During Roger Federer’s smashing victory at this year’s US Open, the camera swished frequently to Tiger Woods who was there supposedly as Roger’s guest. There they were, two of the best athletes in the world, possibly the best ever in their respective sports, sharing a cross-border, cross-sport, cross-race, moment of mutual admiration. Was this just the innocent actions of two famous “friends” or actually a brilliant product placement scheme by Nike? Only Phil Knight knows for sure but as we look ahead to the 2007 marketing arena, we should do so with both wonder and cynicism, cheering greatness and booing duplicity.
1. Instant Replay
Just as the new instant replay system at this year’s US Open kept the line judges honest, bloggers are bringing a new level of scrutiny to corporations and their marketing activities. Marketers must assume they live in glass houses and that consumers are armed with lethal stones. Create a fake blog like SONY did recently with AllIwantForXmasIsApsp.com and you will be flogged online and off. Ignore customer service and the world will know about it faster than you can say exploding computer (as Dell found out this year). Directness and honesty will not only help you win a lot of points but also recover from some bad shots. FaceBook discovered this when their recent “upgrade” caused an uproar among their stalwarts who decried a loss of privacy. Bombarded with negative emails and postings, FaceBook management was quick to respond and fixed the problem.
2. Service Returns
In a world of glass houses, the winners will be those companies that focus first and foremost on customer satisfaction. Expect more companies to redouble their efforts to improve customer satisfaction in 2007 at every point of contact. Online customer support will also improve radically as more companies offer “live” support along with improved search functionality enabling customers to find what they seek in a click or two.
3. Net Promoter Scores Big
As customer satisfaction moves to the forefront of business strategies, expect more companies to use new metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) to assess event marketing effectiveness and reward customer-centric performance. The beauty of NPS is that it only requires asking one question “on a scale of 0 to 10, how like are you to recommend brand X to a friend?” Enlightened companies like GE have already made NPS ratings an integral part of their business, basing 20% of compensation on NPS scores.
4. Hit the Corners
In the 2006 US Open finals, Federer out-aced the more powerful Andy Roddick 17-7 trading off speed for increased accuracy. Similarly, foresighted marketers will seek out the corners, mining new niches with increasing accuracy and reward. Unilever created Small & Mighty detergent, packing a lot of cleaning punch into a small container. Panasonic recently introduced a stunning 103-inch Plasma TV that retails for $75,000 including of course, custom installation. Clearly, this is not a product for the masses, but it generated tons of press and reinforced Panasonic’s position as the plasma leader.
5. Green is Good
Although the US Open repainted its courts from green to blue, smart marketers will bake in eco-friendly “green” strategies across the board in 2007. Remarkably, Wal-Mart appears to be leading the way in this arena with its new “Embrace the Earth” mission that pushes “sustainability” on its vendors the way it used to push price slashing. Suddenly Wal-Mart is the world’s largest buyer of organic cotton, “fair trade” coffee and energy-efficient light bulbs. Because thousands of companies like P&G J&J and Unilever, sell 25% or more of their goods through Wal-Mart, most will be forced to examine the “greenness” of their manufacturing and distribution processes. In addition to the environmental impact, the sales impact could be enormous.
6. No More Lines
For years, marketers have been dividing their communication budgets into “above the line” and “below the line” buckets. More recently, the division has focused on offline versus online activity. Hopefully, 2007 will be the year that marketers say “forget the lines” and look at their communications as one continuous conversation that seamlessly weaves across media turning prospects into customers and ultimately into brand advocates. To achieve this, marketers will need a new approach to strategy development and product management, creating briefs that embrace multi-channel ideation and brand managers that seek ideas not tactics. And agencies will need to be able to serve up ideas that work across the lines (the recent Burnett/Arc merger certainly anticipates this need.)
7. Innovation Triumphs
Part of the genius of both Woods and Federer is that they successfully execute shots that their competitors can’t even imagine attempting. This kind of innovation will propel select marketers and select agencies to new heights in 2007. On the client side, companies can’t afford to keep pushing the same products while competitors rush to market with less expensive knock-offs. Apple continues to be the poster child for innovation, bringing out new iPods and Macintoshes that are faster, cheaper, smaller and cooler before competitors can even respond to previous iterations. Agencies have an opportunity to use their considerable skills in both understanding consumers/culture and producing remarkable ideas to help organizations change the way they operate. The opportunities for innovation abound, the only impediment is the will to go for it.