When I started Concep 5 years ago we decided to target Marketing Directors within B2B, if we ever heard the words “IT Director” it would send shivers down our spines and a common question to us would be: “Can we avoid IT?”.

Is this still the case?

Like Marketing Directors, historically IT Directors and CIOs were not strategic roles within the corporate structure and neither were involved in developing the organizations business strategy.  However, it does seem that this is where both their roles are heading as they strive for their seats on the board.

One of the most insightful comments from a fortune 100 CIO I met recently was his encouragement to colleagues “not to fall in love with the technology”. He was talking about individuals who fought any new ideas because they had signed off on technology, which had now become outdated and no longer delivered the functionality that the business needed. Consequently, there is a fear of a black mark against someone’s name and rather than look at new technologies, they fight for reasons to keep the current solutions in place. More often than not this scenario exists where something was developed internally so the emotional tie-in is even stronger.

The IT Directors role is admittedly being made more difficult by the masses of legislations which are being forced on organisations and IT are being seen as the guardians, or dare I say, watch dogs, to ensure this legislation is being implemented in an automated way. This, however, needs to be balanced with how marketing want to deliver their business goals.

Personally and from experience, when Marketing and IT are collaborating at the beginning of a project, projects tend to run smoother and get implemented quicker.  When IT and Marketing don’t get along we continue to see projects being snuck through the back door and/or delays on critical marketing opportunities.

When we do Brand workshops with clients we often include an exercise designed to help them to identify the character they want their brand to portray and I think today I've spotted a trend. During the exercise participants are asked to choose two faces, one that represents how they feel the brand is seen now and the second, to represent what how they would like the brand to be seen. The actual faces are not that important its about the differences between the two faces. Invariably the changes in perception they wish for include:

• to be more open / accessible
• to be friendlier
• to be more interested / engaged
• to be less formal

If we stop to think about it this isn't surprising as it reflects changes in our society, but the real challenge comes in implementing the changes internally to make this character real, especially in a service business. It's relatively easy creating communications that portray the brand in this way, but changing the culture so that personal interactions feel in line with this character requires absolute commitment from the very top. Often the people at the top are older, more traditional and dare I say it, out of touch with what their customers really want.

We usually find that the "feeling" a business projects reflects the leader, especially when there is a strong leader. And so it should you could argue, but I believe there should be a separation between the personality of the leader and the personality of the business. This can only happen if it is designed to be so and implemented through a program of change. That's not as easy as it sounds.

David Thomas (Base One Creative Director) and I were presenting the "How to produce engaging and outstanding creative" session on the IDM B2B Diploma course this week and it served to highlight the reality gap between the type of creative most marketers run with and the type of creative they think they should run with. We asked the 20 or so students to score the quality of their own creative from 1 to 10, 10 being engaging and outstanding. The results - only 5 scored themselves higher than 5/10, there were 7 scoring themselves exactly 5/10 and the remainder less than 5. Was this modesty are there some fundamental things restricting the quality of creative ...?

Whilst watching a series of ads on Channel 4 last night it dawned on me why we often, as B2B Marketers, struggle to convince others that branding and marketing is crucial for a succesful business. It's because we use the same words as people use to describe the work of our B2C cousins. When we say advertising our management colleagues envisage what they see on the TV or in the press. Direct Mail and they think of the irritating approaches from MBNA et al. Telemarketing and the remember intrusive, poorly executed calls from mobile phone operators. Branding and they picture Nike. It's because they know that's not what their business needs that they, as a result, think that Marketing is not important to their success.

Anybody working in a technology market will be familiar with the main analysts, Gartner et al, and the power they are perceived to have in the market. But do technology businesses give them too much "respect"? Is the wish to be placed favourably on their "magic quadrant" limiting the effectiveness of how well these same companies postion themselves and communicate their services to the market?

Over the last 12 months, as you would expect, we've been involved in a number of pitches and as part of our annual planning process I tend to sit down and review them all - Why did we win? Why did we lose? Which ones do we wish we had won? Which ones do we wish we'd lost? What did we learn from each? Which ones were a pleasant experience? How could we have done better? This year I've noticed a worrying trend which I believe is damaging to the already fragile pitch process - the consultant. I'm not talking about the agency selection services as they tend not to operate in the B2B sphere, I'm talking about a independent consultant who is usually a friend of a friend.

Over the last 5 years or so there has been a wave of change sweeping through the B2C world as Communications Channel Planning revolutionises how clients and their range of agency partners approach planning. It is resulting in a battle for supremacy between agencies as they compete for this all important role. It's an ugly sight, but it is resulting in more cohesive, more innovative and they would argue, more effective marketing. Why isn't B2B followig suit?

It is now accepted wisdom that planning a marketing campaign across all media, in an integrated way and from a customer’s perspective is the right thing to do. But making the transition from a media-led to a media neutral approach is not as straight forward as it might sound.

The Status Quo

Not long a go almost all marketing departments employed the services of a range of agencies depending on their total budgets: a PR agency, an Advertising agency, a Design agency, a DM agency and when needed someone to work on events and other tactical promotions. Each were given their own brief and each worked in their own silo. The result - inconsistent, overlapping and inefficient communications, usually creating confusion rather than creating brands.

But, to be fair, this scenario wasn’t created by the fact that the agencies were specialists but more by the fact that the clients themselves structured their own marketing teams around activities and “media”. They had Advertising Managers, Direct Marketing Managers and PR Managers – all orchestrated by the Marketing Communications Manager or even the Marketing Director.

For many businesses this is still the case and it is still common to find a range of agencies managed in isolation from each other. This makes media-neutrality at best challenging and at worst impossible. So how do you go about making media-neutral a reality?

The Internal Challenge

As with any improvement the first step is to recognise what is wrong with the status quo. For most businesses the answers will lie in the internal structures and practices. There are three key elements to consider: budgets, people, and measurement of success.

Budgets tend to drive planning (which is obviously the wrong way round). It is a process that can wrongly dictate who is employed and what role they take and even what activity they are able to do within their responsibilities. The problem is maintained through evolutionary budgeting. This makes a change in strategy difficult and politically sensitive. So a different approach to budgeting is needed.

People are often a significant element of total marketing costs, and yet whilst lying within the Marketing budget they are a fixed cost rather being seen as part of the cost of the activity itself. Over recent years “headcount freezes” have become more common and this simply encourages departments to try and hold on to what they have, living in fear of having this resource taken away from them.

Changing people’s role is also a challenge. Changing the way the team work can highlight skills gaps and can also threaten status possibly creating contractual issues. So it has to be handled carefully, but restructuring the department is essential to facilitate a change in strategy of this magnitude.

The third area measurement is relatively straight forward to change practically but if the business is used to tracking and monitoring marketing success by media it requires a new measurement regime to go media-neutral and it will result in a period where metrics lose their value as you make the switch.

The Benefits of Media-neutrality

Before looking at how best to make the switch it’s worth reminding ourselves of the benefits. Most of us have witnessed changes in our markets over recent years including increased competition, commoditisation in many sectors, convergence in others – all focusing our attention on the importance of being customer-focused. To gain maximum value from our customers we need to realign all areas of our business to enable us to better meet the needs of the different customer groups.

Media-neutral planning is merely marketing’s way of making this change by using the right media, with the right message at the right time to communicate with each customer segment. It delivers greater relevance, increased efficiencies and improved effectiveness and ROI.

Making the change

It starts with a change of strategy but this often requires a change in mindset. Rather than thinking “each quarter we need to sell X,000 of these and Y,000 of those” you now need to plan around the customer segments – “to generate £X,000’s from this group and £Y,000’s from that group”. Simple.

The reality is that it’s not. It requires a company wide change. Sales needs to be realigned, support needs to be reviewed and customers services will also need to change. It can be done by marketing alone but when the board look to review marketing performance you’ll find that others glaze over as the Sales director is thinking “that’s all very well, but how does it help me sell more widgets”.

So stage one is to construct a business wide strategy that aligns the entire business with the needs of each customer group. The simple fact is that you can’t have a media-neutral plan that promotes products, as media is consumed by consumers and buyers who in turn buy a range of products.

Once the strategy is agreed you can then consider the budgets or should I say reconsider. All marketing expenditure can then be planned around the value, or preferably the potential value of each customer and prospect segment. So rather starting with an Advertising line and an Event’s line begin with Group A (High Value customers) and subdivide into Acquisition and Retention and then divide it further into the objectives – awareness, lead generation etc.

Having worked through each group you may well then be able to group objectives that are common for example Brand building or research. By planning your total spend in this way, prior to identifying “headcount” costs you are also beginning to reallocate people.

Ideally people should take on responsibility for one or more customer groups and should manage all activity focused on that group. Yes it will mean that your DM Manager now has to commission advertising and other media they are not familiar with, but others in the team still have that experience and they need to work together in a matrix during the transition stage.

Measurement now becomes easy, and because people are measured by what they achieve with their customer group, against targets that fall out of the strategy, you are much more likely to find that the marketing activity is much more effective.

External Resources

You are now faced with a decision regarding agency partners. Do you move from specialists to using integrated agencies or do you stick with specialists? The argument against specialists is that you will now have each member of your team briefing and managing each agency partner in turn. Whilst the argument against integrated is that they tend to be Jack of all trades and that quality suffers as a result.

My view is that integrated agencies have evolved quicker than clients. They are more focused on the total demands of communicating with customer groups rather than trying to make their particular area of expertise the solution no matter what the problem.

Whichever route you take, if you are using a range of agencies it’s important to firstly nominate a lead agency and secondly to clearly define the roles and responsibilities. Who is best to take the lead? Well that will depend on your situation as well as on the competencies that exist in each agency.

Managing Media-neutrality

Communication is everything. Regular all agency and department meetings are essential. It’s important that everyone knows what everyone else is doing and that there is genuine desire to work as a team. If you get it right you’ll also find that the combined strategic and creative force becomes greater than the sum of it’s parts and that the agencies get to a point where they begin to manage themselves.

The customer is king

If you haven’t already made the switch then this may all sound too daunting. Equally if you have started to employ media-neutral planning techniques but based around what you’re selling rather than who you’re selling to then taking the final step to planning around customer groups may feel too difficult to contemplate. The reality is, in today’s markets (for most of us) the customer is king. Unless you plan your strategy around them, allocate your budgets according to their value and realign your team to focus on them you’ll only achieve a fraction of what you could achieve.