Dos Equis and the Olympics (no, they're not an official sponsor!)

Great example of how your sponsorship can be Guerilla-marketed away.

Dos Equis
Though not an official Olympic sponsor, Dos Equis and its “Most Interesting Man in the World” campaign has “crashed the Olympics” (in the words of AdAge) with a new commercial featuring winter sport athletes talking about just how amazing—and interesting!—the character created to promote the Heineken-owned beer brand truly is. No actual Olympics athletes are in the ad, and the word “Olympics” is never spoken—that would be against the rules for brands that aren’t official sponsors of the games—but viewers get the idea.

The “Most Interesting Man” campaign has gotten additional attention at the Sochi games thanks to the presence of a competitor who many are calling the real-life most interesting man in the world: Prince Hubertus von Hohenlohe. A descendant of German royalty, he is a pop star with best-selling albums in Europe, an award-winning photographer who used to pal around with Andy Warhol, and the heir to a fortune in the automotive industry. He’s also fluent in five languages, and is skiing for Mexico in the 2014 Olympics at the age of 55 as the second-oldest Winter Olympian ever. It’s unclear, however, what kind brand of beer he prefers.

Read more: 5 Brands That Are Winning the Olympics | TIME.com http://business.time.com/2014/02/15/5-brands-that-are-winning-the-olympics/#ixzz2tgoo71KM

Intangible Values Must Be Measured, Too

Intangible Values Must Be Measured, Too

Marketing programs typically include multiple elements – some with obvious values but others rely heavy on what we call “intangible value.”

For example, the program may include mass media advertising, direct mail, premium incentives, rebates and more. From a cost-based perspective, these elements are worth what you paid for them – essentially their market value.

But consider something like playoff tickets to a New York Yankees game. This will typically sell for more than the retail or “face value” of the ticket. Why? Because they are highly desirable, hard to get, and carry the “intangible value” of attending a Yankees playoff game.

Using a cost basis, you could simply assign the market value – what you paid for the tickets.

But this approach may be unsatisfactory on several fronts. First, you may be in a unique position to purchase the tickets, whereas someone on the “open market” may be shut out entirely. In this case, the purchase price doesn’t reflect the full value.

Secondly, the true intangible value will be much higher if the actual user of your ticket – perhaps a valued client – is an enthusiastic Yankees fan.

And finally, it is useful to be able to understand the comparative value of several options before you make the purchase.

Therefore, Hyperion Marketing Returns uses an algorithm that takes into account the ten most common intangible qualities that add value to a marketing opportunity.

By critically grading the opportunity on its ability to deliver against each of these qualities, we generate a predictive value that enables more sophisticated decision-making.

Break your decisions down using this type of critical thinking, and you’ll become a more sophisticated marketer.

Define Marketing Objectives To Set Your Course

Define Marketing Objectives To Set Your Course

In order to achieve your company’s Marketing objectives, it’s obviously necessary to first clearly define what is important and what is not important. Only then can you work to achieve those goals in a cost-effective manner.

Six Sigma has provided us with a useful map to guide this journey. We need only adapt it to a 

Marketing perspective.

In this case, our primary corporate Marketing objectives will be called the “Big Ys.” This relates to a simple algebraic equation, Y = f(X). Put more simply, what you get (Y) is a function (f) of what you do (X).

We call them “Big” because you need to focus on the few that are both vitally important to the company, and at least appear to be able to be impacted by Marketing. Then, again following Six Sigma precepts, we look at the components that affect each Y, which we term the “Critical Xs,” and ask how Marketing can improve performance on each of these.

For example, if a product sale is a Big Y, then the Critical Xs might include making consumers aware of the product, educating consumers on the value proposition, and exposing consumers to the actual product in positive context.

Marketing programs can certainly impact awareness and knowledge of the product features, and Marketing also can place products in an advantageous context, whether through ad themes, product placement in entertainment, sponsorship, celebrity endorsement or other tactics.

There are likely to be Critical Xs that are not conducive to Marketing efforts, or perhaps would take an inordinate amount of resources for very little impact. Those should be set aside in favor of the Critical Xs that show the most promise, for the most efficient use of resources.

Incremental improvement in each of these Critical Xs typically leads to massive impact on the Big Y.

Marketing By Objectives – The Next Evolution

Marketing By Objectives – The Next Evolution

Marketing By Objectives is the phrase we use to describe a Marketing program that is driven by accountability to a finite set of goals and objectives that advance the overall corporate strategy in a meaningful way.

Let’s break that down a bit. Accountability means identifying desired outcomes, setting specific achievable targets, tracking performance against relevant metrics, and honestly evaluating the relative success.

Without this degree of specificity, any program will lack the essential ingredient of accountability. It won’t be replicable, and worse, corporate decision-makers won’t trust the outcome.

Each Marketing program’s goals and objectives should be derived from those of the corporation as a whole, in a Marketing context. For each broad goal, such as Revenue, there are many possible sub-goals, such as customer acquisition or retention, that may contribute to success. The Marketer must identify those that are important to the mission, and set the program sights accordingly.

Each goal must of course have an objective set of measures that can be used for evaluation. The measures should have a degree of consistency over time, in order to evaluate whether you’re doing “better” or “worse” than before. But don’t remain wedded to outdated goals.

Identifying the measures you will use beforehand not only saves time and trouble later, it can help the entire Marketing team to focus on desired outcomes.

In addition, those outside the Marketing department will more easily recognize whether their initiatives could help – or may indeed hinder – what you’re trying to accomplish.

The result is a more productive, integrated team effort that recognizes the value and contributions of your programs – Marketing By Objectives.

Enlightened Marketing: A Strategic Advantage

Enlightened Marketing: A Strategic Advantage

True enlightenment lies in bringing the same rigor and vigilance exercised over all other business decisions to your Marketing investments, in order to identify and understand the returns.

The key to unlocking these mysteries lies in the rigorous Six Sigma methodology, originally developed to improve manufacturing processes. Applied to Marketing, it allows us to very clearly define what is important and what is not important in the entire process, based on companies’ individual business goals, and help them achieve those goals in a cost-effective manner.

Enlightenment resides at the end of a rainbow, or continuum, that begins with Basic Involvement – simply participating in the Marketing process. From there, the first task critical task is to understand gross spending.

But the real benefits begin when Marketers identify and quantify corporate goals, or “Critical Ys” in Six Sigma parlance, against which they will deliver.

With an understanding of spending and goals, Marketers can then compute the relative Return on Investment for various programs and initiatives. Six Sigma then guides analysis of comparative efficiency – “Z scores.”

Carrying out the analysis, improvement loop brings us one step closer to true enlightenment, which comes when we add in rigorous controls to drive continuous improvement.

The company that follows this methodology as rigorously in Marketing as in manufacturing gains a significant strategic advantage in the marketplace.

Beware these common Marketing mistakes

Hyperion Marketing Returns has identified a pattern of what we’ll call “marketing pitfalls” – traps into which even savvy marketers fall.

The first of these is the attempt to directly attribute sales. This goal is ineffective unless the product is actually available for purchase at the point of messaging.  In any other approach, what statisticians call “noise in the process” overwhelms the cause-effect relationship.

Here are some other pitfalls:

·      Pursuing “Opportunities” instead of Business Goals.  Normally rational business people can be lured into “opportunities.” Business goals are then redefined to fit the opportunities.

·      The Lag Time Problem.  Impact only becomes evident after the campaign is over. 

There is a means of subjecting marketing to a rational process that measures its performance against real business goals.  This method is based on the principles of the management tool known as Six Sigma. 

Marketing ROI Restarted!!

We are relaunching the Marketing ROI blog this coming week!  Stay tuned for weekly postings on the subject of Return on Investment in all sorts of marketing, sales and media channels.