Somebody just forwarded me a link to Dove’s new campaign. Considering, that only 2% of the women think that they are beautiful1, this campaign targets the 98% to be the real self.
A refreshing marketing campaign after a long time. Remember Coca-Cola’s “Always” campaign?
1Numbers based on a survey commissioned by Dove
Marketing Brilliance: Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty”
November 2nd, 2006Marketing Automation: The science of automating the business of Marketing
October 29th, 2006When I started blogging around 3 years ago, I made a promise (to myself) to never blog about my day job — with the sole reason of never crossing the boundaries (well, sorta). However, it was a bad call, not talking about what you do makes the job even harder. So, here I am, breaking the promise (I’m also running out of fresh ideas).
Marketing Automation is the science of bringing “order” to the creative chaos, which is Marketing organization, with the help of business processes, technologies, tools, systems. The high order bit of Marketing Automation is making Marketing organization accountable for dollars spent across various campaigns and it’s effectiveness across channels, segments and Business Units. The low order bit is the automation to allow the revenue generated by Sales to be tracked at the campaign source.
Why do we need Marketing Automation? The rhetoric is simple — Marketing organizations have traditionally been a “cost center”. The organization gets a percentage of revenue to spend (mostly at will!). Whatever money is allocated and spend on various campaigns and programs are never efficiently reported back.
Even if there are reports, they mostly live in spreadsheets or in vendor systems and yeah, every owner of a major marketing campaign or a program has it’s own report on it’s outcome. The outcome — Every quarter the divisional and regional bosses running like kids around the house to organize the data for their moment of truth. This gets repeated every quarter. The goal of the automation is to track the progress and the ROI of every dollar being spent on awareness, brand building, demand generation and market development.
Rethink your business — Innovate, Get uncomfy and change
October 2nd, 2006Traditional way of doing business is changing. Average life-span of an employee on a job is decreasing from 20 years, five decades ago to 2-3 years today. Markets have become perfect (or are becoming close to perfect). Information about anything and everything is freely available. Companies, Managers, bosses, traders, and insiders thrived because of information zealously guarded. The digital age has set it free. Google is disrupting the ad sales model, YouTube is kicking out the Television advertising exec. sitting at the top. What we are leaning towards is a business which is changing at the speed of light. The digital age kicked the travel agents out, online trading kicked the $40 per transaction stock broker out and craigslist is making the newspaper classified business crying afoul. Fortune has an interesting article on how guarded walls of management is seeing change in business.
Here’s how to rethink your business:
Tough talk
Force a conversation on how the company will have to operate differently to be successful two years from now. Otherwise everyone dwells on today’s successful products.
Yellow flags
Pay close attention to what your sharpest, most mobile customers are doing. They’re your early warning of
business-model problems.
Remodel early
Start changing your business model when you’re most successful. When you’re in trouble, it’s too late.
Abandon yesterday
Maintaining what no longer works draws your most valuable resources away from your No. 1 job, creating tomorrow.
A new, improved story line
Explain the company’s changes within a larger context. Employees, investors, customers, and suppliers are more comfortable with change when it’s presented as part of a story line.
Corporations resist change and management often get in the “cruise control” of status quo. Globalization of economies (“flat world”) and access to remote markets, suppliers, and customers have changed the way companies project and view their future earnings potential. It’s no longer the big eat the small; it’s the fast, nimble and agile let the big delapidate under it’s own weight.
Look Ma, I found the video of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”
September 1st, 2006The first time I heard this song was on BBC Radio, and I still remember it — a friend of mine and I quickly realized it was cool. It became a regular fare on BBC’s Jolly Good Show and other radio airplays. I then saw the video of the song sometime around Nirvana won the award for Best Artist (1993? Don’t remember it exactly).
Enjoy!
“…And I forget Just what it takes
And yet I guess it makes me smile
I found it hard Its hard to find
Oh well, whatever, nevermind…” — Kurt Cobain’s at it’s best.
Funny Disclaimer at a Construction Site
August 24th, 2006Found this at the Vallco Fashion Park Mall in Cupertino, CA! What’s the intent?
Photo Courtesy: Moto Razr
Leadership Primer: Colin Powell style
August 15th, 2006- “Never neglect details. When everyone’s mind is dulled or distracted the leader must be doubly vigilant.”
- “Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.”
- “You don’t know what you can get away with until you try.”
- “Organization doesn’t really accomplish anything. Plans don’t accomplish anything, either. Theories of management don’t much matter. Endeavours succeed or fail because of the people involved. Only by attracting the best people will you accomplish great deeds.”
- “Organization charts and hence titles count for next to nothing.”
- “Never let your ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.”
- “Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.”
- “Powell’s Rules for Picking People”—Look for intelligence and judgment and, most critically, a capacity to anticipate, to see around corners. Also look for loyalty, integrity, a high energy drive, a balanced ego and the drive to get things done.”
- “Have fun in your command. Don’t always run at a breakneck pace. Take leave when you’ve earned it. Spend time with your families.” Corollary: “Surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but not themselves, those who work hard and play hard.”
- “Keep looking below surface appearances. Don’t shrink from doing so (just) because you might not like what you find.”
Successful leadership consists of a formula rather than a two variable equation.
9/11 Cover Up Video
August 15th, 2006Just saw the entire video. Shocking! Gasping!
Wal-Mart starts carrying Music of India
August 7th, 2006‘was strolling around the music aisles of my local Wal-Mart, found the “Music Of India” column nicely ensconced between Hawaiian and Blues sections. Asha Bhosle, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan classics, Ravi Shankar, Anoushka and a few dance albums. Decently priced at $10.99 a pop. Notably missing were Lata, Daler Mehndi and the regular hit movie numbers (they’ll probably figure out in couple of iterations).
Picture courtesy: Moto Razr
I think it goes in line with Wal-Mart scoring big with ever growing aisle sizes of Latino Music and their Head of Sales recently announcing customization based on surrounding demographics.
Why the Hiring Process sucks and How Writable Intranet can fix it
August 4th, 2006One of the biggest roadblocks in hiring process is (absence of) collaboration. Again, email and word documents are used for accepting resumes, screening, providing feedback and managing the queue, prioritization, etc. There are multiple parties involved for a single job opening viz. Hiring Manager, Recruiter, HR Manager, HR Specialist (the lady who schedules the interviews!), the interview team, Hiring Manager’s boss, etc.
All the parties involved use e-mail and word documents buried in e-mail to gather feedback and collect data points, which sucks big time. It’s a pain managing the approval process, why a candidate is good on resume, who was phone-screened and rejected/approved. This whole workflow is a mess in most large and small companies. There are vendors however who have software/services for automating this; some are focused on resume management, others are geared towards candidate management, while others specialize in managing the job descriptions. A good software costs at least $200K-$500K in TCO, including license fees, software costs, hardware costs, people costs, training, etc. On top of that, in my experience, HR is last in the queue to get IT support to create an infrastructure to manage the workflow.
What’s needed bare minimum is a collaboration tool for the Hiring Managers where they can track resumes, annotate them as needed and capture feedback from the interview team. I think the Writable Intranet in the form of Wikis could be a great platform. Here are some ideas:
- Create a centralized Wiki run/managed by the HR department.
- Each page on the Wiki corresponds to a an open position within an organization. As the pool of resumes comes in, the resumes are attached as a file and an entry is made as a section for each candidate. The interview team provides individual feedback by entering their feedback directly into the Wiki under the candidate’s section. Thus all the data gets collected in one single place and is visible to everybody
- Security issues? The major thing is reducing visibilty to other people who are not part of the hiring process for a job; depends on the policy as well. Turning off “special pages” and features like “Random Pages” would prevent people from accidentally jumping onto a page.
Easy?