Return on Opportunity
"Efficiency has no deadline", a client of us stated. His MRM project never ended up in the top ranks of the marketing priority list.
What was missing for his project was a "compelling event", while the next campaign did have a deadline and did drive potential sales on the short term.
He was trapped. Or was the company trapped? Take a look at the following case study and judge for yourself.
An international hardware and software provider worked with a product life cycle of 6 months. It took the marketing department another 5 months, after the product launch, to create, produce and distribute all of the marketing collateral to the retailers in the EMEA region, leaving exactly one month for effective communication. After a process redesign program the client managed to reduce the time-to-market from 5 months to 1 month and regained competitive advantage.
How is that for driving results by improving efficiency? Some call this the Return on Opportunity (RoO): marketing creating the opportunity to drive sales, gain market share, etc.
Think again, and rank MRM high on your priority list. Now.
© 2005-2008 Jansen & Riemersma
21/11/2008 2:41 PM
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50 percent of CMOs are hired to fix broken marketing organizations. 
Marketing agencies stand at a critical crossroads.
What Kotler observed, ANA/Booz Allan Hamilton elaborated on, has been proven in recent research: Marketing is becoming irrelevant.
In 2006 marketing budgets were already under pressure. In 2007 the first major fall was reported and Q1 of 2008 started with a further reduction. Now for Q2 of 2008, 27% of companies reported reducing their quarterly budget according to the IPA Bellwether Report. This cutback is the largest since the 9/11 attacks and it resulted in a deteriorating business confidence
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"You know what the funniest thing about Europe is? (...) It's the little differences. I mean, they got the same stuff over there that they got here, but it's just there it's a little different". John Travolta alias Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction, 1994
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Our 4 members of the panel give their personal vision on one of 12 issues that top the CMO's agenda.
In 2008 marketing spend levels are holding steady or trending upward, according to the Annual Marketing Outlook survey of The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council. Still, many marketers say they are frustrated and stymied by organization cultures, senior management mindset, and insufficient budgets.
Imagine your television commercial went live today and highlights a new product. The commercial states: “For more information visit our website…”, but the website hasn’t been updated. Sounds familiar? Probably, according to a recent survey.
If you decide to enter the Marketing Resource Management arena, you'd better be prepared for the TLA's... 
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Sign up for the MRM roundtable at the Microsoft boardroom (we promised to bring more marketers to the boardroom right?) at the 22nd of November.
MarketingGovernance.com must be the last blog on this planet to finally publish a picture of Paris Hilton. Although Miss Hilton is in the confusing business of being hot and acting cool and we are in the logical business of MRM, efficiency and taxonomy, we finally meet.
Every month, the 4 members of the panel will give their personal vision on one of 12 issues that top the CMO's agenda. This month number 3:
If you want to know what McKinsey will be publishing in two years, check MarketingGovernance.com tomorrow. That sounds arrogant, we know. But there seems no other conclusion if you read the text below...
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It is time to update the MRM merger list. Talents enter the market and HiPo's grow, others merge. 
Every month, the 4 members of the panel will give their personal vision on one of 12 issues that top the CMO's agenda. This month number 4:
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Some MRM vendors confessed to us that some clients weren't using their MRM software system after implementing it. Or even worse. Clients bought the license, but did not implement the MRM tool at all. 
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"Marketing accountability is still often an activity trapped within the silo of the marketing function," judges a report published Wednesday by America's Association of National Advertisers.
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Compliance and corporate governance are making its way to almost every business function. How about its impact on the marketing department? 
At the MOM Symposium in London we presented the 7 Quick MRM wins you can start today. On request we publish the quick wins. 
At the MOM Symposium in London we presented the 7 Quick MRM wins you can start today. On request we publish the quick wins. 
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Tomorrow the MOMSymposium will set foot on "Continental Europe", in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to be precise. Time for some thoughts on the international MRM market.
An exclusive MRM survey has been presented at the MOMSymposium in London last June. Roy Dewell at PIPC conducted the survey which took just over 3 months, started in March 2006 and had 102 responses.
At the MOM symposium in New York in March 2006 we presented "an independent guide to MRM software vendors". At a glance it looks as if the MRM software market is a coherent one.
At the MOM Symposium in London we presented the 7 Quick MRM wins you can start today. On request we publish the quick wins. 
At the MOM Symposium in London we presented the 7 Quick MRM wins you can start today. On request we publish the quick wins. 
At the MOM Symposium in London we presented the 7 Quick MRM wins you can start today. On request we publish the quick wins. 
Since we entered the information age it has become a challenge to make sense out of the mountains of collected data. Or more importantly: make money out of it! 
In London we presented at the MOM Symposium the 7 Quick MRM wins you can start today. On request we publish the quick wins. 
In London we presented at the MOM Symposium the 7 Quick MRM wins you can start today. On request we publish the quick wins. 
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Localization is identified as the revolution in consumer markets for 2006.
Marketing managers often are depicted as 'technophobic'. Who can blame them for that, if over 70% of IT projects fail?
UK based "the Marketing Leaders" (formerly known as CIMTech) asked us to give our thoughts about "marketing procurement". In the June's newsletter you can read our contribution "The marketing inquisition has arrived".
Our mission is to bring CMO's to the board table. In other words, we want to bring marketing to the next level. Accountability seems to be the key to the board room. 
According to Winterberry Group above-the-line (ATL) spending has grown an average of 5.5 percent per year. Below-the-line (BTL) spending grew 7.8 percent annually. Conclusion: marketing spend shifts to Below-the-line.
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Few CMO's are joining the poker game as a member of the board. Accountability seems to deliver the key to the board room. 
The world is flat according to Tom Friedman. Russ Hurley proof reads…
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Buckle up and prepare for a bumpy ride. Here are some shocking facts:
At the MOM Symposium in NY a consultant of MRMlogiQ and co-founder of MarketingGovernance.com presented
If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere....New York, New York. 
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Russ Hurley reviews 
Russ Hurley reviews ‘The Brand Gap’, Marty Neumeier (Pearson Education).
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59% of the CMO's say their marketing budget for 2006 will be equal to, or less than the 2005 budget, according to a Dutch survey. At the same time their target is likely to show 'ambition' in relation to market share! They basically need to do more for less. Where to start?
A commonly heard objection in relation to more control on marketing environments is that it will negatively affect creativity.
In March we mentioned the top 12 list of issues that rank the CMO's agenda. We concluded that almost all of them are marketing operations related. So, why not ask the marketing operations experts how they deal with it?
These 'more for less' kind of headers definitely attract our attention. Last week Google launched their free service that measures the effectiveness of websites and online marketing campaigns ROI.
“Getting marketing and IT to play nice is not just office politics; it can lead to competitive advantage”. Christopher Caggiano, a freelance writer at CMOmagazine, states that a better understanding between the CIO and CMO is necessary and both sides need to realize that they enable each other's success.
"If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse".
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...or are the proportions of the Marketing Resource Management market exaggerated? Let's have a look at the facts. 
CEO's are "growing impatient with marketing", according to Philip Kotler. "They feel that they get accountability for their investments in finance, production, information technology, even purchasing, but don’t know what their marketing spending is achieving."
What is the status on marketing definitions? Let’s take for instance ROI or - Return On Investment - one of those abbreviations that pops up in every MRM project. The Association of National Advertisers concluded that marketing ROI remains un-defined. Just like last year. And the year before.
Peugeot is the sixth largest car manufacturer in the world. Their marketing departement faced high costs and delivery delays in the development of 300+ brochures. Cause: inefficient collaboration across multiple global teams.
Every marketing magazine you open nowadays shows articles about the shift in marketing budget from offline to online.
Carlo De Matteo, the EMEA Marketing Resource Management Lead at Hewlett-Packard, is responsible for one of the largest MRM implementations as measured by number of users and dollars planned and managed. 
Always nice to read articles about the future of marketing. Brain scanning? Behavioral targeting? Gene markers? According to the article 'the future of entertainment' these topics will be items on the marketing agenda, a few years from now.
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A study found that online advertising can boost offline sales by as much as 12.5%! Nestle, Kraft and Procter & Gamble each submitted brands and campaigns for evaluation as part of this research. 
"One hamburger with a medium coke, please". 
UK based "Chartered Institute of Marketing's Technology" (CimTech) asked us to give our opinion about "reducing risk in marketing and business decision making". Check out August's newsletter and read our contribution "Accountability is the word, transparency is the key".
After having discussed the challenges of the third screen, let's go back to the first screen! Television.
"The Treasury and Securities Services Global Marketing (TSS) faced a number of challenges", Timothy Baker explained to us. He is SVP and Manager of Marketing Operations of JPMorganChase. 
Barcode is out, RFID is in! Barcodes are not interesting for marketing purposes. But RFID is!
After television and computer screens, the third screen has arrived: cell phones! 
A few weeks ago in our article Bring home the bacon, we mentioned the attitude of some CEO’s towards the marketing and sales department. The understanding of internal marketing processes and insight in the performance of the marketing department and external vendors is often very poor. The result? A marketing and sales function that is not performing at its best. 
Randstad restructured the way they create brand material. That must have cost a fortune, you might think...
When we discuss marketing accountability we often sense certain condescension towards the kind of marketers who ‘shoot from the hip’. Although shooting from the hip is extremely cool, chances of hitting the target are limited. You bet at least 50% is wasted.
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.
Last week Aprimo acquired SmartPath. The bigger fish start to eat the smaller ones.
“For too long, marketing inefficiency has escaped "outing." It 's an arcane science, too slippery and too hard to corral and manage. Well that's no longer the case. It's time for marketing to face the inquisitors, just like everyone else”
We welcome discussions about marketing governance! Especially when vendors, marketing managers and academics all join the discussion. 
Sometimes it looks like there are more marketing books than marketers. Strangely enough only little focus on marketing execution and operations. Although not specifically a marketing book, Execution Plain and Simple, a publication by RHS&A gives insights into "how to improve execution".
Controlling the brands is a complex business in the automotive sector. For manufacturers like Chrysler and Jeep, the complexity comes from extending the brand through a network of dealers all heavily reliant on print advertising to generate business.
A couple of years ago there was a growing awareness that product promotions should communicate customer benefits instead of product features. Will the coming years show a different approach to the management of marketing activities as well? Outside-in instead of inside-out?
Co-branding can be a useful marketing tool -among other tools-, but it has a very high impact on your marketing operations. 
Marketing Relationship Management (first time we see this explanation for MRM) software can boost productivity and campaign effectiveness, but successful deployments must overcome technical and cultural hurdles, according to Drew Robb in the article Marketing Gets With the Program.
Chris Lynn for Seybold replied to our article MRM market consolidates, but when? 
Since we published our updated MRM vendor list last week, many marketing managers asked: What are MRM vendors exactly? And what is it that MRM vendors exactly offer? Good question!
It took a couple of weeks of research to update our entire vendor list. With your help we found 18 extra vendors! Now the list contains 58 MRM and DAM vendors.
How can companies prepare for the growing onslaught of global competition and remain profitable?
Another example with impressive results of a brand management solution. An MRM project with a return on its investment in less than a year! 
MRM Vendors are from Venus, Marketers are from Mars.
Just as you were trying to get your E-mail communication under control, another communication channel pops up at the horizon... Ever heard of shotCodes or spotCodes? This is how it looks like... (see image).
TUI, a part of the world's leading tourism service company, faced a challenge of populating repositories centrally. The head office is in London, the majority of its employees work overseas. 
Nvigorate, an U.K. based MRM vendor, provided us with some exclusive research results. Keep it coming!
In January 2005 market researcher Morph, revealed that 43% (Dutch) of the companies do not answer their received customer emails at all! Now, there's an MRM challenge!
The recent study (pdf) of the CMO Council reveals that less than 20% of top technology marketers surveyed had developed “meaningful, comprehensive measures and metrics for their marketing organizations.”
An annual survey by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) conducted to help shape its Annual Conference in October 2005, ranked accountability as senior marketers' top priority. The following is the comprehensive list of issues ranked in order of importance according to the total responses:
It looks like trendwatching is finally made easy. How can you measure the impact of a trend or campaign? Well, for instance, use Blogpulse to count the appearences in the blogosphere before and after your campaign launch. The blogosphere is often refered to as the community of weblogs on the web. A weblog is a kind of online diary.
“I knew if I could do everything from one location on the desktop, I would be able to spend less time chasing information and more time planning and executing projects,” Bob Slaker said, Senior Manager of Direct Response. 
American Airlines launches a New Digital Asset Management System and aims to reduce the cycle-time and costs of producing marketing materials. The system includes tools to easily create collateral from images and data.
We stated that marketing complexity is increasing. Not only marketing managers have a hard time dealing with it, MRM software vendors too. So it seems, if we take a closer look at the short life of Emmperative.
"Whirlpool was looking for a way to effectively manage our digital assets while automating the business processes surrounding their usage. This has not only produced significant cost-savings, but also allows us to better serve our internal and external clients", says Gregg Crandall, Content & Solutions Consultant Whirlpool Corporation.
Bank of America is one of the larger financial services network in the United States of America. Bank of America delivers higher standards in products, services and functional areas to more than 30 million customers. 
The term Marketing Governance is the marketing answer to Corporate Governance. The term is therefore relatively new. 
The Institute of International Research gathered the best and the brightest for the 2005 PR summit to offer innovative strategies, value-based techniques, benchmarking practices, and recently completed case studies. 
Thank God it is not only the marketing department that is facing the challenges of processing huge amounts of information. For the first time in history it isn't the lack of food, ammunition or personel that is causing major trouble to an armies central command. 
Twice a year, for the Spring and Autumn clothing ranges, the Retail Marketing Channel of Nike had to produce and deliver co-branded brochures or magalogues to 51 different retail chains in 26 different countries, each in the local language. Now that's an MRM challenge!