The Marketing Bull's-Eye

There's an amazing lack of continuity in most marketing campaigns today.  Instead of running for years and building equity and gaining power with repeated exposure, most of today's "campaigns" seem to be as perishable as yesterday's fresh cut flowers.  It's dumb marketing because it turns those marketing dollars from "investment" into "cost."  And in today's environment, every good senior executive is looking to cut costs.  The result?  Good-bye marketing.

Why aren't more marketing campaigns developed and used for the long-term?  

One reason is the incredible turnover in senior level marketing executives today.  The new sheriff in town almost always feels compelled to do their own thing and re-invent the wheel.  After all, the old marketing person was more than likely fired, so why stick with anything they developed?

But there's another reason why marketing campaigns don't last.  It's because they're not properly "sold in" to all of the important brand stake holders.  Broad-scale ownership of the campaign is not created and company-wide "buy in" is not achieved.  It becomes "the marketing department's campaign" instead of the company's campaign and that's usually the kiss of death.

Think of all of the brand's stake holders as concentric rings of an expanding circle - like a bull's-eye.  As you create and develop a new campaign, you must persuade an ever growing list of brand stake holders that the campaign is excellent enough to earn their support and long-term commitment.

Let's start at the center of the bull's-eye and move out.  

The first stake holder that you need to convince is yourself.  Is this campaign good enough that you're willing to bet your job on it?  To advocate it to all the other brand stake holders and put your neck on the block if it doesn't work?  Can you sell it to others with passion and conviction?  Is it right for the company and the brand and does it represent a "BIG IDEA" that can last and last and last?  

The next group of stake holders (the second ring of the bull's-eye) is the rest of the marketing team (including your agency partners).  Do they share your conviction?  Are they behind the campaign, too?  If not, why not?  Do they have real reasons that need to be addressed or bogus reasons because they're simply too whimpy to take a stand? Addressing real concerns will strengthen the idea further and make it better and that's what you need to do.  You'll generate idea ownership and you can then move out to the next stake holder ring of the marketing bull's-eye.

It's the sales organization - both your internal sales team and your distributors and channel partners.  Their enthusiasm is priceless.  Their apathy is death.  Do not understate the need to win this group over.  Do not wait to involve them in the campaign until it's too late to change it.  Your mindset needs to be that every stake holder group can add value and help strengthen the idea.  When they help create the final campaign, they own it and that ownership helps give the idea the power to last.  

The next stakeholder ring is the rest of your co-workers.  The sell-in should not stop with sales and marketing.  Every other department in your company should ideally be enthusiastic about the campaign.  Take the time to turn everyone in your company into brand and campaign ambassadors.

Only after this "internal" sell-in process is complete are you really ready to take your campaign to its intended target.  Make sure you have your measurement tools in place and as you identify ways you need to improve the initial campaign, celebrate that learning as a good thing.  No one should expect immediate perfection.  A great campaign will be a growing living thing.  Strong at birth but a behemoth after a few years of TLC and fine-tuning.  

The CMO's role is to evaluate all campaign input along the way, weed out the bad from the good, keep the BIG IDEA from being watered down and turned to mush, but be open-minded enough to recognize when good input is received and then courageous enough to embrace it and implement it.  The result will be a campaign that your entire business enterprise "owns" and an invaluable long-term business investment for your company.  Not to mention job security and enhanced market value for you.  Being the originator of a well-recognized and highly successful long-term marketing campaign is one of the most powerful career enhancers you'll ever have. You will have hit the Marketing Bull's-eye!