A Flinty Look at the Future

Try to predict the future. Does yours look more like the Jetsons or the Flintstones? If you think Jetsons, think again. Sure, everything is automated and single-application buttons abound, but there is no creativity, no added value, no real efficiency. But the Flintstones combined all their existing resources and captured the natural power of what was available. That modern Stone Age family would have been the future if the dinosaurs never died off (though that’s where we got all the fossil fuel that obsoleted Fred’s foot-powered car). Aside from being underachievers in the area of footwear, they were pretty futuristic. Fred Flinstone knew how make things happen.

Going back to the future, let’s look at what will change the way you promote. I see the three concurrent trends of customer management, electronic communications, and data integration morphing together. These separate initiatives, once relegated to isolated departments, are coalescing and opening new systems and resources. The proverbial organizational silos are coming down. Time to figure out if you’re a complacent George or a take-charge Fred.

Customer management It is the rallying cry from the corner of every visionary office: “We must get closer to our customer!” (In this case, we mean the retailer). Fine, but you have to manage the process and make sure you are making money on it.

Customer management has both an external and internal view. Externally it is account-specific marketing: the ability to market your products in cooperation, conjunction, and within the context of your retailer/trading partner. The internal side is the account profitability model that drives the tactics around co-marketing. Nice to do co-op TV with you, but how much did I make on my product?

Co-marketing is fueling the trend to analyze program performance by customer.

What’s ahead: Unified standardized account profitability measures that will link the co-marketing tactics and merge them seamlessly with executional service providers. You’ll start knowing, without having to ask, which customers are really worth working with.

Electronic communications The logistical side of your building might own electronic data interchange, but other forms of electronic communications are forcing their way into your daily promotion life. Field automation tools and Web-based devices are making the old credo of “just call it in” obsolete.

It’s not really an environmental issue, but companies want to get rid of paper. “Salespeople are tired of trudging into a buyer’s office carrying a six-inch thick notebook with all the latest account-specific events,” observes Greg Murtagh, president of the Stamford, CT-based Customer Marketing Group. “It is impossible to keep these binders updated, and they get heavy, too.”

What’s ahead: E-bidding for promotion execution. You will transfer your top customer codes to your preferred promotional suppliers who will provide you with proposals and reporting based on your specific targeting specs. You benefit from a few things like quicker turnaround, better budgeting, and tighter controls.

Data integration Down the hall, you may have heard the financial folks talk about a data warehouse project and you might figure it doesn’t have a whole lot to do with you and your brands. Think again before someone does the thinking for you. Data warehousing has the potential to integrate all the information you have on a customer, a brand, and an event and put it in one place. “Build a single version of the truth,” says Bob Brogan, KPMG Peat Marwick practice leader for consumer markets.

To make it work you’ll only have to change one thing – the way you work. But the opportunity can be staggering. These systems feed off data. Start finding promotional activity that you can turn into data.

So, you dropped 30-million circulation on that last FSI. Now turn it into integratable data. How much by form, by region, by customer?

And right now, your redemption information lives disconnected from your FSI drop, but it shouldn’t.

What’s ahead: Promotional suppliers will also become data vendors. The competitive edge will be sharpened by the extra value gained with integratable results.

Pick your own future. You can wait until you get handed a pre-fabricated solution or you can start to make your own way. Are you a Fred or a George? Are you powering your car courtesy of your own two feet or, as you get caught up in someone else’s view of how your life should be, are you yelling, with no chance for help, “Jane! Stop this crazy thing! JAAAAANE!!”