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The future’s not what it used to be
Added by David Cook November 16, 2009
At 3M we are currently working on a five-year strategic plan - defining where we want to be and what we need to get us there. The textbook approach is to take a hard look at data and extrapolate from it. But the experience of the last two years, in which so much has changed, has, I believe, re-written those rules.
Unstable market conditions make it harder to use the past to predict the future. Instead, marketers and business leaders need to be scanning the horizon for the next disruptive force - be it economic, technological or social.
Yes you need data but you also need something deeper. A great businessperson can pick out, from a fat report or a quarter’s sales figures, the killer stat that reveals an emerging trend that is changing the game. At 3M we call it ‘environmental scanning’ but an old-fashioned word works just as well: intuition.
You can’t teach intuition but you can set up networks and work paths, so experience is shared across the company. A culture of openness accelerates learning.
Happily, at 3M people are amazingly generous with their time and experience. We are now using Yammer (a kind of corporate Twitter) to encourage this.
There’s another thing you can do to sharpen your commercial instincts: get out there. When people refer to marketing as a desk job, I think of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton who reckoned he had been in more stores than anyone else in America.
Get out there, meet your customers, understand how they behave. It’s the surest way to develop the intuition that can take you beyond crude data analysis.
David Cook is General Manager, Corporate Marketing, Public Affairs and Strategy Development, UK/Ireland Region, 3M UK PLC
I agree: market data has a much shorter shelf life and it can’t handle uncertainty. But can experience and the intuition this builds provide the solution alone? I’m not so sure. Intuition shouldn’t be over-estimated, and if it’s used independently from research I don’t see it offering any more accuracy than the old method. Intuition should assist deciding how the data is used and how forecasts are made, but not replace it.
When it comes to sharing these experiences, there’s nothing like social media. Mentoring schemes don’t reach the majority of employees, and are “one-to-one”, as opposed to “many-to-many”. It also resists hierarchies and allows employees of all levels to mix. For me, it’s a great way to learn. Anyone else have a different way of sharing experience and insight across their organisation?
Reader Edward Hammerton
Marketing Executive, Thomson Reuters
Replied on November 16th 2009 at 1:51 pm
David
Refreshing to hear someone from a corporate environment push the value of commercial instinct, business nous or judgement in guiding the direction of a company. The best leaders I’ve worked for - guys Like Sir David Michels during my time at Hilton - lived and breathed their industry and had an intuitive grasp of the market. They embraced new ideas and created the space for us to run with them, often because it ‘felt right’. They understood that that ground breaking ideas - ideas that transform and create a real competitive edge - most often result from total immersion in the market and an instinct for what’s missing or what could be - something that can’t always be backed up by data. It seems to me that entrepreneurs get this - they learn to trust their instincts about the markets they know so well.
In conventional corporate life on the other hand, how many great ideas are strangled at birth by the apparently innocuous question…”and what data do you have to support that?”.
And maybe as CMOs we need to look into the mirror and question just how good are we at achieving that same ‘market immersion’ for ourselves and our people. How effectively do we nurture and reward instinct, intuition and commercial nous within our teams? And how good are we at winning space for the more radical and potentially transformational ideas at our board room tables? And if we’re not doing it….who is??
Reader Mike Ashton
Managing Director, Ashton Brand Consulting Group
Replied on November 16th 2009 at 1:55 pm
The future of Marketing is in our hands…
‘Marketing’ is now the driving force and it is now time for Marketers to step it up. Everyone knows this but organisations remain fuzzy on it. Strong leadership is required. Marketing needs to encapsulate both soft and technical marketing skills with strong environmental scanning. There are plenty of analytical tools available to make prudent decisions on initiatives and campaigns and they need to used. These were not available before and they go a long way in terms of direction and focus.
I agree with ‘intuition’ but also the changing environment should facilitate a culture of ‘collaboration’ and the future about ‘co-evolution’. Social networking will become to mean more than sharing trivial information and more about real information sharing and this is where the real value will be. Web 3.0 and semantic Web will open the gates to real monetisation of brands. It is the clever marketers that will leverage the opportunities and I am sure there will be plenty of them. Exciting times ahead for Marketing.
Reader Ruth Kearney
Marketing Officer. DIT Hothouse
Replied on December 8th 2009 at 10:09 pm
in undertaking a plan inmarketing, it is always good to creat contingencies that will help to adjust the plans shold there be any future marketing changes.marketing information collected at present should be revieved from time to time cos the behaviour of the market keep on changing and this will create gaps which needs to be filled.the best way to solve this problem is for the planner to know that the futre is not stable and so he needs to plan to meet future uncertainties.
Reader henry agyeman
sales engineer
Replied on December 9th 2009 at 1:42 pm
One school of thought is to do what you do better than anyone else. Recent announcement of AOL being spun out hints to this; Warner perhaps didn’t understand the AOL business and tried to shape it into it’s existing “framework”.
As Mike Ashton states, living and breathing the industry you operate in and those that you serve is central to “intuition”. You can get so much from reports etc; by meeting your customers and understanding the challenges they forsee will provide that “intuition”.This provides the foundation for developing business proposals, often backed up by industry data/changes etc.
Reader Mukesh Patel
Consultant, TashAl Consulting (Private company)
Replied on December 9th 2009 at 2:24 pm
Marketinmg and the element of people go hand in hand for any organisation to servive and achieve its corporate goals.I see the future of any organization to depend on the human resources as the main resource.Marketing should put alot of efforts on impating the fundumental knowledge of marketing and customer care to all the employees of the organization.Wheather there is enough marketing data or not this element will be the one to put it in practice but many organizations always spend alot of money on other areas before thinking about the human resuorces.Let all the CEOS rethink and uttilize this resource effectively to manage the future.Tough challenge to marketing are growing wide every minute.
Reader Wilber Nabimanya Katungwa
Account Manager Monitor Publications
Replied on December 11th 2009 at 6:10 am
Ditto ditto.
It is pleasant to read the above and the revival of gut feeling. This comes WITH MATURE AND SEASONED MARKETERS but not necessarily with ones who have floated along the parameters of the same circles for years. Versatility, creativity and finally innovative marketing is the expression and final outcome of good gut feelings.
With Passion
Thomas Dimech
Reader Thomas Dimech
Business Development Manager Heritage Malta-CIM Tutor
Replied on March 12th 2010 at 10:20 am
Intuition can only be a sound basis for business decisions when you have a profound understanding of what the world looks like from your customers’ perspective. Too much of today’s marketing is inside out. There needs to be more outside in. I would say that, because providing customer insight is what I do. But I do find that many companies in the B2B space vastly overestimate how much they understand about their clients’ view of the world and therefore base important decisions not on intuition but on blind assumption.
Reader Francis Aglen
Director, The Insight Business Ltd
Replied on April 20th 2010 at 11:39 am
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