Back Seat Marketers

No doubt, these times are increasing the focus on value marketing. What is becoming more obvious is the need to increase the focus on ensuring that a company’s strategy has meaningful purpose beyond the financial statements.

What do I mean by purpose? Umair finally kicked me in the head on this one last week with his post on the 7 ways P.E. Obama has confirmed a real shift in strategy. If Google wants to organize the world’s information, then what is it that your company is going to do? Regardless of profit, Google can point to its successes in healthcare, government data and small business services and show an increase in user value. At a time when all businesses will shrink in some way or another next year, having non-growth measurements become critically important for morale.

Some non-growth strategic measurements: new product vitality, value creation v. substitutes, new product profits as a ratio of R&D, unaided brand awareness, customer service levels, and so many more.

If times are hard now, being motivated to do something great while hitting specific targets will at least mean feeling like we all have a worthwhile jobs to do. Honestly, the folks working in the mortgage and auto industries have to turn the corner here - they are not just salvaging shareholder profits, they are also restabilizing the financial base of our country and leaders in those companies need to offer reasons on why their people need to dig in and put in the extra effort.

Trust me, staring at all those red numbers in my 401K and IRA accounts isn’t getting anything productive done.