Please Read It Now, Now, Now

Every marketer should read this. "Global replace" the words advertising agency with marketing team and clients with customers in your mind as you go. This manifesto Marketing at a Point of Change was written in 1994 by the team at HHCL, a very forward looking agency of the time based in the UK. I was still in school when it was written. Yet it is so true even now. If the trajectory of marketing change is a bullet, this feels like the gun that shot it. The bullet is still going and flying fast. One of my marketing heroes says the difference between old and young isn't age. It's that young, vibrant brands believe the future is better than the past ever was. I'm not looking backwards. I'm learning so we can propel forward. It inspires me to make things even better today and to write our manifesto for the future. Please read it now, now, now.

Silvia Lagnado is One of My Marketing Heroes

Silvia Lagnado is one of my marketing heroes. She worked at Unilever for many years shepherding the Dove brand. She created the magic of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty with her team (who she is quick to recognize). I have had the pleasure of meeting her. She is as authentic, as passionate and as smart as you would expect.

I have learned as much from what she did at Dove as how she did it. She talks about "marketing marketing" in businesses. She makes the often misunderstood role of marketers as inspirers, interpreters and creators accessible to others, backed by her serious analytical and business chops.

This is a classic interview from 2006 conducted by Roy Young. You can see that she really listens to customers and cares. She energizes people around a bigger idea. Thank you Roy Young for capturing this moment in time. He interviewed her while researching his book on "marketing marketing." Out of respect to the source, please check it out on MarketingProfs. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Profile of a Marketing Champion: Unilever's Silvia Lagnado

by Roy Young

Published on October 31, 2006

Silvia Lagnado, new group vice-president at London-based Unilever, embodies marketing championship—in particular, the ability to "span silos" by building bridges between marketing and her company's many other functions to generate cash flow. She heads a team devoted to "brand development," including conceptualizing new products and creating advertisements, packaging, and marketing strategies.

In her daily operations, she interacts with Unilever's finance, supply chain, research and development, and human resources departments. She also collaborates extensively with the many far-flung brand-building teams of salespeople and marketers operating around the world to bring the division's offerings to market.

Silvia says the most effective way to "market marketing" in an organization is to make it very personal for staff in other key positions. She advises: "Have people think about which brands they themselves really respect and which products they love—then ask them what has made them think and feel that way. They will likely discover that a marketer's efforts are behind their feelings of respect and love."

What follows is part of an interview I conducted with her to learn what makes her a Marketing Champion.

* * *

Roy Young: Tell me a bit about your background. Did you come up through the typical marketing ranks? Or was your path to where you are now more diverse?

Silvia Lagnado: I joined Unilever in 1986, in Brazil, after getting a degree in civil engineering. But I've always worked in marketing and brand development, and the work has taken me all over the world—Brazil, the United Kingdom, Argentina, and the United States.

RY: In your view, what skills have been most important to your ability to succeed on the job?

SL: I'd say it's hard work, the ability to combine strong analytical skills with intuition, the courage to take risks, integrity, and the ambition to do good work.

RY: Of all the groups with whom you and your team interact, which relationships are the most likely to experience some tension?

SL: My team's relationship with the brand-building groups is most likely to experience some tensions and complications. The brand builders are under enormous pressure to deliver our products to market every day, to both distributors and consumers. They need product mixes on time and in full from my team. If we don't have a good relationship with them, they may start perceiving us as uncommitted to the work.

RY: What steps do you take to construct a bridge between your team and the brand builders?

SL: I've found that aligning both sides behind a compelling vision is crucial. If we can both get emotionally attached to the vision—and agree on where we want to take our brands, why this is an exciting space, and how we plan to succeed there—each group can look beyond its own pressures to the more important, higher-level goals.

Matching a Brand's Marketing to Its Life Stage

It always strikes me how intertwined brand and business strategies are--or should be. This is an absolute must-read article on "Matching a brand's marketing to its stage of life" by David Matli at MarketingProfs.com. I have provided excerpts here, but please read the full article at its origin.

Matli provides a simple view of the four stages of a company and its brand: new, growth, mature and revival.  He also provides pithy, modern brand examples in the article.

New Brands (Create) 
Primary Challenge: Differentiation and Targeted Awareness
"In the early stages of a brand launch, the question that you continually hear is 'What is it?' Distinct, simple, and viral differentiation create the potential for explosive growth. But most significant, it is the relevance to an early-adopter audience that catapults...a brand past the new, start up phase and into the growth phase."
Example: TOMS Shoes

Growth Brands (Build)
Primary Challenge: Transitioning from Early Adopters to Mass Market Without Alienating Core Fans
"Owners of hot, new brands commonly mistake their rabid and vocal fan base support as something long term that will carry their brands into the mainstream.  That is only true when it is carefully managed. It is critical, in this phase, to strategically shift to a simple brand message, using the short-term support of early adopters...The chief challenge in the growth stage is to achieve clarity of brand standards, messaging, tone of voice, philosophical stance, and values."
Example: Books adapted for screen like Harry Potter

Mature Brands (Leverage)
Primary Challenge: Growth Against  "Cooler" Upstart Competitors
"When a brand has become a household name, marketing has become a core internal function.  Growth becomes difficult to maintain because of the sheer weight of the brand's size and awareness makes it challenging to constantly refresh.  Senior management seeks new ways to increase brand relevance...Continuing growth with world-straddling brands requires not only maintaining relevance with the core audience but also constantly expanding into new taste-makers niches, markets and brand extensions.  That process forces a brand to become more diverse in execution and often softens a brand positioning, unless it is carefully managed. Brands risk not accurately identifying their key differentiation points and skillfully translating those attributes into broader marketing strategies...That can take years, just as the brand took years to build.  Brand managers may eventually find that the brand they own has become a commodity with little value."
Example: Ocean Pacific

Revival Brands (Evolve)
Primary Challenge: Regain Relevancy
"When a brand has been a household name with a broad fan base for a generation or more, brand managers settle into a routine and stop giving much thought to differentiation, awareness, and new competitors...Many companies with such brands tend to hire managers with experience in maintaining a business, but little experience in brand extension, differentiation, or repositioning -- skills essential to maintaining relevance when dramatic shifts occur in the marketplace.  And they always occur...At that point, it's critical that strong brand leadership act quickly to re-establish the brand's core relevance in the minds of its consumers....A brand may be well known but so ubiquitous that it becomes background noise, and people forget why it's special. Relevance in a fresh context can become a growth engine for older brands."
Example: Sesame Street