Why Should GM Give Marketing Any Respect?

My ex-partner Al Ries and I rarely disagree, but we do part company on his Branding Strategy Insider blog post titled “GM Appointment Shows No Respect For Marketing“. In my estimation this move supports what Dave Packard of Hewlett-Packard once said: “Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing people.”

It also reinforces what I consider a brilliant statement made by Bob Lutz in a recent interview with BusinessWeek: “To spend $200 million on manufacturing, we have to get board approval with top management involved from an early stage. Yet we spend billions on marketing and delegate that to too many people at the lowest levels. It’s insanity.” He’s absolutely right. Top management has to be involved, and obviously with Mr. Lutz in charge they will be involved.

My main problem with Ries thesis is why marketing should be given respect. Chief marketing officers have shorter tenures than NFL coaches. They rarely last two years before they are gone.

As BusinessWeek commented in an article on the subject, “the job is radioactive.” The article cited a well-known search company as stating that 70% of the companies don’t know what they’re looking for when they recruit a CMO.

In my estimation, Advertising Age had the answer to the short CMO tenure in an interesting piece of research on senior marketers. It was done by Anderson Analytics, which surveyed a group of 1,657 senior marketing executives (600 replied).

Anderson asked respondents to rank the marketing concepts they pay most attention to in their jobs. They spend the most time on customer satisfaction (88%), customer retention (86%), segmentation (83%), competitive intelligence (82%), brand loyalty (82%), search-engine optimization (81%), marketing ROI (80%), quality (79%), data mining (78%) and personalization (79%).

This is why CMO’s are being fired left and right. On the list of things they are working, differentiation doesn’t even make the top 10. While they are worrying about customers or segmentation or ROI or search-engine optimization, their brands are sinking in a sea of commoditization.

If you think I’m overstating the problem of commoditization, let me give you some numbers. A research organization called Brand Keys has been tracking this problem via an analysis of 1,847 products and services  in 75 categories. The results are frightening. On average, the study found that only 21% of all products and services examined had any points of differentiation that were meaningful to consumers. That’s nearly 10% less than in a benchmark study that was conducted in 2003.

To better understand this, take the automotive category. It has a reasonable percentage of differentiation, at 38%. That means you have a fair number of differentiated brands such as Toyota (reliability) or BMW (driving) or Volvo (safety) or Mercedes (prestige). It also means you have a large number of placeholders such as GM and Ford. The marketers at these companies are certainly not earning any respect.

Figuring out the right differentiating strategy is only the beginning. Marketing then has to convince the CEO and CFO that building or even maintaining a brand is a long-term process that requires patience and incremental change. You’ll have to avoid line extensions that undermine what the brands stands for in the mind. And Wall Street will be a problem you will have to get around, with its focus on quarterly and monthly results. With Mr. Lutz in charge, he is in the perfect position to do the convincing.

Al Ries does make some important points about Bob Lutz’s new job. It will be all about the remaining four brands and developing their stories. Al felt there were no stories. I’m not so negative. Chevrolet is America’s favorite American car, which is a good leadership story. Buick can be about high quality without having to pay for prestige, which is the import’s weakness. Cadillac can be about leading-edge automotive technology and GMC about rugged reliability. Bob Lutz, being so closely connected to product and design, can make sure the brands stay focused on their stories – for example, no more cheap Buicks. And I know he can make sure the agencies involved properly implement and dramatize these stories.

So I’m rooting for Bob Lutz to prove me right at GM. After all, with all that taxpayer money, we’re all part owners of this company.

And Bob, our offer to you and GM still stands.

Sponsored By: The Brand Positioning Workshop

Comments

[Ernst]

You are wrong. I'm not sure if Al Ries is. "Marketing", per se, isn't the answer. "Who" is the answer. Right now, GM has the "who's" wrong. And THAT is what is scary.

The problem with so many companies like G.M. is that the person at the top doesn't understand the importance of a killer brand nor what it takes to build one. Commendably, Bob Lutz speaks of building brands but his track record doesn't inspire confidence that he's the man to steer the re-branding of G.M.

G.M. needs someone pronto who has a proven track record of building strong brands. Bob isn't this person. And I think that is what Al Ries was suggesting. Hopefully, Bob knows this and will hire someone who does have the track record. You folks for instance.

Ernst
p.s. Just curious, "The Blake Project"; where in the dickens does that come from?

[Martin Dimitrov]

Apparently in the majority of companies the CMO is perceived as the most “unimportant” CO and in that sense it is good that Bob Lutz has the reputation/authoritativeness to offset this notion and “enforce” whatever marketing decisions he makes. However, it is the quality of these decisions that counts…

[Derrick Daye]

Martin and Ernst, Thanks for your thoughts. Ernst to your question on the origins of our name - The Blake Project.

I'm happy to share our naming strategy. When our brand consultancy was formed we needed a way to dull the sharpness of 'new', as seasoned experts develop our brand strategy deliverables.

Marketing being about perceptions I chose the Old English name of Blake to help project longevity. Besides the boldness of the name I liked its ties to the famed poet and printmaker William Blake.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake

In the next stage I was sure to aim for differentiation - as you know, a cornerstone of strong brands. Too many consultancies use the descriptors group, partners and associates. I chose project, inspired by its uniqueness. The word struck me when I was reading Donald Trump's book 'The Art of the Deal'. Perhaps because 'project' seemingly is on every line. With the name 'The Blake Project' formed we passed it through our naming process – is it Memorable? Defendable? Dot-comable? Differentiated? Easy to pronounce? Free of negative associations? etc.

The name passed and our coined name was christened. The name has served us well and we anchor it with the tagline Elevate Your Brand. A side benefit to sharing these origins when asked – it reinforces our name.

More on Naming
Coined names (such as Xerox, Kodak, The Blake Project etc.) are preferred if you have sufficient resources to build their meaning. Coined names are distinct and can be designed to be easy to read, write and pronounce. It is unlikely that any other brand will be confused with yours if yours has a coined name. Because coined names require significant communication over time to build their meaning, they are best reserved for parent brands or other brands that are extremely important to the organization and that will be around for a very long time.

Again, thanks for asking.

Derrick