HBR ARTICLE CRITIQUE

THE ULTIMATE MARKETING MACHINE

by Marc de Swaan Arons, Frank van den Driest,

and Keith Weed

SUBMITTED BY:

IVANI KATAL

27-MBA-15
To understand what separates the strategies and structures of superior marketing organizations
from the rest, EffectiveBrandsin partnership with the Association of National Advertisers, the
World Federation of Advertisers, Spencer Stuart, Forbes, MetrixLab, and Adobeinitiated
Marketing2020, which is considered the most comprehensive marketing leadership study ever
undertaken.

The article describes the broad traits of high-performing organizations and the specific drivers of
organization effectiveness.

3 winning characteristics for the high-performing organizations:

Big data, deep insights: I.e. collecting information of all the operations, employees,
processes. What we are actually selling to our customers is information related to how
they use our product and services to achieve the results that they need, not the product
itself but the information of how to use it.
o Example of Nike personal fitness products, with motivational feedback and links
users to communities of friends.
Purposeful positioning: a powerful and clear brand purpose improves alignment
throughout the organization and ensures consistent messaging across touch points.

o Three manifestations of brand purpose:

Functional benefits: the job the customer buys the brand to do.

E.g. If we consider pampers, it has become a great brand over the years by
having the best functional benefits. They always were category leader but
when they started talking about the functional benefits in the context of
child development as a purpose, thats when the brand had a competitive
edge over others.

Emotional benefits: how it satisfies a customers emotional needs.

E.g. Dove has used it very wisely in an ad where they have emphasized on
real beauty.

Societal benefits: sustainability.

 E.g. DULUXS Marketing campaign, Lets Color. It enlists volunteers
and donates paint (more than half a million litres so far) to poor
communities from Rio to the streets of Jodhpur.

And what they learned was that when you repair windows and paint the
walls, people feel better. Also the brand repositioned itself from instead of
selling tins or cans of paint to being provider of tins of optimism.

Total experience: High performances brands do give customers personalized offerings

and breadth of the relationship by adding touch points.
o E.g. Around 2006 Nike was losing shares, until then they dont even had the word
loosing in their dictionary because they never had lost shares. Then they stopped
to look behind that what is really lagging. Besides t-shirts and good shoes, thing
like how do we get people started, how do we motivate them, how do we get them
linked to other social networks, how do we coach them and then came up with
nike+ and created a solution for that. With it you can go on a city wide run, you
can get coaching or you can get different products that help you get moving.

But the article says that it is not enough. They say that it is good to develop a preposition on a
paper but you need an organisation to deliver and thats where the organizing for growth comes
in.

What it takes is real connections outside the company. Nike+ didnt happened until Steve Jobs
joined onboard. Thinking who we can strategically connect with outside the company to deliver
total solutions.

In case of dove, before launching total beauty campaign, in board meetings there were all senior
members. They involved the children and families of board members too and that opened up the
discussion.

5 drivers of organizational effectiveness:

Connecting marketing to the business strategy and to the rest of the organization: Today
high-performing marketing leaders dont just align their departments activities with
 company strategy; they actively engage in creating it. Another way companies foster
connection is by putting marketing and other functions under a single leader.
Inspire their organizations by engaging all levels with the brand purpose: employees are
more likely to express pride and motived by the same mission, helps ensure the consistent
customer experience. (Dulux, that involved handing paint and brushes to thousands of
employees and setting them loose on neighborhoods around the world)
Focus their people on a few key priorities: the council of PepsiCos defined a purposeful
positioning, nailed down the brands global objectives, set a prioritized growth agenda,
created clear lines of accountability and incentives, and adopted a performance dashboard
that tracked industry measures.
Organize agile, cross-functional teams: flexible roles, fluid responsibilities, and more-
relaxed sign-off processes designed for speed.
Build the internal capabilities needed for success: basic capabilities like market research,
competitive intelligence, and media planning. The best marketing organizations,
including those at Coca-Cola, Unilever, and the Japanese beauty company Shiseido, have
invested in dedicated internal marketing academies to create a single marketing language
and way of doing marketing.

Successfully companies characterizes, other firms could learn from it.