ARTICLES AND PAPERS

Learning From The Obama Brand (PDF)

SHOW ME AN AMERICAN CEO WITH THE FORTITUDE to pick an issue, a theme, a brand, a strategy, a mission that is truly authentic and touches the hearts and minds of their consumer, and then devotes their unwavering commitment, support and resources to that focus for nearly two years, and I’ll show you a CEO that is winning their campaign for consumer allegiance. Regardless of one’s voter preference, there are significant strategic lessons to be learned from the historic victory of Senator Barack Obama. After all, this election witnessed the most engaged electorate in the history of this great nation— culminating in the largest voting population ever. And what is a vote but perhaps the most meaningful reflection of consumer engagement and behavior. This was no accident. It was an awe-inspiring branding campaign that should be studied by enlightened CEOs around the globe. The Obama campaign was game changing. And the CEO who isn’t paying attention… well, isn’t paying attention.

Turning Green to Black (PDF)

EVERY COMPANY TODAY is either “going green” or thinking of “going green;” trying to develop plans to contain the costs inherent in more sustainable operations, products and practices. In other words, people are treating the green movement as what someone once termed, “An insurmountable opportunity.” In this economic crunch, though, we believe a defensive/reactive strategy or attitude is the wrong approach. “Going green” isn’t just about compliance with increasing political and public pressure. This is not just a shift in regulation, but a shift in attitudes—and it will result in a shift in buying behavior, competitive dynamics and value chains within your industry. We believe you can turn your own move to greater environmental sustainability a move to greater revenue and profit for your core business and provide the opportunity to enter entirely new categories. Even in declining markets, we teach our clients to play offense, using insurgent strategies to gain an unfair share advantage in their markets. Enhancing your top and bottom lines—that’s what we mean by “Turning Green to Black”.

Wake-Up Call (PDF)

IT’S A CALL EVERY ONE OF US HAS HEARD—every American family; in fact, virtually everyone in the world. Everyone is re-thinking everything. We’re re-thinking vacation plans, cutting back on any extravagance in spending, and planning on working more years before retiring. Global business has heard the same call. Almost uniformly, companies of all shapes and sizes have announced cost-containment programs; job cuts and reductions of marketing spending. We have been preparing for this crisis; for a wake-up call in business and marketing. Since it was founded in 1999, Zyman Group has been known for its hard-nosed business discipline for marketing strategy, the discipline of investing in marketing to generate sales and returns…not just spending on marketing activities. Over the past six months, we’ve infused new energy and focus into our approach using the principles of insurgent strategy, learned from the successes of revolutionaries in business, politics and warfare. It’s not just incumbent market leaders or politicians who are under attack now: the incumbent thinking of business-and-marketing-as-usual have now been repudiated. And while most marketing services companies are still trying to defend strategies and tactics of the past, our job is to go on offense to fight for your future.

Change You’d Better Believe In: What Business Executives Can Learn from the 2008 Presidential Campaign (PDF)

At Zyman Group, we use the Insurgent Model taken from campaigns to add focus, speed, sharpness and performance to the traditional marketing or strategic communications projects we develop for our clients. The parallels between a political campaign and marketing campaign are obvious—understanding voter perceptions and attitudes, understanding issues that will move those voters to vote your way, competing for control of the campaign dialogue and going for the eventual win. As with politics, in business today you have less time to analyze, decide, act and react—every day is your election day.

Brave New World: Connecting Brands to Consumers in this Technological Age (PDF)

FACEBOOK has 110 million users worldwide; MySpace has 117 million. In the U.S., four billion YouTube videos were viewed in the month of April alone, and an estimated three million public messages are exchanged daily among Twitter’s 1.3 million users. Technology is changing the world on a daily basis. How people communicate with each other has changed and how they expect companies to communicate with them is changing. Clearly, the marketplace has clearly moved beyond traditional marketing techniques and tactics into a new world of consumer fragmentation, channel and availability expansion, and increasing cynicism and control from consumers. Marketers are attempting to respond to the new world—with increased spending against digital and point of sale; in fact, $36B was spent for online advertising in 2007. This number is projected to increase to $66B by 2010. But more money is not the answer. The real question marketers should consider is: In a fast moving, fragmented world, how can brands reach and engage customers to encourage brand choice and (the Holy Grail), brand loyalty? Here, we attempt to answer this question by cutting through the hype with practical insights for marketers.

Channel Strategy: Is Your Company’s Sales Department A Growth Generator? (PDF)

Even though it might seem surprising, there are very few companies that leverage their sales function to generate a positive impact on the performance of the organization. In most cases, the sales departments in consumer goods companies are limited to ensuring the availability of the products or services at the point of purchase or consumption in an efficient manner. Their goal is to accomplish their sales objectives. Unfortunately, in many cases, they don’t develop strategies that will allow the companies to identify growth opportunities or increase customers’ satisfaction through differentiated value propositions.

Competitive Ignorance (And How To Avoid It) (PDF)

Your competitors want you to ignore them. They have big plans and the last thing they want is for you to fi nd out. But its hard for them to keep their plans a secret… they have to talk to investors, give interviews to the press, presell their customers, make SEC fi lings and register patents and trademarks. They can just hope. They hope that you are not paying attention….that you are too busy attending to your business than to really pay attention to them….and often you are! You are too busy to visit their booth at the trade show or listen to their earnings call or even to visit their new website. Your competitors also hope that you will ignore the effort to think about how their actions may affect you. If you do though, they want you to take your time in deciding what to do. Better yet, they would prefer if you don’t do anything at all since that will be the least disruptive to their plans. The opposite of competitive ignorance is, of course, competitive intelligence. Competitive intelligence means doing three things that your competitors don’t want you to do: 1) Paying attention in a routine way to competitive actions and intentions, 2) Determining how these actions may affect you, and 3) Deciding what you are going to do about it.

Segmentation: Is Yours Delivering the Return You Want (PDF)

In a recent survey of senior business executives published by the HBS, 59% said they had conducted a major segmentation study in the past year. Only 28% said the study had a significant impact on their business. Our experience as strategists and as marketing practitioners leads us to believe both numbers are significantly understated when compared to the pharmaceutical industry for the following reasons: An over-reliance on segmentation in general, lack of integration across individual patients, physicians and payers segments, and the use of design and application techniques that have not kept pace with fundamental changes in the health care industry.

Flagship Stores: A Brand Positioning Tool (PDF)

In the last few years, the number of encounters with a brand and brand advertising a consumer experiences during a regular day has increased significantly. This has created consumers who are relatively immune to traditional advertising but also ones that have many opportunities to become deeply immersed in a brand or story. As a result, companies are adding alternative methods to attract and engage customers beyond traditional media advertising. Flagship stores are one of these tools.

ROMI: What Are Your Marketing Investment Leverage Points? (PDF)

In order to improve marketing ROI over time, you must know how much is invested in marketing, the returns from those investments, and where the leverage points are that will lead to improvement in those returns. These are the areas which represent the primary choices you must make in resource allocation and which will represent the greatest opportunities for improving productivity. At Zyman Group, we helped our clients identify their leverage points and identify ways to improve returns.

And The Winners Are! The Fastest Growing Companies and the Role of Organic Growth (PDF)

Organic versus inorganic; everyone, it seems these days, is proclaiming the importance of organic growth. Yet, studies show that the more deals a company makes the more value it delivers to shareholders. We started by asking who has grown the fastest and then answered what portion of that growth came from acquisitions versus organic growth. The results were profound.

Is Your Marketing Mindset Aligned With the Market? (PDF)

Marketing mindset is the collective role of marketing in delivering sustainable growth for a firm. It includes leadership in shaping the business agenda, in how marketing is used to deliver growth and in the competencies required to do the job of marketing. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how and why the telecommunications industry, broadly defined, requires a unique marketing mindset given the rapidly changing competitive environment and the exponential rate of consumer adoption of technology.

The Possibilities and Perils of Cross Marketing (PDF)

One of the most basic tenets of marketing is that it’s always easier to sell to the customers you already have than those you don’t. Encouraging the customer already in the store to pick up an extra item or two on the way to the register is much easier than pulling someone in off the street. It’s also much more profitable; it costs five to 12 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. Loyal customers tend to make more purchases, are more likely to accept price premiums than newcomers, and are less costly and time consuming to service.

Measuring Advertising Effectiveness (PDF)

Marketers must know if their advertising is effective long before it airs or is seen in print. Cute ads that do nothing but generate buzz aren’t enough. It’s essential that every dollar invested is able to “sell more stuff to more people more often for more money more efficiently.™”

Understanding and Managing Multi-Dimensional Brands (PDF)

Why do certain brands such as Starbucks, Nike, Coca-Cola, and Disney have such broad appeal and market acceptance? What enables these brands to resonate across a broad spectrum of consumers and provide long-term relevancy and value? One answer lies in these brands’ multivalence—their ability to deliver multiple benefits to multiple customer segments within multiple potential scenarios. In today’s environment, marketers cannot afford to paint their brands into a single-function corner. Marketers must understand their brands’ depth, dimensions, and most importantly, their potential applications for building profitable volume and loyalty across multiple customer segments.