Marketing Strategy : How to Create Brand Experience

Creating Brand Experience

Originally Published here in Adclubbombay

We are living in an experiential society. The consumers are moving towards selecting products based on experiential factors and marketers have the opportunity to sell products at a premium if the product is able to deliver the right kind of experience.

Bernd Schmitt in his book Customer Experience Management: A revolutionary Approach to Connecting with Your Customers; has defined customer experience management as the process of strategically managing a customer’s entire experience with a product or a company. Experiential marketing aims to engage the consumers so that he gets a complete experience of the product or service. Rather than depending on features, brands are looking at ways to deliver a holistic experience to the consumer.

There are many factors that drive this experience economy. Consumers are now armed with lot of information. This information has made many a differentiation irrelevant. Hence more than the product’s features, consumers tend to evaluate products based on their experience with the product and the company.

Marketers earlier had tried to create brand experience through standalone promotional activities. These activities were short-term and were intended to give a peek into the brand’s projected experience. But the situation now demands that the brand deliver its experience every time the consumer makes a contact with the brand or the company.

In this period where product feature based differentiation is hard to sustain, marketers must create a brand experience which can act as a sustainable differentiation platform.

Understand consumer’s world.

The first task for the marketer is to thoroughly understand the consumer’s world. Consumers live their experience from their own world. Hence when the marketers try to create brand experiences it should resonate with the consumer’s own world.

Brands which target children practice this principle very effectively. Take the example of Cadbury’s Diary Milk Wowie. The brand takes the kids through a chocolate world where the hero Mickey Mouse helps the kids to enjoy the chocolate world and protect them from harm. This fantasy world appeals to the kids intensely and the level of involvement of kids in this campaign is very high.

Be Relevant

Another critical factor for creating effective brand experience is the relevancy of the experience. For creating relevant brand experiences, marketers must get inside the life of a customer. In the highly insightful book “The Game Changer” P&G CEO: A G Lafley describes the importance of understanding the life of the consumers. P&G made it compulsory for its marketing team to involve deep into their consumers life so that they could come out with products that made their life easier.

Credible

The brand experiences that marketers create should be authentic and credible. Fantasy works best for children but for adults, the experience must be based on realism. The promise has to be delivered. This calls for the organization to be highly customer centric.

Kingfisher Airlines created a very meaningful credible experience by making the most of customer touch points. The ushers who helps the traveller at the entrance of the airport to the cabin services and food served created a new brand experience for the travellers.

Memorable

Consumers should cherish the experiences created by the brand in their memories. The experience should appeal both to the rational and emotional mind of the consumer. Catering to the emotional self of the consumer will help the brand to build attachment with the consumer. Appealing to the rational self will enhance the credibility.

Asian Paints in its clutter breaking campaign “ Har Rang Kuch Kahta Hain “achieved both these objectives. The campaign touched the emotional chord with the consumers and also appealed to the rational mind of the consumers. The brand made the experience more rational by launching sample packs where the consumers can paint a portion of the wall to see how the colour will actually look like.

Involve

It is absolutely important for a brand to involve the consumers in any brand related activity if it wants to create a complete experience. The popularity of internet has opened many opportunities for the brand to involve the consumers. The brand can motivate consumers to sign up in an online community, visit the website or play games, share experience etc.

Brands can create involvement offline too. Kinder Joy has a unique method of creating a brand experience by bundling its chocolate with a surprise gift. Kids eat the chocolate and play with the toy and it created a unique brand experience for them which compel them to buy more.

Brands can create involvement by devising interesting brand rituals. Kitkat smartly taught its consumers a unique ritual of eating KitKat. Consumers willingly adopted this brand ritual making the experience of eating Kitkat unique. Brands can extend the involvement with the consumers by introducing memorabilia and collectables which will further enhance the brand experience.

Marketing Strategy : The Art of Story Telling

The Art of Story Telling

Originally published here at Adclubbombay.com

Branding is the art of story telling. Successful brands are those who tell stories that catch the imagination of the consumers. More compelling the story is- the more customers will love the brand.

Lux for the past 75 years has been telling the story of Bollywood beauties. Dettol has been telling stories of fighting germs and Johnson & Johnson continue telling stories about the love between mother and child.

Story telling is a difficult task and that explain the reason why many brands fail to succeed in the market. Story telling is different from advertising. Advertising helps communicate the stories to the audience but brands have to first build a compelling story.

Take the case of Santoor. This is one of the first brands to tell a story of a beautiful mother mistakenly identified as a young girl because of her younger looking skin. The theme has been consistently reinforced by the brand through various advertisements. The story was compelling, realistic and easy to understand.

Brand stories are not a standalone complete story. The brand story does not have an ending. It is evolving and continuing.

Theme

Stories should have a compelling theme. In order for the story to be compelling, then the theme should be powerful and relevant to the consumers. In the case of Santoor, the story theme was based on the consumer insight that beauty is often associated with younger looking skin. The entire brand story was based on this premise. Axe deo brand has been telling stories of how women chase men who are using Axe. Men like the theme of getting chased by women. Axe was told a compelling story of how ordinary men got chased by beautiful women.

Relevant

Stories should be relevant to the audience (consumers). Marketing Guru Seth Godin in his book “All Marketers are Liars “, talks about the importance of understanding consumer’s world view. He argues that only those stories will be successful which are relevant to the consumers’ world view.

Brands must know their audience before telling stories. They have to understand the audience’s world view in order to create a relevant theme. It is one reason behind the huge success of “slice of life “commercials. Consumers are able to instantly link to the theme because it is something that they can relate to.

Consistent

Brand stories are continuous. Hence the stories need to be consistent with the same set of characters reinforcing the basic theme. Brand stories can be imagined as a large collection of highly related stories woven with a common thread. Hence it is important for the story teller to have the bigger picture while telling their stories. When the stories deviate from the common thread, consumers get disconnected.

Onida was telling a compelling story of envy with the central character of devil. The story was liked by the consumer and a brand was built. But later the brand deviated from the theme, characters were changed, devil was taken off and soon consumers felt disconnected with the stories.

Often we see brand stories change for no reason. When advertising agencies change, brand stories also change. Once the common thread is lost, consumers tend to forget the story.

It is also important to be fresh while consistent. Adults are easy bored by repetition. So brand managers should ensure that there is freshness in the stories that is being told. These stories should evolve from the big picture. Airtel is a classic case where the brand is able to create freshness with consistency. The brand’s core theme of Expressing Oneself is being reinforced through ads which are fresh and attractive.

Connect with the consumers

Successful stories are those which become close to the consumers. The audience should involve with the stories and should own up the theme. Successful movies are those where the audience become a part of the story. They cry and laugh with the characters and are a part of them during the movies. Successful brands are those where the consumers become the part of the story. The more involvement the consumers are, the more iconic the brand becomes. Apple and Harley Davidson are brands which told compelling stories. These brands became iconic because consumers became the part of the story theme.

Brands are trying to tell stories through different media and platforms. The powerful stories are usually told by consumers to consumers. It is very difficult to make a consumer tell a brand story to another. The story should be simple, uncomplicated and personal.

It is a True Story

Brand stories are true stories and it is not fictional. Consumers understand brand stories through experience. He uses all the sense to understand the stories told by the brand. Marketers often think that consumers will buy the story told through advertisements. Hence the focus was more on building a fantasy which is far from reality. What is often forgotten is that the consumers tend to validate the story through experience. If there is a mismatch between the story and the experience, the brand will not be trusted again.

Marketing Strategy : Going Back to Basics

Going Back to Basics

Originally Published here in Adclubbombay.com

In the 1973 classic text, “Management: Tasks, Responsibilities & Practices”, Peter Drucker asks firms to answer five very pertinent questions.

What is our business?

Who is our customer?

What is of value to the customer?

What will our business be?

What should our business be?

Even after 36 years, these simple questions are of profound importance to marketers who are facing one of the toughest times since Great Depression. These questions are more relevant today than ever before. During the period of exuberance, firms tend to forget to answer these key questions and land up in a trouble of their own making. Firms forget value, customers and commonsense when faced with unprecedented growth. This over confidence resulted in inflated prices, aggressive expansions and unrelated diversifications. It is time for marketers to revisit these basics and set their focus on consumer.

Defining the business

One of the fundamental questions that marketers should ask themselves is to clearly define the business. While defining the business, one has to be careful about setting the scope of the business. Too narrow a scope can severely limit the growth of the business. Too broad a definition can cause confusion.

If a marketer narrowly limits the definition of his business by focusing on the product, he will find himself in a state of marketing myopia – a term popularised by Harvard Professor Theodore Levitt. A myopic organization defines its business narrowly which blurs the organizations ability to spot competition from other categories. Further, myopia limits the marketer’s ability to change itself according to changing consumer preferences.

When a marketer becomes too focused on his product, he fails to understand the competition from different types of products satisfying the same consumer need. Although this may sound very simple and obvious, many large organizations and brands have suffered out of this myopia. For example, Scooters which once ruled the Indian market suffered near –death stage due to competition from a different product category of motorcycles. IPod has now occupied the position once owned by Walkman. Ujala redefined the cloth whitener category with a different product form.

The key to a proper business definition is to take the focus away from product and focus on consumer. Marketers must define the business around the customer. The focus should be on the customer rather than the product. Once the organisation redefines itself making the customer as its centre, a world of opportunities will be thrown open.

Too broad a definition blurs the focus of the firm. It is where the firm must be able to understand the consumer it serves. Apple Computers were able to leap forward with its products like Iphone and IPod because it understood the consumers and never restricted itself to be a computer manufacturer.

Understanding the Consumer.

In the highly insightful book “ What the customer wants you to know “ Dr Ramcharan states an important rule – “ The more you know about your customer, the better you and your company will be at identifying and devising products and services that will help address them “

Marketers should be able to collect all the information about the consumers and their buying behaviours. One of the key strength of Hindustan Unilever Ltd is their enormous knowledge about the Indian consumer psyche. This has enabled them to create new products and new business models which are very much in line with consumer’s needs and wants.

Who buys the product and why he buys the product are the two important questions that a marketer should be able to answer.

Consumers buy solutions and not products. Value has been the keyword for success in Indian market. Products that do not have an intrinsic value will not survive in the market. The crisis that most firms now face is a result of the failure of firms to keep their products with in the value expectation of the consumer. When the consumer confidence dips, he turns to those products that offer value. Even in times of recession, consumer needs are not exhausted. He just postpones the decision to indulge till the confidence is back.

The future of business

Predicting the future of business is often the most difficult tasks for a marketer. And marketers have to make decisions regarding the future course of actions.

To predict and determine the future of a business should be based on the firm understanding of the consumer. According to Peter Drucker, this task of making judgements about future should start with a demographic analysis. Demographic analysis is the study of the population and the trends.

Indian market is also witnessing a demographic shift with the younger consumers now becoming the major consuming segment. Those brands which foresee such a demographic shift would be ready with new products and strategies targeting the young consumers.

This calls for massive investment in developing knowledge about customers and their behaviour. Many Indian advertising agencies have realised this need and created specialized departments and Chief Knowledge Officers who are in charge of creation and dissemination of knowledge.

The market environment is in a state of constant changes. Take the case of media. Five years back, very few predicted the explosion of social media in India. Blogging was unheard and Orkut and Facebook was not in vogue, no one was Twittering. Even now Indian marketers are clueless on how to understand the social media and take advantage of the popularity of orkut and facebook.

This is the right time to go back to basics, redefine the business and make the entire business operations centred on the consumer. There will be pain in the process but it will be worth the effort.

Marketing Strategy : How to Create Consumer Centric Innovations

How to Create Consumer Centric Innovations

Originally Published here at Adclubbombay.com

What can you do with a boring product like a dishwash bar? Can you bring excitement into it? Is it possible to make innovations to a product like dishwash bar? A look at Vim, the market leader in the dishwash bar category, will give valuable insights on making innovations which are meaningful for a consumer. Vim have a plastic coating which prevents the bar from getting soggy because of its constant contact with water. This simple coating gives the product long life and thus adding more value to the product.

Innovation is considered to be a key factor that will ensure the future of a company. Companies like Gillette (now a part of P&G), 3 M, Google, and Apple have their entire organization focused on innovation. Successful firms have developed a culture of innovation which becomes the part of the DNA of the entire organisation.

In future, India is believed to have potential to lead the world in product innovations. The fact that many global IT firms have their product development centres in India is a proof of the growing stature of India as a global innovation hub.

Indian marketers are also not far behind. Indian companies have been able to provide breakthrough marketing practices that acts as a model for emulation for their western counterparts. Notable in these innovations are the e-chaupal (ITC) and Project Shakthi (HUL), GCMMF etc.

Although we have seen a significant rise of product innovations in India, we are yet to create an innovation culture in Organizations. The level of investment in research and development in Indian companies are yet to reach global standards. The fact that we don’t have an Indian equivalent of a 3M or a Google is a reminder of the enormous task before us.

In this era of global competition, marketers cannot afford to be complacent. This is a market where categories are becoming irrelevant. Mobile phones are competing with cameras and computers. Two wheelers are competing with cars and airplanes competing with railways. Marketers cannot afford to be myopic to competition. Now firms have to run faster in order to survive.

When markets become too fluid, organizations should be investing in creating products for the future. Organizations need to understand the changing consumer mindset and also the changes that are happening across various markets.

There are three approaches to innovation. One approach is to strive for a pure innovation which results in an entirely new product. The second approach is to innovate incrementally and continuously. The third approach is to innovate on building efficiency in operations. What HUL did for VIM was an innovation which was an incremental innovation. The company created a new method of tapping rural market through Project Shakthi which was a process innovation.

Innovation doesn’t always means that the company should come out with an entirely new feature or a product. Innovation also can be in the form of imitation. Professor Theodore Levitt calls it Innovative Imitation. Innovative imitation is where the firm tries to bring in innovations that are happening in other industries to their field. Vim recently relaunched itself with anti-bacterial property which was an innovative imitation of its nearest competitor.

Continuous and constant innovation strategy is going to be the key for organisational success in future. But in order to succeed, these innovations should be customer centric.

Innovations should be visible and should be authentic for a consumer. The period where a marketer can get away with “New and Improved “label is over. The challenge for the marketer is to make the process of improving their offerings continuously.

The best way for getting new ideas is from the consumer. A consumer may not be able to give a list of new product ideas. But by observing his life, the marketer can get lot of ideas for improving the product and also new products.

Have a plan for innovation

The first step in creating an innovative culture is to have a plan for innovation. Large or small, firms need to have a plan of innovation. There has to be people who should be responsible for innovation and most importantly there has to be a budget for innovations.

Celebrate Failures

While Google, 3M and Apple are celebrated for their innovations, the long lists of the failures encountered by these companies are often forgotten. Not every new product ideas are well received by consumers. When encountered by failures, firms must not penalise the innovator but should be doing a thorough analysis of reasons for failure.

Make the customer the centre of innovation process

In the highly insightful book “The Game Changer”, the authors Ram Charan and A.G.Lafley describes how P&G made their innovations customer- centric. In the book, the authors narrates an example where the product development team for a new heart-burn medicine created a life sized cardboard cut-out of a consumer which they named Joanne. They put this cut-out in a chair in their conference room. In all the meetings discussing the new product’s launch, there will be the presence of this hypothetical customer. The team used this hypothetical customer to focus their discussions on those ideas that will have a meaningful impact on the consumer.

By looking at how a customer uses the products and how the product impacts his life gives valuable inputs for future innovations.

Brands can innovate in product form by launching the product in new shapes and sizes. The shampoo category witnessed explosive growth after the product being introduced in sachets. The simple innovation in packaging made the product category affordable to millions of Indian consumers.

Products also innovates itself by making it easier for consumers to use the product. For example TVS recently provided balancing side-tyres to its Scooty which enables the users (Girls) to learn to ride scooter on their own.

Brands can innovate by making it easier for consumers to store the product .Bru recently added a flavour lock ( plastic clip) which kept the coffee powder fresh and eliminated the need to transfer it to a container.

Products also can innovate by satisfying problems faced by consumers. Asian paints launched samplers which helped the consumer to test the colours before purchasing it. Nightingale popularised un-dated diaries which gave this product an unlimited shelf-life.

Whether big or small, innovations will be successful only if it made some impact on consumer’s life. The most important decision that a marketer should do is to make customer the centre of his innovation strategy.

Marketing Strategy : The Art of Brand Laddering

The Art of Brand Laddering

This article was Originally Published Here at Adclubbombay.com

Raymond makes you a Complete Man, Bournvita makes you Confident, Fiama Di Wills makes you Beautiful Today, Tomorrow, Nike asks you to Just Do It and Eating Parle-G makes you a Genius!!!

Welcome to the world of brand laddering. …

Brand laddering off late is the most sought after strategy in the Indian marketing space. Brand laddering involves positioning of a brand from common product attributes to more abstract values or concepts. Its moving from a focus from product attributes to brand benefits.

One of the Indian brands which have successfully undertook brand laddering is Raymond. Raymond’s is now positioned on a more abstract benefit ( Complete Man) rather than the product /functional attributes of clothing like fashion, texture, quality etc.

From product attributes to higher values involves a series of stages. Marketers have to be careful while trying to position their brands on higher abstract concepts.

The first stage of laddering is establishing the brand’s association with product attributes. Attributes are the physical properties of the product that in turn will deliver the desired benefits to the consumer.

When a brand is launched, the focus of the marketer will be to establish the product attributes. The task is to establish category membership and also to achieve parity with competitors on functional performance.

For example, textile brands will be trying to convince the customer about their product properties like texture, colours, quality etc. For a TV marketer, the focus will be on features like clarity, sound quality, technology etc. For example Sony Bravia is now focusing on its 2 million Bravia Pixels for establishing itself as a leader in the emerging LCD TV market. Automotive marketers concentrate on the product features and attributes while launching its brands into the market.

Once these attributes are firmly established in the mind of the consumer, the brand moves into the next step in the laddering process .This stage involves positioning the brand on product benefits. Here the brand moves from a functional focus to the benefit focus. Maggi Noodles had built its brand based on its product qualities like “easy to cook “and taste. Later the brand repositioned itself on the health platform.The latest tagline of Maggi – Taste Bhi, Health Bhi, takes the brand from attributes focus to benefit positioning.

The most critical stage of laddering process is to associate the brand to abstract benefits. Abstract benefits are conceptual benefits which focus on a deeper need of consumers much above the product benefits. Often these abstract benefits are aspirational in nature.

Brands over a period of time try to move from a basic benefit based positioning to a more abstract benefit. While comfort is a benefit, being a complete man is an abstract benefit. Airtel is about Expressing Yourself. This is an abstract benefit that the cellular service provider tries to position itself on. Fair & Lovely when launched concentrated on its functional benefit of “fairness” during its initial stage of brand building. Over a period of time, the brand has laddered up to the abstract concept of confidence and women empowerment.

Abstract benefits helps increase the aspirational value to the brand. It also helps the brand to extend itself into related categories since its positioning is no more conceptual and not limited by any functional attributes of a product.

The final stage in the laddering process is where the brand becomes synonymous with the abstract benefit. This is a level where the brand personifies abstract benefit. Johnson & Johnson is synonymous with mother – child relationship. Over these years, the brand has established itself by positioning on this abstract concept. In theory, this is referred to as Brand Essence.

Brand laddering helps a marketer in many ways. The most important benefit is that abstract attributes gives more flexibility to the brand. It takes the brand away from the most basic attributes so that marketers can experiment with various communication themes. Abstract benefits also give the brand to be more creative in its campaigns. Raymond’s was able to create highly popular campaigns because it focuses on an aspirational benefit of “Completeness”. Raymond’s can create new stories about a complete man which would not have been possible of a brand focusing on functional attributes.

The fundamental objective of brand laddering is to create icons. Iconic brands are that which truly represents or personifies aspirational values. Nike personifies authentic athleticism and Harley Davidson is synonymous with masculinity, free spirit and rebelliousness.

Although laddering is a sexy marketing strategy, it requires certain preparation for successful execution. The laddering will be successful only if the brand is able to establish its association with functional attributes. If a brand tries to ladder up without establishing its functional expertise, consumers may not believe in the brand’s claim. . The highly acclaimed “ Dirt is Good “ campaign of Surf is a successful brand laddering exercise because it was done after establishing its functional expertise. The brand should first establish its Points of Parity (POP) with its competitors in terms of performance. Only then, the laddering will be accepted by the consumers.

Another important condition is the abstract attribute should be relevant to the brand. For example, Nike and Athletics performance go hand in hand. Bournvita and confidence have obvious connection. Dove and Beauty are connected with each other.

Before venturing into a laddering exercise, the marketer has to decide on the brand essence. The abstract benefit should be carefully chosen because there is going to be a long term association often a permanent one.

Usually laddering is done on a benefit derived out if the core brand mantra. Brand mantra is the core DNA of the brand. It is what the brand stands for. And like DNA, brand’s mantra also remains constant. Choosing the right Brand Mantra enables the brand to ladder up effectively.

Even after a successful laddering exercise, a brand should not leave its focus on functional attributes. Sometimes, the brand should do a laddering down exercise to reinforce its association with functional attributes. This could be done by parallel campaigns focusing on functional attributes. This laddering down should be done if there is a change in consumer’s perception or if the competitors launch an innovative feature. In such a scenario, the brand should reinforce its functional expertise to the consumers.

Marketing Strategy : Executing Marketing Strategies

Executing Marketing Strategies

Originally Published in Adclubbombay.com

Although lot of research and writing is being done on formulation of marketing strategies, little has been said about execution of those marketing strategies. Many problems arise when the marketer fail to properly execute strategies in the market place. It is said that 70-80% of new product launches fail in the market. Most of them fail not because of lack of strategies but because of poor implementation.

For example, most of the Customer –Relationship programs fail at the implementation stage where the program gets morphed into a crude form of database marketing.

Poor implementation of marketing strategies can either dilute the effectiveness or can accelerate failure faster. Unlike other functional areas like finance or production, marketing implementation is external in nature. Take the case of advertising or personal selling, the implementation happens outside the organization. The parties involved in the implementation process are also external. Marketing implementation also requires co-ordination with various other functions like production, finance human resources etc. Hence managing implementation becomes both complex and critical.

For example, when the management decides to cut production costs, the implementation remains largely simple because it is internal. But a decision to reduce marketing expenses will have far reaching effects on various stakeholders like channel members, advertising agencies, media, sales personnel and customer.

There are lot of factors that marketers should focus in order to ensure proper implementation. Most often, implementation is confused with control. While control is of utmost importance, it only helps to correct deviations from the standards. Implementation is more than control. Implementation is about skills, communication, teamwork and culture.

Skills

Marketers tend to focus on systems and process for effective implementation forgetting the human side of implementation. Process orientation alone is not sufficient in marketing implementation because the implementation environment is dynamic in nature. In order to make perfect execution of marketing strategies, one has to look at the skill set of the managers who are in charge of implementation.

Harvard Business School Professor Thomas V Bonoma in a 1984 Harvard Business Review article ‘Making your marketing strategy work ‘identified four critical skills for effective implementation. They are

Interaction skills : Providing leadership to the team and communicating

Allocation skills: Allocating right resources to the right team at right time.

Monitoring skills: Controlling and monitoring on a continuous basis

Organising.skills: Identifying and organising resources and creating an execution culture.

These human skills are a necessary condition for marketing strategy programs to work. In most of the marketing organizations, the implementation is the responsibility of the middle-level managers. Hence it is important that these managers are having execution skills for implementing the marketing strategy.

While implementing strategies, firm must take an objective view of its implementation capabilities of its managers before venturing into execution. It also has to see whether the managers have the ability and the authority to interact, allocate, monitor and organize the necessary resources to execute.

Communication

Most of the implementations fail because of lack of communication between the planners and the implementers. Marketing plan should be treated as an execution manual and the implementers should be able to understand the essence of the strategy.

Lot of miss-selling happen because the sales staffs are not aware of the wider implication of the strategy. For example, if a service firm is moving towards customer orientation, the front-office personnel should be able to understand the relevance of their action in realizing the overall marketing plan. Recently a reputed car dealer was telling me that he knew about the recent price cut through newspaper and not from company sources.

It is also important to encourage communication flow from the external stakeholders like customers and channel partners to the top level executives. Often, these communications do not reach the senior management. Feedback sessions and other communication channels should be tapped in order to make sure that the management gets the real time feedback from the market.

Internal Marketing.

Employees are also a vital element in your implementation plan. In an organization, it is important that the implementation team is also aware about their role in the marketing plan.

This is especially important in the sales management perspective. The quality of customers and the quality of presentation will have a great impact on the success of marketing implementation. The recent sub-prime crisis is a classic example of a failure of proper implementation. While the strategic plan envisages acquisitions of quality assets, the implementation team went after poor quality assets.

Managers must device new communication channels to connect with the internal partners. Companies extensively use internal chat forums and blogs to keep talking to the lower layers of the team.

It is also important to get the commitment of the implementation team for the flawless execution of the marketing strategy. Employees tend to perform better if they realise the relevance of their role in the overall strategic vision of the firm.

Marriott International is famous for its exceptional customer service. The staffs of the hotel called as Marriott Associates represent a remarkable example of commitment and initiative. Once, a very young guest left her favourite Teddy Bear in the hotel while checking out. The staff found the teddy and safely returned it to her home .Although this sounds trivial, it made a big difference to that little guest. This happened because of the commitment of Marriott Associates to take customer service excellence to perfection. No where in the service manual, we could have a process or a budget allocation for such acts. These acts should come from the employees themselves.

Culture

It is important to create a culture of execution in the organization. This has to be consciously created and not to be hoped for. For creating a culture, it is important to have the involvement of top management. Execution oriented culture can be developed by encouraging team members to perform without worrying about failure. One of the biggest resistances to change is the fear of failure. This fear causes managers to tread cautiously.

Organizations should encourage the marketing implementers to fearlessly execute their tactics. This could be done by bringing in transparency, encouraging communication and clearly spelling out the deliverables.

Marketing Funda : Logic of brand extensions

My article on logic of brand extensions published in adclubbombay.com : read it here

Marketing Funda : The Difficult Task of Differentiation

My article on Differentiation published in Adclubbombay.com : Read it here

Marketing Funda : The art of story telling

My article on the Art of Story Telling published in Adclubbombay.com : Read it here

Marketing Funda : Creating Brand Experience

My article on Creating brand Experience published in Adclubbombay.com : Read it here

Marketing Funda : Branding a Commodity

My article on branding a commodity in Adclubbombay.com. Read it here