data, analyzes and evaluates marketing investments on a timely basis and in an objective manner, and makes recommendations for future budget allocation. Although the CFO’s office should be consulted, the job shouldn’t be left to controllers. A finance-savvy marketer will figure out how to account for, not dismiss, the subjectivity that comes with the marketing territory – and he or she will be familiar with market research data that can be used in the analyses.

6.  An Independent Advisor – The CMO needs an Independent Advisor for the same reasons Tony Soprano needs his conciliare and Jon Gruden needs a defensive coordinator on headset with a bird’s eye view of the game. When you’re in the trenches, it’s sometimes hard to see the forest for the trees – and it’s even harder to be objective about something the whole team has been passionately pursuing. Free from bandwidth and political constraints, an Independent Advisor can provide the big picture view when a reality check is needed — or dig deep into a problem to uncover an elusive diagnosis. He or she can be the source for “the word on the street,” contribute perspectives from different categories and brands, and play the role of a talent scout.

These 6 types of players can form the foundation for a winning marketing team. Of course, this begs the question of the role of the CMO.

I suggest the CMO’s primary role is one of a maestro – the conductor who brings out the specific talents of each player and brings them together to produce a great work. The CMO has the vision and recruits people with the potential to deliver it, entices and enables them to see it, and enrolls them in engaging in it – and then eliminates distractions and shores up resources. Moreover, a maestro determines spirit and style, setting the culture in which the team will operate.

The right players with the right leader and the right culture. This is the stuff dreams — dream teams, that is — are made of.

(image above is from Bill Frakes/SI)

related posts:

• invertising
• on marketing and leadership

My Patagonia catalog arrived in the mail today and I was reminded once again of all the things the Patagonia brand does that don’t seem to make sense — but they do.  The catalog’s inside cover spread,

featuring a picture of fallen rock climber Zoe Hart and the story about her breathtaking fall and valiant recovery, captivated me…and yet it seemed to have nothing to do with Patagonia.

I mean, perhaps the clothes and shoes which Zoe is wearing in the photograph are from Patagonia — but there was no indication of such — and even if they are, you can’t really see them very well or read any information about them.  Plus, they’re shown on Zoe as she lies in agony after her 30 foot fall –  I’m guessing most brands wouldn’t want their products shown in such a graphic context.

But that’s the point — Patagonia isn’t like most brands.  In fact, one could argue there is no other brand quite like it.  The company does things which leave most other businesses baffled.  Recently it got some buzz from its move to remove all packaging from its underwear  — take a look at the video from Fast Company in which Patagonia Founder Yvon Chouinard explains how much pushback he initially got from his team when he suggested making this change.

Other examples of Patagonia’s unique operations:

• it doesn’t confirm to industry practices — 16 of the 60 pages in its most recent catalog (over 25%) did not feature any products (2 of the pages were devoted to whooping cranes — yes, birds)
• exceeding generosity to its employees — it has an on-site child care center which it started back in the early 1980′s long before the practice was even considered by most companies — and it subsidizes a portion of the center’s operating costs so that employees can pay lower rates than they would elsewhere
• a faithful corporate steward — boom or bust, it gives 10% of its profits each year to small groups working to save or restore habitat
• willingness to be transparent and vulnerable to criticism — a few years ago it introduced a groundbreaking program, Footprint Chronicles, which allows people to track the carbon footprint of its products from manufacturer to point of purchase
• some pretty unbelievable innovations — the fabric of its Synchilla fleece is made out of post consumer recycled plastic soda bottles

I could go on — but instead, I’ll simply recommend you read the book, “Let My People Go Surfing,” a memoir/manifesto from Chouinard.  It is one of the best studies on “brand as business” — that is, how a company operationalizes its brand values.  The stories and principles relayed in the book provide a strong challenge to the way most people build a brand and run a business.

Which brings me back to my original point:  the Zoe Hart catalog spread which stopped me in my tracks was such a departure from the product- and sales-oriented catalogs du jour — it seemed to have nothing to do with Patagonia, but in fact, it had everything to do with it.

The Patagonia brand is all about courage, commitment, and challenging conventions — in everything it does.

related links:

• brand as business
• using your brand as the North Star of your business
• operationalizing the brand