Marketing functions - blast from the past

This is one of my favorite topics - trying to figure out what is really the purpose of a marketing function and competencies those function hold in different companies. What if your company's marketing function were banned to buy any advertising stuff from ad agencies for six months period of time? What would these guys do then and how would they spend their days?

Traditional marketing functions are actually marketing communications functions and to be precise advertising & media sourcing functions. Majority of marcom function's time is spent in buying communication stuff from ad agencies, media space, communication from communications agencies and research from research agencies (to research impact of communications). Their focus is not in creating more business or better business but in most of the cases to buy from and plan with agencies communication initiatives and  campaigns. One could argue that these two equal but another could argue that their core competence is to be professional buyers of advertising.

Internet has changed many things and it has changed landscape of marketing as well. Problem for traditional marketing function (as traditional function is defined above) with internet is that their focus and  competencies have been in one way communications "we tell you who we are and how excellent our products are". Internet is a business and customer interaction platform. Internet is about having relevant value to customers,  passion to interact - learn, listen, challenge, co-create with customers, digitize business & customer's processes, integrate own processes with customer's processes and many many other things with the main idea of being outside-in driven. All this applies to both B2C and B2B. Traditional marketing functions unfortunately are inside-out driven and they do not even acknowledge this. Fortunately for these guys internet has SEO/SEM activities which follows same working pattern as traditional campaigning added with few technical skills - no need to interact with customers.

Yes I know what someone might say - In many organizations only task given to marketing function is to communicate = blast leaflets, brochures, emails, print ads etc. with the idea that it will support sales. For this I am not sure whom to blame - incompetent sales director or incompetent marketing director or MD/CEO or all of them. Many engineering driven companies fall into this trap especially those with limited resources. On the other hand six month rule would save money for something else.

Yes I know as well that many might say - 6 months... It would destroy our brand awareness and value. Get real especially in B2B space. For example what is the actual lost of dropping out a few print ads in professional magazines - how many lost deals or measurable tangible drop in awareness? How about six months in B2C telecom operator business? Telcos are for sure active advertisers at least in Finland but I am not so sure about the impact and how the money should be spent. Problems they have in delivering hygiene level exceeding broadband service or running a smooth customer service should have higher priority than ads.

So how would you spend your six months? Even better - if head of marketing function is reporting to you what would you ask them to do during this time period?

PS. I have had several marketing roles in quite a few companies & roles where one of my responsibility area has been marketing

Competences - Single idea guys and swiss knives

I have always wondered how easily you get understood and branded with one single competence area. Long time ago (if ten years is a long time) I was very into CRM both from strategic and assets perspectives... but actually for me CRM was just a way to build service business and manage customer base driven business model. But many labelled me as a CRM guy.

Two years ago when I returned from abroad back to Finland and took a role related to online business... and held the role just 11 months - suddenly I noticed that was labelled in Finland as online business guy. It didn't help to explain that yes these services are related to eCommerce but actually we are selling a portfolio of services (even solutions) and the required competence is B2B solutions and service business.

So if I meet people from ten years back they still label me as a CRM guy and these newer relationships label me as online business guy. Actual truth about my competence is that past experiences and responsibilities have shaped me to be a professional in contractual solutions and service business both in B2B and B2C segments with international twist. And on top I can take a sales, marketing, business development or general business mgmt. angle to this arena depending on the case. But it sounds that this is as well unheard of - either you can be a marketeer, seller or general manager but not all of these. It just does not fit to the simple way of labeling people with single competence area.

Of course this is not related only to myself. I have had so many occasions and discussions where you notice that people get labeled as a single idea guy - "oh yes he is the key account management guy or she is the brand expert" - when the truth can be that these persons have this kind of role for the very first time... or it is just one angle in their work.

Another twist for this are the industries and what kind of past experience is suitable for different jobs. Many people work in one industry through their career (and therefore gain beliefs how their industry is so different from others).

For example there are many people who define themselves as IT industry professionals and also want to be labeled as such. When IT/tech. industry has finally understood benefits of service business ideas there needs to be inside IT industry grown service business professionals (and labeled as such). For many in IT industry it does not matter that in reality for example hotel business/travel industry has been a service business for ages and there could be something to learn from. For some reason IT service is so different from hotel service despite you end up serving same people with similar service business encounters. Back to the idea of getting a single label - service business experience from hotel business is not considered to be a valuable asset for IT company when it is transforming itself from products to services. Personally I would hire an executive from Hilton hotel chain to run a consumer IT service business than an IT industry executive. But majority would not.

So why do we label and understand individuals based on their single competence or experience areas? One reason is that there exists so many with single mindset and competence area... so it is easier to treat everyone in the same way. Swiss knife can be used in many occasions but it not perfect in any of them, there is always a single tool which can do a better work. But is it the same with people? Which is better - year after year same industry within same functional area (and very easy to label this person) or multiple different experiences from multiple industries and functional areas (very difficult to label) - if there is a need to for example to do a business turnaround? Many would pick the industry old timer as a safe bet - I just think it is much riskier because nothing transformational will ever happen.

So you get a label - a personal brand - whether you like it or not and most likely it is not the brand you want to be unless you are a single idea guy... and to fight against this I have noticed to be a challenging task