When I started in this business there was a wonderful planning, ordering and direction tool called the Marketing Plan, in my perspective as an advertising agency, under the full responsibility of the client. It was not a calendar, nor was it a wish list, it was not improvised and rather the highest caliber was demanded of it, in direct proportion to the professional stature of the person who managed it. That was the marketing plan, which in its best examples was as deeply inspiring and challenging as it was practical and concrete. Who hid it?
In the 80s, Marketing Managers and their Brand Managers learned to elaborate a complete plan, with the background of their brand and product, market information, concrete objectives and the strategies to achieve them. They were able to define tactics, establish a calendar and allocate budgets. In those golden days of the marketing professional, promotions occupied a place and a space, although they never subordinated the importance of building brands. Research was done the old-fashioned way, and they tried to understand the consumer with qualitative or motivational methods.
Today, however, marketing managers excuse themselves in the speed of time and the dynamics of their markets, the pressure for sales and competition. However, when they were made, Marketing Plans were guides to action. They focused on the strategy in a given period of time, they turned on and off the media, they balanced in a flow-chart the different tools, they assigned attention to each product or brand of their firm, and although they were always modified along the way, they served to have all the controls on, all the radars alert and not a single area of the business uncovered, except for a decision in that sense.
It is unfortunate to see that orderly and careful planning has been lost to the extreme, and that marketing plans have ceased to be the very essence of companies, to become, in the best cases, plans of activities for the next three months. Of course, my generalization is inaccurate and there are exceptions, but they are becoming fewer and fewer.
Most Marketing Managers and their Brand Managers, if they have them, are focused on promotional calendars, on the permanent search for items or prizes for the next raffle, sweepstakes or animation. What is serious is that General Managers, in their predominant focus on financial results, have stopped demanding the full extent of the marketing plan and have also fallen into the activity trap.
Good promotions have always been necessary as a resource for short-term results, and therefore, when the CFO analyzes the investment in a promotion and looks at the immediate results, he tends to become the number one fan of promotions. He then encourages, promotes, solicits and supports them in perpetuity. Their vision and obligation is focused on the numbers, and therefore, usually omits the impact these promotions have on the sustainability of the business , the brand’s personality and its emotional connection with consumers.
In my student days, I was fortunate to meet in the classrooms of the UCR with a professor who later became my client at McCann. In his period as Marketing Manager of Miles Laboratories, he managed Marketing Plans, and therefore, entire brand teams, including their advertising agencies. He achieved the most successful campaigns in the history of Alka-Seltzer and Tabcín, among many other brands. His name is Jorge Alfaro, and today, in these paragraphs, I want to pay tribute to his legacy, his school and his professionalism.
In his time, Laboratorios Miles lived in a permanent state of marketing, which was the essence of the company. The extraordinary results and the famous bottom line were consequences of marketing, or what today I would call emotional branding. It was planned and executed, programmed and improvised, analyzed and intuited, under the strategic direction agreed upon in a practical and valuable marketing plan. As it should be, the brand team would send requests to the laboratory for new formulations or products, because through them we understood what they wanted in their products, and therefore, where the niches for new business were. Her brand managers, among whom I highlight Margareth Grigsby, whom I later invited to join our team at McCann-Erickson, Johnny Tarcica and Janneth Rosales, who were professionals focused on their brands as well as on trade, image and boosting sales. Such was the success achieved by the team led by Jorge Alfaro from small Central America, that they triggered the global acquisition of Miles Laboratories by Bayer, the German giant.
Today, the exceptions to this loss of presence and weight in the marketing plan are only seen in large companies, precisely those that have brands that are powerfully connected to the emotions of the consumer. The leaders dominate and not by chance, but because they understand the importance of demanding creativity and innovation from within, and not only from their business partners outside.
However, the good news is that the trend can be reversed with a single decision. All that is required is to evolve the conventional plan to one adapted to the reality of the day and the category, focusing on innovating and attracting, planning strategically, seducing with design and communication. Today’s consumers demand extraordinary products and extraordinary marketing. One without the other will not succeed.
If you are a marketing manager, take the initiative and make room to retake the plan. If you are a general manager, stop time for a second and regroup the troops, set the pace and dedicate resources to the plan. If you are a marketing professor or run a business school, change your programs and update the plan, igniting the desire to reengage them to their enormous potential. If you are an agency, creative or executive, whatever you do in advertising or business communication, pass this article on to your clients, spread the word and spread the lost virus of the marketing plan. In my opinion, mediocrity and improvisation became partners once again… and hid the marketing plan. It is time to rescue it.
In your relationship with the ad agency, with your brand team, with all those who emotionally build relationships with the consumer, there will be significant improvements if you improve the inputs that are delivered. Often, the agency is forced to give the most, when their client feeds them the least. In the United States they say it easy: trash in, trash out. And that’s why the marketing plan is absolutely essential.
It will be easy to recognize that the difference will be, at the end of the day and as always, the design itself, the creativity in its transformational reach, the courage to differentiate, the inclination for risk, the intuitive interpretation of data, the sensitive reading of the consumer, among other important factors, and of course, an impeccable execution. Everything adds up, everything is important, in the right proportion: 20% for the rational, and 80% for the emotional.
Our invitation: let’s fill the world with brands that are based on inspiring loyalty beyond reasons and boring specifications, beyond lures and conventional promotions. She, the consumer, will repay us with her purchases, her preference, her recommendation. Moreover, in this approach that demands respect, legitimacy and honesty, the world will also be a little bit better.
(Article originally published in this blog on January 29, 2007).