Pepsi Max: I'm Good Campaign

Really funny ad for Pepsi Max which is the competitive alternative to Coke Zero. These are diet sodas with more caffeine. Both were launched in 2006 it appears.

I wonder how successful these brands are. The tie in to the "I'm Good" meme is smart but, in my opinion, they should work this angle more.

Produce more ads around the "I'm Good" meme and make us laughter. Maybe, over time, people that drink Pepsi Max will remember how the ads made them laugh and they will equate that emotion to the brand.

B2B Marketing Integration Framework – The B2B Marketing Gears

UPDATE: My B2B Marketing Integration Framework evolves. For an updated version please check out this post. Thx.

In my last post, I introduced my Marketing Integration (MI) framework. This framework has six planks that work together in order to align strategy with actions that produce results.

This framework has been developed (it continues to evolve) to help solve key problems that exist in B2B markets where there are long sales cycles, complex solutions & sophisticated buyers.

First of all, sales and marketing is not a dirty word!

With the exception of monopolies, every organization markets and sells something. Most B2B oriented companies have marketing and sales professionals whose job it is to generate results. They have to contact prospective buyers to inform, educate (sometimes annoy!) and encourage them to buy something. Reps need to meet with IT buyers and marketers need to promote “the latest and greatest”. In fact, it is highly probable that the IT buyer has a sales and marketing organization promoting his/her company’s products and services.

But, hang on…there’s a reason why a buyer doesn’t return a call or click on that link!

Now hold on a minute. IT buyers are being inundated with “cold calls” and reps that provide no value (or at least that’s what some have told me over the past couple of months). Heck, those reps just want “the deal” and to play golf. Actually, I happen to know quite a few really good Account Managers (Kimberly, Colin, Sean, Mark, Alex, Anthony, Scott, David…come to mind).

IT buyers tell me that manufacturers and “solution providers” send them to their websites for information (assuming the links still work) but over half the time they don’t get the content they want and need. In fact, they may have a bad taste in their mouths already. As homer would say “DOH”!

There is good news though!

There are extremely good account managers and marketing professionals that do work together to provide value and produce results for their customers and their companies. I’ve been blessed to work with forward thinking reps, open minded executives and great partners like Cisco who support an integrated approach to marketing and sales.

These talented people and progressive organizations have helped me develop my Marketing Integration (MI) framework. This framework has 6 planks. The first being the “B2B Marketing Gears”.

Marketing Integration (MI) Framework – B2B Marketing Gears

These three gears make up the go to market focus areas for a B2B marketing plan.

Branding and Positioning – If you don’t think branding matters, when it comes to B2B organizations, I suggest you read Philip Kotler’s book B2B Brand Management. Today, you must clearly communicate what you stand for, what you offer and why it’s of value to your customers. The branding and positioning gear covers three things:

• Identity – brand architecture, guidelines and corporate identity
• Offering – solution mix and the addressable market(s) it serves
• Research – feedback and information on/from customers, partners and competitors

Communications and Community – Marketing communications is changing in two primary ways. First, the content we create must be of value to recipients, available in various formats (text, graphics, audio and video) and in sync with the buying cycle. Second, you must allow for interaction and community development. My blook report on Groundswell covers this in detail. Communications must be engaging, educational and interactive with social media playing an increasingly important role. The Communications and Community gear covers three things:

• Content – create meaningful content that sales enables, informs, educates and builds your brand reputation
• Presence – use of the web, social media and sales support tools to advance brand positioning and generate demand for information, events and opportunities (sales, publicity and partner attention)
• Following – create a community of fans (customers, prospects, partners, media and analysts) through multi-channel communications and automation and in real life briefings

Business Development – Business development is all about generating results. This gear covers three things:

• Demand generation – execution of campaigns and sales promotions that generate, develop and nurture leads and build relationships
• Customer/Partner development & engagement – create meaningful results oriented relationships with customers and channel partners
• Sales enablement & advancement – empower the sales organization with programs, coaching and tools that will help them be successful.

These three gears work together but the first gear, branding and positioning, is what gets everything started. I hope this first plank of my MI framework is of interest to you and may help you be successful. Feedback and comments are encouraged.

Next post: The B2B “Marketing Mix” or 4 R’s of Marketing

Intel Retro Ad

It's kind of neat to put the breaks on and see where us marketing types have come from and what we've done in past years. Enjoy this 30 second spot from Intel featuring Homer Simpson.

A couple of things about this ad. First, look at the size of the Intel processer! Second, will we have Intel chips in our bodies one day?

Value Proposition, Smalue Proposition!

I meet with customers regularly and I've come to the conclusion (so far) that value proposition is in the eyes of the beholder. The beholder of value is the prospective customer and the customer. Not the sales dude, the marketing guy, the owner, the president of your company. The biggest risk we all take is not staying in touch with the customer and diligently assessing their "value compass".

Value propositions, those statements that people use to "define" what's unique about their company, products and services can be dangerous. Why? I think too many companies establish a "value prop" and then hang their hats on it. It then sits in the corner gathering dust.

I'm of the view that customers are more interested in meaningful relationships with you and depending on what's important to them they define what value they want and need. This may sound a bit confusing but I'm learning that each customer picks tangible and intangible things from what you offer AND do with/for the customer....and they constantly reassess that value based on their ongoing experiences or lack of experiences with you.

These value priorities are contingent on what matters to the customer at that given moment in time both personally and professionally. You can't waive a generic value proposition in a someones face and expect them to go "ya, great that's exactly what I need". What you can do though, is give examples of how others are getting value from their relationship with you. This creates a meaningful conversation which can lead to a meaningful relationship.

Branding or Scarring?

In an earlier post on branding I talked about how important your reputation is in the market. Focusing on how customers are benefiting from your products and services and what they think and feel about your company is vital.



My company has recently commissioned a research firm to interview high level executives to explore the challenges they are experiencing in their business particularly in the area of unified communications. We're learning some interesting things about branding too!



This is proprietary primary research so I won't go into too much detail but when it comes to your brand the feedback we are getting will blow your mind! Well, actually, it's pretty much common sense. Get rid of your slogans, your catch phrases and focus on being consistent and deliver on what you say you will deliver on. Be clear on what you can do for your customer, be flexible, if something screws up ... fix it and always do your very best to NOT disappoint your customer.



Work with your customers to understand what their expectations are and how their experience has been working with your company so far. Combine this with a solid reference program and you've got the makings of a one, two punch.



The picture above is meant to stimulate a discussion about branding. Who benefits from branding? The cow or the farmer? What's the branding experience for the cow? Pleasent or painful? How do you brand your product and company?

Success Story Podcasts

In an earlier post I covered the importance of strategic references and case studied the Michener Institute who demonstrated Digital Microscopy. My company designed a secure high speed network which enabled Michener to role Digital Microscopy as a educational medium for their students.

We showcased their solution at a healthcare tradeshow. During the show I had editors from various publications visit our booth to see this solution and talk to our customer. After a demo and conversation with Michener we provided them with a media stick which had a written case study and podcast success story interview on it.

The podcast is an interview of the key visionary leaders at Michener who talk about this innovative project and how it can re-define how we teach and how we deliver healthcare.

Importance of Strategic References

I've talked about the importance of having a solid reference program in place as part of your overall branding strategy.

I like to segment reference customers into three types: Strategic, Marketing and Service/Solution References.

Strategic References are created because both you and the customer need/want to work together closely to achieve key business outcomes of mutual value. This common interest is key to a long term "profitable" partnership where you work together to develop new solutions and markets. This is accomplished by jointly conceptualizing, implementing and then promoting the solution to generate awareness, word of mouth and to advance each others strategic objectives (translation: competitive advantage, sales, productivity).

Case Study

We recently attended an industry tradeshow with the Michener Institute, a strategic reference customer, who demo'd a virtual microscopy solution. Simply put, this solution replaces glass slides with digitized ones and the computer screen takes the place of the microscope.

This is at the very early adoption stage but it is now being taught to healthcare professionals in classroom settings to teach microscopic (say that three times fast!) diagnosis. We wanted to show this technology to various healthcare stakeholders to demonstrate its potential in improving healthcare during the education and healthcare delivery stages (by the way we put in the communications and storage technologies that enable this solution to perform properly and securely).

The customer gathered feedback and generated awareness about this solution now being used to teach their students. It positioned them as unique and innovative. From our perspective our customer advocated our company as a key stakeholder in developing, implementing and supporting the technology that enables students to learn using this solution. Prospective customers heard firsthand what it is like working with our company and how we are solving their problems and in this case helping them innovate. The results were positive for our customer and my company both during and after the show. In fact two articles will be written about this solution in Canada's largest circulated Healthcare Technology Magazine.

Building your B2B Brand (it's all about your reputation)

Don't be led to think that branding and advertising are the same thing. Branding isn't about what you say it's about what people think and feel about you, your people, your product and your company.

Whether you sell to consumers or to businesses the most important "brand attribute" is your reputation. I'm amazed at how companies pick mascots, have stupid characters, use silly slogans that don't tie back to the companies value proposition/customer experience.

Let's take a look at examples from each extreme:

Pets.com
During the .com/.bomb craze we all had more money then sense and branding meant superbowl ads, "eyeballs", and business plans on PowerPoint. So, let's benefit from hindsight shall we?

What does this sock have anything to do with the benefit of shopping online at Pets.com? Nothing! The fact that they couldn't come up with something that represented the value/benefit of shopping online should have been the first sign that Pets.com was doomed!



Red Bull
Drink a few of these puppies (pun intended) and your heart beat is racing! Whether you agree with taking external stimulants to increase energy or not, Red Bull gets it from a branding perspective.

They sponsor sports performers including drag racers, F1 drivers and daredevils. These "hero endorsements" (a term coined by my 10 year old daughter) represent people at the razors edge of speed, performance and exhilaration. I sure hope nobody overdoses on this stuff though!

Tylenol
Years ago some idiot decided to poison some Tylenol tablets in a US city. What did Tylenol do? They pulled every bottle off the shelves across North America (maybe globally). Tylenol then began producing tamper proof packaging. To this day I trust Tylenol.

"Branding" is not a fad and not something you do with a creative director at an ad agency. It is a sum of all the experiences and interactions your customer has with you! Here are some things to think about as you build your "brand" (reputation):

1) What is it that your company or product does for your customer?

2) How do customers feel and think when they use your product or service?

3) What do they experience when working with your professional services organization?

4) What is unique about your service experience over your competition? Do your customers view it as unique?

5) What is it like for your customers to conduct business with your company?

6) What do your sales and services people think are the most important things we should do for our customers?

If you can't answer these questions, find out!

Build your reputation and your brand will look after itself. How do you do this? The key building blocks to building your reputation are the following:

1) A customer reference program - a formal corporate program that tracks customer satisfaction and builds a pool of reference accounts that will endorse your company.

2) Word of Mouth - buyers of B2B products and services seek advice from people they know and trust. Your reference program will help create word of mouth but you'll need to think about how you can also get unbiased mindshare from industry leaders.

3) Thought Leadership - producing value add content and experiences that position you as an expert in your field.

4) Feedback loops - talk to your customers, talk to your sales reps and talk to the founder of your company...regularly. Learn what is working well and what isn't. Find out why.

Building your reputation occurs one day at a time and it depends on customer interaction, input and doing the right things to help your customers be successful. That's what you advertise.

The Four "R's" of B2B Marketing

2/15/09: Stayed tuned for an updated version. Minor enhancements including changing one R from "revenue" to "return".

B2B marketing professionals can benefit from taking this approach when defining their marketing plans. What I call the four R's. I use these as guiding principles regularly for planning and tactical execution. A B2B Marketer, in my view, is responsible for the following:

1) Revenue - marketers must generate revenue opportunities. This is accomplished by executing demand generation campaigns and special events that generate sales opportunities for the sales force. This must be measured and reported.

2) Reputation - marketers must build the company's reputation. This is the primary way a B2B company builds it's brand. This is accomplished through case studies, testimonials and a formal reference program. Customer engagement and collaboration is critical.

3) Relationships - marketers must put on creative events that build relationships with customers, partners and the media. These events can be social or educational in nature and must provide real value to the intended audience. They act as a mechanism to create and strengthen relationships and reduce "distant gaps".

4) Relevant - marketers must have something meaningful, relevant and of value to offer the customer or partner. It must also be relevant with respect to what the company has to offer and what the sales force is prepared to talk about with customers and prospects. People are over-communicated to today. Be relevant and provide value in the form of knowledge, networking and keep it relevant.

These four principles help me guide my marketing efforts each day.