How big is your marketing vendor footprint? Without realizing it, your company may have an overload of marketing vendors.
You might find that you are dealing with one too many advertisers and not getting to interact with like-minded individuals, at least not on the level that you would prefer. It could also mean that you are spending a lot of resources on marketing rather than on actual sales. Additionally, you could be losing valuable data through the cracks, which hampers your ability to create a 360 degree view of consumers—one of the key benefits of experiential marketing.
This disconnect is driving many companies to consolidate their marketing vendors -- even major conglomerates like the food company Mars.
Mars is the company behind favorite brands such as M&M’s, Pedigree and Snickers. For years, its marketing was handled by three different companies, but all that is set to change. The conglomerate is looking to consolidate all its marketing under a single company -- and the reason might surprise you.
According to Adweek, Mars hopes to find a media partner that is able to unlock its data and analytics to plan and buy media more effectively.
“We want to make sure we keep pushing boundaries in how we reach our consumers; being quicker, bolder and more innovative with our choices in this ever-changing media landscape,” said Andrew Clarke, Mars chief marketing and customer officer.
“Data can play a crucial role here, both in providing us with new insights, but also with reinforcing our commitment to evidence-based marketing and investment.”
It’s a smart move because that data can be useful across its different brands—but vendor consolidation does require planning.
The big questions are:
To this end, the marketing world has come up with the innovative concept of building up centers of excellence.
Centers of excellence (CoE) are teams of individuals who carry with them different skills or represent various aspects of one characteristic function of the business.
Every faculty of a business or a company is subdivided into other smaller classifications of tasks, each usually with different goals and requirements. Varying ideas and methods of working effectively can arise from each of these “sub-faculties” and can be leveraged in another area of the business.
Marketing is one such faculty.
If a company is truly invested in marketing, there are various actions they can take to optimize their ad campaigns. With software marketing, for instance, a center of excellence will focus on consumer experiences across multiple platforms.
Nestle is among the companies that seem to have gotten it right. The company implemented the use of personal channels and personalized marketing, which may have played significant roles in the success of Nestle's marketing campaigns over the past few years.
The task of establishing a comprehensive CoE is worth it, but it takes work. It involves a set of clear goals for the organization, analysis of different tasks that are run within the business, and determining how you can leverage resources from these processes and integrate them into others.
On top of all that, these methods must take part with the consumer in mind.
"A center of excellence provides visibility in the company about the idea of business process improvement, and helps the idea catch on in organizations that might otherwise be resistant to change," says Frank Castellucci, Axiom co-founder and managing partner.
Building a center of excellence requires a good planner, one who can take different parts of the business and determine a way to pool resources to ensure maximum returns.
Gail Glickman Horwood, SVP Integrated Marketing, is a good example. Over the years, she has worked with big companies such as Kellogg and Johnson & Johnson -- where she created a Global Center of Excellence. Her other achievements include leading Integrated Commercial Planning (ICP) and omnichannel marketing at Shopping Marketing Digital.
The story behind her implementing a successful campaign for centers of excellence involved setting up a pop-up store at Kellogg to observe and record the grievances of the consumer. She was instrumental in the creation of a Kellogg's pop-up shop that was supposed to run for a minimum of one year.
Consumers came in and had the chance of interacting with different products offered by Kellogg. Most reported that there weren't any digital touchpoints for people that hold back data for who those people were, why they were there and if they even cared, which led to a disinterest in the products.
Observations made from this type of research are what fuelled the need for CoE in businesses today. Centers of excellence have become platforms for companies to exercise uniformity and efficiency across every faculty within their industry.
The goal is no longer to merely preserve resources. There is a shift from individual hierarchies to networks of teams or CoE. Almost 40 percent of companies are organized this way according to Deloitte and more are adopting the structure every day because it works.
CoE makes leveraging ideas and results from previous campaigns to develop real insights easier. Companies can use these ideas to generate more efficient ways of marketing, producing, selling and even provisioning comprehensive consumer care. Ultimately, CoE involves consolidating vendors and cutting costs, creating internal efficiencies not experience vs transactional selling at the consumer level.
Traditional practices such as vendor marketing are becoming a thing of the past. They have proven to be a costly way of marketing that reduces the returns on investment for a company.
Centers of excellence are the way to go, providing not only a safe space for ideas to be introduced and developed, but also a place where, ironically, diversity is used to standardize processes for a company. As Castellucci explains, "If you’re doing it right, a CoE is keeping a knowledge library and being proactive about presenting ideas for constant process improvement."
Companies can avoid pitfalls and unnecessary losses by pulling together different minds and testing out how viable a particular operation is within the organization.
