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In an increasingly fast-moving world, marketers are required to make decisions where uncertainty dominates and they are under more pressure to succeed with limited budgets, resources and short-timelines.This presentation is based on a paper that explores the challenges, shortcomings and risks inherent in making strategic marketing decisions. It reviews recent research into decision-making and classifies the areas where decisions can go awry as either errors in framing the decision, errors in analysis and errors of judgment.
Citation preview
Improving marketing
decisions – 10
recommendations for
making better decisions
in an uncertain world
Battle of the Brands Seminar
August 2010
A marketing hypothetical…
• You are the Marketing Manager of a long standing established brand, founded 50
years ago on one main product
• That product is still the market leader, but has slowly lost market share from 60% to
now only 25% over the last decade, despite continuous investment in marketing
• The main competitor is growing market share and is now almost at parity (24%)
• Testing shows people prefer the #2 competitor to your product in blind-testing
• Substitutes are also growing, reducing the size of the category for you and the #2
competitor
• You’ve recently launched a new product in a substitute category and it has done very
well
• Using what you’ve learnt about what people like about the new product, undertake an
R&D program to see if you can make your old product better
• Product testing research shows that you can modify the original product and make it
vastly superior to both its original form and the #2 competitor
What would you do with the original
product?
1. Modify it and re-launch it as “new” and “improved”
2. Modify it and say nothing
3. Leave it in the original form and invest more heavily in advertising communications to rebuild share
4. Leave it in the original form and invest in trade promotions to rebuild share
5. Do nothing, directing investment away from the original product and toward the successful new product
6. Do something else
If you chose Option 1 - modify and
relaunch…
Congratulations, you just launched New Coke – one of the biggest marketing disasters of all time!
The marketing environment is more complex
than ever before
• Battle of the Brands Seminar
The squeeze is on!
When it all seems too hard…
Framing
Framing
Analysis
What is the rule that defines the relationship
between these numbers?
2 4 6
Judgment
Heads or tails?
10 ways of better
navigating
uncertainty
Framing recommendations
1. Accept uncertainty
2. Be decision-focused not data-
focused
3. Spell out the hypotheses that
underpin the
4. Don’t ignore executional risk
Analytic recommendations
5. Decrease feedback cycle times
6. Seek non-confirming evidence
(don’t ignore outliers)
7. Measure what you must, not
what you can
Judgment recommendations
8. Engage across your organisation
in forming judgment
9. Conduct a pre-mortem
10. Keep judgments independent
Case Study
ZARA
• Short-range forecasts
• Decision focus on
fabric more than
design
• Executional risk is the
priority
• Analysis to anticipate and analysis to react
• Live data feeds from retail systems
• Customer feedback and sales staff observation
• Detailed analysis of successes and failures
• Close proximity of
marketing,
commercial and
design teams
• Clear, consistent
decision processes
How does your gut feel?
“It would appear, Hopkins, that your gut feel was only indigestion”
Thank you!
To down-load a copy of our white paper on making better marketing
decisions, visit:
www.brandnavigator.com.au
To chat some more email me:
For regular updates, follow us:
@drharro
@Brand_navigator
