Interview on Media Talk WebCast.

Click below to view my interview on Media Talk last week.

THE WAY YOU’VE DONE THE THINGS YOU DO.

PLAY THIS 30 SECOND VIDEO NOW.
John Costello is one of the top marketers in the U.S. and has made his mark at Home Deport, Sears, and Yahoo and is now President—Consumer & Retailer at Pay By Touch. The new company uses technology to use fingerprints, among other things, to identify customer shopping behaviors and preferences. Well, John certainly left his fingerprint on the recent Global Retail Marketing Association’s inaugural Summit at St. Petersburg Beach. A common thread throughout the excellent presentations at this meeting was the skyrocketing growth of technology, especially mobile media (cell phones), for retailers and service providers in today’s marketing programs.

One of the points John made, however, really resonated with me and my passion to get everyone in the organization involved with the brand strategy. He recommended that today’s successful marketing organizations should be organized by objective rather than by function as has been the norm for years. Instead of having VP’s of Advertising, Marketing, Branding, Creative, etc., the marketing organization leaders should be determined by the Who (most important customer segments), the What (differentiates the brand vs. competition), and the How (integrated marketing and advertising). To accomplish this, the former VP’s would now take on the rolls such as VP-Customer Intelligence and Insights (Who), VP-Brand and Product Marketing (What) and VP-Integrated Marketing Communications (How).

I think it’s about time that this type of thinking becomes the norm in our organizations where the brand should drive not just the marketing functions, but the entire organization. The operations need to be clued in to the brand strategy and organized so that the place where the customer gets his/her brand impression (the store) is consistent to the message. Human Resources needs to be set in finding people who will live up to the brand - whether it’s at the store or behind the scenes, IT needs to provide the technology and systems to stay up with the brand strategy and a technology savvy customer and employee base. The CEO has to become the Brand Champion who sets the pace, ensuring that the message is integrated into all decisions going forward. In short, it’s everyone’s job and it should be organized around the brand not around a chart of functions.

Until we get over the silos that currently hinder the effectiveness of today’s organizations and truly understand that the brand is the DNA that makes up the store, product or service’s reason for being, I’m afraid branding will continue to be simply a marketing function—for those who want to see their market share dwindle in the future.

For more information about the GRMA Summit, go to www.globalretailmarketing.com . Kudo’s to Sonny Nardulli and Stephanie Fischer on bringing a great forum for progressive thinkers to the retail industry.

YOU CAN’T CUT YOUR WAY TO SUCCESS.

View the 40 second video first.
Last week, my former employer, Circuit City, announced a new wave of cost cutting efforts where by 3,400 employees would be fired and replaced by lower-paid workers in order to become more competitive with other electronics retailers. However, being competitive doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to have the lowest cost efficiencies and lower sale prices,. To me, this is just another step in becoming less of a factor in their category and a guarantee that the market share will continue to erode.

Back in the mid-90’s, Circuit City was the number one choice by American consumers for their electronics and appliance purchases. At that time, we conducted over 3000 interviews with consumers and determined that, in fact, most of them preferred the CC format in providing knowledgeable salespeople and helpful service while maintaining competitive pricing. Just a couple years ago, while working in that category again on the agency side, I consistently read a lot of research indicating that customers, especially females (who now have a say in over 80% of electronics purchases), still had a lot of questions when it came to making technology purchases and would appreciate someone more than a cashier when deciding on what to buy.

The discontinuance of commission salespeople accelerated CC’s move toward self-service and the latest move should put them right there with Wal-Mart who doesn’t promise to be anything more than a low price source. I can’t help but think of The Container Store where they have not only one of the most loyal employee groups, but also one of the highest paid. Consistently rated one of the best places to work in the country, The Container Store has made selling basic “stuff” exciting and it all happens at the store level. I recall hearing the companies’ founders, Kip Tindell and Garrett Boone, say that the key was keeping and paying the best employees. They insisted that a great employee could do more work than three so-so employees and they could pay them twice as much and still be cost effective.

Branding is much more than just a low price. It starts with a great strategy and then having people in the store (who are the brand to the customer) who are motivated and excited about the store and the merchandise they sell. With this latest move, I’m sure that the quality of service at a store that used to promote it was “where service is state of the art” will become not only non-existent, but also a detriment to future share growth. No wonder more electronics buyers (note I did not say “shoppers”) are going on-line or to the warehouse stores to get what they want.

It forecasts a continuance of Circuit City’s lagging sales and diminished market share trends, and I don’t think even having Jim Nantz (who, by the way, did the play by play of the Florida Gators’ championship win) in their commercials will motivate the customers to come back or the employees to do a great job.