Unleashing Global Marketing PotentialTM

November 2012 | page 1

Organizing for Social and Digital Marketing

Over the past 18 months, EffectiveBrands has been especially active helping many of our clients

organize their Social Marketing programs. In our experience, there is no shortage of expertise

to help define what type of social marketing programs to run, but almost no expertise available

to help define how to integrate social marketing into the overall global brand strategy, shape

social marketing roles and responsibilities, and train marketers for social marketing proficiency.

This bulletin focuses on our key lessons and findings.

In a world in which almost all global brands are

“socially active” – one where newly-empowered

consumers snap photos, post YouTube videos, and air

their opinions about the brands they use online and

off – everyone can agree that Social Marketing is

crucial.

Today, with over 1 billion Facebook users and 2 billion

regular Internet users across the globe, the question

becomes: How to integrate social into the brand

strategy and how to structure and train the marketing

organization so that it becomes social Marketing

ready?

Our work with global marketing leaders developing

marketing strategy, structure and capability programs

for organizations like Unilever, Hershey, Campbell,

Virgin and Shiseido teaches us that most global

marketing organizations are still working overtime to

tease out the answer to this question, but also that

there are real lessons to be learned, and best

practices to adopt, in order to move faster, more

successfully, and avoid some obvious pitfalls.

From our perspective, each organization needs to find

the right balance between the ambition of a brand’s

purpose and the marketing organization’s willingness

and ability to open up and engage with the outside

world. We dub this balance “Social Marketing

Readiness.”

Put another way, Social Marketing Readiness is when

the brand’s purpose, or what it stands for, is reinforced

by the appropriate

marketing

organization how.

Let’s first

investigate the

brand purpose

dimension of this

definition:

BRAND PURPOSE AMBITION In today’s global, flat and transparent business

environment, brand purpose will continue to play an

increasingly important role in helping consumers

Unleashing Global Marketing PotentialTM

November 2012 | page 2

choose one brand over another. By way of definition,

Purpose goes beyond a brand’s functional and

emotional consumer benefit by emphasizing the

societal difference that the brand strives to make in

this world. Below, we look at examples of all three

levels of brand ambition: functional, emotional and

purposeful.

Functional: At the most basic level, brands have

always offered a consistent, functional benefit to their

consumers. Take the mobile phone brand HTC, whose

advertising promises fast download speeds and a

high-quality camera. Yet beyond these functional

benefits, few people across the globe would be able

to describe the HTC brand as a person. HTC offers no

emotional benefit, and certainly no overt societal

purpose. Although there is nothing wrong with

focusing solely on delivering a functional benefit, it

delimits the brand’s ability to reap the potential

benefits of social marketing, as we will see below.

Emotional: Moving up the benefit ladder, we can

learn a lot from Stella Artois, the global beer brand

owned by AB InBev. Over the years, Stella has created

a brand benefit

that promises its

millions of

worldwide fans not

only a great taste

but also a 600-year-

old brewing

heritage. Many

consumers have

joined Stella Artois’ online “Beer Society” to learn the

best ways to pour and drink the beer, and to share

their own Stella Artois experiences. The brand has

spent time building authentic relationships with many

of its users who, in turn, are willing to spend time

online interacting with the brand.

All of which, we might add, allows

Stella Artois to expand the overall

brand experience, as well as gain

valuable insights from its core

users.

Purposeful: Atop the brand ambition scale sit brands

that offer a societal purpose. We believe this brand

purpose needs to go way beyond Corporate Social

Responsibility (CSR) and sustainability, which are fast

becoming the minimum entry requirement for all

global brands doing business. To be believable and

successful, brand purpose needs to be specific to the

brand itself. Think of brands like Dove – standing for

real beauty, the Body Shop – against animal cruelty,

and FedEx – Sustainably connecting people and

places. These are brands that have are leveraging

their market presence to make the world a better

place.

Purposeful brands have the potential to fire up

consumers, key influencers and also employees

around what the brand stands for, along the way

generating brand evangelism, enthusiasm and, not

least…sales.

MARKETING ORGANIZATIONAL AMBITION Over the last five years, the fast-changing social and

digital marketing landscape has led to dramatic new

demands on every company – especially the

marketing organization. Brands and the organizations

that manage them are evolving from an integrated,

local, and 360-degree perspective to a new global,

365 always-on, total experience orientation – one

where the brand manages (or at least monitors) an

explosion of touch points and wherever relevant,

responds and participates intelligently and quickly –

24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

But How? Let’s look at three stages of organizational

development in today’s marketplace.

Push: Let’s be

honest: Many

organizations have

always been, and

still are, organized

for push

communication,

wherein a few

Unleashing Global Marketing PotentialTM

November 2012 | page 3

marketers working alongside PR and Corporate

Relations are responsible for establishing the face the

brand wants to show the outside world. All

communication briefings and interactions flow from

here, and everyone else in the organization knows

better than to speak in public about the brand. This

way of working is clearly no longer tenable in today’s

flat world, but many organizational structures have

not yet evolved to reflect this new normal.

Engage: Particularly in B2C, most brands have

significantly evolved their marketing organizations

over the last decade by building substantial

organizational capability for consumer engagement.

Thus, the ability to interact via multiple touch points,

Facebook, chat rooms and Twitter (to name just a

few), is there. But these interactions with consumers

and customers are still highly centralized, controlled

and scripted. In the face of multiple touch points,

there is still very

little empowering of

the workforce to

interact freely on

behalf of the brand.

Very few

organizations would

qualify for the

description of being

truly “open.”

Open: What, then, is Open? To our mind, it’s the

place where all organizations are – or should be -

ultimately heading. Over the last two or three years,

more and more larger brand organizations have made

the scary step to do just that. Let’s learn from Coca-

Cola’s evolution. When Coke’s leaders were first

confronted with videos on YouTube where Diet Coke

and Mentos mints were combined to create “bottle

explosions,” they responded with traditional legal

procedures in an attempt to quash these online

activities. To its enormous credit, senior leaders

quickly learned that the court system is no match for

online and social expressions. Coke swiftly shifted to a

mode of engagement with its new online fans, and

even embraced these new forms of brand admiration.

From that point on, Coke decided to take a lead in the

digital and social marketing world. The company

quickly evolved how its employees engage online, and

today Coke is widely respected for its transparent and

open online social media principles. Every company

employee is

encouraged to be

active online, and

the employee

online guidelines

are empowering,

loose and fully

public.

So Coke is an organization to learn from, as it is now

ahead of many companies half its age and size. But

the real trailblazers in today’s new landscape are

companies such as Zappos, Telefonica, and Ren Ren,

where openness is woven into the DNA of the firm,

and all employees, no matter what department they

work in, are empowered and even expected to be an

active brand builders.

ORGANIZING FOR SOCIAL MARKETING SUCCESS Our experience shows us that organizations that win

in social marketing have found the right balance

between the brand’s benefit ambition level, and the

marketing organization’s ability to engage and

interact with the outside world in a responsive,

brand-consistent manner.

But wait. Finding the appropriate social marketing

readiness level – e.g., the right balance between

brand and organization ambition – doesn’t mean that

the company is “ready,” at least not by our definition.

Companies may

very well have full

openness, but lack

clear or shared

purpose. Consider

RIM where, just

last year, internal

discussions and

complaints about

Unleashing Global Marketing PotentialTM

November 2012 | page 4

the lack of purpose suddenly became very public,

leading to a significant loss of confidence in the Canada-

based manufacturer of Blackberry mobile phones.

A mismatched brand and organizational ambition can

also result in huge missed opportunities. If a company

or brand mission is truly purposeful, why not

transform every employee into an ambassador to the

outside world? It would be a huge missed opportunity

if colleagues around the organization felt restricted in

singing the brand’s praises once they left the office.

Social media is all about connecting with your

audiences in all relevant ways. Obviously, there is a

huge advantage in numbers, which is why Coca-Cola

and many other organizations now give their

employees a free hand (well, so long as they don’t

divulge Coke’s secret recipe).

In sum, we believe that for purposeful brands, the

biggest opportunity in social media is there for the

taking, so long as they are willing and able to fully

open up the company to the outside world. If the

brand purpose is clearly spelled out, and being lived

up to everywhere, an enormous opportunity exists in

empowering all employees to become brand

ambassadors. Who wouldn’t want thousands of brand

fans interacting in the social space?

So, what does it take to get organized for social? Empowering employees to be socially active is only

part of the solution. As the marketing leader, you will

need to ensure that the company clearly

communicates how digital/social plans are integrated

into the marketing strategy and structure, while also

making sure that all employees are fully trained for

their new social roles.

Strategy Any marketer worth his or her salt will tell you that to

succeed; digital and social strategy needs to be fully

integrated into the total marketing mix. This is also

true in the long run. That said, we believe that in the

early phase of experimentation, marketers must focus

on ensuring that digital and social initiatives are run,

monitored, adapted and evaluated.

Most organizations are still unclear about the

effectiveness of their social and digital programs. They

must also convince countless internal stakeholders of

the need for change from continuing to carry out

business-as-usual. Everything in social and digital is

new to the organization, and it takes dedicated focus

and resources to build the required confidence around

efficiency and effectiveness before social media can be

integrated into the “normal” mix.

Another interesting insight? Many of the leading

companies we have worked with, or studied, began

their evolution by defining a discrete percentage of

budgets and resources to be spent on “new” social

and digital initiatives. Coke has a 70/20/10 rule,

where the vast majority of spend and focus goes to

trusted and proven initiatives, 20 percent on new-but-

proven initiatives, and 10 percent to new and

experimental initiatives.

Marketing Organizational Structure As with strategy, we strongly suggest that marketing

and media teams start out with dedicated leads for

social and digital activities. Here, focus and speed are

essential: it is critical to immediately roll out learnings

and successful initiatives across pilot teams, and avoid

buying inefficiencies, or anyone reinventing the digital

wheel. Early on, it is also critical to ensure that the

leaders of social initiatives are closely connected,

whether it’s sharing results, measuring impact in the

same way, or collectively negotiating key

partnerships. As time goes by, we often see a

transition of responsibilities for social media planning

from media departments to marketing.

As the company builds sufficient experience,

confidence and capabilities (see below), digital and

social roles are often integrated into the “regular”

media and marketing job descriptions. There are new

roles to be created too; many large firms now have

“social media monitoring centers” and “community

managers” that ensure companies are keeping a

Unleashing Global Marketing PotentialTM

November 2012 | page 5

finger on the pulse of their most important

stakeholder groups.

EffectiveBrands is

often asked to

redefine marketing

structure and

operating models

to help with this

integration, as well

as to assist with

striking the right balance between creating new

“expert” social marketing roles and integrating social

and digital marketing responsibilities into “regular”

marketing roles.

DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MARKETING CAPABILITIES It’s pretty safe to say today that no one above the

grade of marketing manager was ever trained in

college or business school to be proficient in digital

and social marketing.

Usually only the very youngest and most

inexperienced marketers have significant personal

social and digital marketing experience to leverage. At

the same time, this group often lacks the industry

experience to successfully shape brand strategy.

Which leaves a large group of middle and marketing

managers and senior marketing leaders to make

decisions without personal experience or direction

from a boss. (This group of marketers is sometimes

referred to as the “lost generation.”) It’s no surprise

that there is a rush on social and digital training for

marketers. EffectiveBrands has developed and

embedded such

training programs

for many firms

across numerous

B2C and B2B

industries.

There are definitely

lessons for success

to be leveraged. For example, every program must

contain all the basics to build a common language and

ensure that marketers are proficient and equal

negotiating partners in the new media arena. Beyond

the basics, many companies and brands have also

chosen to define “the brand X way” of doing social

marketing.

In our experience, most effective training programs have

been adapted to the application of the capability.

Examples include helping Unilever set up reverse-

mentoring programs, where young employees work

one-on-one with board members to quickly get them up

to social speed, and live action workshops where a

brand teams works side-by-side with its Twitter team to

develop both the strategy and a detailed Q4 2012

program to activate a key initiative across the Twitter

sphere. Diageo and AB InBev went a step further. Diageo

has now taken over 1,000 senior leaders through a

multi-day immersion at Facebook, while AB InBev has a

longstanding Stanford “technology garage week” where

key leaders are exposed to everything that’s new and

potentially relevant.

It bears repeating:

Social marketing –

provocative,

exhilarating and

ever-evolving – is

here to stay. The

challenges it brings

(among them, complete organizational transparency)

are as immense as the opportunities, which include

getting closer to, learning from, and adding more

value to, consumers. As the future of social marketing

plays out, we believe that the most open, well-aligned

organizations will win the game by unleashing online

consumers to speak about, and grow, their brands in

ways marketers may not previously have imagined.

So ask yourself: How good is my brand’s social

marketing strategy, structure and capability?

If you would like to know more about the insights,

best practices identified, and social marketing

capability programs we have helped develop and

implement for our clients, please let us know by

sending an email to florian@effectivebrands.com.

Unleashing Global Marketing PotentialTM

November 2012 | page 6

ABOUT EFFECTIVEBRANDSTM EffectiveBrands is the only global marketing consultancy focused specifically on

unleashing global marketing potential. Founded in 2001, EffectiveBrands helps

global marketing leaders increase global marketing effectiveness with

programs and practical tools that build and embed global marketing strategy,

structure and capability for profitable growth. Our tailored solutions build

internal capability and support for change from the start.

The EffectiveBrands team consists of 75 international and experienced global

marketing consultants and offices in New York, London, Amsterdam,

Singapore, Paris, Tokyo and Istanbul. Our insights and practical solutions are

predicated on in-depth global marketing experience, as well as our proprietary

Leading Global Brands™ Study. As of 2012, over 300 global brands, 3,000 global

marketing leaders and 30,000 global brand marketers and their colleagues

contributed to this study.

NEW YORK AMSTERDAM LONDON SINGAPORE 648 Broadway, Ste 502 Singel 540 28-30 Little Russell Street 17A Duxton Road www.effectivebrands.com

New York, NY 10012 1017 AZ Amsterdam London WC1A 2HN Singapore 089483 info@effectivebrands.com

USA The Netherlands United Kingdom

T: +1 212 358 9638 T: +31 20 330 2636 T: +44 20 7831 8444 T: +65 6221 3693 © 2012 EffectiveBrands