Bed Bath & Beyond didn’t respond well to e-commerce taking much of its business. The retailer shifted its assortment a bit, tried to hone its promotional pricing, and targeted its marketing. But it just couldn’t compete with the assortment found online, nor the convenience of e-commerce, nor with many of the low prices. It never found a coherent response.
Claudia Kotchka played a key role in figuring out what parents (mostly mothers) want from their children’s diapers. She was in charge of P&G’s design, tasked with bringing new innovation tools and techniques into the company. But it was incredibly difficult to get marketing on board because the experiences reported by her consumers didn’t match up with what marketing thought were the important parts of selling diapers. It was only when IDEO came on and...
The road to making marketing accountable has been perilously slow. In the time of David Ogilvy marketers believed in measurement, their status was high. But many years ago, marketing turned inward and focused on ads. The CMO stopped being a business partner to the CEO. Marketing got dumbed down to being seen as frivolous, a cost center not an investment.
Netflix just reported its half year earnings to analysts. Wall Street’s reactions were typical. After the initial knee jerk punishing of Netflix’s stock because Netflix did not capture enough subscribers, Wall Street, its analysts and media talking-heads focused on Netflix’ positive news regarding operating margins, free cash flow and operating profits.
Heavy users and advocates play important roles in marketing as they can help companies to reach new customer targets, increase brand awareness and loyalty, and drive sales. But you have to know them to love them, so here’s a closer look at their roles:
