Understanding the power of marketing

With the market undergoing significant restructuring, and the ever-taxing task of driving top and bottom line performance across any organisation, leaders are faced with the challenge of identifying and resourcing their companies with the very best talent available across the region.

The pressure has been also been magnified by the need to ‘right size’ whilst maintaining the desired balance of localization and experience in an organisation, and avoiding high recurring cost of overhead.

Like many of the more developed markets, the role of interim, specialist resource placements and mentors will become a vital manpower strategy in the short to medium term.

The employment market over the past 18 months has had a major coming of age, executive salaries, packages and benefits have needed to realign themselves with the realities of the day, and many companies who had built an infrastructure of human manpower to aggressively attack the new frontiers of growth, scaled back and focused on once again 'becoming smaller before attempting to becoming bigger'.

In other words, the major thrust of growth has been replaced with responsibility in delivering sustainable short to medium term profitability and cash within organisations while we look for all the areas we can achieve growth without risking our company’s future.

The areas of operations that were seen to be important but not urgent such as 'policies and procedures', 'risk management' and 'audit' are now at the forefront of leadership, as they should have always been in high growth, high profitability and high velocity organisations, however, I am highly bemused by the lack of foresight amongst many leaders that now is the time for marketing and customer management.

Building brand power and affinity is an investment, which is time sensitive, and will provide significant returns upon maturity.

During the Asian crisis of the mid to late 1990's, we witnessed the birth of the champion organisations, companies that innovated through low unit pricing and format, innovated through aggressive marketing and advertising in building market share during the relatively quiet competitive heat in media, to win customers who would stay with them post the crisis.

They quite simply understood that with a lean organisation, the recruitment cost of new custom was low, and that maintenance during the new peak of growth would be affordable and hence a major competitive advantage.

How many of our organisations in this region are operating with this model? How many have spent millions recruiting their customers over the past decade, only to ignore them now and thereby missing the opportunity to refresh their brands and services.

The cost will be at minimum triple over the next cycle to win them back! Just imagine the cost of re-building many of the property development brand equities over the next decade!

Marketing is the science of building belief systems to brands. For belief systems to work effectively they need followers, and followers need stimulus to be convinced to believe! Hence the need for Marketing and Customer Management at the core of organisations!

We are at the point where leaders need to lead, and management needs to manage. However, this fine line between leadership and management is not well understood across the region, and the default position is to go ‘management’ and treat marketing as a cost, rather than a strategic investment.

Frustrated by the many situations I have witnessed recently, my decision to set up a management advisory practice is aimed at providing short to medium term mentoring to organizations in rebuilding the belief systems amongst their current or lapsed followers.

Understanding that an organisations greatest asset is not their building, factory, technology, or distribution system but rather the belief system that is the backbone of both their internal and external customers is the key to not only surviving but emerging from this period of fade, fit for growth, and fit for purpose and with returns which outpace the industry norms in their respective sectors.

Companies such as Apple and Virgin understand this, have true leadership who practice the art of creating followers, and that is why they are successful, loved and envied.

Next time you are with a group of colleagues and friends, actually listen to what they say! How many are telling you that they love what they do at work? And how many are telling you that they are just grateful to be hanging on and have a job, any job!

Turning this negative 'positive' into a high energy positive 'positive' is one of the key stimuli required to regain the momentum and velocity in our region.

We all buy into belief systems, we all follow brands, people and causes which win our hearts and minds, and in all cases someone or something has been presented to us as stimulus to create awareness, then trial, then conversion, and ultimately conviction! It is the power of marketing, well crafted, with genuine insight and meaning!

Alex Andarakis is managing director, Andarakis Advisory Services