Remember the Verizon ads years ago that repeated the refrain, “Can you hear me now?”℠ It was a brilliant and simple way to demonstrate how Verizon’s network was superior to others. For mobile phone users frustrated by fuzzy and unstable calls, Verizon nailed the ultimate consumer benefit at the time: a clear and reliable connection.

One of the biggest obstacles for marketers today is finding impactful and lasting ways to rise above the noise. Everywhere you turn there is a relentless stream of content delivered through an unending variety of channels. No brand, company, or individual voice is immune.

Thomas Butta with attendees of REACH 2014

As consumers we feel it. As business people we suffer from it. As marketers we must deal with it. I’ve seen this theme play out at each step of my career – including most recently in the world of venture capital through my work with Andreessen Horowitz in Silicon Valley.

So, how can you avoid being part of the noise?

The question is one I discussed recently at Princeton University’s REACH 2014 conference in front of an audience filled with hundreds of the brightest and most earnest undergraduate students interested in careers in marketing and advertising. There, we talked about five traits central to rising above the fray.

1. Give. In business, like life, you need to give to get. Sometimes you need to give value that seemingly has no self-serving purpose. A great example of this is AppNexus, where I was CMO. AppNexus, the technology company that provides trading solutions and powers marketplaces for Internet advertising, carved out a significant portion of its office space to allow other innovators and technology leaders to Razzle Dazzle audiences. The space became an exchange of ideas and possibilities, not unlike the business AppNexus software supports. Attendance to the events was free. It was good for the NY tech community. It was good for attendees. And, ultimately it was good for AppNexus.

2. Surprise. Sometimes you have to reach people where, when and how they least expect it. A great example of this is when PTC, where I was CMO, opened an analyst conference with a short film we created that simulated what a Wall Street analyst would be doing from the moment he woke up until he arrived at our meeting at the Logan Hilton in Boston. As you can see, every item the analyst encountered was enabled by PTC software. I dare say those analysts never thought the same way about the importance of PTC software in their everyday lives.

3. Truth. Wherever you can tell it like it is. You need to use truth as a way to stand out from the hype. We did exactly that for a small, but clever big data software company based in Austin, Texas. We created a booklet that dispelled the myths and mystery around big data. It was called, The Truth About Big Data. It not only won over the hearts and minds of its customers, it attracted the attention of IBM, the biggest company in the space. Less than a year later, IBM acquired the company.

4. Clarity. People need clarity to make sense of the madness. Sometimes it’s really hard to discern the important signals that can help from the typically self-serving noise that comes from company after company shouting about why their products are better than the rest. Imagine you’re a buyer. How are you going to figure out who and what really matters? It certainly helps if a company is helping to bring clarity and transparency to the table. That’s why we created the booklet, PLM Schizophrenia. Making Sense of the Madness for PTC.

5. Invest. Sometimes you need to go well beyond traditional tools, and invest in the creation of something of such significance that it can change an entire industry. That’s what PTC did for the new industry of Product Lifecycle Management when it created The Way to Product First, A Roadmap for Creating and Capturing Value. It was effectively the playbook on how to create winning products. It became so useful, it is now in version 8.0, and has been taught at MIT.

If you do these five things, you have not only risen above the noise, you have increased your chances of achieving the most coveted spot in any industry, the trusted guide. The trusted guide is the place/person/company where people tune into for help.

So widespread, it deserves an acronym: CLASP.

You have a clasp when people criticize your new strategy because they don’t know how to execute it.

Yes, a new strategy has to be executable, or it’s merely a wish. No, the logistics behind it don’t have to be tried and true. It’s one job to dream up a strategy and another job to execute it. Whining about how hard the logistics are is just fine, but don’t conflate this with thoughtful feedback about whether your strategy makes sense.

Just about every great new project couples a brilliant strategy with impossible logistics that somehow get handled.

From the blog of Seth Godin.

Activation and action are key.

By Roger Ehrenberg
Roger Ehrenberg is the founder and Managing Partner of IA Ventures.

Throughout my business career, I’ve observed that people love to label current fashions. “Web 2.0,” “Cloud” and “Social” are three which are currently in vogue. In my lifetime likely none was bigger than “.com,” describing a business and its recognition of the importance of the Internet. Remember when long-established businesses would change their names by adding a .com extension, only to receive a salutary stock market reaction? This was an equity market story that was destined to have an unhappy ending, from which the public markets still have yet to fully recover. Needless to say, the Internet has changed billions of lives in positive ways too numerous to mention, but those benefits didn’t come from labels, stickers or launch parties. They emerged from businesses new and old building and re-positioning their strategies to harness the Web’s true power, and to engage with customers in more and better ways than was previously possible. Nobody gratuitously adds .com to their names any more, and as far as I know I haven’t heard anyone refer to an Internet-based business as a .com for at least five years. That said, I’m beginning to detect a similar phenomenon in companies touting a characteristic particularly close to my heart: the use of “data” to describe a value inherent in the business. And in many if not most cases, it’s not true and I’m not buying.

It doesn’t take a genius to know that data is everywhere, and that it is growing exponentially across virtually every dimension: bigger, faster, deeper – and perhaps even more messy. Every business uses and generates data, but this doesn’t begin to capture what it means to be a data-driven enterprise or where data is viewed as a discrete asset and treated as such. It is a fundamental issue of strategy and culture, and the mere presence of data is not itself an indicator of having deep and relevant data DNA. “Hey, our business generates a lot of data, BIG DATA” is a phrase I hear frequently which I assume is supposed to get me excited. It doesn’t. “Hey, we’ve got this thesis that as our business scales we’re going to build a monster data asset that can better help us attract, retain and monetize happy customers. It will help us create competitive barriers and we’re planning for this from Day 1. We’ve shared some early data with a data-hacker buddy and feel this is a promising avenue for building company value.” Hey now, NOW you’ve got my attention.

There is a world of difference between the mere presence of data (say, an inert corpus of data accumulated from customer transactions) and its activation (putting that same data in a form that can be analyzed in real-time to provide intelligence about trends, pricing, feature attributes, etc. and classified and stored in a way that subjects itself well for future analysis). The data-driven enterprise will embody the notion of creating and leveraging its data asset in everything it does, and will use it to drive current and future decision-making, not merely retrospective analysis. There isn’t some checklist to determine if a business has a deep data culture or not; believe me, if you are one you know it. And if you toss around labels that sound good but ring hollow as there isn’t a bridge between headline and application, then, well, you probably lack the culture I’m describing.

There isn’t anything wrong with not being a data-driven enterprise. I mean, we all can’t be data-driven, can we? Well… I take that back. There is something wrong if a business isn’t data-driven in some way. Online or offline, it doesn’t matter. Commerce generates data. Businesses need to learn from and leverage data to remain competitive and grow. Whether you operate a barber shop, an enterprise software business or sell virtual goods online you have the potential for creating a valuable data asset. But I’m here to ask you a simple question: “Where’s the beef?” Because without it don’t talk about it: just get it. It’s never too late to adapt but it requires core cultural change, and half-hearted efforts simply won’t work. Just as building an online culture has been critical for all businesses to compete in the 2000s, building a data culture has become an essential element for success in the 2010s and beyond.

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Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.

How many times have we heard that refrain? How many times have we ignored it? How many times have we believed that nothing will change because of another day?

If you want (or need) to do something then why not get on with it?  Whether it’s energizing your company, reshaping how you do things, or simply making contact with someone you’ve been thinking about, why is it so hard to act with urgency?

Certainly inertia has something to do with it. Inertia, after all, is a force more powerful than momentum. Inertia is the weight that keeps us rooted in the status quo. Weighty things typically don’t inspire action.

Could it also be laziness? I suppose not doing what we want (or need) can be construed as being lazy no matter what excuses we might have.

But at the end of the day, I believe the failure to act in the here and now comes down to commitment. Acting with urgency requires a commitment to velocity that’s based on the belief that there are no guarantees about what tomorrow may bring. Anything can and very often does happen. The earth might quake. Your competition announces what you’ve been thinking of doing. Someone else writes the piece you’ve been noodling with. Etc.

Tomorrow has yet to emerge. Yesterday is gone. They are far, far away from what exists today. Today is in your control. What you do today is in your control. The sooner you internalize the notion that speed actually matters, the sooner you’ll take the steps toward becoming the person, company, parent, athlete, writer, friend, spouse, partner, mentor, and leader you want/need/can be.

Be in the moment. Focus on what’s in front of you. Then do it again and again and again. Be impatient with yourself. Just do it. Because you can.

Third, given the importance of transformation should organizations consider making transformation a business function? I would argue, yes. Organizing for success is key. Where can we find the best candidate to lead the transformation effort?

The Office of the CEO would seem to be a natural candidate, but it’s not my choice. While the Office of the CEO sets company vision and strategy it does not have the time or operational bandwidth to physically drive the transformation agenda day in and day out.

Who then? Who is best equipped to lead the cross-functional, enterprise-wide effort of making transformation happen?

I believe someone from Marketing should lead the transformation function. Why?

1. Marketing sees the whole. To do marketing well, it must understand customer needs and integrate the core of every organization – sales & service/product/marketing.
2. Marketing drives positioning. It brings vision to life. And it activates strategy.
3. Marketing is the point of the corporate spear. Everything lines up behind it as proof.

The original business can’t get to next level by working off of the old framework. Transformation to a new, higher-value business requires hammering out new boundaries and values that the sales & service/product/marketing functions can use.  Unlike the original business where boundaries and values were established under different conditions, there are three problems facing any new business that’s built on top of an old one.

1. Holistic understanding. The business is too big for any one person to fully grasp.
2. Alignment. Different camps derived from different functions, origins and cultures have built-in biases and agendas.
3. Accountability. The lack of common language and detailed cross-functional commitments and dependencies doom the group to under-achievement.

A cross-functional group does not have the time nor the expertise to solve these problems through the many execution iterations required. Nor will CEO-led management off-sites. The only way to give sustainable transformation a chance of sticking is to organize for success and select the right leader. For my money, that’s establishing transformation as a business function and selecting someone from marketing to lead the effort.

The Future of the Enterprise is at Stake

The job of driving transformation is critical. The future of your entire enterprise is at stake. The decisions on how to organize for success and who to select to lead the effort are politically loaded, that’s for sure. But, they are probably the most important decisions a CEO and board can make. They are decisions that will make the difference between success and failure – between remaining an organization stuck in its past or one whose value is vital to the interests of its customers.

This is the second part of a 2 part post. Read part 1 here.

The art of moving quickly with a savvy strategy.

By Stephen Wunker, Contributor

Today’s announcement of the Kindle Fire, possibly the iPad’s most serious competitor, underscores how Amazon’s Jeff Bezos remains one of the most predictably revolutionary leaders in business. Selling at just $199, the Fire can accelerate the growth of the already white-hot tablet market through leveraging revenue streams Apple lacks. It embodies the sort of asymmetric competition that has become Amazon’s trademark. How does the company do it?

First, consider the legacy preceding the Fire. Amazon launched as an online bookstore slightly ahead of the dot-com frenzy, and it used a distinct business model to up-end a staid industry. Through collecting payment from buyers well before it paid suppliers, and by initially declining to carry any inventory itself, it could slash prices on popular titles and still make money through the “float” interest it earned on the money paid by users for purchases. Bricks-and-mortar chains couldn’t respond. Then, once Amazon had built up its own distribution centers, it could become a hub for users’ e-commerce needs through selling and distributing products from rival merchants.

Users became increasingly loyal to Amazon even in the hyper-competitive world of Internet retailing, and competitors couldn’t match the scope of Amazon’s offerings because they lacked the scale economies of those centers. More recently, the firm leveraged its market leadership in selling physical books online to become the dominant vendor of e-readers, leaving potential rivals such as Sony unable to gain much traction. It has also started to compete against traditional book publishers, offering leading authors a far-better payout on sales if they self-publish under an Amazon imprint. With a business model predicated on providing these authors with services that many don’t really need, old-line publishers cannot come close to beating Amazon’s terms. The company is also a revolutionary in businesses where it has lacked much scale; for instance, Amazon’s free video streaming for top customers competes asymmetrically against Netflix’s paid model.

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By Seth Godin

You may be purchasing services from people with magical talents (artists) and it’s a mistake to confuse them with vendors.

As we get more and more service oriented, it’s an easy mistake to make. You’re busy buying cleaning services or consulting or design, and sometimes the person you’re working with is a vendor, and sometimes they’re not–they’re an artist, “the talent.”

A vendor is someone who exists to sell you something. It doesn’t always matter to the vendor what’s being sold, as long as it’s being sold and paid for.

The quality of what’s being delivered is rarely impacted by the method of transaction. The turnips will still show up, the house will still get painted. You can send an RFP to a vendor, bid it out, get the lowest price, sign the contract and if you write the contract properly, will get what you ordered.

The quality of the work you get from the talent changes based on how you work with her.

That’s the key economic argument for the distinction: if you treat an artist like a vendor, you’ll often get mediocre results in return. On the other hand, if you treat a vendor like an artist, you’ll waste time and money.

Vendors happily sit in the anonymous cubes at Walmart’s headquarters, waiting for the buyer to show up and dicker with them. They willingly fill out the paperwork and spend hours discussing terms and conditions. The vendor is agnostic about what’s being sold, and is focused on volume, or at least consistency.

While the talent is also getting paid (to be in your movie, to do consulting, to coach you), she is not a vendor. She’s not playing by the same rules and is not motivated in the same way.

A key element of the distinction is that in addition to the varying output potential, vendors are easier to replace than talent is.

Target understood this when they reached out to Michael Graves to design a line of goods that sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of items. When I interviewed Michael a few years ago, he had nothing but great things to say about the way Target invited him in and gave him the ability to do his work. Threadless embraces this when they treat the designers of their t-shirts in a non-corporate way. Etsy is built on this single truth.

Most industry is built on vendor relationships, and vendors expect (and sometimes value) the impersonal nature of their relationships. This scales… until you lump in the talent.

Should you treat vendors with respect? No doubt about it. Human beings do their best work when they’re treated fairly and with enthusiasm. But when the provider is also digging deep to put something on the table that you can’t possibly write a spec for, you’re going to have to respond in kind.

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Yes! A Must read for everyone looking to drive transformation.

By MARC ANDREESSEN

This week, Hewlett-Packard (where I am on the board) announced that it is exploring jettisoning its struggling PC business in favor of investing more heavily in software, where it sees better potential for growth. Meanwhile, Google plans to buy up the cellphone handset maker Motorola Mobility. Both moves surprised the tech world. But both moves are also in line with a trend I’ve observed, one that makes me optimistic about the future growth of the American and world economies, despite the recent turmoil in the stock market.

In short, software is eating the world.

More than 10 years after the peak of the 1990s dot-com bubble, a dozen or so new Internet companies like Facebook and Twitter are sparking controversy in Silicon Valley, due to their rapidly growing private market valuations, and even the occasional successful IPO. With scars from the heyday of Webvan and Pets.com still fresh in the investor psyche, people are asking, “Isn’t this just a dangerous new bubble?”

I, along with others, have been arguing the other side of the case. (I am co-founder and general partner of venture capital firm Andreessen-Horowitz, which has invested in Facebook, Groupon, Skype, Twitter, Zynga, and Foursquare, among others. I am also personally an investor in LinkedIn.) We believe that many of the prominent new Internet companies are building real, high-growth, high-margin, highly defensible businesses.

Today’s stock market actually hates technology, as shown by all-time low price/earnings ratios for major public technology companies. Apple, for example, has a P/E ratio of around 15.2—about the same as the broader stock market, despite Apple’s immense profitability and dominant market position (Apple in the last couple weeks became the biggest company in America, judged by market capitalization, surpassing Exxon Mobil). And, perhaps most telling, you can’t have a bubble when people are constantly screaming “Bubble!”

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It’s interesting to see how much comfort there seems to be with industry insiders in the article below. I would argue that the power of outside influence is what’s needed to help companies better accelerate through opportunities.

CMO Moves Reveal New Demands, Required Skills.

Over the past six to nine months, we’ve seen a next-generation marketer begin to emerge. The old “CPG academy” model is evolving to a “hybrid marketer” model — and it’s changing the career path and experiences of today’s top marketers. A more typical path might now include a career start in traditional brand management, then a move to an online, direct-to-consumer or new-media environment — to gain significant digital marketing expertise, ideally, in a culture of innovative thinking.

In fact, given new realities, many next-generation marketers will come out of cutting-edge digital agencies and the media industry.

Looking at the most recent CMO moves, we’re able to extrapolate some of the ways the role is evolving in the marketplace — particularly at organizations where the emphasis is shifting toward customer insight and relationship building. For one, the CMO’s ability to drive measurable demand generation is critical and now more complex than ever with the increased number of channels and methods available to connect with customers.

Meanwhile, demand for hands-on/operational marketers who have the ability to move at a rapid pace and stay in front of the customers is rising: Executive teams want to see tangible results, quickly.

In addition, CMOs must be deeply cognizant of emerging trends in the digital arena and confident enough to lead the organization in terms of creating or altering a relevant strategy for the brand.

The CMO must be seen as an authentic advocate for customers and, conversely, as a listening ear to customers who are advocates. That’s because increased activity in user reviews and customer feedback gives new and existing customers a more credible voice that marketers must hear and react to in tangible ways.

Digital-to-consumer continues to grow in importance across all customer demographics, so understanding how to forge both one-on-one and broader community ties with core consumers via digital media is critical.

Finally, digital/social-media experts are leading the way in brand communications, and these leaders may be suitable for client-side roles. The cultural implications for organizations that go this route are key — companies must be truly open and ready for change when embracing new technology and communication tools.

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