On the heels of our announcement last month about Ajit Maira joining
the ITSMA team as our new senior vice president of consulting and training,
I'm happy to let you know that Bob Baginski—who's been a member
of ITSMA since 1994 and served on our Board of Advisors—has also
come on board as our new senior vice president of member engagement.
Prior to joining ITSMA, Bob served as the senior vice president of
Global Marketing and Communications for Satyam, where he introduced
a program to reposition the company from an Indian outsourcing provider
to a global consulting, technology services, and outsourcing/BPO leader.
Before joining Satyam, Bob spent eight years at Accenture, where he
held a number of roles, including global director of integrated marketing
for the company’s Business Consulting unit. He also directed
Accenture’s Thought Leadership marketing and Credentials programs.
Earlier, Bob held marketing and sales management roles at CSC, Ernst & Whinney,
and Cleveland Consulting Associates.
Bob joins Dave Munn, Julie Schwartz, Robert Bailey, and Ajit Maira
as part of ITSMA's executive management team. Please join me in welcoming
Bob to ITSMA!
Every time you try to sit down, you fall on the floor. You bump into
walls and occasionally fall into the ocean. You have difficulty speaking.
And you have this strange habit of going limp and hanging your head like
a rag doll when you haven't been doing anything for a while.
This scenario may sound somewhat familiar to parents of toddlers, but
it's actually a description of a new avatar in Second Life, a virtual
online environment where visitors adopt 3-D personas (called avatars)
that can move, speak, and see. Just like toddlers, newcomers to Second
Life need to work hard to learn to do things that we adults take for granted
in the real world. And there are other challenges to overcome when you
consider Second Life in the context of B2B marketing: technical complexity,
lack of proven ROI, and the need to keep visiting avatars entertained
and well behaved (attention spans in Second Life tend to mimic those of
toddlers, too).
However, despite all the controversy swirling around Second Life these
days, marketers are discovering that it can potentially add value to a
business in ways that traditional marketing tools cannot. Second Life
and other emerging social networking tools are still primitive, but they
are worthy of consideration because they presage—even if they don't necessarily
define—a new way of interacting with customers.
Although anyone can visit Second Life for free, owning a stake and moving
up in the world will cost you, just like in the real world. Virtual properties
(called islands) are for sale, and owners can build homes, offices,
factories, and meeting places. There is even a currency, called Linden
Dollars, that trades at about 250 to one U.S. dollar.
Though roughly 8 million people have signed up for Second Life, only
50,000 people are online at any given time, according to Claus Nehmzow,
a partner at PA Consulting—one of the first consulting companies to enter
Second Life. Despite that disparity, the number of concurrent users is
growing at 20% per month and shows no signs of slowing. (In fact, Gartner
has predicted that 80% of internet users will have an active presence
in virtual worlds—although not necessarily in Second Life—by 2011.) Today's
users, who include analysts, journalists, and bloggers, are a particularly
vocal and influential group, and they generally remain online for 30-60
minutes at a time—much longer than the typical website visitor.
Second Life is a convergence of the three primary types of online participatory
media: social media (FaceBook, MySpace); gaming (World of Warcraft, the
Sims); and simulation and training (Forterra). Its hybrid heritage gives
Second Life flexibility and makes it a potentially powerful tool for B2B
marketers in five primary ways:
Shared real-time experience. A website is an isolated, one-way
communication channel, but Second Life allows visitors to interact in
real time using many different media at once. For example, an avatar
visiting a virtual meeting hall can view a video while text messaging
with another avatar watching the same video.
A new forum for explaining complex products and services. By
combining different communications channels in Second Life, companies
can let customers see and experience products and services that are
difficult to conceptualize in traditional media such as print. For example,
PA Consulting has built a "smart home" in Second Life where visitors
can play with futuristic high-tech and energy-saving technologies for
the home. On Dell's Second Life island, visitors can enter a giant 3-D
Dell computer to see the inner workings of a PC. Most important, if
visitors have questions, a virtual representative can answer them in
the moment.
Inexpensive prototyping and customer focus groups. For example,
PA Consulting built a virtual bank branch for a client to gauge customer
reaction to the space and to give bank representatives a chance to try
different sales techniques on visitors.
Training and recruiting. Second Life is becoming a valuable
training ground for Cisco, which recently conducted its network academy
instructor training series inside the virtual world. Meanwhile, PA Consulting
uses its virtual island to ask job applicants questions in real time,
just as during a job interview, as do other organizations, including
Microsoft, HP, and the Vancouver Police Department.
Global reach and accessibility. Second Life meetings can replace
in-person meetings and teleconferences. Dell, for example, has a virtual
conference center for meetings and events and a theater for product
announcements and webcasts. Cisco holds its monthly user group gatherings
and events with partner companies in Second Life and has a virtual trade
show floor where the company holds product launches for the press and
analysts.
Though there are potential benefits to Second Life, it is still in the
early stages of development and should be considered experimental. Here
is a short list of challenges and lessons learned from our research:
"Human" presence is important. Without greeters at the door
to show people around your virtual world, visitors will get lost and
frustrated and will leave. Your greeters can also pass along brand messages
and steer people toward a purchase in the real world.
Events are everything. Even avatars need a reason to talk
to your company. Events, whether business oriented or fun, are the best
way to draw people in. And tell people to arrive early to the event
so that you can train them to navigate your property.
What happens in Second Life doesn't stay there. Second Life
users tend to be technologically savvy, highly connected, very vocal,
and occasionally downright reckless and nasty, participating in virtual
vandalism and defacement of corporate islands. Be sure to communicate
your marketing intentions clearly and monitor other social channels,
such as blogs, to see how your message is coming across.
Develop security workarounds—or stay up late. Most corporate
firewalls block access to sites like Second Life. Some set up alternate
access means, such as virtual private networks (VPNs), for Second Life
users. Your best bet: Hold your Second Life events at night so that
people can log in from home.
ROI is elusive. The returns on Second Life so far are more
focused on brand awareness and savings that result from using it as
a substitute for in-person meetings and onsite training.
Second Life and other social networking tools are new, primitive, and
unproven, but this new way of communicating isn't going away. Companies
can and should begin to test strategies for marketing in these "second
worlds."
New
Thinking
Making a Marketing Leader: An Interview with ITSMA's Bob Baginski
At ITSMA's
Annual Marketing Conference in 2006, Bob Baginski, a 25-year veteran
of professional services businesses and ITSMA's new senior vice president
of member engagement, provided insight into how to establish oneself as
a marketing leader. This article outlines some of the insights he shared.
ITSMA: To quote blogger Brett
Duncan, "Everyone thinks they're a marketer. Everyone thinks they
know what makes people buy something. What ads work and what don't. What
color looks better. What product name is better. What price is better.
What strategy is better … There's no other department in a company that
is susceptible to committee input like marketing is." Given this environment,
what can a career marketer do to establish himself or herself as a true
marketing leader?
Baginski: Each time I begin to market a new business or new company,
the last thing I want to have happen is that my boss comes in on my first
day and sets the marketing agenda. A marketing leader takes ownership
and sets the marketing agenda. Does the business executive really want
to continue to do the same old stuff the same old way? Or will the marketing
leader step up, claim ownership, and not only do things differently, but
do them better?
But there is so much to learn about a new business or company. And so
I always insist on conducting a business and marketing assessment. Such
an assessment might seem like a traditional marketing planning process,
and the boss will probably say that he or she already has that in hand.
The boss will also want to know how long it will take. The key is to emphasize
that the team, from day one, will continue to execute and improve while
the assessment is under way. These analyses can take from two to six months
and involve three to several core team members. There will be some negotiation
here, but because the company is about to invest considerably in marketing
for the next few years, it's worth the time and effort to start that journey
with the right strategic direction.
ITSMA: Can you elaborate on the business and marketing
assessment approaches?
Baginski: All marketing leaders are going to have their own ways
of doing this. You start with what's worked in the past and then weave
in new techniques and best practices. For me, a comprehensive business
assessment looks at five key areas: markets, customers, alliances, competitors,
and the company itself. When I do this, I package the information three
different ways for different audiences and uses:
Snapshot. A very short summary, perhaps one page on each key
area, for a total of five pages.
Executive summary. A more detailed look at each of the key
areas, totaling no more than 25 pages.
Full report. A detailed analysis of each key area, typically
100 pages or so.
Senior management doesn't care for the 100-pager; typically the snapshot
enlightens them and convinces them that you're on the right track. Armed
with this knowledge of the business and market, you earn a lot of credibility
and position yourself to be viewed as a peer/leader.
There are four key areas of the business analysis that I would like to
highlight because they are so important:
Client issues and opportunities. Marketers should know more
than anyone else at the company about their clients. Marketing leaders
gain a lot of credibility when they demonstrate that they can bring
intelligence from the marketplace to the business—that they know what
the clients are thinking, why they hire the firm, and what they expect.
But don't just dwell on the client business issues; also look at the
opportunities.
Client anecdotes. Personally, I will interview 15 or so clients
myself so that I have first-hand knowledge of them and their business
matters. This also provides the marketing leader with compelling insight
and anecdotes, including some things the client service executives might
not have known.
Competitor innovation. Understanding your competitors' research
and development agenda is a window into their investment in innovation
and thought leadership development. In the services business, breakthrough
thought leadership is the source for differentiation and competitive
advantage.
Your company's financials. The company's CFO, CEO, and auditor
are going to know more about the company's financials than anyone else.
But the marketing leader must be among the top five people who are knowledgeable
about the company's financials. This knowledge will help set strategic
direction, determine investment allocation, and credential the marketing
leader during executive sessions.
I find that business unit leaders—rightly or wrongly—typically sit in
their own silos and do not have a comprehensive view across the entire
company and its markets and clients. So if I show up at meetings armed
with the information from the business assessment, I can add real value.
Here, as in other situations, information is power.
To read the ITSMA Viewpoint from which this article was excerpted,
please visit:
Think back to 1999. That was the year that Infosys, an Indian IT services
company, hit $100 million in annual revenues. Flash forward to March 2006
and Infosys, fueled by growth in the outsourcing industry, had hit the
$2 billion mark—a remarkable feat by any company's standards.
But Infosys had no intention of resting on its laurels. Rather, aware
that it still needed to step up its branding efforts, the company launched
a global branding campaign built around the idea of winning in the "flat
world." Instead of being seen as simply another offshore services provider,
the company's goal was to build a reputation as a trusted transformation
partner that can help businesses compete in a global market.
Creating a Differentiated Position
Setting itself apart from many other companies that were still thinking
about brand in terms of logos, slogans, and attractive visuals, Infosys
knew that to compete with the global leaders, it needed to launch more
than a "me, too" marketing campaign. It needed to differentiate itself
from its competitors in a way that was relevant, credible, unique, and
defensible.
To achieve this goal, the company first conducted research to uncover
the issues its customers were struggling with in the new global marketplace.
The research revealed three important things:
There were four forces "flattening" every business environment:
The rise of emerging economies
Changing global demographics/redistribution of the global talent
pool
The ubiquity of technology
Increased regulations
Companies were unaware that they needed to shift their operational
priorities to deal with the consequences of these forces
Customers looked at Infosys itself as an ideal flat-world company
In response, Infosys set out to help companies shift their operational
priorities in four ways:
Shift focus to fueling growth by becoming globally efficient, cost-competitive
producers
Stop focusing simply on better customer service and start focusing
on creating customer loyalty through faster innovation
Shift focus from merely spending money on information systems and
process to making money from information
Shift focus to winning in industry cycles rather than only in the
straightaways
Infosys achieved these goals by creating a new offer to assess the impact
of these global forces on clients' businesses and provide a roadmap for
the operational changes required to address those impacts. The offering
defines four stages of excellence for the flat world and offers clients
a financial model that measures the impact of their efforts. All other
solutions within the company were aligned to the flat-world offering,
and subject matter experts were instructed to focus on establishing thought
leadership around the issue.
With unique offers in place, Infosys shared the results of its research
with key clients. The research, combined with Infosys's own reputation
as a flat-world company, made the company's new positioning credible and
defensible. Now all Infosys needed to do was get the message out.
The Campaign
The company conducted a multifaceted marketing campaign aimed at Global
2000 firms. It was designed to target four different audiences within
an organization—C level, lines of business, sourcing executives, and IT—and
focus on "flat-world" topics that were relevant to those audiences.
But before Infosys kicked off the external campaign on July 31, 2006,
by ringing the NASDAQ opening bell from India, it conducted an extensive
internal campaign to bring over 50,000 of its employees on board with
the new positioning. The company launched its extensive internal campaign
in January 2006.
Infosys included the following elements in its customer-facing campaign:
Infosys Website
"Think Flat" microsite and blog
Thought leadership white papers
Digital ads in top-tier publications
Partner programs
Annual report
Executive events
Industry events
Analyst outreach
Marketing and sales collateral
Achieving Fifty Percent Growth
From March 2006 to June 2007, Infosys increased its annual revenues from
$2 billion to $3 billion. A significant portion of that increase is directly
attributable to the online marketing conducted around the flat-world campaign.
In addition to the company's astonishing growth, Infosys became the first
Indian company to be added to any of the major global indices in December
2006, when it was added to the NASDAQ-100. Analyst firms such as Yankee
Group, Forrester, and TBR are singing the company's praises. And the Infosys
sales group created a special new award to recognize marketing's impact
on the business.
All in all, the flat-world campaign has enabled Infosys to differentiate
itself from both other Indian outsourcing firms as well as the global
consulting companies, and it is beginning to neutralize the legacy advantage
that traditional IT consulting firms have long enjoyed. Infosys is now
seen—by customers and influencers alike—as a trusted business transformation
partner rather than just another outsourcing firm.
If you're interested in hearing more about the "Win in the Flat
World" campaign, be sure to register for ITSMA's
Annual Marketing Conference (November 14-15), where Srinivas Uppaluri,
head of global corporate marketing at Infosys, will go into more detail
about Infosys' branding efforts.
EuroNotes
Consistency and Adaptation: Balancing Global and Local Priorities and Perspectives
The swing between centralised and decentralised marketing control is
something many of us have come to expect. When major corporate change
occurs, marketing's natural reaction seems to be that we pull in the reins
in order to have a greater level of control over the message that is being
sent out. In many instances that level of control is gradually loosened
until either:
The next big event happens, or
The "regions" begin doing their own thing to the point that consistency
and central marketing efforts are adversely affected.
At that point, control is often pulled back into the centre and the process
begins again. Each time we go through this cycle, it has a considerable
impact on the business in terms of budget, staff morale, lost knowledge,
and so on.
In a recent ITSMA survey, 88% of the respondents confirmed that, within
their organisations, the balance between centralised and decentralised
marketing had changed in the last five years, with both spending and decision
making becoming more centralised in the majority of cases. Interestingly,
the shift looks to be going towards a more regionalised model in the next
five years.
Although things keep swinging, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Through a number of interviews with members around Europe, we were able
to get some deeper insight into what is happening. Everyone agreed that
while for the most part the pendulum continues to swing, the swing is
getting shorter, suggesting that the two sides seem increasingly willing
to understand the needs of the other. In addition to the swing getting
shorter, the pendulum also moves forward with each swing.
Most people agree that global organisations should present consistent
core values through their global brand but also provide an umbrella under
which a degree of localisation can be adopted. However, maximising local
effectiveness whilst leveraging scale and ensuring consistency is a difficult
balancing act to get right. Add to this the complex and fragmented nature
of the European market, and even defining "local" poses its own question:
Do we mean regional, subregional, or country level?
Even though the marketing structure within the organisations we spoke
with differed considerably, ranging from primarily centralised to primarily
distributed, most had at least some representation at each of these three
levels. And from the results of our survey it looks as though people hope
to see more resources and decision making moved into the regional marketing
layer, albeit primarily at the expense of central marketing.
An interesting idea we considered was whether—rather than going through
this shifting of power in a stop-start fashion—companies should place
a greater level of importance on developing the right processes and frameworks
for marketing so that once the correct balance between consistency and
local adaptation has been achieved, it can then be maintained. The theory
is that the greater level of trust enabled by such a framework would have
a positive impact on individual performance and on overall marketing achievements—while
also enabling new initiatives to be implemented more efficiently. To test
the idea, we asked our survey respondents to what extent they agreed with
the statement, "Clearer business processes and a good marketing framework
would ensure that local and regional activity was consistent with central
requirements." One hundred percent of our respondents agreed.
So there’s our next challenge, marketers; join us for our next Inner
Circle Meeting in London on 11 September to brainstorm how we can
figure out this situation!
Each month, ITSMA receives a number of queries through Ask
ITSMA, a resource designed to give members a quick and easy
way to get insight on important services and solutions marketing
questions they face. In this column, we will publish some of our
favorite questions along with excerpts from our replies.
Question: How does ITSMA define the term "brand"?
Answer: A brand represents a company's ability to deliver on
its promise to the marketplace. There is more to a brand than a catchy
name and effective logo. A brand is designed to make the benefits of
a company, product, or service visible to target customers. It encompasses
a company's:
Value propositions
Positioning
Core competencies
Values
Marketing messages
Personality
Delivery
A services brand is best communicated through the actual services
experience. Therefore, branding requires internal alignment around
the promise and messaging and addresses operational and portfolio issues
in addition to marketing communications.
An outstanding end-to-end client experience consistent with the brand
ensures a strong brand, and perhaps even more important, a strong reputation—how
clients perceive the company and what they convey about their experiences.
Recommendations from colleagues are the most credible source of information
among buyers undertaking a solution provider search. In technology
professional services, word-of-mouth marketing is the lynchpin to building
brands that generate bottom-line results.
Do you have a services marketing question? Visit Ask ITSMA to access
our experience, insight, and research results.
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