Annual Plan Checklist for a Killer 2022!

We hope your 2021 is exceeding expectations and you’ve created a strong plan for 2022 to grow faster.  As most of you are, or are approaching, completing your 2022 Plan, here’s a checklist to make sure you’re ready for a killer 2022!

2022 Annual Plan Checklist

1. Develop a Written, Market Based Growth Plan Carefully

• Analyze and segment your customer and consumer base, prioritize by growth potential
• Understand what your customers’ unmet needs and why they will choose your superior product or service
• Build a strategy that leverages your business model: market opportunities, your core competencies and where you are most profitable

2. Widely Communicate Your Growth Strategy

• Summarize your 3-5 Key Growth Strategies, based on factual analysis (e.g. channels, products/services)
• Growth Priorities should be quantified and clearly communicated throughout your company and key constituents (e.g. suppliers) so everyone understands them and is aligned
• Innovation should be among your top priorities; have clear parameters (fertile areas in which to innovate) to provide direction

3. Have, or Get, the Right Accountable Team

• Have accountable talent who can lead and drive respective pieces of the growth strategy
• Have strong and clear inter-department communication and processes
• Have the right talent who can produce; commit to coach up, outsource for, or dismiss those who can’t

4. Execute with Cross-Functional Precision

• Have clear leadership, accountability and measurement of top initiatives
• Maintain ongoing cross-functional leadership and communication to keep key initiatives on track
• Track key programs quantitatively and refine them based on in-market learnings

5. Deploy Effective and Efficient Marketing

• Marketing should identify and drive consumer and marketing growth opportunities
• Marketing should develop and lead a clear marketing strategy that directly ties to growth strategy Your brand positioning(s) should be clear, consistently communicated.
• Your marketing communication and R&D efforts should consistently strengthen your superiority
• All major programs should be on strategy, measurable, optimized across multiple media, and provide measurable return-on-investment

6. Drive Productivity… Everywhere

• Set ambitious, achievable productivity goals (cost reduction/efficiency). $1 in productivity > $10 in new sales
• Challenge each function to develop specific, measurable, cash-saving (not conceptual) programs; drive wide participation
• Celebrate, publicize, and reward best programs. This creates a ripple effect for more productivity

Avoid Botching Exposure: No, we still don’t know BDO

BDO, a global accounting, business and financial consultancy, is wasting millions of dollars on its current advertising campaign, “People who know, know BDO.” In their advertising, they could tell you who they are, but they don’t. They could tell you what problems they solve for you, but they don’t.    They could tell their target audience when to contact them and why, but, alas, they don’t.  It’s painful to see such a great introductory opportunity go to waste.

Rather, they do tell you that the people who already are aware of them and know what they do (presumably anyone but the audience) are knowledgeable.     So they are talking only to people who already understand and use their services.     This is a great example of everything you don’t want to do in your advertising.

Sadly, they repeat the strategic vagueness on their website as well (At least the campaign is consistent).

To avoid this, take these simple steps:

1.   Clarify your brand proposition – Who are you, what problem(s) do you solve, who is your target audience, and why are you superior and unique.
2.   Determine your advertising goal – Are you trying to attract new users?  (like BDO is attempting, but failing to do)  Convince current customers to buy/select/consume your brand more frequently?   Are you trying to improve your brand image?    If you are not clear about the purpose of your advertising (or any marketing investment), you can count on meandering advertising, unless your marketing partners are clairvoyant.
3.   Assess your advertising from the consumer’s perspective – What do they know about you now?  What do you want them to know about you after they have been exposed to your message?    Make sure you are giving them a persuasive message, in their language, based on what you know from your consumer research.     Again, BDO makes a common error of crafting advertising based on their internally focused, prideful self-assessment.     It’s a missed opportunity to tell potential customers of who they are, why they’re a superior service, and how they will solve the customer’s problems.
4.  Pre-test your advertising – There are several great advertising effectiveness evaluation methods, including MSW ARS and IPSOS ASI, that will give you unbiased, quantitative and credible feedback on if your advertising campaign is persuasive and has achieved your marketing goals.    These are small investments that can be done while the campaign is in the idea phase, prior to wasting money on producing or airing ads that do little to grow your business, or even may do harm.

by Tammy Katz

What Keeps Marketers Up at Night?

Key Issues for Marketers are driving growth, ROI and digital capabilities, per MarketingProfs #marketing #brands

                   by Ayaz Nanji  |

September 26,  2013

Not surprisingly, the foremost worry for marketers is reaching customers,  with 82% saying it is a major concern, according to a recent survey by Adobe.

The next most common worries are understanding whether campaigns are working  (79% of survey respondents) and proving campaign effectiveness (77%).

Demonstrating return on investment for marketing spend is the fourth biggest  concern (75% of respondents), followed by using digital tools effectively  (70%).

Below, additional key findings from the report, Digital Distress: What Keeps Marketers Up at Night?, which  was based on data from an online survey of 1,000 US marketers (263 digital  marketers and 754 generalists).

   

Digital Demands

• Only 48% of the digital marketers surveyed feel highly proficient in digital  marketing.
• Generalists are even less confident, with just 37% saying that they feel  highly proficient.
• Overall, only one in three marketers think their companies are highly  proficient in digital marketing, and only two out of five marketers think their  colleagues and peers are highly proficient.
• In particular, marketers feel ill equipped to tackle the digital challenges  of e-commerce, personalization, and measurement.

Marketing Proficiency and Change

• In general, marketers have low confidence in their organization’s marketing  performance. Only 40% think their company’s marketing is effective.
• Just 44% say their marketing departments have a great deal of influence over  their organization’s overall business strategy.
• 76% of marketers think marketing has changed more in the past two years than  the past 50.
• Marketers are mixed on what areas to focus on in the future—with social  media, personalization, digital advertising, and cross-channel marketing all  seen as rising in importance over the next three years.

ROI

• 83% of respondents said proving return on investment on marketing spends is  important.
• 79% say it will be even more important to prove ROI in the next 12  months.

About the research: The report was based on data from an online survey of 1,000  US marketers (436 decision makers, 499 staff members; 263 digital marketers, and  754 marketing generalists). The survey was conducted between August 26 and  September 11, 2013.
Ayaz Nanji is a digital strategy and content consultant. He  is also a research writer for MarketingProfs. His experience includes  working as a strategist and producer of digital content for Google/YouTube, the  Travel Channel, and AOL.

Read more: http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2013/11725/what-keeps-marketers-up-at-night#ixzz2gIawSatJ

Super Bowl XLVII Ad Winners and Atrocities

No spectacular ads last night (except for the Beyonce brand), but several excellent ads that were well worth the $4.0 million investment for the ad time, pre- and post-game public relations and social media legs.     Super Bowl advertising with strategically sound brand communications that focused on persuading consumers to buy and garner a return-on-investment, rather than sophomoric – or just lame – humor at the expense of a selling message.   Budweiser, Tide, Doritos, Skechers, and Milk Processors most of the car ads were particularly effective at keeping their products central to  the main message (vs. prop ‘afterthought’) and told engaging stories about the quest for the brand.

But some spectacularly cringe worthy ads too:   GoDaddy (disgusting, patronizing and unclear message) and Samsung (fatal flaw: inside jokes about how advertising is developed amuses no one except those who made the ads and unclear message).

Special kudos to Oreo’s brand team and brilliant agency, 360i,  for their nimble Oreo ‘You Can Still Dunk in the Dark’ mega tweet  (over 10,000 tweets) which was created on the spot during the power outage (and depleted chicken wings).    Another bravo to Beyonce’s breathtaking performance (done gratis, but 13 minutes is worth $104 million in advertising).

Here are the winners (and worst) from four marketing mavens – USAToday’s AdMeter (panel popularity), Mullen and Radian6’s Brand Bowl (twitter volume and sentiment),  us (effectiveness), and AceMetrix (Persuasion and Watchability)

USA Today – AdMeter                              

Best:
1.   Budweiser Clydesdale (horse and trainer reunited) 

2.   Tide (Miracle Stain)
3.   RAM (farmers)
4.   Doritos (fashionista Dad)
5.   NFL (Deion Sanders returns)

Worst:  GoDaddy – So awful it doesn’t deserve a link – get domains at 1and1, just in protest.

Mullen and Radian6’s BrandBowl

1.  Volkswagen (get happy office guy)  

2.  Bud Light (voodoo)
3.  Calvin Klein (guy in underwear)
4.  Audi (prom)
5.  Taco Bell (viva young)

Worst:  iRobot

Katz Marketing Solutions

1.  Tide (Miracle Stain) 

2.  Coca-Cola (security camera)
3.  MILK board (Rock running)
4.  Budweiser (horse and trainer reunited)
5.  Skechers (cheetah race)

Worst:  GoDaddy

AceMetrix

1.  Budweiser (horse and trainer reunited) 

2.  MILK board (Rock running)
3.  Coca-Cola (security camera)
4.  Jeep (home again)
5.  Doritos (goat 4 sale)

Worst:   Calvin Klein

by Tammy Katz

5 Ways to Maintain Brand Growth and Relevance: StarKist’s Revitalization Strategy

StarKist‘s marketing strategy is a rich example of maintaining brand relevance and accelerating profitable growth.    Despite having some significant brand challenges:  a mature category, a mature brand, dated brand equities, and pricing challenges, their strategy is spectacular and effective.

Here are the 5 brand revitalization best practices they’ve nailed:

1.   Maintain a clear, consistent, and relevant brand positioning  –  StarKist’s brand’s positioning is the best brand of high quality, nutritious tuna.   This has been a virtual constant for over 60 years.   Consistency is relatively easy, but maintaining relevance over time is more difficult and even treacherous, if you don’t do it.    They have brilliantly adapted, but not radically changed, the brand positioning to ‘the best brand of high quality satiating nutritious tuna.’     That transformative “tweak” moves pre-packaged tuna from dated and increasingly irrelevant, to a brand that is contemporary, appealing and compelling for today’s consumer.

  

The Chobani brand Yogurt Coup: Reinvent the Category

We applaud Chobani‘s explosion to +$900 million in annual sales since its 2007 startup by attacking the yogurt category with a truly differentiated and superior brand.    Not only have they catapulted to stardom, they’ve even beat the brilliant, entrenched competitors, like Yoplait (General Mills) and Dannon.    They’re among the elite brands, like WhiteStrips, Swiffer, Apple, and Dyson who invent and dominate new category segments by reinventing their category.   

First, Chobani designed a much better product.    Their CEO and founder, Hamdi Ulukaya, thought American yogurt was horrible and developed a premium, Greek-style yogurt, which is thicker, creamier, more protein, less sweet, and has a healthier perception.   They challenged many of the conventional approaches of what product design seemed to drive the category.

They also rethought pricing and price/value.  

7 Musts for Profitable New Products

1. Delight your target consumer
DO focus on creating items that truly solve your target consumer’s needs and points-of-pain
DO meet and exceed their needs
DO create fans, not just customers
DON’T focus on internal issues
Can you precisely define your target market and what motivates them?
√ Does 50% of your target audience say they definitely or probably would buy your product?

2. Make sure it’s profitable early
DO screen ideas for profit potential at the idea stage
DO rework ideas early to address any profitability issues

10 Obscenely Easy Ways to do Better Marketing

Brand marketing and strategy can be very complicated, analysis driven, or even intimidating.    But much of the time, it just isn’t.     Here are 10 obscenely easy ways to do better marketing.    And this isn’t about one particular company, rather, all too many.

1.     Focus –  If you haven’t already, figure out what business you really are in (it’s not what you make, it’s whose problems you solve), what drives your business model, and what you need to attack first.    Less is always more, and more profitable.
2.     Develop your Business Strategy – This needn’t be the all-consuming five-year plan that is both painful and rarely used.    Just figure out what direction you want to head, make sure you know why you want to head that way (versus other alternatives), and make sure that direction is financially sound.      This is CEO and Board stuff, and it’s critical.    But it’s all too frequently not done.

5 Ways to Ignite Brand Innovation

Only 10 percent of new products launched in the United States are successful, according to Ernst & Young. This 90 percent failure rate for new products is tragic and avoidable. Leading innovators could consistently and successfully launch new products, simply through better planning and execution. The failure rate of new products doesn’t have to be so high, and the number of people and companies launching successful new products can be greater. Here are five Best Practices for innovation and launch of new products:

1. Set priorities and expectations: Innovation is more successful when it is established as a corporate priority. Senior management must set and broadly communicate clear and consistent innovation goals within the corporate strategy. Goals must be measurable and have clear accountability: Sales, profit and payback goals for the entire innovation effort (all products and services), typically for a one-year or five-year timeframe. Both marketing and research and development have interdependent accountability to deliver these goals. This step alone can address the paralyzing chasm between most marketing and R&D teams.

Swanson’s Inclusive Advertising: Stirring Sales Growth

Kudos to Swanson brand and parent company, Campbell Soup Company for its outstanding, inclusive print advertising campaign. The campaign features great chefs using, and providing recipes for, their delicious broths… and a delicious, authentic respect for diversity. While many companies are wisely striving for, but often struggling with, diversity, Swanson’s work is exemplary. They are elegantly appealing to caucasion ‘traditional families’ – AND the roughly 50% of the U.S. population that isn’t – appealing to millions of consumers that others overlook.