Ready, Fire, Adapt!
[Posted by Lisa Bradner]
My report on Adaptive Brand Marketing continues to generate coverage and comments positive and negative in both the US and Europe: see links here for Marketing Week and AdAge.
The Ad Age piece in particular is interesting to me. While I’m not fond of the “we haven’t read the report but here’s what we think” approach, I do appreciate the folks from BBH Labs weighing in and sharing their vision of what the future adaptive marketing organization looks like. Several of the things called out on their list are in my report as well—although anyone who’s read Dave Frankland’s recent report on customer intelligence, "The Intelligent Approach to Customer Intelligence" knows that equating this function to market research doesn’t’ scratch the surface of everything that is involved.
What I am concerned about is the attempt to bring adaptive brand marketing down to a list: lists won't get us there. We need to fundamentally rethink the people, process and technologies we use and, take on hard issues like organizational structure; partner relationships, compensation and metrics, or this just becomes another reinvention activity that stops short of real change.
My piece is neither an indictment of agencies nor of brand marketing organizations. It is an attempt to begin the dialog about what we keep, what we give up and how we make our relationships more productive for all parties. In my many conversations with practitioners on both sides of the fence (both for the piece and at Forrester’s Consumer Forum this week) I heard that no one is happy with the status quo and no one feels they have all the answers. I also heard a lot of smart business minds willing to wade in and take on the core issues and that excites me greatly.
At Forrester we'll be continuing to push the thinking on how to design, build and operationalize an adaptive brand marketing organization. As a 3rd party research firm we have the opportunity to look across both the agency and brand marketer camps and help surface solutions. The more everyone commits to talking about and thinking through the tough issues the better the solutions we'll create together.
So I’m here to give a shout out—there’s been a lot of noise out there but things are quiet on the marketing leadership blog—I hope you’ll change that: post here, tell us what you think, ask provocative questions and be part of the conversation. Let’s make this something we build and grow together so we create lasting change not just another industry buzzword.
Post your comments here, or ping me on twitter @lisabradner