Where should brands start looking to enhance efficiency?
There are five key areas that intrinsically underpin efficiency in the Marketing Value Chain for any organisation. By focussing on these, one at a time, and ensuring they are all operating efficiently, a more effective outcome can be guaranteed.
People Power
It tends to be the “Four Rs” that can really make or break how well people work inside marketing departments (or indeed in most organisations) – Relationships, Resource Roles & Responsibilities. When we start to formalise RACI structures it helps with how people perceive their own self-worth – which in turn helps with a self-fulfilling “up or out” mentality. If no-one knows where they sit in the pecking order, and have no clear view of their role within the great society things can start to unravel.
Closely tied to that is how people within the organisation view and treat those who are outside the brand – how do marketers interact with agencies, and how well do the agencies communicate with each other? Respect is a word often bandied about in terms of internal teams, but it is equally important that everyone respects and appreciates the work done by third parties.
Clear Thinking
It should go without saying that a clear strategy is essential to success, but it’s amazing how many marketing departments still have no clear creative or media strategy (including of course social media) actually written down. Many marketers claim to have a strategy but have no permanent record of such a thing.
Once you have a written plan you can there start to determine the key growth drivers, test which drivers work and then start to apply some real KPIs. Again, to keep yourself honest you need to write this stuff down!
Most of the best creative (though not all) is based on true insight which comes from clear thinking. When we think of insight we like to define it as “a hitherto undiscovered human truth”. In other words, do you have a real insight, that tightly dovetails your product/service benefit that will have consumers and prospects nodding along “oh yeah, that is so true…”?
Stand-out Creative
If you’ve got a true insight borne out of a clear strategy then you’ve got the perfect platform for great creative – whether it be innovative npd, creative delivery options or indeed any of Porter’s 7Ps then you can start to be truly creative. Just make sure that it passes the “pure idea” litmus test – is it media-neutral, and truly channel agnostic, regardless of whether it’s a communications idea or a new app?
Efficient Processes
In a creative industry like marketing many people fight against strict processes, railing that it stifles creativity. In fact, the opposite is true – take all the boring repetitive tasks out of the mix with a strict process and you will free up more time for the creative bits – you just have to ensure that processes are being adhered to. Most creatives yearn for “the freedom of a tight brief”. With strong, clear thinking and rigorous processes we can make the creative generation process much more effective. This includes proper campaign development, really tight feedback and sign-off protocols and tightly defined review meetings with all stakeholders.
Follow the money
Firstly; budgets are there to be stuck to – zero mission-creep, zero over-run, in both money and time.
Secondly; agency remuneration is a very hot topic, but one that cannot be ignored. The best clients look to remunerate their agencies so that they can make a fair profit and be motivated to work on the account. That way you get the best individuals, committing the most amount of time; rarely is there a purer relationship between getting back what you pay for. If you short-change the agency they will short change you back – you just might not notice it until it’s too late.
