Today he sent me a link to an article in Fast Company entitled “Print Media Is Dying. Online Revenues Are Tiny. What If the Ads Are to Blame?” As always, it got me thinking and writing.

My emailed response to my Dad ended with a terse “systems that don’t work die.” And as I wrote it, pessimism washed over me. My Dad, a smart guy, is freaked out by the idea that the activity he has spent his whole life doing will simply vanish. And, Cliff Kuang (the writer of the piece and also, assumably, a smart guy) clearly doesn’t see things the way I do. I’m a fairly confident individual, but it’s easy to falter when those we lean on stumble.

What seems so incredibly obvious to me is that the value of information is changing, and as it does, it is dragging media monetization models with it. The value of scarce, immediately relevant, actionable information is quite high―that’s why Google pockets about one out of every two dollars of online ad revenue. The value of non-scarce information is practically nothing. That’s why inexpert opinion (i.e. national reporting from just about any local newspaper) isn’t worth the quarter consumers now refuse to pay for it, and instant-expert bloggers aren’t any better. On the other hand, want to know what a real expert like Warren Buffet thinks about the economy? You can trust the Wall Street Journal to pry some quotes out of him, or you can subscribe to Buffet’s Twitter feed and keep tabs on him yourself. That sort of access is unprecedented and having it changes everything.

As magazines, like my Dad’s evolve, they may be hard to recognize in their new incarnations. But, I really believe they won’t die when they transition to digital as long as they continue to do what they are supposed to―provide valuable information to their readers at the precise moment the reader needs it most, and occasionally before they even know they need it. Valuable information is usually monetizeable. As long as my Dad can figure out how to satisfy this demand for information from consumers, while making it easier for his advertisers to get to future customers through him than it would be to do so directly (setting up their own content distribution via Twitter, email newsletters, etc.) then marketing revenues won’t dry up and the magazine gets to stay in business as an information middle-man, or if you prefer, an expert.

Too often, publishers used to CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions) pricing models let advertisers take over the online publication and plaster ads everywhere–essentially spamming the audience with unwanted ads. That system just doesn’t work any more. On the other hand, pricing models that promote good advertising practices, such as CPA (cost-per-aquisition) or CPC (cost-per-click) make sure everyone stays happy. The publisher makes money, the consumer gets the info they want without wasting time, and marketers get access to hot leads they would otherwise have trouble finding. I call it the win/win/win scenario, and think it should be the goal of anyone interested in the future of media or marketing―myself included.

I’m not saying that if everyone switched to a CPC model tomorrow, all our troubles would go away. What I will emphatically say is that we, as an industry, need to come to terms with the fact that the old ways of doing things aren’t sustainable. The systems we rely on, the models we employ, the metrics with which we measure, and even the language we use must all change. I don’t have all the answers, but because of what I do, I’m able to collect thousands of great ideas and present the best ones to you. For me, the future of media is a personal matter. Let’s make it work.

According to the Wall Street Journal article, the profit was “aided by cost cuts.” (Starbucks Swings to Profit, Aided by Cost Cuts – WSJ, 7/22/09) Well, I submit that the article my be more aptly phrased as “Aided by Marketing.” Marketing appears to have played a significant role in helping Starbucks hold their own against an economy that’s running from even the smallest luxuries en masse, competitors that are offering cheaper “me too” products in the specialty coffee department and the general ‘cocooning’ behavior that’s keeping Americans at home and out of their favorite ‘third places.’

Mr. Schultz said the company has benefited from its own marketing campaign, which has included print ads and communication with consumers using social media Web sites. Last week Starbucks became the most popular brand page on Facebook with more than 3.5 million fans.

In fact, I would argue their are four elements in the marketing equation that have contributed to their “resurgence” in the last year:

1. Starbucks’ crowd sourcing of consumer ideas via their My Starbucks Idea site – With thousands of ideas submitted, thousands more votes on this ideas that followed, and a few actual innovations that have made it into stores that have provided genuine benefit to Starbucks consumers, this is one of the things that has kept me personally loyal to the brand
2. Their intelligent use of data through the Starbucks cards and the vast email database – While Starbucks didn’t really have much of a “loyalty” program to speak or until the Gold Card (yes, I have one), they’ve built a great email database that they’ve used as recently as this week with the “free pasty with a drink purchase and this email” campaign. One only had to look at the sheer volume of empty pastry containers and the large stack of emails at my local Starbucks to see the email is a steady staple in their marketing plan that’s working for them.
3. Starbucks made waves with social media - They currently have the largest Facebook group (3.5 million users) of any of their competitors.
4. Finally, Starbucks has stuck to their knitting using traditional marketing - Using vehicles like print ads and (seemingly) more prolific and effective in-store marketing, while integrating them into the overall digital strategy to reach customers at all ends of the spectrum, Starbucks has truly “met people in their medium” to ensure that no customer is left behind.

More to the point, even competition has helped Starbucks to carve out a stronger position in the coffee market.

In recent months, Starbucks has faced increased competition from rivals including McDonald’s Corp. and 7-Eleven. McDonald’s recently launched a national marketing campaign behind its McCafe specialty coffee drinks.

Rather than hurt Starbucks, Mr. Schultz said the added attention has helped his chain. “It appears that the various marketing campaigns, and all the media coverage about coffee, has created unprecedented awareness for the coffee category overall, and has actually had a positive result on Starbucks business,” he told analysts.

While I admit, this is a complete outsider’s view of the situation, I submit that as a daily customer, who better to see the effects of their marketing that us! I further submit that Starbucks’ marketing efforts have done as much for them, maybe more, than any of the cost-cutting and operational efficiency plays that they’ve made over the past year.

This story illustrates what marketers all over the country know and Schultz said it himself in the article when he said “No company can save themselves to prosperity.” Exactly! Prosperity comes from being competitive, engaging in smart marketing, crafting a holistic strategy and a driving that strategy to execution. Me, I’ll take marketing over cost cutting any day!

I installed an HP K8600 printer in my office this weekend. Having spent a good bit of time working with my partner on a retail experience problem, I realized while I was installing this very complex piece of office machinery that I was staring at the solution right before my eyes. While I was installing the driver, of all things. And this is the point – and the minor epiphany – of customer experience.

There are times in the lives of your customers when they’re waiting for you. While there are ample reasons to reduce or even eliminate unnecessary bottlenecks in the delivery of your service, there comes a time when you either can’t or don’t want to skimp. You need to do something correctly, customized for the specific needs of your waiting customer. In my case, this software won’t install itself. As the old proverb says, “we count the faults of those we wait for,” so this can be a problem.

As with any immovable problem, the best and often only way to deal with it is to embrace it and “make the bug a feature.” So how do you make a wait not just bearable but actually valuable? How do you create a brand-enhancing mini-flow-state when you simply need them to wait for a moment? Much like the magician using temporary distraction to draw your attention from his sleight of hand, you create a “trance state,” letting your customer temporarily lose themselves in your micro drama while you deliver the goods.
For HP’s software install, this is done with a well developed slide show of branded messages that reinforce the benefits of the product line (an up-sell), the technical characteristics of the printer purchased (education), providing a web-based ink purchasing site link (e-commerce) and other messages.

Key Takeaways:

Make the bug a feature. If you can’t eliminate the bottleneck, don’t try to cover it up – use the time so well that the wait becomes an event in and of itself, worthy of mention.

When you make people wait, remind them of what a great decision they just made. The immediate post-purchase moment is exactly the moment to remind your customer that they were wise to decide on your brand. We all believe our judgment is sound and typically over-estimate our confidence in our decisions immediately after we’ve made them. So give them the pat on the back they want.

No one is as fervent as the recently converted. Your brand experience doesn’t stop with the packaging, as I’m sure I don’t need to remind you, but it’s always worth repeating. We can all agree that the brand experience continues through the product’s lifecycle with you, as the user; but those first critical moments, from installation through initial mastery, will determine the trajectory of your brand experience with that user throughout the user’s total lifetime of loyalty. Let’s spend a lot of time and energy on getting it right up front.

Does your brand experience have a stalling point? A time when you simply can’t do something as fast as your customers want? Take this as a challenge, then, and make the wait better than bearable. Make it word-of-mouth worthy. How would you create a trance state for your brand?

Regards.

P.S.: How would you have improved upon HP’s experience―or your own experience―in creating a trance state? I’ve posted more thoughts on this subject over at Note to CMO, so feel free to comment here or there.

I am excited for this to happen, I can’t wait for this to happen, I am completely convinced this is going to happen. In fact I am beginning to see seeds of it happening right now!

Facebook Connect has been generally available now for a while and quietly we are seeing sites begin to take advantage of it. So far I have noted on Inside Facebook …

• YouTube Integrate Facebook Connect to Auto share Uploaded Videos
• PageReach Launches First “Content Network” Built On Facebook Pages
• Microsoft Xbox Games to share Games with Facebook Connect

Users can update their Facebook status, post photos, and play games with friends directly within Xbox Live. In addition, Electronic Arts announced that Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2010 would integrate Facebook Connect on Xbox when it is released this fall, marking the first Facebook Connect integration on a gaming console ever!

Websites will also present themselves very differently if you use your social profile on them though Facebook Connect. They wont say – “Talk to us on Facebook” or “Connect with us on Facebook” they will say use your social profile to get a completely customized experience on our website or navigate our website based on what your friends found important.

These are new an exciting ways you can spend all that Social Capital you have been building up in your Twitter or Facebook account. Increasing Social Capital will become more important than ever to you and your web experience. It will be the way to find things, buy things and experience things on the web.

The time is now to build your Social Capital, synchronize and prune your Social Networks so that followers you have in Twitter are also friends you have in Facebook and connections you have in LinkedIn. Bottom line is you should build your Social Capital now before you need it!

This week, Toolbox.com and PJA released the fourth wave of our survey on social media in IT. Check it out: social media usage spiked dramatically, particularly among executives, and Twitter is beginning its adoption curve in IT. But the most interesting findings have to do with attitudes around vendor involvement.

Our earlier research found that communities such as Slashdot are among the most trusted sources of content related to purchase decisions, precisely because the chatter you hear about companies and products is unfiltered. It is information direct from peers who, for the most part, don’t have a vendor agenda or ax to grind. So we were curious what community members thought about the role of vendors. Do parties with an explicit commercial agenda—and clearly a less-than-objective point of view—belong in the conversation? We have seen that open source developers are deeply ambivalent about the role of corporations in the Linux space. We figured we’d hear a lot of the same skepticism and mistrust. We were wrong.

The biggest finding? Vendors are more than welcome. Not only were respondents open to vendor involvement in online communities, most people felt they had a critical role to play. A full 76% of respondents said it was important that vendors participate in online communities. When you dive deeper into the research, it makes sense. We are talking about professional networks: large, vibrant communities of people banding together online to get work done, get information to make better decisions, and further their careers. Professionals commit time to communities because they have important, concrete tasks to accomplish. And they want vendors there because effective corporate involvement can help them accomplish those tasks.

Toolbox is a global IT community, and for technology products, complexity reigns. When users want vendor comparisons, they trust their peers. But when sorting out product or platform questions, users wrestle with product specs, roadmaps, workflow, integration, etc. And they are sophisticated enough to recognize disinformation, spread by people who don’t know the facts. This clutter is confusing and a time-waster, and community members know that a product manager from the vendor can provide real answers. We saw a lot of verbatims like the following:

“Vendors bring insight and authoritative knowledge to discussions of their products, thus reducing having to speculate on the validity of information provided within the community.”

The second biggest finding? You don’t get credit for just showing up. How vendors participate in the community makes all the difference. This from a survey respondent:

“There is nothing worse than over-commercialization. Venders must know how to communicate information that actually matters and help along the community rather than just set up shop to beef up their internet presence and attempt to push their products.”

What do members want from vendors? Respondents value transparency, responsiveness, (improve products based on feedback), and relevant content. Interestingly, they don’t care that much about give-aways or members-only benefits. Participate on the same terms as everyone else, and enrich the community as a whole rather than a chosen few. Egalitarianism, not exclusivity, is the dominant ethic in communities.

The thread across all the research is that vendors are welcome if they participate in the give-and-take spirit of the community. And there are strong suggestions that the rewards are there, they just might not be the ones companies expect. Many marketers I talk to evaluate investments in communities against traditional media or demand gen programs. Communities will never stack up as lead machines, certainly not short term. The rewards of effective vendor involvement are two-way. The community gets the information it needs, while the vendor is saved from the outcome of “a misinformed community who may lose faith in a product due to incorrect information.”

What the research says about communities characterizes the relationship people want with companies in the age of transparency and consumer-driven marketing. Companies are welcome to participate, they just need to strip themselves of their marketing layer. They need to leave a narrow, parochial corporate agenda at the door. Start with a sense of honesty, responsiveness, and transparency. The rest will follow.

I’m curious whether your experience with communities supports the survey results, or has been different. Let me know here or on twitter @motoole1.

Having said that, the really smart companies take this very much to heart. Especially in times like these. Real corporate leaders—especially in struggling companies and in tough times—understand that their employees can make or break their businesses.

Another inspiring leadership article in Forbes magazine: “How Employee Engagement Turned Around Campbell’s,” proves the point in concrete, quantitative terms.

The gist: when current CEO Douglas Conant arrived at Campbell’s from Nabisco in 2001, he found himself involved with a “beleaguered old brand.” Declining sales, increased competition and disengaged employees spelled potential takeover, if not doom. Sound familiar? At some point, many brands, including great heritage ones, experience these issues.

Conant’s strategy? In his own words: “To win in the marketplace, we believe you must first win in the workplace. I’m obsessed with keeping employee engagement front and center and keeping up energy around it.” How did he implement his strategy? By instituting the “Campbell Promise.” Conant replaced 300 of the company’s 350 management level people within the first three years. Half of the new leaders were promoted from within the ranks. The message resonated.

In the most memorable quote from the article, Conant stated: “I saw that in all of the elements related to culture building, engagement correlates closest to shareholder returns. We can use engagement as a tool to measure our progress in building a high-performance culture and to set higher standards for our leaders.” That’s what I call focus—not to mention a breath of fresh air.

The number #1 criterion for managers who are evaluated yearly: their ability to inspire trust from their employees. The company also surveys all of its 580 work groups annually. Managers review survey results with their superiors, also updating them on their progress in achieving clearly defined goals.

Employee achievements are celebrated “at a high level.” Conant personally sends out roughly 20 thank-you notes daily to employees. He has lunch with about a dozen employees once every six weeks, to engage with them, getting their feedback, hearing their problems and perspectives on the business.

Results?

• Campbell’s has gone from the worst Fortune 500 company ever polled for employee disengagement to one of the best. In 2002, 62% of Campbell’s employees said they were not actively engaged and 12% stated they were actively disengaged. Today, 68% of all Campbell’s employees consider themselves to be actively engaged. Just 3% state they are actively disengaged. “That’s an engagement ratio of 23-to-1, and Gallup considers 12-to-1 to be world-class.”
• Campbell’s has increased earnings by up to 4% per year over the past eight years (excluding acquisitions and divestitures); earnings per share are growing 5% to 10% per annum.
• Cost-cutting measures, smart innovations and increased marketing have played a role in Campbell’s success, but the evolution of a new company culture is the #1 reason for the company’s dramatic turn-around.

Conant: “Besides our improved financial and market performance, the biggest benefit has been the revitalization of our whole culture. We’re performing at a higher level, we’ve become more innovative and we’ve become more self-governing. That all contributes to our being on track to have one of our best years ever, despite the worst economy of our lifetimes.”

Questions:

• Do you think, especially in these hard times, companies would benefit from adopting Douglas Conant’s strategy of valuing employees, increasing employee engagement and building a unique culture?
• Do you think employees are the most important asset in businesses? Or do you rate other assets: financial working capital, cash flow, innovation and controlling costs as having equal or greater importance? If so, why or why not?
• Do you know of other companies that have enjoyed success because they are committed to employee engagement?

I’d love to hear from you.

Of course, the company is also risking the likelihood that a few of the more nutrition-conscious eaters they draw into the conversation might call them on anything Chipotle is doing that doesn’t quite make the grade. But, that seems to be part of the point in the brand’s Food Inc. support. According to a Hollywood Reporter article:

Chipotle says that 35% of the beans it uses are organically grown and that it serves more naturally raised meat than any other restaurant worldwide.

“I hope that all our customers see this film,” said Steve Ells, founder, chairman and co-CEO of Chipotle. “The more they know about where their food comes from, the more they will appreciate what we do.”

Now, given so much risk in opening consumer eyes to what may not yet be up to par in their own work, why would the brand decide to put itself so “out there?” If marketing to women is considered to be marketing to the highest standard of all consumers (as it should), there are two elements of such wisdom exemplified within this Chipotle “strategy”:

1) Acknowledging (and embracing) the fact that they are on a journey* toward a greater goal. A woman’s multi-constituent, multi-tasking, community-aware brain tends to appreciate this sort of adaptable, possibly meandering path. Chipotle’s healthy/fast food market segment is a very tight, focused consumer niche that likely thinks along similar lines. The brand’s executive team must feel confident that the sophistication level of such restaurant-goers will bear out. Chipotle expects, and likely will get, goodwill points for all their efforts in that positive direction. As a bonus, they’ll get more patience from consumers regarding any less-than-perfect business or food-related practices thus far. Consumers trust a journey – because it is human-scale. Consumers don’t trust an “all and perfectly done” proclamation, because that is truly impossible.

2) Choosing to rise above the competition by being an industry educator. To learn more about an industry or category, women will tend to take time gathering information and educating themselves before making a purchase. Any brand that helps in this process will be duly rewarded. Chipotle is doing this. Rather than looking for ways to exclude themselves from the fast food industry altogether, the brand is integrating new research and deliberately sharing that with the competition – as well as customers. What could be more counter-intuitive than sharing knowledge/content/ideas? Yet, those industry leaders that do will often become shining stars more easily seen by consumers. Such industry-wide education efforts may not garner a brand the big press or glamour of fancy promotions or astounding sales growth, but they do serve as a worthy investment toward reaching today’s more holistic consumer brain, male and female.

The Chipotle team is taking a risk by putting their own business under a microscope, but it also raises their profile in terms of their authenticity. Their approach and motivations should be a model for other brands in pursuit of the more sustainably-minded consumer. And, in my mind that person is either 1) a woman or, 2) is thinking a lot more like one today (using right with left brain to make decisions).

Moral of the story? Authenticity actually can’t happen without vulnerability, scary as that sounds. However, the right customers (your core market) will appreciate and reward you for it. So, take the risk so few brands will, and see what happens!

The panel included social media practitioners Brendan Hart, VP of National Geographic, Stacey Kane, Marketing Director for the California Tortilla chain of franchise stores in the DC area, and Andy Sernovitz, author and founder of the Word Of Mouth Marketing Association.

When creating buzz, the panel discussed the necessity of matching the message to the medium. I noted that there are two ways to build word of mouth – sustained programs, where we send out some small bite of content every day; or a campaign, which is a one-time, big blast that you hope will be the top search link for a day or longer.

The sustained approach is a great way to engage. Offer a coupon for a taco like California Tortilla, or link to a way cool photo and invite comments as National Geographic does. I gave the example of Publisher’s Clearinghouse emailing the video of the winners (yes, they still give out million dollar checks every month). These are the most forwarded messages.

Campaigns are harder to build and take a commitment. They are also risky – they could generate complete silence, or negative publicity, or lots of noise but not a lot of sales, like the Subservient Chicken campaign from Burger King. National Geographic built a puzzle of Mt. Everest which drew in a lot of traffic. It includes “Look, I did it!” links to share.

For California Tortilla, the rate of response is slightly higher on Twitter, perhaps because these are the “freshest” (most recent) subscribers, but the largest number of people by a magnitude of 100x is via the Taco Talk (http://www.californiatortilla.com/taco-talk.html) email newsletter. So, while Twitter and Facebook have “cool” factors, when she needs to bring people to the stores for lunch, email has the reach and remains her best friend.

Guy Kawasaki is of course a wildly heralded thought leader on entrepreneurism and social marketing, and has 175,000 followers on Twitter. He uses Twitter exclusively among the social networks to help promote his latest business, Alltop. He says that if you aren’t “pissing off” some people on Twitter, you aren’t using the channel properly. He freely admits that he uses it as a broadcast channel only. It was good to see that strategy (which works well for his personal brand) contrasted with what Stacey is doing (engagement and direct marekting) and Brendan (loyalty).

Andy Sernovitz gave a wonderful intro about how word of mouth is just the result of “making love” with your customers. Delight them, arm them with great sharing tools, and tap into what they already love about your products and services, and you will enjoy stronger word of mouth marketing, he said. Andy also suggests that you don’t need to use all the bright new shiny technologies out there to be successful with word of mouth. Don’t get distracted, but focus on where your customers are already hanging out. Like email!

What I loved about the discussion is that while it was all about viral and the buzz generated from social networks, the emphasis kept coming back to email marketing as the foundational element for most marketers. Certainly email powers the social networks – it’s the biggest traffic driver. But more importantly, for most of us, email is the most powerful link between your brand and the largest number of customers simply because that is where our customers spend time.

Integrating social and email is a great idea, and I offered a number of tips to help, including:

1. Match the content to the medium. Email is great for lifecycle marketing, promotional broadcasts and content newsletters. Facebook fan pages are great for surveys or building loyal fan bases. Twitter may be great for customer service as well as broadcast. Don’t just repost your blog everywhere – send content that is relevant to the channel so that you appeal to customers who consume information in different ways.
2. Make it easy to share. Add “SWYN” or Share with Your Network links, but do so prominently and integrate them into the content. SWYN links in the footer will not drive significant sharing, just like a buried Forward to a Friend link will get little use.
3. Host your own social community. Invite conversation among Facebook fans (e.g.: What do you think of this new product feature?), offer product reviews or build your own community (IBM Corp. has nearly 45 community sites). Use that content in your email newsletters, and to help keep product and customer service and marketing teams connected to the marketplace.
4. Tie it back to email. Integrate the opt-in invitation everywhere – on your Facebook page (Lenovo does this well), at the end of videos, on your Twitter profile, on key landing pages for shared content..
5. Celebrate your listening skills. If you are responding to customer and prospect input, be sure to communicate back your responses and any changes you are making. This makes for excellent email newsletter content.
6. Participate. Do more than listen, participate. Don’t engage halfway.

As with everything in email and social media, it’s all about the subscriber experiences you create via your content strategy. All the viral mechanics and technology automation in the world will not make your brand compelling or engaging. Be where your customers are – and for now, you can’t ignore the inbox.

At the end of the day, here’s why email is the coolest and sexiest channel in the digital marketer’s toolkit: Revenue. Email drives the most revenue at the lowest cost. Period. And you just don’t get any sexier than that in business.

Check out the full webcast (90 minutes) here. And follow the Tweets using #buzz2009. Thanks to SmartBrief for having me, and thanks to Guy, Andy, Stacey and Brendan for a great conversation!

Two recent activities in particular are brilliant. Yes, of course, for the actions, but most importantly for the intent and motivation that guide their decisions.

First; parent company PepsiCo‘s commitment to sustainable growth, defined as Performance with Purpose. TrueNorth, their Frito-Lay divison’s 100% natural nut snacks is recognizing people who pursue their life’s passion. Their “True North.” In June, Nancy Miller was recognized for her passion in forming the Jimmy Miller Foundation, which hastens healing of individuals through the therapeutic power of the ocean through honoring the memory of their son whom they lost.

Second, this past month, I began to hear radio ads about how Frito-lay has begun adding more of their snack foods into the bags. A small gesture to help in the tough economy. More for your money. Sure, one could argue that eating chips isn’t earth shattering. Again, what’s important here is the intent and motivation behind this decision. The intent: to help families. The motivation: they have families too, they connect.

What Pepsi-co and this brand extension Frito-Lay accomplish is the personalization, they connect commerce with humanity. I am a huge fan of Indra Nooyi, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of PepsiCo, who, in the way that she leads enables and heralds this connection.

As a consumer, so often these types of efforts can frequently come off as plastic, or obviously cloying and artificial. What sets these efforts apart in how they come across and out of Frito-lay is what is behind their decisions. It’s the intent to help and the motivation that inspire these uncommon acts of kindness.

What do you think? Do these efforts sound genuine to you? Do they compel you to buy snack products from this company knowing that behind it is a beating heart considering the life of its customers?

It is tempting to confine “strategic planning” to the ivory tower of executive decision making. And taking into account that most CMOs don’t have a seat on the executive board; should marketers wash their hands of the topic? Not so fast, say the analysts at Gartner. A report, “Top Ten Marketing Processes for 2008-2013”, clearly labels “strategic planning” as a concern of the marketing discipline.

Strategic planning involves taking into account the necessary systems, people, resources and processes needed to design and execute a future picture. And while it can be argued that today’s marketplace is simply too complex, interconnected, and unstable to plan and prepare for anything longer than a twelve month timeframe, the following cases show the importance of keeping the future firmly in front of you.

“The Smartest Guys in the Room” is a story about the rise and fall of Enron. The book details what happens when you take really smart individuals, and put them together in no-holds barred, survival of the fittest cauldron with loose rules and even looser ethics.

One of the more interesting quotes is from Jeff Skilling, the former CEO of Enron who said, “I think strategic planning is the antithesis of building a corporation.” Jeff really was one of the smartest guys in the room and he said many brilliant things during his tenure at Enron. However, this phrase wasn’t one of them.

Jeff believed in a “let the cream of the crop rise to the top” type of management style, where players would duke it out in a Darwinian/Machiavellian manner. If an initiative made sense, had the political backing of players in the firm, and promised to make oodles of money, it was usually funded. At Enron, strategic planning was locked in the basement. And we all know how the Enron story ended.

In “House of Cards”, William Cohan chronicles the rise and fall of Bear Stearns. In a similar “locker room” mentality to that of Enron, managers were very insular and most were Bear “lifers” (they started their careers at the firm).

In a culture that was free wheeling, excessive, and pretentious, there was little room for strategic planning. Cohan writes, “(At) Bear the historical view of the firm is that they don’t plan. They don’t have business plans. At one point they were proud the only thing that was planned was the executive dining room. Everything else was opportunistic.”

In fact, former CEO and Chairman Ace Greenberg said, “What our positions look like at the end of the day is long range planning as far as I am concerned.” At Bear, strategic planning wasn’t locked in the basement; it never existed in the first place.

In California’s San Joaquin Valley, the fog sometimes gets so thick that when driving you can only see 200-500 feet in front of your car. These pervasive hazes are dangerous to all drivers because they literally have no idea what’s ahead—drivers are lucky to see the tail lamps of the lead car! It could be open road ahead, or a fifty car pile-up. Limited visibility can be extremely dangerous.

We cannot hold the lack of strategic planning solely responsible for the downfall of Enron and Bear Stearns. There were too many other factors at play to draw this conclusion. However, it is also clear that when management has little visibility into upcoming adverse events (ex: credit crisis)—all heck can break loose, and possibly devolve into cataclysmic results.

Where is marketing’s responsibility in this?

Marketers should not only have a pulse on customer wants/needs but also sentiment. Customers are pretty smart—they often “sniff” trouble or sign of a potentially adverse event coming long before we can. Marketers need to understand what customers are saying and thinking. We need to discern what constitutes a critical mass and tipping point. We need to have the mechanisms in place (not just social media) to capture and act upon this feedback.

With our eyes wide open, and backed with historical and near real time data (quantitative and qualitative) analysis we should be able to help our companies navigate times of stress.

Marketers—don’t let your company become next case study for lack of strategic planning. We have a responsibility to our companies, customers and ourselves to let strategic planning out of the basement.

• A HBR article, Bringing Customers into the Boardroom argues, “In too many companies, marketing is poorly aligned with strategy.” Do you agree? If so, why do you think this is the case?
• Will involvement in strategic planning help get marketing back on the CEO’s agenda?
• Author Nassim Taleb says that humans tend to, “Focus on the minutiae instead of the large (unexpected and devastating) impact events.” If you agree with this statement, what is a potential solution?