Stop tinkering and create something new by Alex Marks
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True, lasting performance is not achieved by tinkering. It needs a complete overhaul. It’s time to be brave, says Alex Marks.
Nearly all of us remember our first car. And many of us, particularly if you are male (I make the supposition than women aren’t that sad) will remember trying to make it look better or go faster. Not always an easy exercise with a V reg VW Polo, as I had. It didn’t stop me from trying, though.
I cut a hole in the air intake to let more air into the engine. I took out the carpets to get the accelerator further to the floor. I fitted ‘special’ spark plugs and a new exhaust. To my 17-year-old eyes, and those of my equally naive friends, this was nothing less than a Brunel-like miracle of engineering. The result was an increase in performance, sadly followed by a catastrophic melt down of the ‘big end’. Whatever that is.
I tell you this not just to embarrass myself but to make a point True, lasting performance is not achieved by tinkering. It needs a complete overhaul.
This occurred to me when reading of P&G’s latest attempt to cut costs from their $10bn ad budget. Robert McDonald, CEO, recognises that the growth in their ad budget needs now to be moderated. And that digital channels, with which the company intends to do more, can offer much greater efficiency than traditional media. Therefore, partly as a result of this reduction in spend, they have cut 1600 jobs.
He is right in some respects that digital can indeed be more efficient than traditional media, but what they have failed to do properly is examine the roles and structure needed to take advantage of this.
Amanda Davie, MD of the digital consultancy Reform, makes a very good point, when referring to her contact with P&G in the past: “Even with a channel as media-efficient as search, the challenge that P&G faced wasn’t making their digital media buying effective/ROI positive, but it was their organisational structures. Multiple agencies on roster, all delivering component parts of the digital mix, and no consistency in terms of organisational process, results measurement or insights gathered and fed back into the strategic planning piece.”
And there’s the issue that many organisations are still struggling with. If you take your existing marketing team and bolt bits on, you may end up with something that works a bit, but will never be all it could be.
But if you want to fully embrace the digital world and create a team that has data at the centre, that measures and analyses through integral operational systems, that allows the management of customer relations and brand perceptions in one place, then it is time to be brave.
Go to the drawing board and create something new. Something fit for purpose in the modern world. Not an archaic structure with bells on.
American author Arthur Bloch sums it up for me: “If you tinker with something long enough, eventually it will break or malfunction.”
Posted: February 21st, 2012 | Author: Leah.Latimer | Filed under: Digital | Tags: Alex marks, Arthur Bloch, Digital, Marketing Blog, Marketing Society blog, P&G, Reform, VW Polo | Leave a Comment »
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