rethinking the four_ps[1]

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Rethinking the “Four Ps”: Marketing Operations Management and the New Pathway to Productivity A Winterberry Group White Paper April 2012

© 2012 Winterberry Group LLC.

2 April 2012

Acknowledgements This white paper would not be possible without the significant contributions of more than two dozen executive-level marketing thought leaders—representing a range of vertical markets and almost every functional discipline within the advertising and marketing ecosystem. Additionally, Winterberry Group is grateful to our sponsors, The Buffkin Group and Group O, for their generous support of this research initiative. To all those whose insights, time and other contributions helped in the development of this white paper, we thank you. Notice This report contains brief, selected information pertaining to marketing operations management and the associated service provider and technology development support industries, and has been prepared by Winterberry Group LLC with the sponsorship of The Buffkin Group, LLC and Group O, Inc. It does not purport to be all-inclusive or to contain all of the information that a prospective investor or lender may require. Projections and opinions in this report have been prepared based on information provided by third parties. Neither Winterberry Group nor its sponsors make any representations or assurances that this information is complete or completely accurate, as it relies on self-reported data from industry leaders—including advertisers, marketing service providers, technology developers and agencies. Neither Winterberry Group, its sponsors nor any of their officers, employees, representatives or controlling persons make any representation as to the accuracy or completeness of this report or any of its contents, nor shall any of the foregoing have any liability resulting from the use of the information contained herein or otherwise supplied.


3 April 2012

Executive Summary Ask any CMO—or spend just a few moments reviewing the day’s industry news, replete with announcements of emerging technologies, data sources and media alternatives—and one truth will become abundantly clear: A new era of marketing possibility is upon us.

“What an exciting time to be a marketer! Never before in history has there been a combination of technology, social realignment, behavioral changes and a variety of channels converging at once, causing marketing organizations to really consider how, in fact, they are prepared to deal with the new normal of constant change.”

—2011 Mid-Year Marketing Trends Study, The Kern Organization

“Marketing is moving from the outskirts to the core of the enterprise as the key owner of critical activities like nurturing the dialogue with customers, developing customer-centric strategies across the enterprise and helping other executives implement these concepts across their respective departments.”

—The Evolved CMO 2012, Forrester Research and Heidrick & Struggles

“More than ever before, marketers are implementing transformational programs to revitalize marketing operations, accelerate customer acquisition and revenue and predict how to better shape and influence market demand.”

— The 2011 State of Marketing, CMO Council On the surface, the promise of this “new era” is substantial, offering brands unprecedented new tools to identify ideal prospects, extend real-time offers and maintain profitable, long-term customer relationships. But for all this potential, many executives gripe that their efforts to drive substantial marketing performance improvement continue to be stymied by one fundamental challenge: They can’t make them work. Dig a little deeper, and their complaints resonate in unison. Corporate bureaucracies don’t allow for the quick decision making needed to capitalize on new opportunities. Institutional silos (separating lines of business, functional groups, geographic divisions and other internal units) independently manage data, creative, financial and human resources, limiting their ability to fully leverage the company’s assets. And even those investments focused on driving positive change—new marketing automation platforms, for example—often suffer from lengthy implementation and review processes, sapping value at every stage of the effort. Considered collectively, this span of challenges suggests that for many companies, existing marketing infrastructures—designed to support long-discarded economic models, advertising strategies and media toolsets—are simply no longer viable.

For all this potential, many marketing operations executives gripe that their efforts to drive substantial performance improvements continue to be stymied by one fundamental challenge: they can’t make them work.


4 April 2012

More concerning is the approach that most enterprises have adopted in tackling that challenge. Rather than seeking out the kind of transformative change necessary to keep pace in a media landscape increasingly paced by disruptive digital innovations, most are approaching their fundamental “marketing misalignment” challenge as a series of smaller, disconnected operational issues—each demanding their own technology, manpower and budgetary fixes. That approach, not surprisingly, isn’t working. Increasingly, marketers are looking for a new path to marketing productivity, grounded in the experience of seeing their enterprise peers benefit from holistic process optimization efforts, and focused on the critical imperative that a true “new era” infrastructure be built upon functional pillars that are both stronger and more extensible than those that have supported advertising and marketing execution to date. This white paper—based on Winterberry Group’s extensive strategic consulting experience in the advertising and marketing ecosystem, as well as a dedicated research effort that included in-person and telephone interviews with over two dozen executive-level marketing thought leaders in early 2012—explores the extent to which that “new era” is truly upon us, and outlines a series of operating principles that marketers should view as fundamental to enabling substantial, profitable change in the years to come. It will demonstrate that traditional approaches to managing marketing channels, campaigns and brand messages are rapidly falling by the wayside. Likewise, it will illustrate how achieving true transformative performance improvement demands the holistic optimization of four central marketing operations pillars—people, platforms, partners and processes—as driven by five overarching priorities:

• Speed: to enable “right-time” responsiveness, provide for a constant first-mover capability and minimize costly cycle time issues

• Insight: to better understand customers and prospects (and their likely needs, preferences and response cues) as well as the contributions of various promotional channels in the broader media mix

• Access: to provide a steady stream of the appropriate inputs—including data, creative assets and business rules—to drive seamless, “always-on” execution

• Flexibility: to support rapid (and sometimes substantial) changes in business need, strategic priority, channel preference and competitive demand

• Security: to safeguard critical resources—including customer information, brand assets and delivery tools—and reinforce confidence in the marketing operations infrastructure and its underlying value proposition.


5 April 2012

The Challenge: Pain Points Confronting Enterprise Marketers Times are tough for the CMO. Even while technology, process innovations and emerging media open new doors to generate value through advertising execution, just as numerous are the obstacles that have emerged to inhibit growth in the marketing function. Panelists said it often seems that for every new, groundbreaking marketing innovation, an equal array of implementation challenges creep up to offset that particular advance. For every new mobile platform, for example, there’s a corresponding data capture issue; for every promising real-time media buying platform, vexing questions about the “real” value of a customer audience. In the language of the enterprise marketer, these disparate challenges—these pain points—often conspire to undermine the value of a whole marketing enterprise (to say nothing of their impact on individual channel management efforts, campaigns or media programs). Collectively, they present a compelling case for marketing operations process reinvention, setting the stage for the development of guiding priorities around which those programs may be based.

Pain Point In Their Own Words…

Finding the Right Multichannel Mix: With the growing need to maintain “in market” presence across a range of promotional, response and engagement channels, marketers are seeking a central platform from which they may coordinate (and optimize) their various communications.

“It used to be a lot less complex, because it was all about new channels. Now it’s not about new channels; it’s about how you use the channels.”

— Vice President, Consumer Banking Operations, Top 10 Credit Card Issuer

“We are challenged by the fact that marketing execution is handled separately across different channels that don’t all share common segmentation, campaigns, key metrics, etc.”

— Vice President, Customer Marketing, Top 15 Retailer “We send our messages, other teams send their messages. Many small fiefdoms in our kingdoms are protective of their territory.”

— Senior Advertising Project Manager, Top 5 Telecommunications Provider

Searching for Accountability Metrics in the Data: Armed with voluminous tracking and result data, marketers feel they should be further along in the science of attribution and optimization.

“Asking our agency about channel attribution is like asking a kid to write his own report card.”

— Senior Partner, Data- and Technology-Focused Private Equity Firm

“We do a lot of analysis at an individual marketing level to see the incremental impact of an impression. But this doesn’t really address the attribution issue; instead, it kind of dumbs it down.”

— Manager, Customer Insights, Top 5 Automaker


6 April 2012

Developing a “Full Picture” from Disparate Customer Data Sources: Marketers are bombarded with multiple disconnected (and largely incompatible) data sources and platforms. But what they need isn’t more data—it’s a viable approach to generating useful insights from the overlay of that information.

“We try to do matchbacks whenever possible, but data isn’t always clean and useful from a decision making perspective.”

— Director, Marketing, Telecommunications, Top 5 Telecommunications Provider

“Our data is siloed. There is a lot of it, but we lack an integrated view of what it can provide.”

— Global Chief Marketing Communications Officer, Top 10 Technology and Consulting Company

“We have the ability to technically sew the data back together, but it’s viewed differently by each organization…. Our biggest problem is agreeing on a single definition of a customer. The data is very messy.”

— Vice President, Customer Marketing, Top 15 Retailer

Orchestrating a Promotional Cadence Commensurate with Sophisticated Customer Needs: Marketers lack the tools to move at “right time” with their communications.

“We try to be honest with ourselves about how long it takes to get campaigns up and running.”

— Senior Vice President, Marketing Strategy, Top 10 Publishing Company

“Quality and timeliness of follow up: ‘Who’s going to make the next touch?’ That’s critical.”

— Vice President, Worldwide Marketing, Top 5 Technology Company

Leveraging the Full Force of the Extended Enterprise: Suppliers bring a wealth of offers to the table, but marketers struggle to engage and benefit appropriately from their own partners.

“We know we need to outsource essential (but non-value-add) work, but we are having a hard time doing it because of legacy operating issues.”


Aligning the Various Stakeholders—Local, Regional, Corporate—with the Single, Renewed Marketing Vision: Different incentives and outcomes drive inconsistent marketing investments and interests.

“There is a movement here to coordinate all marketing processes at the corporate and local level—we are a year and a half into this effort. Difficulties include getting the right data in the right places and getting the right people connected to it.”


Executing Campaigns with Quality—and Confidence: Expertise and delivery bandwidth that is needed for step-level improvement is spent ensuring that “business-as-usual” execution quality (and adherence with security guidelines) aligns with the organization’s standards.

“As our bar for error/need for security has heightened, not that many start-ups are viable suppliers to a company like us.”



7 April 2012

The Opportunity: Marketing Operations Management and the Argument for Change Many of the most daunting challenges facing large enterprises today—including a host of issues that may appear closely linked to the financial, operational, sales or “executive” functions of the organization—are rooted in fundamental marketing considerations. Take, for example, some of the paradigm shifts that are now confronting senior managers across vertical markets:

• The emergence of new, disruptive media and product delivery channels

• The acceleration (and ultimate shrinking) of product lifecycles, especially when those products are grounded in digital content or technology platforms

• Widespread shifts in pricing approaches—favoring dynamic, automation-driven market pricing, versus fixed benchmarks; and

• Growing consumer sophistication—and intensified demand for niche products and services that cater to unique interests.

Objectively, these shifts speak directly to those traditional concerns—including the “four Ps” of product, promotion, pricing and placement—that the modern marketing function was designed to address (and that every business student learns at the outset of their Marketing 101 coursework). But rare is the organization that has assigned their marketing department the resources and oversight authority needed to actually act on these theoretical responsibilities. In fact, marketing’s very prominence—its association with advertising, creative, promotions, events and the other trappings of the customer-facing business—may actively work to inhibit its role as a strategic influencer. Increasingly, though, senior executives are coming to see that perspective as flawed. Seeking to become more responsive to the needs of a digital world (and needing an accountable lever to manage the exchange of material resources, data, decision making and other assets), many companies are working to realize the potential of the marketing department to fulfill a role of strategic influence equal to that of finance, operations and the other fundamental pillars of organizational success. Conceptually, the benefits of that approach—including better utilization of corporate assets and improved matching of product development efforts to marketplace need—are clear and compelling. But given the substantial embedded barriers to change that exist in many large organizations, achieving this bold transformation requires a complete rethinking of the role that marketing plays in a complex enterprise, addressing its structure, resourcing and relationships with both in-house “customers” as well as third parties. In short, it requires a renewal of those “four Ps”—and development of an entirely new framework upon which marketing operations structures should be designed. The goal: to assure maximum effectiveness, efficiency and the room to grow to meet evolving enterprise demands over time.

Achieving this bold transformation requires a complete rethinking of the role that marketing plays in a complex enterprise, addressing its structure, resourcing and relationships with in-house and third-party “customers.”


8 April 2012

If the traditional marketing organization is hallmarked primarily by the existence of parallel “silos”—independent functional units within which resources, expertise and tools exist in competition with others—then perhaps the baseline of this transformation should be grounded in complementary “pillars,” working collectively to enable a marketing enterprise that’s stronger and more fundamentally prepared to address the more complex challenges of tomorrow.

Developing a coordinated plan for marketing reinvention, though, requires more than just acknowledging the need for change. It requires an intense inward-looking investigation focused on understanding the organization’s “as-is” situation and potential platform for change, as informed by the new pillars of marketing productivity (as well as the specific organizational priorities that should guide decision making with respect to each). Our panelists said that today’s cornerstone marketing priorities—and thus the ideals which our “pillars” will seek to support—are nearly universal: speed, insight, access, flexibility and security.


9 April 2012

People Platforms Processes Partners Guiding

Understanding

The right leaders and the right delivery

teams—armed with the right skills and

tools, and connected by the right

relationships—will drive lasting,

defensible differentiation

Leading-edge technology can and

should be a key enabler of product

and process innovation. But

exploiting the value inherent in these

tools requires aligning adjacent

organizational resources to best

leverage their potential

contributions

The specific approach by which the

marketing team “does things” is a critical factor in

driving its ultimate success. As such,

processes must be straightforward, transparent and

optimized to drive desired outcomes

given available resources

The complexity and rapid pace-of-change

that characterize today’s marketing

function require not only a strong internal team, but a network of external partners,

each bringing strategically

desirable expertise, tools and delivery

capabilities to drive innovation

How Do “Best-in-Class” Organizations

Prosper?

Through results-driven hiring and

staff development that promote

education, practical/ cross-disciplinary

training and compensation tied to

desired outcomes

Through integrated platform structures designed around the

central marketing strategy, leveraging

data and modular “point” solutions to

fuel insight and innovation

Through dedicated process mapping and

optimization efforts—focused on minimizing waste,

accelerating productivity and

meeting fundamental customer needs

Through creation of a broad

confederation of service providers and technology

vendors who may “fill in the execution gaps” and provide constant market

insight

Critical Questions to (Re)consider

• How do we recruit and retain the best talent on an ongoing basis?

• How do we maintain a constant focus on emerging skills and disciplines?

• Do we incentivize the results that are most important to us?

• How do we create and sustain excellence in our people?

• Are our existing systems optimized to execute upon our existing (and likely future) strategies?

• Do we have full visibility into the data we need to make good decisions for customers?

• Is our technical architecture providing us with competitive advantage?

• Are we meeting the expectations of our customers—both internal and external?

• How much flexibility do we give up to long cycle times and rework requirements?

• How much farther along would we be if we were faster in execution? And/or delivering higher quality output?

• Has our supply chain been built specifically around our marketing strategy?

• Are we doing things that would be best done by external partners?

• Do we have systems in place to extract the most value from our supplier relationships?

Rethinking Marketing Ops: Four Pillars (“Four Ps”) of Organizational Transformation


10 April 2012

Speed: Responding to the Needs of the Business in a Competitive, Dynamic Environment Why It’s Important: Enables “right-time” responsiveness, provides for a constant first-mover capability and minimizes costly cycle time issues Why Marketers Struggle to Deliver It: Enterprise marketing infrastructures have been built mainly to execute large, one-time campaigns (rather than continuous programs) supported by complicated, custom—and overwhelmingly manual—processes, resulting in lengthy lead times and prioritization queues Its Impact on Marketing Performance: Long cycle times add production cost, increase the likelihood of errors and diminish the relevance of marketing communications (as well as the value of potential first-mover advantage)

People Platforms Processes Partners What “As-Is”

Challenges Typically Confront

Marketers?

The talent that marketers need to re-engineer their process is not in the marketing department

Systems are silo-specific and house their own version of assets that must be recalled rapidly; legacy solutions lose relevance quickly

Marketing execution processes have developed piecemeal, with manual execution engines that are slow, not repeatable and prone to error

Too much internal bandwidth is used in execution—it’s not that there aren’t enough people, it’s that they’re doing the wrong things

What Does the “Could Be” State Look

Like?

Marketers enable flexibility and capacity by becoming disciplined with respect to talent cultivation and deployment

Automation platforms enable standard work to flow through quickly with little manual interference

Processes are engineered to first diminish cycle time (as precisely as possible)—and then to realize follow-on benefits of quality, cost and flexibility

Suppliers contribute to execution in the areas at which they excel; are compensated for exceeding timing expectations with high quality levels

How Do We Get From “As Is” to

“Could Be”?

• Get the right talent (internal, borrowed, external) to rebuild

• Make transformation a visible and active team priority

• Commit to teaching the team new (and marketable) skills

• Identify the types of activities that will occur most often as based on the marketing strategy

• Source automation solutions to manage tasks as seamlessly as possible

• Marketing approach must be built with speed as the desired outcome

• May require “burning the ships” by turning off old processes while “as-is” programs continue

• Ask the organization to analyze every internal function against industry solutions

• Look for ways to quickly upgrade technology, process, expertise by sourcing

In Their Own Words… “We’ve built processes and procedures so that we don’t need to recreate the wheel every time. We can respond to competitor’s offers very quickly with a matching offer.”

— Vice President, Advertising, Top 5 Telecommunications Provider

“Speed to market is priority number one. The challenge lies in getting it done from an executional and operational standpoint. The constraints… are a myriad of disconnected and disparate databases.” — Vice President, CRM, Top 5 Retailer


11 April 2012

Insight: Leveraging All Available Data to Better Understand Customers, Markets and the Impact of Multichannel Efforts Why It’s Important: Allows the marketer to better understand customers, prospects and the behaviors that impact their ultimate purchase activity, allowing them to promote an ongoing relationship across the channels the customer chooses Why Marketers Struggle to Deliver It: Integrating disparate data sources (including those that that may be “unstructured”) and measuring cross-channel performance is, for many, the elusive “Holy Grail” of targeted marketing. Though many are working to address the challenge, no one has yet crafted a comprehensive off-the-shelf solution Its Impact on Marketing Performance: With the various data sources connected, the marketer can build out an attribution framework to optimize cross-channel efforts



Marketers?

Marketers often lack the deep analytics talent they need to make sense of the challenging quantitative problem of multichannel attribution

Typically, data is fragmented, disjointed and built upon different taxonomies; BI solutions are not set up to provide deep analytics

Processes often depend largely on contributions from homegrown “hard-coded” solutions cobbled together to solve incremental challenges

Systems and data may respectively by housed externally (where data may be hard to access) or in a combination of external and internal repositories


Like?

Marketers engage with quantitative analysts and resources schooled in hard sciences

Analytical needs require dedicated systems and powerful analytical software that is integrated with enterprise decision making engines

Systems are engineered for adaptive control and parameterization; are highly flexible on key strategic dimensions

Data can be hosted externally, but needs to be kept in-house to ensure accessibility and security


“Could Be”?

• Recruit and build out a team of marketing analysts; it’s easier to train analysts on “marketing” than vice versa

• Develop retention and recognition programs to foster analytics talent, team spirit and loyalty

• Architect systems to support massive centralized data with intense processing power

• Create separate data structures optimized for analytics

• Work backwards from a desired end-state of automated decision making

• Designate a central point of marketing investment decision making to provide analytics direction

• Source hosting, connectivity, matching and platform integration, but keep the strategy (and access to key resources) in house

In Their Own Words… “It’s easy to get lost in those multichannel conversations without stepping back and looking at the customer.”


“In my experience, I have generally been dissatisfied with the level of expertise and focus on attribution.” — Vice President, Digital Brand Strategy,

Top 5 Credit Card Issuer


12 April 2012

Access: Centralizing the Management of Core Marketing Assets to Maximize Their Contribution to the Whole Enterprise Why It’s Important: Rich proprietary assets—including granular data on customers, prospects and their respective purchase and promotional histories; legacy creative material and campaign performance records—presents a source of substantial competitive advantage for the company, and making these properties available for cross-enterprise use is essential in delivering synergy benefits Why Marketers Struggle to Deliver It: Data and content management structures are typically siloed according to the internal “parent,” often in separate or duplicative databases or libraries—and with few protocols in place to govern resource sharing Its Impact on Marketing Performance: Diminishes the organization’s ability to derive a truly complete “view” of their own customer, or leverage previous resources in follow-up marketing efforts



Marketers?

Staff may be protective of resources and see little reason to make assets available to others

Multiple platforms are sourced (by different internal owners) to provide the same basic functionality

Processes are specific to the department, rather to the enterprise, and are designed to prevent resource sharing

Suppliers deliver single point solutions without comprehensive scope


Like?

Assets are managed in universal databases and libraries, with a specific set of business rules guiding access and availability

Sophisticated matching, keying and historical data supports complete customer views

Streamlined internal approval processes provide insights where they are most needed

“Referential” keying, which accesses a full external database for links, allows for optimal consolidations and visibility


“Could Be”?

• Marketing needs should be incorporated at the earliest possible development stage

• Account for heavy lifting if the organization is not built around central access points

• Identify opportunities to streamline central platforms with focus on data integration and asset cataloging

• Design to drive real time communication, integrating assets from various cross-enterprise databases/libraries

• Architect customer identification as an “always-on” process

• Consider third-party solutions to reference and match data (as well as other assets) and provide the most complete picture possible of customer interactions

In Their Own Words… “There is a movement [in our company]… to coordinate all marketing processes. The difficulties include getting the right data in the right places and getting the right people connected to it.”


“It’s critical to get it centralized. What I’ve seen in my history with clients is that [data and creative assets] are very fragmented and siloed.”

— Global Chief Marketing Communications Officer, Top 10 Technology and Consulting Company


13 April 2012

Flexibility: Engaging with Supply Chain Partners to Extend the Capabilities and Scope of the Marketing Enterprise Why It’s Important: Allows the marketer to develop a strategy to best maximize internal own talent and resources—while leaning on the right set of partners to expand the organization’s skillset and gain critical operating bandwidth Why Marketers Struggle to Deliver It: Third-party relationships are treated as transactional, often focused on single activities rather than process outcomes Its Impact on Marketing Performance: Many marketers devote disproportionate time, cost and attention to managing tasks outside their core competencies (which would thus better be left to third parties)



Marketers?

Supply chain expertise is price-focused, procurement-based, and housed primarily in the finance department—if it exists at all

Innovation requirements are queued up for internal IT development; delivery timelines are measured in months, if not years

Marketers hold suppliers at arm’s length form the core operation (and from each other), inhibiting the benefits of potential cooperation

Suppliers are largely transactional in nature and legacy in their origins. Decisions about what is done internally/externally are implicit


Like?

Supply chain expertise is embedded in the marketing department, with a focus on leveraging partners to drive innovation and promote the positive benefits of lasting competitive tension

Suppliers are selected for their ability to deliver solutions via existing platforms that are best-in-class and meet all the marketing needs

Suppliers rally together for the sake of the process, working as an extension of the internal team to solve the marketing challenge

Suppliers are brought together with internal teams to deliver jointly on departmental goals


“Could Be”?

• Create and staff a marketing supplier management team, charged with building out the necessary relationships

• This team works with procurement and serves as supplier’s primary customer

• Mine IT’s “wish list” for biggest impact projects and longest delivery timelines

• Use supplier managers to find providers who can immediately deliver objectives within existing platforms

• Hold regular reviews (which all suppliers attend) to review progress, obstacles and goals

• Make the overall objective a part of each individual supplier scorecard

• Derive key process and technology needs from the overarching marketing strategy

• Use suppliers managers to source potential third-parties

In Their Own Words… “One of top challenges was: How do we make the organization nimble enough and still keep costs down?”

— Global Chief Marketing Officer, Top 10 Insurance Provider

“We augment with vendors, relying on their expertise/technology because it’s not within our core.”

— Vice President, Marketing, Top 20 Health Insurance Provider


14 April 2012

Security: Ensuring the Viability of the Organization (and the Confidence of its Customers) Through Protection of Critical Assets Why It’s Important: Safeguarding critical resources—including customer information, brand assets and delivery tools—reinforces confidence in the marketing operations infrastructure and its underlying value proposition Why Marketers Struggle to Deliver It: Security is rarely seen as a marketing function—and marketers are largely unprepared to lead on such issues Its Impact on Marketing Performance: Security, privacy and the “rules of engagement” that drive data usage are key considerations in communicating with customers; managing them with an eye on customer needs (as opposed to delivering security “for its own sake”) will provide lasting business benefits



Marketers?

Even though marketing has a voracious appetite for data, the stewardship function is managed elsewhere, if at all

Security and privacy concerns are system-specific—and each one has its unique needs that require attention and support

Security is externally focused and managed from IT, with no visibility into the marketing value of the data it is protecting

Providers offer a default level of security and privacy protections—and carry their own risk of breach


Like?

Marketing designates data stewards—teams dedicated to safeguarding the data, designing the policies and monitoring controls

Security and privacy procedures are tailored to the data and managed by the data stewardship team

Marketing processes are built around central data, which is managed to allow for varying access based on its value and sensitivity

Ideal service level agreements spell out not just recourse, but consistent standards for safe execution


“Could Be”?

• Create and staff a marketing data stewardship team, charged with building out policies and procedures to safeguard data

• This team works with IT as the service provider for security

• Tailor security and privacy solutions to the sensitivity and value of the data from a marketing perspective

• Designate the most sensitive fields in the data flow and automatically limit access to them

• Conduct a “security audit” of the key workflows and data flows

• Develop the end-state security vision and assess current state against it

In Their Own Words… “We have a security office that manages a firewall system to make sure that we are not passing around consumer data. There are huge efforts to make sure that consumer info is protected.”

— Director of Advertising, Top 5 Telecommunications Provider

“We have someone in charge of the governance but this is part of IT infrastructure, not part of marketing. I’m not sure if we have someone in charge of maximizing the opportunity though.”



15 April 2012

In Conclusion The demands on today’s marketing operations teams are more varied—and more intense—than ever before. Wholesale technological advances, channel proliferation, the rise of “big data” and the fragmentation of audiences are the hallmarks of the era. But at the heart of those developments, a single current flows consistently: Consumers have come to expect more of the brands with which they do business. That doesn’t just mean the savvy marketers of tomorrow will have to be everywhere (be it on television, in the mailbox, in the retail environment, on the Web or in the inbox). They’ll also have to be more responsive to changing consumer needs, more attuned to the macro trends driving market opportunities, more interactive in their customer relationship management and, above all else, more nimble in how they strategize, assign resources and build marketing programs to support rapid, continuous innovation. For most enterprise marketers, supporting that colossal paradigm shift will require more than simply “reforming” marketing ops as we’ve known it. It will require a concerted effort at strategic reinvention, driven with an eye on leveraging the core operating assets of the business—the “four pillars” of people, platforms, processes and partners—as the central enablers of whatever tactical priorities the business deems critical. Today, senior marketers say that the dynamism of the marketing environment has positioned five ideals—speed, insight, access, flexibility and security—as the foundational priorities upon which those pillars must be built. But over time, those priorities may well change—demanding that marketing operations (and the strategies, processes and infrastructure that guides it) must change with them.


16 April 2012

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17 April 2012

Winterberry Group is a unique strategic consulting firm that helps advertising, marketing, media and information companies build value. Our services include:

Corporate Strategy: The Opportunity Mapping strategic development process prioritizes customer, channel and capabilities growth options available to advertising and marketing industry firms, informed by a synthesis of market insights and intensive internal analysis. Market Intelligence: Comprehensive industry trend, vertical market and value chain research provides in-depth analysis of customers, market developments and potential opportunities as a precursor to any growth or transaction strategy. Marketing System Architecture: Process mapping, marketplace benchmarking and holistic system engineering efforts are grounded in deep supply chain insights and “real-world” understandings—with a focus on helping marketers and publishers better leverage their core assets. Mergers & Acquisitions Due Diligence Support Services: Company assessments and industry landscape reports provide insight into trends, forecasts and comparative transaction data needed for reliable financial model inputs, supporting the needs of strategic and financial acquirers to make informed investment decisions and lay the foundation for value-focused ownership. For more information, please visit www.winterberrygroup.com.

rethinking the four_ps[1]

Business

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marketing operationsmanagement

state of marketing

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