High-performance marketing: an interview with Nike's Phil Knight. Interview by Geraldine E. Willigan

Nike's advertising slogans--"Bo Knows," "Just Do It," and "There Is No Finish Line"--have moved beyond advertising into popular expression. Its athletic footwear and clothing have become a piece of Americana. Its brand name is as well known around the world as IBM and Coke. Behind the slogans and the flashy TV commercials is the vision of its founder, chairman, and CEO, Phil Knight. Since forming the company in 1962, Knight has taken Nike from a small-time distributor of Japanese track shoes to the top of the athletic shoe and apparel market. But not without a stumble. Along the way, Knight discovered that technological innovation alone could not continue to drive growth. When sales stagnated in the mid-1980s, Knight and Nike learned several hard lessons on how to build brands and understand consumers, and they transformed their technology company into a marketing company whose product is its most important marketing tool. "Ultimately," says Knight, "we wanted Nike to be the world's best sports and fitness company. Once you say that, you have a focus. You don't end up making wing tips or sponsoring the next Rolling Stones world tour." To keep the company growing, Nike began splitting its brands into sub-brands. In tennis, Nike divided its shoes into Challenge Court--for younger, more active players--and Supreme Court--for older, more mature players. That approach brought the company to a broader range of consumers while preserving the customer base. And to create an emotional tie with the consumer, Nike started advertising on TV. "Sports is at the heart of American culture," Knight says. "You can't explain much in 60 seconds, but when you show Michael Jordan, you don't have to. It's that simple."     

Smart customers, dumb companies

Customers today are being bombarded with an overwhelming array of choices. To alleviate customer frustration, say Steven Cristol and Peter Sealey in Simplicity Marketing, companies should stop creating new brands and product extensions. Better to consolidate product and service functions by following a four R approach: replace, repackage, reposition, and replenish. That's an outmoded, dictatorial view of markets, says Christopher Locke. Far from being stymied by choices, customers are rapidly becoming smarter than the companies that pretend to serve them. In this networked economy, people are talking among themselves, and that changes everything. Locke predicts we'll see a growing number of well-defined micromarkets--groups of customers converging in real time around entertaining and knowledgeable voices--such as NPR's car guys and the Motley Fool investment site. "Micromedia" Web sites will replace traditional advertising because they'll provide credible user-supplied news about products and services. Locke contends that an open exchange of information solves the "problem" of choice much better than manipulative strategies like simplicity or even permission marketing. Companies can participate in micromarkets through what Locke dubs "gonzo marketing." If Ford, for example, discovers that a subset of its employees are organic gardeners, it may offer support to a big independent organic-gardening Web site with donations and employee volunteers. This marketing effort would be driven not by advertising managers but by people with genuine interest in each micromarket, so it would have credibility with customers. With gonzo marketing, both companies and their markets will benefit.     

Execution without excuses. Interview by Thomas A. Stewart and Louise O'Brien

The success of Dell--it provides extraordinary rewards to shareholders, it can turn on a dime, and it has demonstrated impeccable timing in entering new markets--is based on more than its famous business model. High expectations and disciplined, consistent execution are embedded in the company's DNA. "We don't tolerate businesses that don't make money," founder Michael Dell tells HBR. "We used to hear all sorts of excuses for why a business didn't make money, but to us they all sounded like 'The dog ate my homework.' We just don't accept that." In order to double its revenues in a five-year period, the company had to adapt its execution-obsessed culture to new demands. In fact, Michael Dell and CEO Kevin Rollins realized they had a crisis on their hands."We had a very visible group of employees who'd gotten rich from stock options," Rollins says. "You can't build a great company on employees who say, 'If you pay me enough, I'll stay.'" Dell and Rollins knew they had to reignite the spirit of the company. They implemented an employee survey, whose results led to the creation of the Winning Culture initiative, now a top operating priority at Dell. They also defined the Soul of Dell: Focus on the customer, be open and direct in communications, be a good global citizen, have fun in winning. It turned outto be a huge motivator. And they increased the focus on developing people within the company. "We've changed as individuals and as an organization," Rollins says. "We want the world to see not just a great financial record and operational performance but a great company. We want to have leaders that other companies covet. We want a culture that makes people stick around for reasons other than money."     

Playing by the rules. How Intel avoids antitrust litigation.

Microsoft and Intel are both obvious targets for antitrust litigation; both wield considerable control in their respective segments of the computer industry. But while Mircrosoft has been mired in court for years now--its name and business practices dragged through the mud, and its very future as a single company thrown into doubt--Intel has avoided a prolonged, high-profile antitrust case. Intel's success is not a matter of luck. The company's antitrust compliance program, refined over many years, has been an integral element in the chip maker's business strategy. In this article, the authors suggest that Intel's approach to compliance provides a valuable model for any enterprise that may come under regulators' scrutiny. They describe how Intel created extremely conservative antitrust compliance standards and then instituted a series of unique training events that had active support from then--CEO Andy Grove and others in senior management. First, live training -- not just instructional pamphlets or videos -- was given to all affected employees. Those classes were followed by customized training programs for different parts of the company. Then, to drive antitrust awareness deeper into the company's memory, Intel carried out random audits of employees' files and conducted mock depositions. "It's fascinating to see," Grove says. "A memo is introduced into evidence and you shrug. You fully understand how that memo could be written. Moreover, you could have written it yourself. And then you see that memo turned into a tool and a weapon against you, in front of your eyes." Intel recognizes that no matter how cautious it is, it will always face extraordinary scrutiny as a market leader. But "since antitrust is embedded in everything we do," Grove says, "we can control our destiny."     

A time for growth: an interview with Amgen CEO Kevin Sharer. Interview by Paul Hemp

Fast growth is a nice problem to have--but a hard one to manage well. In this interview, Kevin Sharer, the CEO of biotech giant Amgen, talks about the special challenges leaders face when their companies are on a roll. Sharer, who was also head of marketing at pre-WorldCom MCI and a division head and a staff assistant to Jack Welch at GE, offers insights drawn from his own experience--and from his own self-proclaimed blunders: "I learned the hard way that you need to become credible and enlist support inside the company before you start trying to be a change agent. If you think you're going to make change happen simply by force of personality or position or intellect, you'd better think again." And change there was: Under Sharer's leadership, Amgen overhauled its management team, altered its culture, and launched a couple of blockbuster products. How do chief executives survive in that kind of dizzying environment? "A CEO must always be switching between different altitudes--tasks of different levels of abstraction and specificity," Sharer says. "You might need to spend time working on a redesign of your organizational structure and then quickly switch to drafting a memo to all employees aimed at reinforcing one of the company's values." Having a supportive and capable top team is also key: "A top management team is the most revealing window into a CEO's style, values, and aspirations.... If you don't have the right top team, you won't have the right tiers below them. [The] A players won't work for B players. Maybe with a company like GE, the reputation of the company is so strong that it can attract top people to work for weaker managers. In a new company like Amgen, that won't happen."     

Selling the brand inside

When you think of marketing, chances are your mind goes right to your customers--how can you persuade more people to buy whatever it is you sell? But there's another "market" that's equally important: your employees. Author Colin Mitchell argues that executives by and large ignore this critical internal audience when developing and executing branding campaigns. As a result, employees end up undermining the expectations set by the company's advertising--either because they don't understand what the ads have promised or because they don't believe in the brand and feel disengaged or, worse, hostile toward the company. Mitchell offers three principles for executing internal branding campaigns--techniques executives can use to make sure employees understand, embrace, and "live" the brand vision companies are selling to the public. First, he says, companies need to market to employees at times when the company is experiencing a fundamental challenge or change, times when employees are seeking direction and are relatively receptive to new initiatives. Second, companies must link their internal and external marketing campaigns; employees should hear the same messages that are being sent to the market-place. And third, internal branding campaigns should bring the brand alive for employees, creating an emotional connection to the company that transcends any one experience. Internal campaigns should introduce and explain the brand messages in new and attention-grabbing ways and then reinforce those messages by weaving them into the fabric of the company. It is a fact of business, writes Mitchell, that if employees do not care about or understand their company's brands, they will ultimately weaken their organizations. It's up to top executives, he says, to give them a reason to care.     

Is your company ready for one-to-one marketing?

One-to-one marketing, also known as relationship marketing, promises to increase the value of your customer base by establishing a learning relationship with each customer. The customer tells you of some need, and you customize your product or service to meet it. Every interaction and modification improves your ability to fit your product to the particular customer. Eventually, even if a competitor offers the same type of service, your customer won't be able to enjoy the same level of convenience without taking the time to teach your competitor the lessons your company has already learned. Although the theory behind one-to-one marketing is simple, implementation is complex. Too many companies have jumped on the one-to-one band-wagon without proper preparation--mistakenly understanding it as an excuse to badger customers with excessive telemarketing and direct mail campaigns. The authors offer practical advice for implementing a one-to-one marketing program correctly. They describe four key steps: identifying your customers, differentiating among them, interacting with them, and customizing your product or service to meet each customer's needs. And they provide activities and exercises, to be administered to employees and customers, that will help you identify your company's readiness to launch a one-to-one initiative. Although some managers dismiss the possibility of one-to-one marketing as an unattainable goal, even a modest program can produce substantial benefits. This tool kit will help you determine what type of program your company can implement now, what you need to do to position your company for a large-scale initiative, and how to set priorities.     

Bottom-feeding for blockbuster businesses

Marketing experts tell companies to analyze their customer portfolios and weed out buyer segments that don't generate attractive returns. Loyalty experts stress the need to aim retention programs at "good" customers--profitable ones- and encourage the "bad" ones to buy from competitors. And customer-relationship-management software provides ever more sophisticated ways to identify and eliminate poorly performing customers. On the surface, the movement to banish unprofitable customers seems reasonable. But writing off a customer relationship simply because it is currently unprofitable is at best rash and at worst counterproductive. Executives shouldn't be asking themselves, How can we shun unprofitable customers? They need to ask, How can we make money off the customers that everyone else is shunning? When you look at apparently unattractive segments through this lens, you often see opportunities to serve those segments in ways that fundamentally change customer economics. Consider Paychex, a payroll-processing company that built a nearly billion-dollar business by serving small companies. Established players had ignored these customers on the assumption that small companies couldn't afford the service. When founder Tom Golisano couldn't convince his bosses at Electronic Accounting Systems that they were missing a major opportunity, he started a company that now serves 390,000 U.S. customers, each employing around 14 people. In this article, the authors look closely at bottom-feeders--companies that assessed the needs of supposedly unattractive customers and redesigned their business models to turn a profit by fulfilling those needs. And they offer lessons other executives can use to do the same.     

The customer has escaped

Every company makes choices about the channels it will use to go to market. Traditionally, the decision to sell through a discount superstore or a pricey boutique, for instance, was guided by customer demographics. A company would identify a target segment of buyers and go with the channel that could deliver them. It was a fair assumption that certain customer types were held captive by certain channels--if not from cradle to grave, then at least from initial consideration to purchase. The problem, the authors say, is that today's customers have become unfettered. As their channel options have proliferated, they've come to recognize that different channels serve their needs better at different points in the buying process. The result is "value poaching." For example, certain channels hope to use higher margin sales to cover the cost of providing expensive high-touch services. Potential customers use these channels to do research, then leap to a cheaper channel when it's time to buy. Customers now hunt for bargains more aggressively; they've become more sophisticated about how companies market to them; and they are better equipped with information and technology to make advantageous decisions. What does this mean for your go-to-market strategy? The authors urge companies to make a fundamental shift in mind-set toward designing for buyer behaviors, not customer segments. A company should design pathways across channels to help its customers get what they need at each stage of the buying process--through one channel or another. Customers are not mindful of channel boundaries--and you shouldn't be either. Instead, they are mindful of the value of individual components in your channels--and you should be, too.     

The perfect message at the perfect moment

Marketers planning promotional campaigns ask questions to boost the odds that the messages will be accepted: Who should receive each message? What should be its content? How should we deliver it? The one question they rarely ask is, when should we deliver it? That's too bad, because in marketing, timing is arguably the most important variable of all. Indeed, there are moments in a customer's relationship with a business when she wants to communicate with that business because something has changed. If the company contacts her with the right message in the right format at the right time, there's a good chance of a warm reception. The question of "when" can be answered by a new computer-based model called "dialogue marketing," which is, to date, the highest rung on an evolutionary ladder that ascends from database marketing to relationship marketing to one-to-one marketing. Its principle advantages over older approaches are that it is completely interactive, exploits many communication channels, and is "relationship aware": that is, it continuously tracks every nuance of the customer's interaction with the business. Thus, dialogue marketing responds to each transition in that relationship at the moment the customer requires attention. Turning a traditional marketing strategy into a dialogue-marketing program is a straightforward matter. Begin by identifying the batch communications you make with customers, then ask yourself what events could trigger those communications to make them more timely. Add a question or call to action to each message and prepare a different treatment or response for each possible answer. Finally, create a series of increasingly urgent calls to action that kick in if the question or call to action goes unanswered by the customer. As dialogue marketing proliferates, it may provide the solid new footing that Madison Avenue seeks.     

Interview God

"Come in,"God said to me,"so,you would like to interview Me?" "If you have the time."I said. He smiled through His beard and said:"My time is called eternity and is enough to do everything;what questions do you have in mind to ask me?" "None that are new to you.What's the one thing that surprises you most about mankind?"     

Defensive marketing: how a strong incumbent can protect its position

There has been a lot of research on marketing as an offensive tactic-how it can help companies successfully launch new products, enter new markets, or gain share with existing products in their current markets. But for nearly every new product launch, market entrant, or industry upstart grabbing market share, there is an incumbent that must defend its position. And there has been little research on how these defenders can use marketing to preemptively respond to new or anticipated threats. John H. Roberts outlines four basic types of defensive marketing strategies: positive, inertial, parity, and retarding. With the first two, you establish and communicate your points of superiority relative to the new entrant; with the second two, you establish and communicate strategic points of comparability with your rival. Before choosing a strategy, you need to assess the weapons you have available to protect your market position-your brand identity, the products and services that support that identity, and your means of communicating it. Then assess your customers' value to you and their vulnerability to being poached by rivals. The author explains how Australian telecommunications company Telstra, facing deregulation, used a combination of the four strategies (plus the author's customer response model) to fend off market newcomer Optus. Telstra was prepared, for instance, to reach deep into its pockets and engage in a price war. But the customer response model indicated that a parity strategy-in which Telstra would offer lower rates on some routes and at certain times of day, even though its prices, on average, were higher than its rival's-was more likely to prevent consumers from switching. Ultimately, Telstra was able to retain several points of market share it otherwise would have lost. The strategies described here, though specific to Telstra's situation, offer lessons for any company facing new and potentially damaging competition.     

High tech the old-fashioned way. An interview with Tom Siebel of Siebel Systems. Interview by Bronwyn Fryer

There is a growing awareness among corporations that the quality of the customer experience they provide directly affects their bottom line. Many are turning to high-flying software maker Siebel Systems for help in managing those relationships. The young company holds a leadership position in an explosive market-enterprise application software. But customer satisfaction, not dot-com chic, is foremost on the mind of Siebel Systems' founder, chairman, and CEO, Tom Siebel. The buttoned-down Siebel rejects the freewheeling management style and culture that characterize many Silicon Valley companies. As the former CEO of Gain Technology and a former executive at Oracle, Siebel believes in putting customers ahead of technology, discipline ahead of inspiration. In this interview, conducted at the company's San Mateo, California, headquarters, Siebel describes how this obsessive focus on customer satisfaction has been the driving force behind the company's success. He talks about how the organization remains true to its core values: a deep commitment to providing customer satisfaction; responsible fiscal practices that have created a cash-positive business amid today's cash-negative dot-coms; and general professionalism. "The notion of dressing in jeans and a T-shirt to greet the CEO of a major financial institution who just got off the plane from Munich is not acceptable," he says. Siebel Systems rejects the concept of going to war with rivals; instead, the CEO says, the company has forged an ecosystem of partnerships that allows it to support and integrate its own systems with other companies' software products and ultimately ease the customer's software installations. Indeed, Siebel says, the CEO's most important job is to understand what customers need and deliver that.     

How to restore the fiduciary relationship. An interview with Eliot Spitzer. Interview by Louise O'Brien

Eliot Spitzer's investigations into the mutual fund and investment-banking industries have made the New York State attorney general the de facto flag bearer of corporate reform. His exposure of conflicts of interest between investment bankers and research analyst in Wall Street firms led to the $1.4 billion global settlement between regulators and banking houses in 2003. In this interview, Spitzer describes the challenge of protecting public markets from conflicts of interest, paying particular attention to how such conflicts get institutionalized in an industry. "The cases that have gotten me and my fellow regulators most upset are the ones where we've seen senior management being tolerant of rank abuses," he says. "Because then you know that the entire structure is rotten." He also points the finger squarely at boards, maintaining that board members are drawn from pools of company and industry insiders. He cites "a void in values in a lot of boardrooms," holding up executive compensation as a powerful example. "Board compensation committees ... are self-selected and interwoven--it's a rigged marketplace." He continues, "It would be interesting to see what the world would look like if CEO pay packages had to be submitted to shareholder votes." Spitzer suggests that what's really needed is for all business leaders to reinstill throughout their organizations the critical notion of a fiduciary duty--whether it is to the shareholder or to the customer. Using the mutual fund industry as an example, he also contrasts the value of enforcement with that of regulation and articulates an important--and surprisingly limited--role for government in protecting free markets.     

How CEOs manage growth agendas

When does it make sense for companies to grow from within? When is it better to gain new capabilities or access to markets by merging with or acquiring other companies? When should you sacrifice the bottom line in order to nurture the top line? In a thought-provoking series of essays, five executives--Kenneth Freeman of Quest Diagnostics, George Nolen of Siemens USA, John Tyson of Tyson Foods, Kenneth Lewis of Bank of America, and Robert Creifeld of Nasdaq--describe how they have approached top-line growth in various leadership roles throughout their careers. They write candidly about their struggles and successes along the way, relaying growth strategies as diverse as the companies and industries they represent. The leaders' different tactics have almost everything to do with their companies' particular strengths, weaknesses, and needs. Freeman, for instance, emphasizes the importance of knowing when to put on the brakes. When he first became CEO of Quest, he froze acquisitions for a few years so the company could focus on internal processes and "earn the right to grow." But for Greifeld, it's all about innovation, which "shakes up competitive stasis and propels even mature businesses forward." The executives agree, though, that companies can grow (and can do so profitably) by distinguishing their offerings from those of other organizations. As Ranjay Gulati of Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management points out in his introduction to the essays, no matter what strategies are in play,"it's important to remember that growth comes in many forms and takes patience.... The key is to be ready to act on whatever types of opportunities arise."     

Capitalizing on capabilities

By making the most of organizational capabilities--employees' collective skills and fields of expertise--you can dramatically improve your company's market value. Although there is no magic list of proficiencies that every organization needs in order to succeed, the authors identify 11 intangible assets that well-managed companies tend to have: talent, speed, shared mind-set and coherent brand identity, accountability, collaboration, learning, leadership, customer connectivity, strategic unity, innovation, and efficiency. Such companies typically excel in only three of these capabilities while maintaining industry parity in the other areas. Organizations that fall below the norm in any of the 11 are likely candidates for dysfunction and competitive disadvantage. So you can determine how your company fares in these categories (or others, if the generic list doesn't suit your needs), the authors explain how to conduct a "capabilities audit," describing in particular the experiences and findings of two companies that recently performed such audits. In addition to highlighting which intangible assets are most important given the organization's history and strategy, this exercise will gauge how well your company delivers on its capabilities and will guide you in developing an action plan for improvement. A capabilities audit can work for an entire organization, a business unit, or a region--indeed, for any part of a company that has a strategy to generate financial or customer-related results. It enables executives to assess overall company strengths and weaknesses, senior leaders to define strategy, midlevel managers to execute strategy, and frontline leaders to achieve tactical results. In short, it helps turn intangible assets into concrete strengths.     

Turn customer input into innovation

It's difficult to find a company these days that doesn't strive to be customer-driven. Too bad, then, that most companies go about the process of listening to customers all wrong--so wrong, in fact, that they undermine innovation and, ultimately, the bottom line. What usually happens is this: Companies ask their customers what they want. Customers offer solutions in the form of products or services. Companies then deliver these tangibles, and customers just don't buy. The reason is simple--customers aren't expert or informed enough to come up with solutions. That's what your R&D team is for. Rather, customers should be asked only for outcomes--what they want a new product or service to do for them. The form the solutions take should be up to you, and you alone. Using Cordis Corporation as an example, this article describes, in fine detail, a series of effective steps for capturing, analyzing, and utilizing customer input. First come indepth interviews, in which a moderator works with customers to deconstruct a process or activity in order to unearth "desired outcomes." Addressing participants' comments one at a time, the moderator rephrases them to be both unambiguous and measurable. Once the interviews are complete, researchers then compile a comprehensive list of outcomes that participants rank in order of importance and degree to which they are satisfied by existing products. Finally, using a simple mathematical formula called the "opportunity calculation," researchers can learn the relative attractiveness of key opportunity areas. These data can be used to uncover opportunities for product development, to properly segment markets, and to conduct competitive analysis.     

In search of global leaders

For all the talk about global organizations and executives, there's no definitive answer to the question of what we really mean by "global." A presence in multiple countries? Cultural adaptability? A multilingual top team? We asked four CEOs and the head of an international recruiting agency--HSBC's Stephen Green, Schering-Plough's Fred Hassan, GE's Jeffrey-lmmelt, Flextronics's Michael Marks, and Egon Zehnder's Daniel Meiland--to tell us what they think. They share some common ground. They all agree, for example, that the shift from a local to a global marketplace is irreversible and gaining momentum. "We're losing sight of the reality of globalization. But we should pay attention, because national barriers are quickly coming down", Daniel Meiland says. "If you look ahead five or ten years, the people with the top jobs in large corporations ... will be those who have lived in several cultures and who can converse in at least two languages." But the CEOs also disagree on many issues--on the importance of overseas assignments, for instance, and on the degree to which you need to adhere to local cultural norms. Some believe strongly that the global leader should, as a prerequisite to the job, live and work in other countries. As Stephen Green put it, "If you look at the executives currently running [HSBC's] largest businesses, all of them have worked in more than one, and nearly all in more than two, major country markets." Others downplay the importance of overseas assignments. "Putting people in foreign settings doesn't automatically imbue new attitudes, and it is attitudes rather than experiences that make a culture global," says Fred Hassan. The executives' essays capture views that are as diverse and multidimensional as the companies they lead.     

The business against case revolution. An interview with Nestlé's Peter Brabeck. Interview by Sue Wetlaufer

One of the world's most enduring companies, Nestle epitomizes everything that today's high-flying, headline-grabbing companies are not. It respects technology but doesn't consider it central to strategy. It values growth but prefers it controlled. It seeks talented professionals but wants only those who are modest in word and deed. Nestle CEO Peter Brabeck is skeptical of the relentless push for radical transformation heard from every quarter. He believes, instead, in continuous improvement through slow and steady change. Big, dramatic change is fine for a crisis, Brabeck says, but not every company is in crisis all the time. Many companies are like Nestle--performing well, growing and innovating, without frenzy, without bloodshed. While he acknowledges that every company must change in order to compete in today's turbulent marketplace, Brabeck makes the focus of his work identifying and strengthening those aspects of Nestle that should stay the same. For example, Nestle eschews the noise and energy swirling around technology. Many companies make technology the focal point of strategy, Brabeck says, but Nestle is about people, products, and brands. The company uses technology to create better products but keeps it in its right place--the background. Brabeck also talks candidly about how to fight complacency in a successful company, how to institutionalize collaboration in a decentralized organization, and how to resist pressure from analysts and money managers and focus on long-term, sustainable and profitable growth--in short, how to win the war without the revolution.     

寿险营销渠道创新:直复营销模式在我国的应用

本文着重讨论直复营销这一创新销售模式于我国寿险业运用,并通过和传统营销模式的比较指出其优势,及我国寿险企业开展直复营销的前景与制约条件,旨在为寿险公司的营销渠道创新提供一些新思路.