CENTERLINE DIGITALSTRATEGY, DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY FOR CONTENT MARKETING

SIMPLIFICATION: Dismantling Marketing Complexity From the Inside @stevenkeith

SIMPLIFICATION

Some of the world’s largest companies are quietly launching coordinated assaults on complexity in their organizations like rational doomsday-preppers. This includes a few of our clients (IBM, GE, Google). They’re simplifying their operations, their lines of business, their R&D, HR, IT and their marketing and advertising—which is the focus of this post.

!I’ve noticed this most in the way they’re changing their positioning and conducting their marketing externally and internally. This change isn’t another hollow promise and blind march toward shareholder value or delivering better customer experiences—it feels like a real genuine change that I can see, feel and hear. It’s loaded with accountability and immediate, perceptible measures. !I’m excited about this change for a host of reasons, not the least of which, is that it mirrors my personal mantra which ultimately attracted me to the career I have and activities I get paid to think about and do on a daily basis.

It’s called Simplification and it applies to a surprisingly wide set of practices in every business. However, few businesses are willing to embrace it holistically. Because it’s—complex! !In 2010 when I started working at Centerline Digital, I was tasked with thinking about how our biggest client’s strategies (leadership, products/services, culture, marketing) affect what Centerline delivers and vice versa. I was to evaluate how we could change our customers with content and how our customers evolving needs could change us. I was skeptical but started to see patterns from a few corporations. !The biggest pattern was a correlation between their size (employee count, revenues and global reach) and their relative willingness or mandate, to take a deep breath and aggressively attack complexity—across all areas, most notably, operations, IT, HR and marketing. The bigger they are, the more aggressive the attacks. Likely for the obvious reasons that they have both more to gain if it works or lose by not doing it at all.

SIMPLIFICATION: IBM

IBM, was taking perhaps the most surprising steps from our perspective. It was really surprisingly and yet, almost Zen. They were taking steps to create strategies that simplified everything they do. !One big example, John Iwata, their chief of marketing, placed a bet in a two step change strategy for marketing.

1) flip the switch of brand and marketing accountability to their agencies instead of their thousands of internal marketers !2) dramatically reduce the number of agencies they work with

Why? Brilliant and simple math and incentive. They wanted to create an accountability multiplier. It’s simpler to hold a small handful of responsible agencies accountable for the brand if their seat at the table is only guaranteed by their ability to deliver accountable creative day in and day out.

The agencies are given incentive to run the asylum and just enough rope to hang themselves. !This has changed the way all their agencies have adapted to IBM’s needs. !If we, as one of their three storytelling agencies, don’t perpetually grow to better understand them and deliver every idea and asset with complete accountability, we are out. That simple. !And truth be told, simplification for our client makes us, as the agency work exponentially smarter. We became experts talking to experts. !Both the internal and external effect of that simplification strategy was nearly immediate. They reduced the number of agencies that “sheriff” their brand from dozens to three (selection based on past performance). And secondly, they got all their agencies to play nicely together in a more integrative fashion around generating evolving sales and marketing successes. It was like lightning.

SIMPLIFICATION: GE

GE knows that every company is looking for ways to be more nimble and efficient. And they’re doing amazing things internally to meet their customers’ needs quicker.

How? Eliminating as much bureaucracy through an Immelt-led crusade. They’ve simplified everything to center their entire company around their biggest and most promising growth drivers.

That’s not what’s most impressive! If that change wasn’t enough, in the three or four years we’ve been working with them, they have been remarkably nimble in how they are able to shift their focus and market with greater precision, relevance and simplicity.

They can now do this because they’re applying simplification at every level of the organization to allow themselves to be quicker on the draw and tell more resonate stories, quicker and with more passion.

In 2010 they were organized more around the tenets of Building, Curing, Moving and Powering. And while those tenets are still in play, today they are more explicitly organized around Advanced Manufacturing, the Industrial Internet, and the Age of Gas.

This helps them simplify. It affects how they’re perceived externally but perhaps its greatest measurable impact is how this simplification coalesces in the tens of thousands of internal minds that deliver this focus to the marketplace every single day.

It’s brilliant because it works. And it works because it was through simplifying their purpose, vision, mission and platforms that made everyone understand and get behind why they get up and go to work each day.

That is monumental.

I can feel this simplification now when I walk down the halls of GE today. I can note the difference in how they make decisions, how they collaborate and work with their agencies.

To them, simplification is about organizing for prescience and impact.

In the words of Jeff Immelt, GE’s CEO;

“We use Simplification to drive decisions closer to customers and make our teams accountable for outcomes, not process. We are using simplification to reduce the time it takes to introduce a new product 30 percent, boost field approvals 50 percent, and cut the deal cycle in half.”

SIMPLIFICATION: In detail

So what is simplicity and how can you wrap your mind around it in a way that makes sense for where you are today? !I think it’s different for everyone and most certainly different for every business that pursues it. !My definition is this: !

it’s the combination of deliberate decisions and actions that reduces the friction and complexity that prevents you from more fluid evolution.

!In terms of pursuing it, you need to start a simplification conversation at the highest level you can. And in the spirit of simplification, you need to start it with two simple questions; 1) What can we gain by simplifying the way we do marketing? 2) What will we possibly lose by not simplifying?

If you’re like me, you may also be thinking in the back of your head, why aren’t more businesses making changes toward simplification. !If the world’s largest and most complex businesses can do it, doesn’t logic tell us it would be incrementally easier for smaller businesses with less complexity to simplify? !Further, doesn’t it seem obvious that simplification can create opportunities to take a fresh look at your strategy, rethink your business models and make operational improvements to gain competitive advantage? !And like in the case with IBM and GE, wouldn’t it allow you to market at lower costs and address your industry and marketplace faster? !I think the rational answer is this; the smart ones that want to stick around probably are, but are doing it quietly under the darkness of competition.

SIMPLIFICATION: In detail

And alternatively, here are my top ten factors that impede simplification efforts:

!1. The impact of IT change on production

and communications 2. Layers of hard-fought standards and

regulations 3. Data management changes are a

nightmare 4. Don’t possess knowledge and skills 5. Complexity isn’t static 6. Not sure how to start 7. Not sure what stories to communicate

internally or externally 8. Leadership doesn’t understand the sum

total of impact complexity has on organization and thus are weary of the consequences of attacking it

9. Not a lot of strategies or precedents exists to give executives comfort in a simplification mandate

10. Difficult to harmonize simplification, globally

If you’re on the fence about whether to consider a simplification initiative, consider my top ten factors that businesses should use to determine need for simplification:

!1. Focus 2. Reduce wasted resources on low-

output priorities 3. Lower the costs of marketing 4. Improve marketing’s efficiency 5. Improve partner/agency output 6. Reduces innovation impedance 7. Reduces process friction 8. Improve marketing clarity 9. Reduce time to market 10. Competitive advantage: speed to

create customer advantages

Brand Strategy

Solutions Development

Messaging Strategy

Business Model

Redesign

!Partner & Customer Analysis

Organizational Development &

Culture Map

Thought Leadership

Value Proposition into Tribe Narrative

Product Architecture (taxonomy)

Business Model Evolution

Business Plan

Content StrategyEngagement

StrategyUser

Experience Strategy

Digital Strategy

Brand Strategy

Brand Architecture &

Hierarchy

Purpose, Brand Vision &

Mission

Consultative Services

Positioning

Integrated Offering Narrative

!Leadership

Vision

The first step in figuring out how to simplify and/or unify your marketing is to get altitude above all the interconnected components to gain a holistic view into what’s going on—or not going on in your organization. !

Applied Strategy

Technology

Chances are good that while you see things differently, there are many significant constants in this triangle that will resonate with you and your organization. In any case, this intended to be a conversation-starter that sparks ideas and couples them into a framework in an effort to remove complexity from the marketing elements that help drive your company forward. !It occurred to us that while we work with our client partners on several important simplification initiatives we often see how things could be more unified, rationalized and ultimately more valuable if only they could be viewed from a higher vantage point of the entire marketing ecosystem.

SIMPLIFICATION: How to Start a Marketing Simplification Conversation

The area inside the red triangle represents one of many simplification opportunities. By considering the interplay between your Business Plan, Purpose/Brand Vision & Mission and your Engagement Strategy, you can ask, “how can simplifying these three elements together create an advantage for our business?”

centerline.netContact Steven Keith to share your stories and explore how simplification can work for you. !steven@centerline.net (919) 771-5219 @stevenkeith