The most effective enterprise strategic plan flows from purpose, vision, and values. These guideposts provide context for long-term priorities; objectives and key results to be achieved through well-defined projects; and key performance indicators to measure how it is all going. And as the circulatory system for projects and teams, processes — their efficacy and unexploited potential — are critical to the success of the plan.
For decades marketers have found certain stages in a person’s life where they are more susceptible to messaging and marketing.
For some serious insight into the challenges facing grocery packaged goods, the Barron’s recent interview with Robert Moskow is an important read. One of the points made in the interview is that packaged goods’ focus on competing with own-label grocery brands seems to push a lot of buttons, except for innovation. Packaged goods seem to be fighting fights of the past rather than focusing on the future, in which packaged goods brands can win. Packaged...
From all my years in research and consulting, I think I’ve learned a thing or two about marketing worth sharing. Enduring fundamentals, mostly yet often overlooked. So, this year, I’m sharing some for your consideration. I hope they’re helpful. This week’s thought: Change is overrated. Marketers love fads and fashions. Change is the watchword of marketing. I’m in the trends and futures business, so I’m not unhappy about this. But part of studying trends and...
Let me be blunt: the annual ritual of demanding a marketing plan from the CMO is a boardroom charade masquerading as strategy. The corner-office crowd think they’re extracting a roadmap—a neat, glossy prediction of what the company will do, spend, and achieve. They think they’re judging the plan. Wishful thinkers. The plan is a distraction, a fetish of the naive who believe the world bends to their spreadsheets. The real game, the actual signal amid...
