I recently sat in on a number of meetings with a marketer and their agencies to discuss how they could get a greater level of collaboration between the various marketing teams and the agencies on their roster.

The ideas that the agencies were putting forward appeared to be quite reasonable and would address the issue of collaboration. There would be more:

1. sharing of information on a daily and weekly basis,
2. discussion about strategy and idea development
3. interaction and co-ordination during the development and implementation stage

The problem was not the intention, but the execution, because every single one of these was followed by a discussion, and a meeting and more discussion about who would need to be involved.

Meetings can be incredibly effective if held and managed properly including:

• make sure you have prepared for the meeting
• choose the right venue
• have competent executive support
• ensure the meeting runs to time
• keep accurate records of the meeting
• report the outcomes to the appropriate people
• ensure participants stick to the subjects
• follow-up to ensure that all the tasks generated by the meeting are completed.

But how often do you participate in meetings where information is shared with little output or outcome except agreement for more meetings?

The problem is that often the meetings are pointless. Collaboration without objective is futile. But most of the time we believe we are collaborating to achieve an objective, only to discover that everyone has a different view of that objective.

To collaborate effectively is not about meetings. It is about alignment to a common and agreed objective.

In his book, “Silos, politics, and turf wars”, Patrick Lencioni identifies the requirements for achieving alignment and collaboration within organisations and overcoming the silo, politics and turf wars that get in the way.

1. A thematic goal
2. A set of defining objectives
3. A set of on-going, operating standard objectives
4. Metrics

The purpose of the objectives is to create alignment of the various stakeholders to objectives that are singular in focus, qualitative in nature, time-bound and shared by all. The purpose of the metric is to measure and monitor progress toward achieving the goal set by the group.

Without these objectives people find themselves holding multitudes of meetings trying to maintain alignment and focus. By holding the meetings with the purpose of achieving alignment up front, fewer meetings are required as the project progresses as people spend more time focusing on the area they are responsible for and less time determining what everyone else is doing.

This is basic project and meetings management. But often the basics are overlooked in the rush to get the project done.

How many meetings each day do you have trying to create collaboration?

Last week I went along to speak to a financial services advertiser at their six monthly marketing planning day. They asked me to talk about the various types of marketing departments. When they called me and asked if I could come and speak the topic was “What is a high performance marketing team?”

That initial conversation went for about half an hour and I finally got to the bottom of what really was the issue. The marketing team and structure had to be changed about six times in the past 4 years (not uncommon in financial services) and marketing were trying to identify what was their role and opportunity in the new structure?

On the day I talked to this presentation, which I have shared on Slideshare previously.

One of the issues that arises when we have undertaken a Strategic Supplier Alignment (where we align suppliers to the strategic needs of the marketing function) is that the marketing leadership often rightly question if they have the best structure in place.

On the basis that structure follows strategy it is possible to see how the organisation strategically positions marketing by the structure applied.

It is interesting that often this conversation is not overtly explored when organisations are restructuring marketing. Instead the new marketing structure is deployed, resources are rearranged and changed and business as usual resumes, albeit with usually less resources and new reporting lines.

But beyond the usual vacillation between centralised and decentralised models, there are a number of structural features that can quickly identify if marketing is seen as:

1. A supplier
2. An advisor
3. A partner
4. A leader

Some of the most obvious signs are:

1. Does the Marketing leadership report to the CEO or someone else such as Sales or a Business Unit?
2. Does Marketing hold P&L responsibilities or just a budget?
3. Is Marketing responsible for NPD? Pricing? Distribution? Or simply Promotion?

Check out the presentation for yourself.

Let me know in comments which marketing structures you have seen and how well (or not) they work.

These days, many consumers form their impressions of organisations, brands and products through what they read, hear and see in the editorial and news sections of the media as much as they do through paid advertising in the same media.

Research studies conducted in the late 1990′s in the US by AT&T’s Public Relations research department measured the interaction between news coverage and advertising. It was concluded that news coverage can have a substantial impact on consumers, on a par with advertising. They suggest that news coverage can substantially impact the investment a company makes in various forms of paid marketing communications and that expert management of media relations is critical to protect and leverage this investment.

Yet very few organisations really know how each influences consumers, what interaction there is between the two and what the consequences are if advertising is presenting one perspective, while the editorial media is presenting another.

Once upon a time advertising was king

There was a time most consumers were conditioned to receive messages through advertising. Editorial never stooped to cover commercial matters, which was regarded as giving advertisers a ‘free plug’.

Today editorial is much more an equal partner. Media see it as their responsibility to inform and educate – giving huge amounts of space to everything from reviews of products to coverage of the evolution of industries such as consumer electronics.

As well, a large number of Australians are now shareholders, so finance and company news has spilled over into general news.

The result is that consumers are now confronted with a smorgasbord of news, information and content. Some is advertising, others are editorial – but distinguishing between the two is increasingly becoming a challenge. Perceptions are created and opinions are formed from all of this – but never has it been so unclear as to what has the most potency.

What impact is this having on consumers?

Take telecommunications in Australia today. The participants are spending millions on paid advertising. But the sector, and the companies within it, are subject to constant editorial coverage. Advertising traditionalists will argue that to counter heavy media editorial coverage, marketers need to spend heavily on ‘controlled messages’ through advertising.

PR people will argue that research clearly shows that consumers are heavily influenced by what they read as editorial (and perceive as independent opinions), and that they are distrustful of companies simply telling their own story through advertising.

The bottom-line is that news/editorial coverage is, for many companies, assuming an increasing proportion of what the consumers see, hear or read about them. Yet many organisations are still running their PR and advertising agencies as separate silos based on the traditional model.

What is the opportunity for alignment?

Questions major consumer marketers, who find themselves in sectors widely covered by the news media, should be asking are:

1. Should we be finding out what in today’s total environment is influencing our consumers (ie not just researching the impact of our advertising)?
2. Are we coordinating well enough the messaging between advertising and PR?
3. Are there ways we can make our PR more effective in delivering product messages (and measuring the degree of success)?
4. Are our existing advertising and PR agencies working toward the one common goal with complementary messaging?

Often the problem is that public relations, increasingly like social media, is the domain of corporate affairs and reputation management. Therefore marketing is not aligned with corporate affairs. And corporate affairs is not aligned with marketing. Yet both have an important role in managing the reputation of the brand and the organisation.

We have found that the first step is to recognise the interaction between the two and then to align structure and strategy across marketing and corporate affairs.

Where have you seen these two closely and successfully aligned?

When I was doing my Bachelor of Applied Science at RMIT, our first year included a study unit on the Theory of Science and the Scientific Method. In this unit we read Darwin’s The Origin of Species and discussed the scientific method which became the foundation of science to separate “scientific fact” from “science fiction”.

Interestingly few people have heard of the Scientific Method, even though it is at the basis of all science breakthroughs and is the best way yet discovered for sorting the truth from lies and delusion. The simple version looks something like this:

1. Observe some aspect of the universe.
2. Invent a tentative description, called a hypothesis, that is consistent with what you have observed.
3. Use the hypothesis to make predictions.
4. Test those predictions with experiments or further observations and modify the hypothesis in the light of your results.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until there are no discrepancies between theory and experiment and/or observation.

At a time where there is so much change and many hypotheses on what will work and what will not, it seems to me that proven methodology like this could be easily adapted for marketing.

In the case of marketing ‘test & learn’ the steps could be:

1. Observe some aspect of the market place or use market research to define an insight.
2. Invent a tentative strategy, that is consistent with what you have observed.
3. Use the strategy to make predictions of the effect the strategy will have on the market.
4. Test those predictions by experiments and observations and modify the strategy in case where it under-performs the predicted results.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until there is consistent over performance against the prediction when you would integrate the strategy into the core ‘go-to-market’ strategy.

I have heard from a number of advertisers, who have used this approach, that they start by separating their budget into a 10 / 20 / 70 split.

70% is for business as usual (BAU) – that is, they budget to undertake their usual marketing plan with a 30% reduction. This reduction is achieved not by paying the agencies 30% less for the same work, but by eliminating waste and investing less in non-essential or non-performing activities.

Of this 30% reduction, 10% is for observing, strategy hypothesising and testing and the remaining 20% for proving those test strategies that deliver worthwhile results.

It provides a disciplined approach to embracing those opportunities that seem to continually present themselves and testing and learning what is working and what is not before you jump in with a significant investment or worse, underprepared and under-resourced.

But it is not just new opportunities, the process can be used to test and learn how effective many of your existing strategies actually are delivering against your objectives and predictions.

We have been very effective in finding where you can fund this from within your existing marketing plan and budget.

Are you testing and learning? And if so, what is working for you?

My friend and colleague Clement Toulemonde recently shared a list of phrases commonly used in English language that are often misinterpreted by the listener.

I suddenly realised that this happens often in meetings between marketers and their agencies. The cause is often the two parties are often working at cross purposes: the marketer is trying to provide feedback, direction or criticism without causing offence to the agency and the agency is trying to achieve agreement to their recommendation or point of view coming from an often unrealistic but optimistic perspective.

In the process, two groups of communication professionals completely miscommunicate their intentions and fail to align to the business strategy. So here it is, “what marketers say, what they mean and what the agency hears”.

I was reading through these in a meeting and discovered three more happening before my very eyes:

There must be many more where these come from, so please feel free to provide any suggestions below.