Play Your Home Field Advantage

… the competitive location of premium production is different from commodity production.

--Ken Jarboe, Athena Alliance, The Intangible Economy

Blog alert: if you want to be a player in the I-cubed (Information, Innovation, Intangible) economy, you should read the Athena Alliance blog. It is a clearinghouse of expert opinions on how to create competitive differentiation in an increasingly flat (i.e., commoditized) world.



Take the June 27th post about a Business Week article on why some entrepreneurs choose not to offshore even though competitors do. Key reasons for sourcing at home:

• High end customization.
• Design and quality.
• Close link between office, production and customer

The business examples cited happen to be makers of tangible products -- knitwear, birdcages, and board games. But what about makers of intangibles like professional services? Do these three attributes also create compelling differentiation for local suppliers of "products" that clients can receive over a wire from anywhere?

My view is that they can. In fact, a close connection to your home market can itself be a strength, especially in combination with the other attributes cited. However, a lot depends on where "home" is -- for both buyer and seller.

One thing that's interesting about my clients is that many of them are non-native speakers of American English. This started back to the mid-90s when I was writing the résumés of SAP third-party integrators from Eastern Europe. Today, I count among my "non-native" clients both offshore companies and senior marketing executives of U.S. companies who happen to be foreign nationals.

Yes, we live in a flat world. But the American idiom still dominates high tech marketing (even when translated). That means that professional communicators who know that idiom well, and also know how to make non-native speakers feel at home in it, have an edge.

Peanut Butter Marketing

"What happens when you take two things that are great on their own . . ."

--Direct mail teaser

Yesterday this text arrived in a direct mail solicitation from a competitor … another marketing writer. It came on a card inside a small box with some straw, a chocolate bar, and a little tub of Smuckers peanut butter. The purpose of the mailing was to promote the alliance between this writer and a marketing consultant. Both their logos signed the bottom of the card.

Well, okay, so first let me finish their thought: What happens when you take two things that are great on their own … and combine them?


So what does happen? Great writing plus great marketing equals … what? More than words can say, I guess. Too bad that's the opposite point from the one the writer intends.

And why not come up with a better word than "things" for your businesses? How about: "Two specialties that go great by themselves or together." (It works equally well with jelly, which I prefer.)

Yes, I know, in a mission statement it's the thought that counts. But while you've got people's attention why not express the thought?

Why Can't Case Studies Be More Positive?

"A high-tech advantage lets us 'play with the big boys.'"

-- customer case study

Yesterday I said that CMO growth champions are effective at managing a paradox: the opposing sides of process and creative -- the steady state versus big bang theories of business expansion. But what about the technology vendors that market to them? What do they say to CMOs who are out to prove that solid productivity gains and big-time growth are not mutually exclusive?

For many tech vendors, the productivity message comes first, growth second. Take this case study by Siebel. Note that this case is not about just any software. This is about Siebel's marketing solution. And the key message? Cost savings.

Now look at this case study from my client Two Step Software. Like Siebel, my client makes what is essentially a productivity solution. But the case study connects the dots between productivity and growth. And growth is the star. One of the ways this works is by making the case about a single central problem -- not just about growth in the abstract. The particular problem is both growth related and one with which the target audience will closely identify. Specifically it is about how to position the subject of the case (a law firm) on a level playing field in its own industry against much larger players.

There's a lot of other technique stuff going on here -- like opening the case with a "success story within a success story" about one of the largest VC deals of 2004.

My real point, however, is that tech companies need to reach beyond tired productivity messages and address what business customers really want -- competitive advantage. In that context, productivity is just an essential means to an end. But the audience won't get it without help. If tech companies expect to sell a growth message, they first have to express it.

Faith Based Marketing Is Under Attack!

"Use lean techniques to streamline repeatable processes, such as collateral development …"

--Overview to Six Sigma for Marketing Processes

First, an apology to anyone who Googled this post expecting something on religion. Sorry, this is actually a response to two books and a number of recent posts by other bloggers on the need to bring more metics based operational discipline to marketing. As a marketing writer, I get it that creative types need freedom to explore their intuitive side. But as an independent business owner, I also get it that without process discipline, things can fall apart hard.

On my very micro level, weak process can cause things like invoices not getting processed, drafts not getting reviewed, and interview appointments not being kept. (If you think writer's block is bad -- try process block!) In the corporate world, weak process can mean not getting your marketing budget approved because you can't base it on real numbers. That's what I call faith based marketing -- and it's under attack.

I got clued into this a few days ago when Eric Kintz, Vice President of Global Marketing Strategy & Excellence for HP, kindly left a comment on my post: "Which Type of CMO Are You?" inviting me to check out his own post: "Marketing as a key driver of business growth."

Both discuss the idea of the marketing growth champion. Eric's point: that growth champions have five characteristics in common, chief among them a proclivity for metrics-driven process discipline.

A little research revealed many other recent posts with a similar message, including one on the Six Sigma blog. There are also a couple of brand new books:

• Six Sigma for Marketing Processes: An Overview for Marketing Executives, Leaders, and Managers, by Clyde M. Creveling, Lynne Hambleton, Burke McCarthy
  
  
• Marketing Metrics: 50+ Metrics Every Executive Should Master, by Paul W. Farris, Neil T. Bendle, Phillip E. Pfeifer, David J. Reibstein

My own view is that high value creative work is naturally opposed to rigorous operational discipline -- and that both are vital to business success. It's the kind of paradox leaders need to manage. It's also the kind of paradox Mercer Management's Stephen Rheinesmith talks about in his article "Learning to Live with Paradox."

Other paradoxes with which leaders need to contend in their business lives are work versus family, stability versus change, and centralization versus decentralization. I think you can add to this list: faith based versus metrics based marketing.

Here are Stephen's five steps for managing paradox, which I would like to introduce into the discussion:

• Identify the competing forces of a paradox.
• Create a grid to map the positive and negative effects of a paradox.
• Optimize, rather than maximize, your primary responsibilities.
• Include contradictions in your thinking.
• Create paradox alarm metrics.

I think these add another dimension to the problem. In fact, it would be very interesting to see how to operationalize these steps in the marketing context.

Why I Post Writing Samples

"This case study came out great and I look forward to the next one. I think it's outstanding."

--Gary D. Levine, President, Two Step Software, Inc.

Writing samples should do more than show off a writer's talent. They should show how to solve marketing problems in the face of complexity and limited attention spans. With that in mind, I want to highlight three new writing samples in my portfolio -- a case study, a feature article, and a white paper.



Check out Two Step Software's case study for an example of a customer testimonial that touches all the bases -- business problem, resolution, and results. Two Step faces a challenge common to a lot of small software companies -- achieving credibility with large corporate buyers. So who better to speak for them than a large corporate buyer like Acuity Brands? As a writer, my job was to let them do that in as concise, efficient and compelling a way as possible.


This month's Communications News features my client, 1st Works Corporation and the feature article I wrote for them on client-centric conferencing. Comm News, like most publications, rejects articles that read like an ad. Client-centric conferencing was my way of breaking through that resistance by saying that not all conferencing solutions should require a server. It's both a valid point of argument and permits us to present the many positive points of the 1st Works conferencing solution. (Credit to Christine Shock of ShockPR for placing this.)


Companies often wrestle for years trying to find the best way to explain a key technology to the marketplace. In the white paper I recently finished for Basis Technology the problem was how to explain entity extraction in a way that search engine executives would immediately appreciate. My approach was to start the paper with interesting and easily understood scenarios. Would you like to know about the next big thing in search? Read this white paper.

The Case for Personal Engagement

"Marketing communications must be reborn as a consumer-centered craft."

--Booz Allen Hamilton

The Summer 2006 Issue of strategy+business, the Booz Allen Hamilton quarterly, is now out and marketing communicators everywhere will want to read "The Future of Advertising Is Now," by Christopher Vollmer, John Frelinghuysen, and Randall Rothenberg.

Although the piece presents itself as "a field guide for the new marketer," the article is less about "how to" than it is a survey of current trends. Nonetheless, it's still a great source of research and anecdotes reflecting of the current shift away from "push" marketing to what I call marketing by personal engagement.

That shift already has been the central focus of countless marketing books and articles. What's new here is evidence that:

1. Marketers are now starting to believe it
2. There are actual payoffs resulting from the new engagement-oriented practices
3. There are common issues marketers face when adopting these practices

Three of those issues are innovation, tighter integration with IT, and complexity. These should sound familiar. They are the reverse side of the key issues driving the new role of IT (which must integrate more tightly with marketing in order to push its own agenda). And just as innovation has become the key competitive asset of the company, it can't help but be the key marketing asset that demonstrates a difference to customers.

As for complexity, marketing communications has (or should have) a ready-made solution: clarity. As messages, offers, and audiences become ever more challenging, the case for personal engagement must be ever more clear, compelling, and pervasive.

Who Cares about Software as a Service?

"... business leaders will need to rethink governance models and management processes to take full advantage of new technology trends."

--McKinsey & Company

The Summer 2006 edition of The McKinsey Quarterly (subscription required) offers a web exclusive, "Two New Tools that CIOs Want" by authors Kishore Kanakamedala, Vasantha Krishnakanthan, and Roger P. Roberts.

The two new tools: virtualization and software as services.

The article ends by saying that if these technologies are truly going to deliver the goods, then top management will have to get on board. My own view is that top management -- as well as other stakeholders -- may very well not get on board without a marketing campaign to lead them. And who better to conduct a marketing campaign than marketing?

Why should marketing care? Because in a service-based, plug-and-play world, the enterprise does not end at the front gate. Web services are how trading partners interoperate -- or soon will. They are hooks into your customers.

I am currently working with a large telecommunications company that is migrating to a web services platform for conducting business-to-business transactions like pricing an offer bundle or tracking a repair order. Say, you're an office manager at a Fortune 100 company and you want to find out the status of something. In the past, you would have had to pick up the phone and wait in a service queue and then wait again while the customer rep pulled up your data on the screen ... and so on. Then when you finally did get the information, you would still have to put it someplace to make it useful -- like into one of your firm's own applications. And that assumes that your applications know what to do with the data once it's there.

With web services, whatever information is in the telecom company's systems can be used by applications at the telecom's customers. In addition, basic functions can also be pulled into the customers' applications -- like "calculate a price" or "track a service request." Effectively the customers' applications become an extension of the telecom company's application (and vice versa) -- but each company gets to keep its preferred look and feel -- and its own brand.

What I'm working on is a Flash presentation to sell this -- first to internal audiences at the telecom company and then to external customers. People have to "get it" before they sign on. For one thing, internal stakeholders have to be willing to expose their business processes -- and that by itself may require senior management leadership.

McKinsey is right. The latest technology trends have enormous implications about how people and businesses will work together. My point is that marketing -- as the traditional bridge builder -- needs to find its role.

If You're Like Most Companies You're Messed Up

"If your company is like most North American technology businesses, you are not conducting formal companywide assessments of your competitiveness …"

--A.T. Kearney

How do you like white papers that start out by saying that you are probably messing things up? Not only that, but the reason you are messing things up is because you don't buy enough of the types of services the author sells. This opening certainly gets your attention. Of course, it could also turn you off.

Judge for yourself by reading this A.T. Kearney article by Philipp Jung and Eric Cherng. The article discusses the results of a survey of 300 high-tech executives on the key competitive actions these executives think they should take and what actions they actually do take.





I think consultants write like this when they get frustrated with their clients. On the one hand clients say they want to be one thing (more strategic, more innovative, more risk taking, etc.) but in practice clients are just the opposite. It's another example of people doing the opposite of what they think they should do. I have discussed this before.

In the survey, the actions most executives cite as ways they are increasing innovation is by extending current products and creating new bundled offerings. Other competitive actions cited by these executives are even less exciting.

That said, however, I don't think beating people up first is how you get them to open their minds or their wallets (legally, anyway).

Effective marketers realize that they have to deal with the customers that actually exist, not the ideal customers they would prefer. And shaming customers into correct behavior is not going to whip them into shape -- even if whipping is deserved.

NOTE: Previous posts referencing A.T. Kearney are listed below. To see posts referencing other consulting firms (e.g., Bain, Boston Consulting Group, Booz Allen Hamilton, Mercer, DiamondCluster, InfoSys) type the name of the firm in the search box at the right.

Sell Deployments Not Products
Be an IT Champion!
Can IT's Image Among Marketers Be Repaired?
Why Wireless Operators Don't Sell Online
So Much for Generic Technology
The One Mistake Banks Can't Make Is the Second