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Customer Manufacturing Update |  |
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Dear Mitchell, Welcome to the March 2005 Customer Manufacturing Update. This month's white paper looks at the people issues involved with reorganizations. Sometimes people are all too forgotten ... or taken for granted. It was written by Bayard Bookman (bayard@customermfg.com) of our Santa Clara, CA office. If you have friends or colleagues who would appreciate receiving this e-zine, feel free to forward a copy to them using the "Forward e-mail" link at the bottom of the e-zine.
The more things change, the essential element remains the same; it's the power of your people to produce results that count. Far too many reorganization projects tend to serve the structure itself and not your customers, and it's your people, not the scaffolding, who serve your customers. This month's white paper, Let's Reorganize! That Way, We Won't Have to Really Learn How To Manage, considers the underlying people issues too often ignored.
Mass media is moving as quickly as possible to provide feedback to their users regarding advertising. The value of feedback from Internet-based advertising is moving more spend in that direction. To keep from being left behind, much of the mass media is trying to find ways to get more detailed information to their advertisers. A new technology is being tested to monitor the actual listeners to particular radio stations in real time, by location. Mobiltrak is testing montioring devices in public areas that can sense which radio stations car radios are tuned to. (Not to worry, they don't know it's your car.) Mobiltrak can provide real-time listener data by location to radio stations and their advertisers. In California this method is being taken a step further (it is California you know), and the listener data (in this case monitored by Smart Sign Media) is being used to make demographic estimates and then modify nearby electronically changeable billboards to reflect target ads. While your first reaction may be focused on intrusion, there is no real privacy issue as they do not know who is listening to what, but they can use the information to improve advertising effectiveness, and when an ad delivers information you find valuable, it is not intrusive.
Al Ries (father of the term positioning) recently wrote an article for Ad Age where he lamented the sorry state of CEO's understanding of marketing. Ries points out that many CEOs believe that marketing is just "common sense," and they have plenty of that, so how tough can marketing be anyway? Maybe that's why the average tenure of CMOs in large companies is less than 2 years. Ries suggests that successful marketing is 90% strategy and 10% execution. While this may fly in the face of current management beliefs that execution is "everything," we believe Ries makes a good point. He correctly points out that good strategy improves execution. In fact, a good strategy allows for better execution. Consider Dell as an example. As we pointed out a few months ago, there is not an agreed upon definition of what the Chief Marketing Officer does, because there is not an agreed upon definition of marketing. It is impossible to improve something that you cannot even define what it is supposed to do. This needs to change or, as Ries suggests ... Marketing is in trouble.
In 1985 (only 20 years ago) the U.S. Big Three auto makers held a 76% share of the U.S. auto market. Today those three automakers (excluding their foreign owned brands like Volvo, Saab, etc.) hold a 56% share. Down 20 points in 20 years. Plot that trend and you can see when the bottom drops out. This is an extension of a trend that goes back to the 50s when GM alone had over a 50% market share. How long do you think this is going to last? How much longer are the U.S. automakers going to try to extract concessions from their suppliers (many of the best are defecting to supporting the foreign makers in their U.S. operations)? When will these companies (or their Boards) wake up and see that they no longer "think like a customer?" Hopefully before market share hits zero.
We appreciate any feedback you can provide to help us make sure these Updates give you value each month. Feel free to respond to this e-mail with any comments or suggestions for future topics or ways we can make these Customer Manufacturing Updates more valuable to you.
Thank you for your interest, and if we can provide
any
additional assistance in sales, marketing, strategy, or
innovation to help you increase your sales,
let us know.
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