Organising around the Customer Experience

How to Design the Marketing Organisation of the Future

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Rich Bryson, Group Client Director and Thought Leader in Customer-Centred Organisation Design at specialist capability consultancy, Brand Learning shares insights on how to organise marketing around the customer experience to drive sustainable growth in the future.

This paper shares new ideas and practices based on Brand Learning’s experience working with over 120 of the world’s leading organisations, and covers:

• Organising and broadening Marketing to work within a Customer Ecosystem not just as a Function

• ‘The Customer Experience Engine’ – Marketing’s way of working with Insight, Innovation and Customer Development in creating motivating customer experiences

• Our new 4S MarketersTM Model – reframing the Marketing and Insight functions around ‘Scientists, Strategists, Storybuilders and Socialisers’

• Insightful advice on making change happen in practice, with examples from companies such as Pernod Ricard, Coca-cola, AstraZeneca and P&G

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Whilst technological breakthroughs have been the key driver, it is their impact on human behaviour that is critical for organisations. Always-on customers demand authenticity and utility, want to share and collaboratively consume, they have a voice and they demand to be heard – now. Whatever the advances in technology, it is the ability to engage with ‘the people behind the devices’ that will drive the winning organisations of tomorrow. This is why we believe the customer experience is everything, it’s what people remember, it’s what builds relationships, and it’s what ultimately drives growth.

As the customer champion, Marketing is well placed to drive the organisation behind a shared purpose of creating motivating experiences that drive commercial growth. But Marketing cannot fulfil this role operating as a siloed function seeking to influence the broader organisation as it does in many organisations today. Marketing needs to be organised to work more fluidly with other functions as a joined up

‘Customer Experience Engine’ shaping and dynamically executing the experience across the ‘customer ecosystem’ (meaning the interdependent interaction points through which all employees and external partners influence a customer’s experience of an organisation). Creating motivating customer experiences means organising around the customer experience.

This will drive a reframing of the Marketing function itself. We believe there are new roles emerging in Marketing which we have captured with our 4S MarketersTM Model (Scientists, Strategists, Storybuilders and Socialisers). And, building new capabilities to equip the people in those roles to drive the customer experience as an organisation wide responsibility is vital for commercial success.

This paper shares our thinking on how to establish a customer-centred operating model and a future-focussed Marketing function – to deliver this in practice. It shares insights from our work with leading organisations across different sectors, industry best practice and the

We are experiencing a period of unprecedented change, which has driven a fundamental shift in the way we live.

Creating motivating experiences means organising around the customer experience

Unless you understand the nuances of your business today and how work really gets done, at the moment of truth, so to speak, in the countries, in the markets, with our customers, with our consumers, multi-functionally, cross-functionally, how the real work actually gets done in a particular enterprise. It’s very difficult to chart a course for the future, because otherwise it’s just words on a pageSalman Amin (former CMO PepsiCo and now COO of J&J)1.

perspectives of senior leaders on leading and inspiring this change.

One of the biggest frustrations from today's business leaders is having to work with organisational structures that may look good on paper but don’t work in practice. We believe this is due to an insufficient focus on how organisation design is integrated with the other core drivers of capability (process, skills, culture and people), and we will also consider the importance of these wider drivers of capability in ensuring the whole organisation is working practically together to create better value through the customer experience.

Clearly there is no-one-size-fits all approach for the marketing organisation design of the future, but we believe the principle of organising around the customer experience can be applied to set up any organisation for sustainable customer-centred growth.

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Contents1. Marketing within a Customer Ecosystem not just as a Function

1.1 The Customer Experience Engine (Marketing, Insight, Innovation and Customer Development)

1.2 Executing the Customer Experience across the Customer Ecosystem

1.3 Embedding new practices through Agile Centres of Excellence4

2. 4S MarketersTM… Implications for the structure and roles of the Marketing Function

2.1 Brand Developers – Strategists and Storybuilders

2.2 Brand Activators – Socialisers

2.3 Insight – Scientists, Storybuilders and Strategists

2.4 Mono vs Multi Brand Considerations

3. Implications for Global-Local Operating Models

4. Making it happen in practice

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The need for Marketing to drive the growth agenda in the organisation beyond its function has been the call to arms in recent years. It’s important however this is not perceived as a Marketing takeover, rather the need to harness the whole organisation to deliver customer value and the key role Marketing can play within this. This requires customer-centred organisation design that defines Marketing’s ways of working with all functions involved in creating and executing the customer experience. Beyond cross-functional working, this operating model must be built on a shared understanding of the customer ecosystem, the desired customer experience and the role of each function within it.

Marketing within a Customer Ecosystem not just as a Function

The most important part of marketing leadership is the ability to lead the people and the ability to lead the organisation. When we relegate ourselves to be the creative services department, the producer of ads and packaging we do our organisations and ourselves a disservice2

Andy Fennell, former CMO Diageo, now President Diageo Africa

At the heart of this ecosystem is what we call ‘The Customer Experience Engine’ – how Marketing needs to be organised to work fluidly in a spirit of partnership with Innovation (including R&D), Customer Development (sales), and Insight to create and manage a joined-up, motivating customer experience that drives sustainable business growth. It is equally important to clarify the role of all customer facing teams and external partners that interact with customers across the ecosystem3… the ‘Customer Experience Execution’ teams, establishing the right capabilities and ways of working with the Experience Engine to shape, evolve and dynamically execute this experience. Organisations must be continuously focused on improving these capabilities to respond to the changing needs of customers, so ‘Agile Centres of Excellence4’ need to be hardwired into the business and able to embed new practices into ways of working much faster than is often the case today.

1

THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

ENGINEExternal Partners

Customer Facing Teams

Non Customer

Facing Teams

Agile Centres of Excellence4

Customer Experience EngineMarketing fluidly working with Innovation, Customer Development, and Insight to create and manage a joined up, motivating customer experience that drives business growth

Customer Experience Execution Clarify the role of customer facing teams and external partners in the customer experience, build in the right capabilities and fluidly work with them to dynamically execute this experience

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The Customer Experience Engine

Whilst organisations vary, there are key principles for how Marketing needs to be organised to work effectively with Insight, Innovation (including R&D) and Customer Development within the Customer Experience Engine strategically shaping and managing the customer experience across the organisation, and we will explore each one in turn.

Insight

Marketing Customer Development

Innovation (inc. R&D)

1.1

THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

ENGINE

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A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is – it is what consumers tell each other it is5 Scott D Cook , one of the US’s most successful business people

We now live in a digitally enabled, networked world. The days of a ‘command and control’ approach in which Marketing pushes out controlled messages to customers are over. In the networked society, customers are organising themselves via virtual networks to share their delight or despair about their experience of brands, no longer simply listening to the stories brands are telling but re-shaping these stories and communicating them within their communities. Customers expect brands to be responsive to their views and authentically to deliver on the values they advocate to maintain trust. This won’t be new to you… 80% of us will read between 6-12 reviews online before booking a hotel, 54% have posted original photos or videos to websites6… this is how we live now, the question is are we marketing in the way we live?

Marketing’s core groups (e.g. Brand Developers and Brand Activators) remain the same, but where, how and when they apply their skills needs to change to strategically shape the customer experience in the networked world.

• Build cross-functional portfolio and brand strategy that’s joined up around the customer experience

• Develop purposeful brands built on purposeful positioning and evolving stories to activate across the customer experience

• Shape innovative new propositions bringing together internal (e.g. technical experts) and external talent (e.g. customers, inventors) to innovate around the customer experience

• Define a customer engagement strategy that maps the desired customer experience across every interaction in the customer ecosystem

• Continuously manage and build this experience through 2-way conversations with customers across every touchpoint

Marketing cannot fulfil this role if it is organised as a separate function and works in its own silo.

The Customer Experience Engine 1.1

Marketing’s role in driving the Customer Experience Engine

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This is meant to be the year big data comes of age, but it will only be effective if synthesised together into human insight and translated into actionable ideas that address human needs. The successful Insight functions of tomorrow will be those with the capabilities to weave together advanced data analytics with cultural anthropology to generate this actionable human insight. For this reason, Insight needs to be an integral part of Marketing – embedded in the DNA of all marketers and with the Insight function itself a key part of the Marketing function within this Customer Experience Engine.

Rather than being perceived as a sign of weakness, this will enable the Insight function to strengthen its influence across the organisation. The reality is that insights generated by specialist functions are still underutilised by marketers and cross-functional teams in their strategies and plans, with a Future Foundation report indicating that just 55% of marketers have been shown to regularly use insight

provided by their specialist teams in their day-to-day jobs7. For this reason, the integration of Insight and Marketing has always been important, but in the future it will become essential:

• Organisational focus on the customer experience needs to be powered by joined up insight from across the customer journey using significantly more advanced data analysis techniques than we know today

• Insight generation must be a continuous vs one off process, listening to and engaging with customers in real time to distil insights for Marketing to use to build brand conversations with customers. The way of working needs to be fast, agile and responsive to be effective

• Privacy data concerns will have an increasing influence on the relationship between people and brands. The Insight team has a key role in ensuring data protection is placed at the centre of customer centred strategy and plans rather than a bolt on at the end

The Customer Experience Engine 1.1

Insight needs to be empowered as part of Marketing

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Organising for innovation clearly varies and needs to be aligned with the innovation strategy of a given organisation. It might be focused on multi-disciplinary ‘SWAT’ teams to provide a ‘fuel injection’ or as Jill McDonald (CEO of McDonald’s) calls them ‘little hit squads so you can have cross-functional people pulled out of their day jobs to focus on a particular opportunity you want to land quickly8’. Alternatively it may require more radical changes in organisational structure, for example as Nestle CEO Peter Braebeck did when he created a separate Nespresso company outside the Nestle organisation to drive its new focus on the mass market household coffee segment9. In all cases however the key to success is organising diverse groups of people (internal and external) with different skills sets to work fluidly to address customer needs – a remit that Marketing is well placed to fulfil in the organisation.

Therefore Marketing needs to be organised to drive innovation within the Customer Experience Engine, either with Marketers in key roles in a separate Innovation function or Innovation being led from the Marketing function itself. Equally important is to establish the right operating model for Marketers to bring together internal (e.g. technical experts from R&D and manufacturing and category / channel from Customer Development) and external talent (e.g. customers, inventors, and co-manufacturers) to innovate around the customer experience. The focus is to move beyond cross-functional working to creating a ‘social movement’, in which these groups work together to build, share and co-create customer focused innovation across virtual networks and online platforms. Rather than relying on process, this needs to be guided by clear brand purpose that galvanises these

Pernod Ricard sees innovation around the consumer experience as the responsibility of everyone in their organisation in its role as the ‘créateurs of convivialité’, and we will explore how this is built into the roles of their Marketers later on. However they have also established a ‘start-up’ style unit of 10 senior people outside the traditional organisation, the Breakthrough Innovation Group, with the goal of inventing “the

future of conviviality by developing new products and services which will radically change and enhance the consumer's experience”. Comprised of Innovation Visionaries, Trend Hunters and Innovation Managers, it is focused on ground breaking innovation in every area: products, services, experiences, consumption patterns, industrial technologies and processes. Examples include the recent

Project Gutenburg a designer library, made up of “container books” each holding a sealed bottle of spirits and connected to a service platform with mixology tutorials10

The Customer Experience Engine 1.1

disparate groups behind a shared goal and embedding a supportive culture and values within the operating model from the top down. Organisations need to decide what is achievable within their traditional organisational structure and where a more radical approach is needed.

Innovation must be closely linked with Marketing

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Tension between Marketing and Customer Development is inevitable and can be healthy. What isn’t healthy is competing agendas leading to out and out conflict that damages the customer experience. To create a joined up customer experience, Marketing and Customer Development teams must genuinely engage as equal partners. Fundamental to this is a shared view of the customer ecosystem and understanding of the unique role different stakeholders play in delivering the end-user’s experience and the value that must be created for them. Marketing must work within the Customer Experience Engine to shape experiences that are motivating and consistent at all points in the ecosystem, equally for retailers as for consumers, for payers and healthcare stakeholders as for patients and physicians.

Businesses recognise the need for this cross-functional approach, but silo behaviour creates a challenge in practice. It is this shared view of the customer experience that can help address this, identifying the joined up capabilities and processes required, clarifying who needs to do what in practice and openly tackling the ‘pain points’ in current cross-functional working. With these operating model principles clearly defined at senior leadership level, they can then be practically implemented through joined up, core business processes focused on delivering value to all stakeholders in the ecosystem. This of course cannot be successfully achieved without an appropriate focus on the people within the process, in particular establishing a cross-functional leadership that drives this joined up customer agenda from the top down, engaging the team in a spirit of partnership behind a shared purpose to deliver performance in practice.

AstraZeneca Japan recently implemented a ‘One Brand Team’ model to drive this change in their organisation. Recognising that cross-functional planning was not supporting their ambition to move from ‘good to great’, the Japan Leadership team established the ‘One Brand Team’ model clarifying the roles and responsibilities of cross-functional brand team and ad hoc members in each area of planning and execution, and where

possible ensuring they were co-located within these teams. Critical to this was establishing a Brand Leadership team of cross-functional leaders (Marketing, Medical, Sales, R&D) responsible for driving the joined up strategy and engaging their cross-functional teams behind a common brand purpose. Brand Learning partnered with the Japan Leadership Team to build the required functional and behavioural skills into

their brand leaders through a leadership programme to drive the implementation of the new model from the top down11

The Customer Experience Engine 1.1

Join up Customer Development and Marketing around Customer Experience

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Driving the customer experience as a cross functional team Marketing plays the role of business leaders working in cross-functional category / brand teams, consisting of Finance, Operations and R&D with Market Strategy and Planning teams acting as the lynchpin between Marketing and Sales. Marketers are expected to have a commercial mindset focused on customers as well as the consumer, with clarity on the 'sweet spot' for what their brand will achieve for key customer accounts. Innovation sits within the Category team at global level driving a portfolio of innovation for their purpose-driven brands, capturing insights from Market Operations Teams’ innovations in executing the experience. Their ‘connect and develop’ open innovation programmes bring together companies, entrepreneurs, academia and research groups to share and co-create innovation ideas. The P&G culture is to ‘walk in customers’ shoes… all levels, all functions, all of the time’ and insight is everyone’s responsibility at P&G, supported by specialist Market Research and Product Research teams working closely with Marketing12

Ways of working focused on the consumer, driven by clear brand purpose:P&G's mantra is 'Consumer is Boss', with a relentless focus on the consumer experience and the key stakeholders involved in delivering this. For example on Pampers, all consumer and customer-facing teams as well as retail customers visit their Geneva Innovation Centre to sit in oversized high chairs and attempt to walk on wobbly floors in order to experience the world as a baby user of its Pampers brand.

Equally critical is the focus on purpose driven brands within P&G that galvanise disparate teams behind a higher ideal for consumers. As former P&G Global Marketing Officer Jim Stengel advocates in his book ‘Grow’, P&G brands are driven by a clear ideal which inspire and engage the multi-disciplinary teams working on them13, from Pampers ‘helping mothers care for their babies’ and toddlers’ healthy happy development’ to Old Spice ‘helping young guys navigate the seas of manhood’.

The Customer Experience Engine 1.1

Always execute brilliantly. Your consumer only sees your execution not your strategy14

Roisin Donnelly, Corporate Marketing Director P&G, UK & Ireland

The only thing the consumer sees is the execution P&G has a relentless focus on executing the consumer experience brilliantly, and adopting a ‘test and learn’ mindset in doing this. P&G emphasises the need to approach the consumer experience 'starting with the store back', considering the needs of the retail customers and shoppers first within the customer ecosystem – coined back in 2005 as the first moment of truth (shelf) followed by the second moment of truth (experience), and now preceded by Google’s zero moment of truth.

How P&G strategically creates motivating customer experiences

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Making Customer Experience Execution everyone’s responsibility across the organisation Whilst the Customer Experience Engine teams are responsible for strategically shaping and managing the customer experience, everyone in the organisation who interacts with customers is responsible. It is essential therefore to identify the roles and responsibilities of all groups involved in fulfilling the desired customer experience and clarifying the operating model for how they will work with the Customer Experience Engine to dynamically execute this experience.

This can no longer be a model of a central group trying to influence a broader workforce to deliver one way communication; rather it is now a model of participation and engagement. As we have discussed, the customer experience is

augmented or detracted through ongoing two-way conversations between a brand and a customer, and Customer Experience Execution teams need to be engaged and upskilled to play this role. Therefore the Customer Experience Engine needs to similarly focus on stimulating these two-way conversations with employees internally through inspiring engagement programmes rather what some describe as ‘antiquated internal communications’.

It’s a shared responsibility outside the organisation with ecosystem partnersThe Customer Ecosystem must also encompass external partners involved in the execution of the customer experience. For example, dealers for automotive companies or brokers for financial services organisations have a significant impact on the experience of customers.

Executing the Customer Experience across the Customer Ecosystem

1.2

Marketing must therefore ensure it clarifies the role of these partners in creating the experience and then build the marketing resources into them to fulfil this role as part of the ecosystem16.

For example, RSA recognised Brokers and Financial Advisors were critical to executing their desired customer experience, and worked with Brand Learning to develop a programme to build the RSA way of marketing into these priority groups, building capability in core skills such as customer segmentation and communications planning17.

Virgin Media Simply Brilliant Programme15

The Virgin brand is renowned as a ‘customer champion’ across its diverse range of businesses. To help deliver its brand promise of ‘One Vision, One Customer Journey’ One Customer Experience’, Virgin Media developed an employee engagement programme with the ambition that every customer would describe every contact as ‘Simply Brilliant’ – and in line with their corporate

philosophy “how your managers treat their staff is how their staff treat their customers”. ‘Simply Brilliant’ main events were delivered for a total of 900+ Field Technicians and staff at the Field Service Operations Contact Centre, as well as ‘Simply Brilliant Leadership and Coaching’ events for all team leaders and first line managers. During the main event, the participants worked on delivery of the Virgin Media Customer Experience as expressed through

customer perception statements, whilst the Leadership and Coaching event focused on the development and application of the Virgin Media Leadership Mindset. As a result, engagement scores increased to 98% as well an improvement in the net promoter score.

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Emerging capabilities need to be hardwired into organisations by ‘centres of excellence’ – groups responsible for continuing to shape, share and embed new capabilities. Centres of excellence are not new, but the way they work and apply skills in the organisation will be.

Firstly they need to be comprised of cross-functional partners involved in creating the customer experience rather than silo functional centres, and secondly given dynamically changing needs, these centres need to be agile and hardwired into the business to embed new capabilities faster into ways of working. In addition businesses need the right ambition levels to ensure these emerging capabilities are translated into competitive advantage rather than sitting as a separate and underutilised resource in the organisation.

Coca Cola’s Content Marketing 2020 has the right mindset, with an aspiring purpose to ‘create ideas so contagious they cannot be controlled’ and plans to double sales by 2020 through content. Coca Cola has established Content Excellence teams to accelerate this change from creative to content excellence across the organisation, supported by key principles to inspire participation from the best, stimulate creative minds, share the results of efforts, continue development and measure success. The application of the 70-20-10 model to stimulate investment in content marketing is a clever way to drive behaviour change in the organisation – 70% low risk and less time (e.g. a Fanta TVC), 20% innovating off what works (e.g. Fanta Mime Spoof), and 10% brand new ideas (e.g. Roller ball interactive campaign).18

Embedding new practices fast through Agile Centres of Excellence4

1.3

No business can afford to stand still in such a dynamically changing world.

70%

70-20-10

20%

10%

low risk and less time

brand new ideas

innovating off what works

Coca Cola's 70-20-10 model for content marketing

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We have explored the need for a customer-centred operating model, in which Marketing works within a Customer Experience Engine to strategically shape and manage the customer experience across the organisation and external partners. What are the implications for the structure, capabilities and roles of the Marketing function itself within this? In short, we believe it will be the same but also different…

Marketing will still comprise Category / Brand teams marrying the right blend of Developers and Activators but with the focus on the customer experience in this digitally enabled new world, where, when and how skills are applied will be different. This necessitates new capabilities for marketing roles within these traditional marketing groups… our 4S Marketers ModelTM

Implications for the structure and roles of the Marketing Function… 4S MarketersTM

2

No business can afford to stand still in such a dynamically changing world.

SCIENTISTS

Apply advanced techniques to collate

and analyse pa erns of behaviour from data

sources, and drive targeted strategies

STRATEGISTS

Create aligned category, brand and

customer engagement strategies focused on

the customer experience and guided by the brand purpose

STORYBUILDERS

Shape and evolve compelling stories and

content to engage external and internal

customers, underpinned by key insights from culture

and data analysis

SOCIALISERS

Socialise new experiences, ideas and content externally and internally and evolve through con�nuous

two-way conversa�ons

The 4S MarketersTM

© Brand Learning 2014 All rights reserved

Shaping the Pernod Ricard Marketing function of the future19

Brand Learning worked with Pernod Ricard to define the role of marketing in creating a distinct, relevant ecosystem of convivialité experiences. Through building a future orientated view of the consumer experience, key priorities were identified for Marketing in the organisation…

• Create brands that demand loyalty and advocacy

• Build and sustain systems that feed ongoing advocacy

• Convert advocacy into commercial success in the last 3 feet

To deliver this in practice, the Pernod Ricard Marketing structure and roles needed to be reframed to reflect the types of capabilities in the 4S MarketersTM model. This means establishing the right blend of Scientists, Strategists, Storybuilders and Socialisers in existing and new roles within the Marketing function, with examples including…

• Brand Strategy teams responsible for shaping the long term experience to drive engagement, dialogue, participation and activation.

• Community Managers responsible for animating vibrant on and offline communities

• Insight Navigators, Social Listeners and Intelligence Managers to drive the strategic application of human insight driven by a scientific approach to data.

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As a strategist, they need to establish ‘where to play’ through a winning portfolio strategy based on a brand agnostic view of the customer journey, comprising the optimal portfolio of purpose-driven brands required to win. The capability to develop purpose driven brands will be essential as 1. they engage human values in a less controlled, networked world, 2. they drive internal as well as external engagement, and 3. they drive financial performance (shown to be almost 400% ahead of average market growth20)

Whilst FMCG organisations have made building purpose-driven brands central to their marketers’ skills (e.g. P&G or Unilever) this still requires a shift in certain sectors. For example, in the pharmaceutical industry where the imperative is achieving a better clinical benefit for patients, talking about high purpose ideals can feel uncomfortable for Marketers. The need is to build a mindset that says delivering better clinical benefits for patients remains fundamental, but laddering this up to a higher order benefit will enable my pharmaceutical brand to stand out across the patient ecosystem and more patients to ultimately benefit.

Brand Development – Strategists and Storybuilders

2.1

Brand Developers will need to shift to playing the dual role of Strategist and Storybuilder to develop a winning portfolio of brands around the customer experience.

There also needs to be a shift from communications skills to customer engagement strategic skills that use the customer ecosystem to map out the desired customer experience and a joined up channel plan. ‘Talking at’ customers in today’s world of channel proliferation and advancing technology will not be successful. Engaging customers with consistent, relevant messages is key to delivering a motivating customer experience and thereby driving growth. Brand Developers need to become ‘Storybuilders’ focused less on management and more on shaping and evolving brand stories through continuous dialogue with customers across the customer experience.

The key to this customer engagement strategy is content that provides genuine utility and value to customers. As marketing organisations increasingly become publishing organisations, content marketing has become an integral part of the Brand Developers’ role. Brand Directors and Managers need to be responsible for shaping the strategic content ideas as part of the customer engagement strategy, overseeing the right blend of Content Creators (either in-house, outsourced or both) to shape this evolving content. Like publishing houses, marketing functions will be supported by an editing

team to ensure content remains aligned to the brand purpose and values. Whilst there are Marketing functions out there doing content well there’s also too much content that is still focused on promoting a product and not a genuine value exchange with customers. In an increasingly opt-in culture, Marketers need to create and evolve content that provides genuine value through the customer experience. We believe this change needs to be integrated and driven from the top down, so the Chief Marketing Officer plays the dual role of chief strategist and content storyteller for the organisation rather than a separate Chief Content Officer. Creating joined up customer experiences requires integration and not separation, and with the number of new Chief roles being advocated across the industry, there is a real danger of ‘Too Many Chiefs, Not Enough Indians’ and a muddled end result for the customer.

This focus on integration needs to also be reflected in the Brand Developer’s approach to channel planning, with a focus on an omni channel plan as John Bowden describes rather than separate channel approaches for paid media, social media, retail, shopper and so on. Brand Developers need to take the lead in driving this cross-functional approach to channel strategy and planning, underpinned by customer data and insights from across the customer experience and supported by an in-house or external planning team able to provide the channel insights that underpin the approach.Multichannel is an operational view – how you

allow the customer to complete transactions in each channel. Omnichannel is viewing the experience through the eyes of your customer, orchestrating the customer experience across all channels so that it is seamless, integrated and consistent21

John Bowden, VP Customer Care Time Warner

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With the focus on creating outstanding customer experiences, these roles need to be reframed as ‘Socialisers’ with responsibility for socialising ideas, content and experiences in the world of customers. Whilst there is a tendency to think about the online world when we talk about ‘social’, job roles need to be reframed across the holistic customer experience.

For example, Brand or Retail Activation Managers responsible for delivering winning in-store programmes (e.g. retailer events, POS, coupons, in-store demonstrations) need to be harnessed to create an ideal customer experience that fulfils the brand ideal rather than simply executing promotional materials. The mindset needs to become that of Method (cleaning products) who are relentless in delivering a customer experience behind their purpose to lead a ‘Happy Healthy Home Revolution’.

Brand Activation – Socialisers 2.2

There is also shift for those involved in Brand Activation, by which we mean those traditionally responsible for executing brand activities to customers.

The Method team want to position Method as a master lifestyle brand and will only work with retailers who will enable them to achieve this – e.g. stocking Method in the same shelf space as handwash brands22

Of course there will also be the need for Marketing roles to socialise the experience online, as we already see now in business with the right blend of Community Managers and Conversation Managers managing and optimising content through and from ongoing dialogue with customers. In addition to deepening the relationship with customers, what will become even more important is how these types of managers socialise insights and ideas from customers back into the Customer Experience Engine internally. This will require an ongoing two-way dialogue with Marketing to identify key trends from customer conversations and respond with speed and agility.

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We discussed earlier the importance of Insight as part of Marketing within the Customer Experience Engine, as the owner of integrated data from interactions across the customer experience and real time customer listening and monitoring. This will require a more powerful Insight function focused on the continuous generation of ‘Human Insight, Driven by Science’ and the right blend of Insight Scientists, Storybuilders and Strategists to fulfil this role in practice.

Scientists and Storybuilders Data has got big and we will need smart techniques to get what we need from it. The techniques to aggregate and analyse big data will draw from fields including statistics, computer science, applied mathematics and economics23.Data scientists are already recruited by leading organisations across industry sectors (Microsoft and IBM top the list, but the top 100 also includes companies such as Starbucks, T-Mobile and HSBC) and indeed it was proclaimed as the ‘sexiest job of the 21st century’ in a 2012 HBR article24. This was possibly coined by a Data Scientist, but without doubt it will be a critically important role and it will need to evolve from today’s Data Scientist to maximise its potential. The Insight function will need a new breed of Data Scientists and Storybuilders with the capabilities to make the use of big data through not only identifying and analysing

Insight – Scientists, Storybuilders and Strategists

2.3

relationships from large data sets, but also synthesising data-driven insights into compelling stories to engage their organisation. It’s a similar challenge for Social Listening Centres in organisations as their analysis moves from volume of conversations to a deeper analysis of the topics and themes in conversations, how this real time data can be continuously shaped into ‘short stories’ for Marketing to respond to and capitalise upon.

If the future is about building deeper relationships through the customer experience, neuroscience has a key contribution to make. The role of emotion in purchasing decisions is now well established (our senses take in 11m bits of info every second and only 40 are conscious25). Neuroscience techniques (e.g. EEG, FMRi, Facial Coding) help us to understand these unarticulated thoughts and feelings in an unprecedented way, and we have already seen future thinking companies establish specialist centres such as Coca Cola with their own in-house neuroscience lab. However as neuroscience results need to be viewed in conjunction with other techniques as part of a joined up story rather than in isolation, it is equally important that a breadth of neuroscience skills is built into roles across the future Insight function to unlock the full potential of this exciting technology.

Storybuilders and Strategists Yet for all the opportunities that this new science opens up for Marketing and Insight, we must never lose sight of the fact that we are human beings striving to create solutions that make life better for other human beings. Engaging human needs to experience, to grow, to feel a sense of belonging remain essential, and so Marketing functions need to ensure they understand the science through a human lens. This requires Cultural Storybuilders who study human culture and future trends to humanise the data in the context of society, hence why companies such as Intel have cultural anthropologists. Genevieve Bell, the cultural anthropologist at Intel Labs, runs a team of about 100 researchers, explains ‘My mandate at Intel has always been to bring the stories of everyone outside the building inside the building – and make them count. You have to understand people to build the next generation of technology”26. Similarly there needs to be Insight Strategists who work with these different Scientists and Storybuilders to challenge and co-create the stories into focused human insight that can be actioned to drive new propositions and better experiences for people in reality.

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There is certainly no-one-size-fits all approach as was highlighted at the start of this paper, but we believe the principles of organising around the customer experience and the Marketing function around the 4S MarketersTM model can be applied to set up any organisation for customer-centred growth.

Mono v Multi brand considerations 2.4

Therefore for mono brand organisations, whilst the organisation design will look different, it would be based on the same principles. For example rather than customer engagement being a core skill set of a Brand Developer, a separate Customer Engagement function would be established to replace the current Communications function, with responsibility for shaping the 3-5 year engagement strategy for the brand and managing the 2-way brand conversations across all touchpoints.

In exploring the Marketing function of the future, we have focused on a multi-brand rather than a mono brand model.

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Traditionally establishing a global – local operating model has been based on a spectrum from Centralised to Locally Led driven by an interrogation of the category on a number of dimensions, such as customer needs, competitors, scale of R&D and pricing. The responsibilities of global, local (and regional if applicable) have then been mapped on a linear path of brand development and delivery. What we are seeing and anticipate in the future is a less structured and linear approach to global – local operating models. In this flexible approach, the operating model principles will be determined by whoever is best equipped to design and manage the customer experience in a particular category – whether that be a global function or local markets. This will lead to models in which global brand strategy could be driven by a central function or by local markets.

Implications for global-local operating models 3

For example, the Levi’s dENiZEN brand was built on consumer insights from markets including Brazil, Mexico, India, and China and created in the Asia region. Its initial launch in 2011 was driven in China, followed by roll out in India, Singapore, South Korea and Pakistan. Only 8 months later was the dENiZEN brand brought to the US where Levi’s is centrally headquartered. This type of global-local model has been emerging informally over the past few years, and we expect it to become increasingly formalised in global – local models over the years ahead.

This brand was built on consumer insights from various markets besides India and China so in that sense, it's truly global in nature. So consumers across the world will identify with this value brand and it will have resonance across markets27

Aaron Boey, former President of dENiZEN and Head of Commercial Operations Asia Pacific

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Embedding a new way of working (particularly when it’s on a global scale) is clearly a challenging task. Organisations are driven by human beings and we humans find change threatening. When we’re uncertain, we retreat and want to protect our turf – addressing this people dimension is essential to activating a customer focused operating model. It is equally important that the organisation design is integrated with the other core capability drivers (processes, skills and culture) and the change is driven through customer-centred leadership at every level in the organisation. We have shared our recommended steps for making customer focused operating models and organisation design work in practice below:

Making it happen in practice 4

Define an inspiring Purpose centred on customer needs – work with cross-functional leaders to define an inspiring brand / business purpose centred on the customer and the capabilities required to create an outstanding customer experience

Establish a customer focused operating model before structure – clarify the role and ways of working of all the functions within the Customer Experience Engine and across the organisation in shaping and dynamically executing the desired customer experience

Reframe Marketing around the 4S MarketersTM – within the customer focused operating model, reframe the role of Marketing, its structure and its marketers around the 4S – Scientists, Strategists, Storybuilders, SocialisersTM

Embed within core business planning processes – translate the operating model into simple to apply processes for the critical capabilities, supported by clarity on cross-functional governance at all levels

Focus on People as well as Process – humans beings have human traits that need to be harnessed, so clarify everyone’s role in the customer experience, engage their aspirations with the purpose in a spirit of partnership and build skills to drive performance in practice

Underpin with a customer-centred culture and behaviours – clarify what you stand for and believe in, and make this live in every interaction with customers

We have experienced first-hand the frustrations of operating models and organisation designs that don’t work in practice.

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Sources 1. Brand Learning External Benchmarking

Interview, 2011

2. Brand Learning Interview, Marketing Leaders Programme 2013

3. ‘We’re all marketers now’ – Mckinsey Quarterly 2011 / Outside in ‘The Power of Putting Customers at the Centre of your Business’ (2012, Harley Manning, Kerry Bodine)

4. Centres of Excellence, Booz Allen, AMA Today January 2014

5. Scott Cook, co-founder of Intuit, 2013

6. Pew Research Center’s Internet Project and Trip Advisor Report 2013

7. Marketers need more Insight, Melanie Howard Future Foundation 2010

8. Brand Learning Interview, Marketing Leaders Programme 2013

9. Innovation’s Hidden Enemies, HBR 2011

10. Pernod Ricard press release, January 2014

11. AstraZeneca Japan Commercial Excellence team, 2013

12. Interviews with former P&G marketers, 2014

13. ‘Grow’, Jim Stengel, Virgin Books 2012

14. Marketing Society Marketing Leaders Programme 2014

15. Brand Biology case study ‘Simply Brilliant’

16. Outside in ‘The Power of Putting Customers at the Centre of your Business’ (2012, Harley Manning, Kerry Bodine)

17. RSA Marketing Academy project with Brand Learning, 2011

18. Coca Cola Content 2020

19. Pernod Ricard project with Brand Learning, 2014

20. ‘Grow’, Jim Stengel Virgin Books, 2012

21. John Bowden, VP Customer Care Time Warner

22. ‘Grow’, Jim Stengel Virgin Books, 2012

23. Stephan Kudyba, ‘Big Data, Mining, and Analytics: Components of Strategic Decision Making’, 2014

24. ‘Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century’ by Thomas H. Davenport and D.J. Patil, 2012 and Data Science Central report 2013

25. ‘The Buying Brain: Secrets for Selling to the Subconscious Mind’. A. K. Pradeep, 2010

26. ‘Here’s why companies are desperate to hire anthropologists’, Business Insider 2014

27. ‘Levi’s targets Asia’ and ‘Levi’s Strauss finds Asian Success’ articles, WARC 2011

For more information about Brand Learning’s approach to designing and embedding customer-centred operating models and organisational structures, or to discuss your organisation’s capability needs, please get in touch on info@brandlearning.com

Visit brandlearning.com for the latest thinking on how to build the capabilities of organisations to achieve customer-centred growth. You can sign up to be alerted to the latest blogs or thought leadership papers, or you can follow us on LinkedIn or on Twitter @brandlearning to stay updated and to join the conversation. We’d love to hear from you.

About the author

Rich Bryson is a Group Client Director at Brand Learning and the Thought Leader in Customer-Centred Organisation Design.

Inspiring people. Lifting capabilities. Growing organisations.

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