Manhattan Marketing Maven

Measuring Marketing Magic

Marketing remains one of the elusive frontiers for performance management. For years marketing performance measurement (MPM) vendors have been working both sides of the aisle -- the CFO and the CMO -- in an attempt to define and measure marketing's magic and graft onto the marketing department the same fiscal discipline imposed throughout the corporate structure.   

For the last eight years VisionEdge Marketing has been surveying MPM issues and their 2009 report entitled, "Closing the Gap Between Marketing and Business" concludes that 

1. Marketing still has a long way to go to align with the business it supports and measure performance
2. Marketing departments still lack the skills to run themselves like a business
3. When  the marketing department measures; its not measuring the right customer-centric stuff.

You can get a 20% discount on the full report by clicking here.

These are sobering conclusions especially in a recession when every dime of marketing spend is under intense scrutiny by corporate and brand bean counters looking to hold back every marginal idea and expense. It also reinforces the stereotype of marketing guys as frisky kids masquerading as grown-ups in charge of the fun factory and accountable to no one. 

In practical terms, it seems obvious, at least to me, that the 23 month average CMO tenure documents the fact that CMOs are not playing the game as CEOs and CFOs see it. Few have invested in dedicated marketing operations people, essentially a COO for the marketing department, and even fewer have bought MPM packages or vendor services. And while a CMO's ears glaze over with the first mention of so-called "best practices" nobody is really happy with what gets measured or how they figure out how money spent by marketing impacts on the objectives of the business. 

What has caught on are dashboards. There are lots of them ranging from simple graphs to dramatic colorful eye-candy. But these devices are more show-and-tell than useful gauges of business success. Intended to be a "connection between marketing and business which facilitate fact-based strategic decisions", they are more CYA than FYI. The proof of this is that in spite of the dashboards, few top decision-makers see a clear correlation between money spent on marketing and advertising and sales or profitability goals. Herein lies the challenge -- connect the dots convincingly with enough data and intellectual rigor to withstand questions from the finance folks. 

What gets counted is political. Marketing guys count inputs. Finance guys want them to count outputs. There is also a bias toward counting the sexy acquisition programs rather than the under-loved and lower key retention programs which have a much more predictable impact on sales and customer satisfaction.

Since these are not new issues, I quizzed VisionEdge co-founder Laura Patterson , a serial entrepreneur who learned her marketing and measurement stripes in 14 years of service as a marketing executive at Motorola. Laura believes that CMOs need to build-into their consciousness and their tables of organization "a culture of accountability that's native to marketing." Rather than fear measurement marketers have to think about what they are trying to accomplish and craft measurement methods at the same time they craft big ideas.

Laura argues that this orientation starts with looking at the marketing activities that drive business value rather than simply measuring activity. If marketing programs are tasked to find, sell and retain customers, measurement must demonstrate how they did it or didn't do it and take a stab at explaining why. In her experience CFOs are less interested in exactly hitting the numbers than in marketing guys thinking and planning for results using a disciplined process which includes advance planning and post-campaign measurement. Among her clients, Laura reports a huge shift in perception when marketers create a process and set performance targets at the same time that they develop messaging and campaigns.

For top management, in Laura's view, measuring performance versus plan is table stakes for efficient operations and control. Marketers have to plan for expected results measured in business terms -- leads, revenues, share or market, margin contribution or repeat customers. Measuring the efficiency of the production process or the cost-per calculations of media efficiency are secondary. 

Bottom Line: The C Suite yearns for CMOs to tun the marketing department like a business. The 2009 Survey shows we're not even close.

 

Are Focus Groups Finished?

Four significant brands -- Tropicana,. Motrin, Facebook and the SciFi Channel -- made serious missteps recently; moves clearly the result of flawed customer research. Journalist Cathy Taylor and creative executive George Parker see this as evidence that focus groups --the dominant customer insight tool used by ad agencies -- are dead.

As a stand alone or dominant tool I agree. As part of a multi-dimensional research or brand planning matrix I'm not so sure.

The premise behind focus groups is to gather target customers and carefully probe their feelings, their  allegiances and their loyalty to the brand. Often sitting behind the one-way mirror you can glimpse the branding process at work. Frequently you can hear the language and the emotions that brand loyalists and those completely unaware of brands use to describe your product or service. 

We've known that these groups are inherently limited for years. There are significant challenges in recruiting that even $100 bucks and a steak dinner can't overcome not to mention the groupthink dynamic that can easily set in with a strong personality or an uncontrollable blabber in the room. Yet there are still very few tools that enable us to see, hear and watch our target customers as they interact with the brand and each other. 

Part of the over reliance on focus groups is a by product of the fact that traditional agency planners have little real training in survey techniques or interrogation methods and even less understanding about how online surveys, social media and guided web surfing can round out a picture of how customers and prospects perceive or interact with a brand. In a 24/7 cyber world no one in their right mind would rely on small numbers of self-selected subjects sitting in a small dark room to determine what a brand should say or how to say it. 

In too many cases focus groups were the stick or the carrot wielded against agency creatives. Groups often determined which execution was recommended but more often substituted for the absent backbone of creative directors. Today in hours, we can A/B test and almost limitless number of creative executions online and get thousands of gut reactions from any number of customer subsets that are statistically valid.  Relying on focus groups even fto intimidate creatives is folly.

Effective brand planning is dramatically more complex and must account not only for an exploding number of customer touchpoints; it also has to understand and mine the customer experience to have any validity. The idea that ads are the brand is ancient, even if far too many brands and too many agencies still believe it. The artificial reaction of small numbers of customers, advocates or prospects is way too unstable a sample to risk significant media investment or brand exposure. Focus groups are flogged by those who lack the skills or the imagination to create more robust insight for brands. So in this regard, focus groups are finished.

In conducting research and undertaking brand planning, you must consider and/or include most of these eight dimensions to get a fair understanding of your customer base or the audience you wish to influence.

1. Purchase histories and CRM data

2. Web analytics and online behavior or click streams

3. Customer service themes and frequent issues

4. Data from standing or ad hoc online survey panels or fan/club sites

5. Traditional media metrics -- ratings, page views, 800 number volumes, time spent data

6. Guided web interviews and task-oriented surfing, eye-tracking, heat-mapping

7. In-depth 1-on-1 high value customer interviews

8. Focus groups composed of carefully defined audience segments reflect the brand's geographic and psycho-demographic reach

To fall back on flawed focus groups as the bedrock brand insight tool is the prescription for getting it seriously wrong.

    

Managing the Customer Experience

Every so often you have an encounter with a brand that reminds you how little marketers think about customer touch points and how difficult it is to control and shape the customer experience.

And while every agency blabs about their skill at brand stewardship, integrating channels and carefully crafting customer experiences, all it takes is several sequential interactions with a brand to discredit this claim.

CRM  or no CRM, very few brands think through and map the range of customers’ interactions with the brand and the result of these interactions on brand awareness, preference, purchase or loyalty. Branding experts talk about the essence and the expression of the brand but very little of their philosophizing gets built into the plumbing of service delivery and what happens where the rubber meets the road.

Consider my experiences with Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield of New York, administrator of

New York

State

’s Child Health Plus program, over a 5 day period:

1. I get an officious form letter from Nora D. Vitolins-Roullier announcing that my daughter’s health care coverage has been dropped for non-payment. It comes out of the blue as a surprise.
2. I grab my bill file and checkbook and investigate.
3. I call Empire and fight my way through an excruciating phone tree
4. I talk to Mary who tells me that the letter was in error and that everything is fine. “The computer” screwed up the billing. She promised immediate re-instatement and a confirmation letter in 48 hours. She almost apologized.
5. I try to fill my daughter’s a prescription. The system shows us as “disqualified”.
6. I call Empire and fight my way through an excruciating phone tree
7. I talk to Karen who tells me that while the billing error was rectified and we are re-instated, the computer misread my income and I owe $758 for service from January through April 2009. So I now have to pay up to be really re-instated.
8. I carry on.
9. Then I ask if I can the bill. I’m told that I can’t pay the bill till the computer issues me a new bill and that I could call back and pay by phone in 36 hours.
10. I carry on some more.
11. 36 hours pass.
12.  I call Empire and fight my way through an excruciating phone tree
13. I punch in countless numbers, get disconnected twice and finally pay the bill by talking to a human at JPMorgan Chase by phone.
14. She says the payment will post in 24 hours.
15. I get the reinstatement letter by mail.
16. Take 2 at the pharmacy. I get one of three scripts. The other two are disallowed, even though they are the same meds she’s been taking for 5 years.
17. . I call Empire from the pharmacy counter and fight my way through an excruciating phone tree
18.   I talk to Aaron at  8p ETon Friday night. He tells me that the authorization for these meds didn’t transfer when Empire changed PBM providers on January 1. And while he didn’t know why, he would investigate and call me back, but I could not get the medication till at least 48 hours later on Monday and I probably had to have the doctor re-prescribe the meds and get a new prior authorization since the meds were not on the Empire formulary.
19. The bills I paid by phone arrive by mail. I can’t make any sense of them.
20. I mobilize the doctor who calls Empire
21. He fights through an excruciating phone tree and calls me with an OK.
22. I call the pharmacy to see if the problem was resolved. It wasn’t, they tell me.
23. An hour later, Aaron, who I spoke with on Friday night, calls me and says the situation is fixed. He explains he doesn’t know how it got broke or how it got fixed but it is. He volunteers to call the pharmacy and square things up. He does.
24. I call the pharmacy to double check. They say everything is copasetic.
25. We walk two blocks and actually pick up the 2 remaining scripts.
26. New billing arrives by mail saying I owe $843 not the $758 I paid.

Now think about the arc of emotions and feelings that this action sequence might provoke. You pay for a decent service and you count on it. You are surprised that your service is interrupted unexpectedly. You seek service and you are disappointed. You are confronted by annoying technology that frustrates you. When you finally make contact you are treated politely by robots that don’t really know and don’t really help you.  Then somebody surprisingly helps you. You get what you were initially after. They send you a bill. This is not exactly the formula for brand intimacy or loyalty.

Brands need to execute on the brand promise not only in ads but downstream – where transactions take place and where the battle for brand purchase and loyalty is joined. It starts with an attitude. Either you are a brand that understands me, helps me, meets me where I need things or you are not. This can’t be faked or masked by snappy graphics or punchy lines.

I refuse to believe that since everyone hates insurance companies my bruising brand experience was inevitable. Marketers, especially those endangered CMOs, need to assert quality control over all touch points and anticipate the likely service needs and emotional results of day-to-day business. Infusing the delivery system and the customer service system with a genuine brand ethos will pay off much faster and much better than accumulating thousands of online “friends.”

Avoiding B2B Marketing Obsolescence

Laura Ramos celebrated her 8th anniversary as the B2B marketing analyst at Forrester by worrying about the death of B2B marketing. Her piece suggests a frustration with B2B marketers still in love with trade ads, trade shows and brochures and still at war with their counterparts in sales.

She hints that their obsession with the top of the demand funnel ignores the reality of complex considered purchases which include larger teams of influencers and fewer decision-makers, require months of punishing interactions and requires the patience and the savvy of a chess master to close a sale. And while she points to a four "macro trends,"she misses some of the nuance that the best B2B marketers understand in adapting to a radically different marketplace. Let me address her trends in order.

Commoditization. Open architecture and software-as-service plus marketing-resource-management tools shift the marketer's burden from the mechanics of distribution and cost control to the need for sophisticated CRM to drive prospect engagement. Now anybody can get the e-mails out, the brochures customized or the personal URLS deployed at affordable prices. What most can't do is use real-time data or incorporate intelligence gleaned by inside and direct sales guys into presentations and create a natural, logical back-and-forth sales conversation over time.

A B2B sale is a ballet in time. Marketers need to understand the sequence of contacts and the prospect's expectations and internal process at each step. By understanding who does what to whom, we can orchestrate the messages, accelerate discovery, consideration, competitive analysis and surface the real objections to any deal earlier. Deploying customer-specific websites to store documents and traffic information help as do dedicated webinars or efforts to connect current customers with their peers in prospect companies.

Consumerism Rules. Word of mouth matters. Industry peers wield the most influence in terms of brand awareness and often, brand preference. The web is an obvious tool to distribute relevant content, give access to user groups and peer-to-peer communities and to influence longitudinal conversations about trends, tactics and evolving technologies. This is where social media, blogs, RSS feeds and diagnostic tools or even viral videos matter.

Everyone Hates Ads. Duh! Even though top management is often wedded to an ongoing balance of power in trade ads with direct competitors, the key to any successful campaign is to intersect prospective buyers in ways they trust to allow them to get the idea they need your product or service. Any campaign has to start with a feeling for what prospects read, what they trust, where they visit, what they opt-in for and who can influence their opinions. It makes the case for investments in natural search and pay-per-click campaigns and behavioral targeting and it reinforces the value of getting analysts like Laura writing favorable things about you.

Globalization. Offshore production reduces the costs but rarely does it improve the targeting or the content of marketing campaigns. Moreover the smartest global marketers understand that 85 percent of the positioning, the process and the pitch are the same from place to place. Leading brands create shared service operations to optimize the value of art, graphics, intellectual property, web tools, demos and a wide array of collateral. They rely on local or regional players to address the remaining 15% and to adapt or translate product or service benefits to the local business culture and to keep the brands locally competitive.  

Laura take heart! B2B marketers aren't as sleepy as you think. We are embracing and using digital technology more frequently and more effectively than you might see even though we frequently have to fight harder internally to break away from old patterns and expectations.

  

10 Secrets for Successful Client Service

Marketing is a service business in which the successful players super serve their clients. It requires a hierarchy of behaviors which sublimates your ego even for your dumbest client. It requires you to anticipate and proactively prepare for unseen events that can impact the client’s business and yours in a nanosecond.

Here’s a compilation of the best advice and direction I’ve been given over the years:

Read everything. Don’t just scan it. Read it. Be sure you understand it. Ask questions. Keep asking. Question it. Good ideas come from everyone. Your perspective will help keep us from being too insular.

Demand context. You’ll be asked to do a million things. Many are routine or intuitive. Some are not. If in doubt, ask what we are doing, why, to whom, and how your task fits into the whole scheme of things. Also insist on knowing about priorities – which matters/comes first, second, third.

Be a Hub. We will all be spinning in several directions. You are the hub of the wheel – steady, stable, constant, always in the same place. You’ll have to figure out how to do it.

Get involved. Surf the sites. Know our competitors. Read the paper with us and our clients in mind. Become an online shopper. Notice cool functionality, interesting details, marketing stuff and share it with the team.

Lay out your thinking. As you do more complex projects, don’t assume that everyone knows (or remembers) what you are doing. Lay out the assumptions and hypotheses. Document your approach so we know where you are coming from. The more transparent you are; the better.

Treat everyone like a client. Assume that everyone deserves maximum attentiveness and respect. You’ll never go wrong.

Assume urgency. We move at Internet speed. And deliver service and answers in a New York minute (50 seconds). Assume that every request made is to be done ASAP unless otherwise stated. If too many ASAPs pile up, ask for help in setting priorities.

God is in the details. Every great thing is nothing more than a web of details. Write everything down. Check and double check. Spell check. We are all juggling stuff. We expect you to be on top of things – entirely buttoned up. If we don’t share the details – demand them from us.

Know where we are. Figure out our personalities. Get all our phone, pager, PDA and home numbers in an easily accessible form. Know how and when to reach us throughout the working day. Figure out what you need from us to be productive and happy. Then tell us explicitly. Few of us read minds. All of us want to work in a fun, happy and productive place. Getting there is an individual and collective responsibility and goal.

Build a network. Every organization has a formal structure and table of organization that explains who’s who and what’s what. Every organization also has informal links of friendship and mutual cooperation between people. That really decides who’s who and what’s what. Getting into the informal loop and being a source of help and information to others will expedite your ability to get stuff done and accelerate your productivity and job satisfaction.

Marketing to the Hyperconnected

Those geeks juggling half a dozen devices have a new moniker -- hyperconnected -- thanks to a survey of 2400 working adults in 17 countries sponsored by Nortel and conducted by IDC. These totally wired people are the vanguard of the Web 2.0 proletariat; the earliest of early adapters among the 1.2 billion humans now surfing the Internet.

You know the type. Concentrated in high tech and finance in urban centers they are 60% male, primarily managers, mostly under 35, two-thirds have Wi-Fi at home. These are the people, who juggle an average of 7 devices and 9 applications, rush to embrace iPhones, iPods and every new gadget. They define themselves and draw validation, status and a measure of cool from their hyperconnectivity. And this group, now pegged at 16% of the global information workforce is growing and growing fast with another 36% expected to join them soon.

But the implications of a hyperconnected lifestyle for marketers aren't clear. In fact, connectivity per se can obscure rather than illuminate the positioning, messaging and media tasks that already confound us. Consider a few possibilities.

Constant Streaming.If all-news media makes you crazy, imagine an even bigger torrent of data from a growing number of sources over a growing number of devices anywhere you go. The hyperconnected point to a lifestyle that is always on, always available and always connected. They make an incredible number of clicks or calls from cars, restaurants, vacations, bed and even church. They are they guys who've made the streets an eavesdropper's delight. This makes it easier and tougher to target them. The merry-go-round never stops. Separating content even opt-in desired or desirable content from background noise or filtering or scheduling content becomes an even greater challenge.

Instant Gratification Everywhere. If you are always on and always linked you want everything now. If patience is already frayed by the variables of service delivery and personality, imagine a whole world demanding everything right now, whenever the mood strikes. Who can possibly deliver on these expectations?

All Work-All Life-All the Time. For the hyperconnected distinctions between work and private life, between on and off time between public and private and even geographic or temporal boundaries have effectively disappeared. Its funny since many of the hyperconnected tools and applications are supplied by companies but serve both work and personal objectives. This further complicates how we create and deliver messaging and how we conceive and channel media to deliver the pitch.

No QC. There is no survey data connecting hyperconnectivity to hyperproductivity. In fact the more we watch the hyperconnected, the more we'll discover that they have more ways to goof off, hide and sidestep responsibility than we ever imagined. Those "crackberry" addicts are reading work e-mails and checking box scores with equal frequency and intensity. Its about showing how connected you are not how competent you are.    

Perhaps I'm becoming a Luddite, though I fall into the 7% of hyperconnecteds over age 50. But the more I embrace the Web, new devices and new applications, the more I'm seeking more sorting, filtering and thinking. I yearn for less immediate data flow and more consideration, insight and analysis. Its not about speed or quantity its about value and empowerment.

Haagen-Dass & The Honey Bees: Ruminations on Cause-Related Marketing

The mysterious disappearance of honey bee colonies threatens our food supply and is possibly both a consequence and an allegory for our systematic disregard for or destruction of carefully balanced natural ecosystems. This phenomenon caught my attention almost a year ago, and yet somehow the adoption of the beleaguered bees by Haagen-Daas' gives me a funny buzzing sensation in my head.

Honey bees pollinate almost one-third of our food supply. The rapid and unexplained disappearance of vast numbers of colonies reported in 35 US states, like the disappearance of native American colonies in the Southwest, leave behind empty shells of civilizations with scant clues to the causes for their disappearance. Its CSI meets the Nature Channel with potentially serious consequences for our food chain and the planet.

This is a fascinating story, reported on extensively by Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker of 6 August 2007 and covered broadly in both the popular and the science press. At last glance, the leading theory dubbed the "colony collapse disorder" is thought to be some kind of  epidemic, though the evidence and the research into the details, the causes, the consequences or the cure are not conclusive.

Enter Haagen-Daas, a General Mills brand licensed and marketed in North America by Nestle.

The brand has aligned itself with the preservation of honey bees by creating a logo bearing a slogan ( HD Heart (graphic) HB in yellow and black bumble bee stripes), introducing a limited edition Vanilla Honey Bee Ice Cream, doling out $250,000 for bee research at Penn State and UC Davis, creating a consciousness raising  website and running a three page ad in the May edition of National Geographic.

Looking through the ad you can almost hear the brand team thinking ... ecology, earth day, leverage natural ingredients, connect with an unclaimed and unassailable good guy cause, use fruits and berries images plus the organic connection between the bees and our products to leverage the franchise and target the premium taste tree-huggers in eco-friendly magazines. For the cost of a single TV spot we can bankroll legitimizing research which can extend the brand message, focus attention on flavor advantages, and connect the brand to the hearts and minds of our customer base using PR and viral tactics.

Call me cynical or call me a practiced marketer. But I've been in a thousand of these meetings where this kind of cause-related thinking makes perfect sense and builds its own internal momentum and constituency. I could write the presentation deck in my sleep.

A huge MNC-owned brand goes back to its quirky roots to put it self on the side of the angels (or the bees), shape a brand message as eco-friendly advocacy and reach out to the public to raise the alarm and move more product by teaching consumers "how you can help." Although it gets a bit funky when one of the helpful suggestions is " Enjoy a pint of Haagen-Daas ice cream's bee dependent flavors and you'll help fund research with the goal of bringing the honey bees back." 

Maybe I'm getting cranky in my old age, but this feels funny to me. I don't believe that buying and eating more super premium ice cream will save the bees. I'm creeped out by the transparency of the marketing thrust and yet I understand where its coming from. And yet I appreciate the targeting and the integration of brand advertising with bee-related content.

Maybe this is a classic example of brand-ad-content synthesis; the holy grail of integrated marketing. Or maybe its just way over the top for my tastes.   

   

Selling Uncertainty

Hiring a law firm isn't much different than hiring an ad agency or a marketing firm except for the fact that most clients think they can do advertising and marketing as well as their vendors. Yet lawyers not only leverage their positioning as licensed specialists they invoke the language and the customs of their guild to enhance the pitch process.

Both sets of professionals are retained to address uncertainties in business, usually high stakes uncertainties with many variables where some combination of skill, insight, experience and luck determine the outcome or the consequences which can be dire. Both trade on knowledge clients don't perceive themselves to have to affect future events and both offer fresh fruit and cookies in the early engagement meetings.

Having witnessed several law firms in pitch mode this week, here are the lessons they offer marketers.

1. Establish Credentials Upfront. Send preliminary materials and brochures ahead. Emphasize the practice areas most relevant to the prospective client. Be understated not over-the-top about who you are and what you can do since they are in the room because they believed the credentials you sent earlier. Don't belabor the point. Don't parade every partner or department head. Don't talk about yourself because they only care what you can do for them.

2. Connect the Dots Early and Often. Link your expertise with the prospects problem in the first 2 minutes. "You're being indicted; we're the best criminal defense guys in town." Cut to the chase early and often and zero in on the prospect's anxiety. "We got Exxon out of the same mess because we've got specialists in that area of the law and because we lobbied the regulators." Or remind them that you've done exactly what they need done zillions of times. "We were in front of the FCC just last week. We filed a motion identical to yours. In fact our partner Sally went to law school with the Chairman and our associate Bob is sleeping with him."

3. Punctuate Forecasts with Bold Statements. Outline the dependencies and contingencies that could impact events. But rather than say "if this happens" or "on one hand" which makes you appear to be unsure punctuate the prophecy with bold statements on several issues (the more insignificant the better) that eliminate the perception that things are uncertain or risky. As you lay out all the likely and unlikely things that could or might happen pause dramatically and say "but no court will issue a declaratory judgment on this issue!" By signaling firm beliefs you take the edge off the murky, hazy and nasty view emerging from the crystal ball and reinforce your standing as an organization that can weather a storm.

4. Give them the Odds. Clients buy outcomes and want success. The perception of do-ability directly influences their perception of value and often determines who gets the deal. Nobody wants to hear that whatever they want can't be done. So even in situations where things look bleak, offer hope by citing  odds. Say things like " based on what we know now and on our experience in dealing with these matters, there's a 60 percent chance we can get this done in 6 to 9 months, assuming the Treasury Department doesn't do X."  Or try "there's only a 1% chance you'll be led way in handcuffs." And even though prospects know to immediately discount the quoted odds by as much as half, they take great comfort in your willingness to risk a forecast. And if you can, for good measure, throw in some guild argot or a Latin word or phrase to reinforce your expertise and general willingness to stare down the abyss. Instead of saying " there's a tiny chance" boldly assert "the risk is diminimus!"

5. Ballpark the Numbers. Tell them flat out, with as many caveats as you like, how long it will take and how much it will cost. Everybody is a price buyer on some level and prospects hate the conceit that you have to carefully scope this all out or that you are wishy-washy about money. They know that long before the meeting, you've figured out, at least provisionally, who is going to do the work, what it will entail and roughly how much you need to charge to make your margin. They also know you have several different ways of calculating costs and several pricing models. So tell them right then and there. You can always hem, haw, stammer, back track, discount and generally grovel for the business later.

An Afterthought About Inventors

Inventing is a defiant assertion of our vitality and humanity. An inventor rejects the status quo refusing to accept what is in favor of what might be. An inventor assumes there's something different and something better to come.

Inventing is an act of supreme optimism which refutes the existential notion that we are helpless creatures marooned on a rock spinning in space subject to the repetitive cycles of nature, tradition and convention. The act of invention articulates our ability to change our own lives; to make something happen rather than have things happen to us.

And while not all of us can invent things, we can all celebrate the revolutionary impulse which inspires us to think, to adapt, to experiment to build and to strive for discovery --- the driving force of our civilization.

7 Reasons Why Marketers Fail

Marketing success has much more to do with political and organizational factors than an individual's skills at the dark arts of strategy, research, positioning, messaging, advertising or sales.

That was theme of my three hour stand-up act in Professor Neil Lichtman's Strategic Marketing course for master degree students at NYU. Here, in abbreviated form, are the seven deadly sins that doom marketers and marketing initiatives.

1. BLINDNESS. Marketers and their bosses frequently have too much faith in marketing, as if clever words and images can overcome badly designed products or unwanted services. Similarly marketers overestimate the appeal and impact of their brands on customers and prospects because they don't accurately understand how their brands are perceived, sorted and filed or utilized by those most likely to respond to brand messages.

In some cases marketers get a full head of steam for a big idea and blindly ignore the reality around them or the prime motivation of most customers -- inertia. And some marketers fueled by hubris and fancy graduate degrees actually ignore the facts to serve pet theories or because they never really understand what drives awareness and how those drivers are the same or different from the factors that motivate purchases.

VISION. Too many marketers don't see the world through the eyes of the people who determine their fates; bosses and customers. They fall into fantasy traps of assuming that all-in-one appeals or goofy brand-centric notions have broad or universal appeal when they are really barely understood by those who thought them up. Too often the vision is not clearly articulated and differentiated so customers have no reason to embrace or respond to the brand.

DATA DEFICIENCIES. Campaigns and careers fail because marketers don't read the situation right, don't understand the players, the politics or the plumbing of the organizations they serve. It's easy to discard those annoying numbers when you have a brainstorm. Unfortunately often buried within those nasty numbers is the answer to the mystery; the reasons and the methods people find their way to the brand or to a purchase. Too many times the big idea or the wacky creative execution ignores the patterns of customer behavior, the organic connections between product sets, natural product cognates or the obvious reasons people want and need individual goods and services.

MISMANAGING MONEY. Loads of marketers blow the budget on flashy stuff and crap that never pays off or pays out. Some squander it on high profile sponsorships, celebrity endorsers or vacuous Superbowl spots and then wonder why they get fired. Anyone marketing today wants to see a tangible, measurable return on marketing dollars spent. The more you can connect marketing spend to purchases and profits; the better. Those marketers who ignore ROI do so at their own peril.

IGNORING SILOS. In every organization nobody owns all the key tools or key instruments. Power is diffused and competed for. If you ignore the silos and don't figure out how to make friends, allies and parry enemies you are dead. Just like understanding your target customer, understanding your colleagues and your adversaries, their power bases and their career or CYA motivations is critical to successful marketing .

ONE TRICK PONIES. There is a cadre of successful senior marketers who have one trick and bicycle it along with their personal mafias from job to job. Innocent or unobservant marketers that don't recognize this phenomena before or soon after it strikes are toast since one trick ponies quickly eliminate anyone who can see that the emperor has no clothes.

IGNORE MARKETING FUNDAMENTALS. Sometimes politically savvy marketers actually blow the craft of marketing by ignoring their customers, failing to create sharp competitive differentiation or underestimating the need for segmentation and segmented marketing tactics. Others fail to understand the necessity for framing integrated brand strategies, speaking with one voice and focusing on frequency to hammer the brand into the brains of its most likely adherents.