Richard Fouts
Research Vice President
2 years at Gartner
23 years IT industry
Richard Fouts guides digital marketers on best practices for evaluating and deploying emerging digital marketing techniques to ensure marketers make fully informed decisions about their marketing investments. With extensive experience in brand management and marketing communications ... Read Full Bio
by Richard Fouts | February 7, 2013 | Submit a Comment
Years ago, a man who loved music as much as anyone of his generation, began going deaf, just as he was becoming recognized as one of the world’s great composers. But he didn’t let his handicap interfere with his destiny. After losing over 90% of his hearing, he went on to compose one of the most famous symphonic works of all time. That man of course, was Ludwig van Beethoven. The symphony? His Ode to Joy.
Anyone who knows this story never forgets it. That’s because stories engage. Stories move us. Stories are how we learn.
A couple of years ago I called on several Indian software companies with my colleague Jennifer Beck. The CEO of one of these firms asked us to look at his ideas for refreshing his organization’s brand. After the second or third slide, Jennifer asked, “ Why do you bother to get out of bed and come to work every day? What moves you? What is the heart and soul of this company?” It was a memorable moment, because the client was speechless (stunned is more like it). There were a few more moments of awkward silence. So Jennifer tried again, with a tone that indicated she was quite serious about getting an answer. This time she slowed the pace of her usual rapid fire speech, asking in a near whisper: “Why do you bother?”
We went on to remind this client that brand is about memory (arguing that people rarely, if ever, remember bullet points on powerpoint slides; they do however, remember good stories).
When I asked the CEO of a Silicon Valley firm who was pitching a new chemical compound used to prevent heart attacks, I asked him Jennifer’s standard question. He said he was inspired to invent the compound following the premature death of his father, with whom he was very close. He went on to explain that in his grief, he kept seeing ways his father’s death could have been prevented. It took some coaxing, but he eventually agreed to make this part of his corporate story.
I don’t remember much about that company; but I remember the reasons that CEO bothers to get out of bed every day. Behind every good brand is a good story. A story of why you do – what you do. Mr. Beethoven, who never cared much about marketing, might have been a natural brand manager. When asked, “What do you do?” he responded, “I write music for the ages.”
Category: Brand awareness Digital Marketing Tags: digital marketing
by Richard Fouts | January 28, 2013 | 8 Comments
Real time marketing often conjures up scenarios of customer service issues posted on Twitter or YouTube, where an unhappy customer attempts to embarrass a company into fast action. But real time marketing goes far beyond microblogging.
The high-tech industry, with its many winner-take-all stories can be especially generous to providers that get there first. For example, those that perform well in analyst reports such as Magic Quadrants are often characterized by organizations that see opportunity, find an area where they can add customer value, then follow with a skillful mobilization of resources for fast execution. Leaders get there first.
What can we learn from these organizations?
Organizations that operate at customer speed … in ways that cause others to ask, “Why didn’t we think of that?” are the real time marketers. They are the type of digital marketers that realize speed is a trait available to anyone seeking business advantage. It starts with a burning desire to act more quickly, more nimbly. It means taking measured risks, and yes – granting people the freedom to suffer the occasional setback. For many organizations, this type of environment represents a major disruption. But it may indeed be worth the effort.
How did the term real time marketing evolve?
The speed at which everything is taking place has kicked off a new wave of thought leadership known as real time marketing. While it feels new, many of you might recall that Regis McKenna (considered the marketing guru of Silicon Valley) talked about real time marketing as early as 1995 with his HBR piece, “Real Time Marketing.”
The term “real time” (RT) traces back to engineering: applications that automatically trigger an instant response to an event (e.g, when the room temperature hits a defined threshold, the AC kicks on; or when a stock dips to a pre-defined price, a trade is triggered). These type of applications are often governed by operating systems (or operating environments) – optimized to serve real time requests.
Of course, marketers have taken some creative license with the term. While cases of true real time marketing do exist, particularly in sales (airlines use of dynamic pricing for example) real time marketing doesn’t imply knee-jerk response to every market event that happens along. The real time marketer rather, is one that readies the organization for speed, agility and rapid response to unplanned events – within time frames that can impact business advantage. It means having a process for discerning which events require fast response and which don’t. But it also means having a proactive environment for rapid response, where you’re the one putting competitors (that still operate on their own timetables) on the defense.
Hence, real time marketing is designed to avoid threats (escalating a customer service situation that is on the verge of becoming public) as well as opportunity (streamlining go-to-market strategies with digital techniques that cut out margin-adding middlemen).
What are some other examples?
Some scenarios illustrate common marketing and sales processes. When I request client references from company A, the turnaround is two weeks. Company B returns them in an hour – not from any extraordinary use of technology (other than a good customer reference application) but rather due to a marketing organization that puts value on turning things around fast (to secure a deal). Sure, technology helps, but the existence of an application doesn’t guarantee operational response; that’s something that occurs at a process and cultural level.
Real time marketing isn’t just applicable to sales and customer service situations. Another example is an agile product development process that commands premium prices for getting functionality out the door before competitors. It’s about shaping news stories as they happen (versus responding to them later). It’s about crowdsourcing a product development idea over days versus months, reading buying signals in real time as people interact with your web, or commenting on blogs where discussion about you is occurring.
How does an organization migrate to a culture of speed?
Becoming a more responsive organization doesn’t necessarily mean you’re facing a full scale transformation. If you’re part of an organization that runs on its own timetables (versus those of customers) and is missing out on opportunity due to lack of speed and agility, there are things you can do immediately to start turning things around. For example:
Create a list of the previous year’s Top 10 Firefighting Moments, where the lack of rapid response prevented you from achieving a specific business advantage through speed. Turn your focus to the top three.
Identify the inhibitors that prevented you from rapid response. Think about how you can re-engineer the process to eliminate the inhibitors. Many times, this stems from empowering marketing program managers with enough information to make their own well informed decisions. Or, it means giving people enough information and empowerment to make higher quality recommendations to senior management to enable rapid signoff.
Or, you can start even smaller. For example, TD Bank conducted a Kill a Stupid Rule contest where employees were asked to cite rules that add no customer value. Once the best idea was implemented, more followed resulting in much more streamlined, agile , responsive organization.
Keep in mind: real time marketing, as a set of priorities, processes and attitudes, won’t be realized with a large scale business transformation initiative that forces the issue. Those efforts usually fail because they try to deal with too much, and they often fight well established culture norms that need to handled more delicately. A more measured approach that leads by example is usually the better way to go.
So build your top ten firefighting moments. Pick three (or even one) that has the opportunity to create real business advantage. Re-design it for rapid response, test it, measure the results, and let me know how you do.
Category: Digital Marketing Tags: Real time marketing
by Richard Fouts | January 24, 2013 | 1 Comment
In an old Seinfeld episode, George laments he does virtually everything wrong. Jerry has some simple advice, “Start doing the opposite.” With marketing pundits all saying, “marketing has been tipped on its head from digital” is there some weird truth in this advice from a comedian?
Jerry’s advice for George starts to make sense when we note the many marketing processes that have switched gears. They started picking up speed of course, when search-enabled, socially networked buyers took charge – seeking advice about what to buy, not from marketers, but from their peers (who as it turns out, they trust the most).
For many digital marketers:
• Graphic design has become experience design
• Inbound marketing is outperforming outbound
• Marketing monologue is out; two way dialogue is in
• Physical events are being replaced by virtual events
• Reach is out, Relevance is in
• Buyer profiles have morphed into buyer personas
• It’s not about who we know, rather what we’re willing to share
• Historical analysis is often supplanted with real time analysis
• Customer adversaries become customer advocates
The list continues (maybe you’d like to add to it). The fire behind this movement became unstoppable as power rapidly shifted from seller – to buyer. Now that customers are empowered with search and social, they don’t need marketing and sales people the way they used to. This challenges everything marketers do of course, but it also creates a different type of opportunity.
With customers doing just about everything online, data driven marketing becomes more science than art. As Adam Sarner notes in his recent post, customers leave breadcrumbs behind them, showing marketers what they are doing, where they are doing it, and who they are doing it with. Many willingly lend information about themselves, knowing that their gift to us will create more relevant offers, that don’t waste their time.
So as you go through your marketing plan, think about Jerry’s advice. Where should you be “doing the opposite?”
Category: Digital Marketing Tags: digital marketing
by Richard Fouts | December 12, 2012 | 3 Comments
Dear digital marketers,
This letter is especially for those of you who are lined up in my inquiry queue with the question, “Why isn’t my CEO buying my social media strategy?” It’s simple. The CEO cares about his/her strategy first, not yours. For example:
Is your CEO focused on growth? If your organization’s growth strategy for example, focuses on acquiring new customers in new markets - show your CEO how social media tactics can raise awareness (and generate qualified leads) in target sectors where you’re not known. Social media doesn’t replace your current brand awareness plan, but it sure as heck offers some great tactics to help it along (that don’t cost a lot of money).
Do you want to retain more customers? If you’re like most organizations, an improvement in retention is always a welcome change. Why? One famous study from the US Chamber of Commerce shows that a 2% increase in retention is the equivalent of a 10% reduction in costs. Socially-enabled customer communities offer great tactics for adding value to customers (that encourage them to stay). You should also check out Jenny Sussin’s research on this topic)
Do you want to be more competitive? By offering products that are more relevant than your competitor? And – do you want to take those products to market faster? The social web is a giant focus group that is always on, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It’s ready to give you insight into the products your customers are ready and willing to buy (at a premium, if you get them to market fast enough). Show your CEO which of your social media tactics inform the product road map – often more quickly than traditional techniques (that cost a lot more money and take a lot more time).
Do you want to compete on service? Show the CEO how the social web, particularly blogging and microblogging, can extend your service strategy. Share success stories like @ComcastCares. Social media doesn’t supplant a good customer service organization by any means, but it offers tactics that help you better serve your customers while showing them that you care. Social media tactics have also been successful at turning customer complaints into positive PR opportunities.
Do you want to sell to customers as markets of one? Check out Andrew Frank’s post on this topic. This powerful tactic, initiated by Peppers and Rogers a couple of decades ago, was instrumental in a recent presidential election where social networks played a huge role. Were Bill Clinton running today, the banner in his campaign headquarters would likely read: It’s about the data, stupid.
I could crawl through your entire business strategy, but hopefully you get the picture. If you tell your social media story within the framework of your CEO’s goals, vision, and passions – I promise you’ll initiate some good conversation (which in itself, illustrates what social media is all about).
If you agree (or not), let’s talk. Leave me a comment and I’ll respond in 2013.
Category: Digital Marketing Marketing Strategy Tags: digital marketing
by Richard Fouts | December 5, 2012 | 1 Comment
This is a guest post from Jake Sorofman, our newest analyst at Gartner for Marketing Leaders. Jake’s many talents include marketing management (he was the CMO at rPath), product and market strategy, communications and digital marketing.
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The waning weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are the high season for merchants—of both product and opinion. For retailers, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are holiday spirit in full tilt. But for the industry watchers among us, holiday tidings are found in our round-ups, retrospectives and predictions.
On Monday, stock-picker turned venture capitalist Mary Meeker presented her annual “Internet Trends Year-End Report,” which highlights mobile computing as the heat source that’s catalyzing global Internet adoption. You can see the complete version of her report here.
According to Meeker, while iPod redefined an entire industry and iPhone ramped even faster, iPad is a fiery comet hurdling through the sky, eclipsing iPhone adoption rates by 3X.
Why? Plenty can be said about smart branding, product design and a vibrant ecosystem. But what’s perhaps less obvious is the way the tablet has quickly insinuated itself into our lives as the so-called “second screen,” which provides plenty of value in and of itself, but even more value when used in conjunction with other media. According to Nielsen, 45% of US tablet owners use their devices at least once a day in concert with TV. This secondary benefit has become a primary use case, creating tremendous opportunities for marketers looking to bridge the gap between diverse and heretofore disconnected media to create integrated, ensemble brand experiences and commerce opportunities.
Speaking of mobile commerce, Meeker reports that 24% of Black Friday retail spending was rung in via tablets and other mobile devices. It’s a strong indicator that mobile commerce is off to the races, which should put even the scrooges among us in the most festive of holiday spirit.
My prediction? Mobile commerce will be one of next year’s bright and shining stars. Look for substantial thinking on this topic as part of our 2013 research agenda, where we’ll help marketers understand how to bridge the gap between diverse online and offline experiences using mobility as the connective tissue.
In the meantime, as the clock runs down on 2012, usher in the holiday spirit with an appetite for and heaping helpings of your own opinion on what the future holds. After all, it’s part of our holiday tradition.
Jake Sorofman, Research Director, Gartner for Marketing Leaders
Category: Digital Marketing Tags: digital marketing
by Richard Fouts | October 18, 2012 | 2 Comments
If I held a party for the participating providers of our recently published Magic Quadrant for Global Digital Marketing Agencies it would prove to be a rather diverse, even eccentric bunch of people. The most common question I’d get: “Since when do IBM and Accenture compete with Wunderman and Ogilvy? And wait a minute – who are those guys from Portland? Aren’t they from Wieden+Kennedy? And who are those people from Meredith? Aren’t they publishers?”
All fair questions – and easy to answer. The technology types are moving onto the creative turf – and the creative types are becoming more geekish. Two providers, MXM and iCrossing – are owned by media companies. R/GA, with roots in advertising, brand and film production – has actively hired management consultants and ideation engineers, putting them on RFP lists alongside McKinsey, BCG — and Frog Design.
Digital marketing agencies are keen to become the ultimate right-brain-left-brain operation - a trend that’s been going on since the turn of the century, but one that has especially heated up in the past few years.
That’s because agencies no longer simply pair copywriters with illustrators. iCrossing for example, has a media lab in New York City that teams screenwriters with UX engineers – and storytellers with mobile app developers (to create experiences for banks, insurance companies – and rock ‘n roll musicians). Wieden+Kennedy, famous for its out-of-the-box ideation, now leads tech movements with its Portland Incubator and India Tube projects. The mother of technology, IBM, delivers creative services for demanding clients such as Wimbledon, Tiffany & Company, and My Coke Rewards. Razorfish teams its UX engineers with business strategists to help Delta Airlines executives solve business problems they wouldn’t have forseen five years ago. Technologists at SapientNitro help customers at Bed, Bath and Beyond visualize how various configurations of products will come together in their homes – while AKQA works with Audi to develop the “fifth screen.”
It’s nexus of forces at work as social, information, cloud and mobile join to create the ultimate user experience. But in a digital world where information is always available and always on – the providers must deliver more than great creative that users will want to look at. To win awards and win business they need to deliver interactive brand experiences that customers will want to talk about – and share.
It’s a party you won’t want to miss, especially if you’re a marketing executive that hires external agencies to help you create the big idea.
Click here to read the entire document
Category: Uncategorized Tags: digital marketing
by Richard Fouts | October 7, 2012 | 1 Comment
When you combine the social nature of shopping with information, cloud and mobile (aka, the nexus of forces) you have the next big thing: social commerce.
In fact, I believe social commerce is what is unleashing the commerce everywhere phenomena.
Of course, the idea behind social commerce is hardly new, going back to Sunday afternoons on the Parthenon in ancient Greece – to the modern day Tupperware party. The latter, illustrates a social event that is very deliberate in its pairing with shopping (which, by the way, can get rather competitive). As soon as someone buys that latest ingenious Tupperware solution to a nagging problem we’ve all experienced in the kitchen for years – several other party participants (not to be outshone) pull out their wallet (whether they need the product or not).
Competitive shopping is the attribute behind the wildly successful home shopping network. Or consider my two sisters – who hate to shop alone, hence they go with each other – and often compete (whether they admit it or not) for the prize of who brings home the most number of shopping bags.
Millions of dollars might be spent on a clever ad campaign, but in the end it’s often the recommendation of a peer in a social environment that pushes us over the edge to buy. And it’s why creating an in-line shopping experience, while staying within our social network of choice has captured the imaginations of Facebook marketers. In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and predict that by 2017 5% sales of large CPG companies will come from socially-enabled commerce environments.
So, when I brag about my new Jag convertible on Facebook, it just may initiate a sale or two from one of my friends that, not to be outshone, has been eyeing a Bentley. And, of course, somewhere in that scenario is an opportunity for a game-based marketing idea.
As a digital marketer, all you need is an Internet connection and a good dose of imagination.
Category: Digital Marketing Tags: commerce everywhere, digital marketing, ecommerce, mcommerce, social commerce
by Richard Fouts | October 1, 2012 | Submit a Comment
Colleague Jackie Fenn once told me to watch Hollywood sci-fi stories to get a peek at the future. After all, Star Trek previewed the flip phone, Bluetooth, smartphone apps, and augmented reality as early as the 1970s.
Then came Minority Report, where smartphones got even smarter. You remember – Tom Cruise gets relevant offers the moment he steps foot into The Gap? If the film were made today, he’d see images of himself in several different outfits (that he’d listed on his wish list) the moment he steps in. He’d pick one of them up and simply walk out the door. No burglar alarms would go off of course, but his bank account would be automatically debited for the full amount well before he reached the parking lot.
This scenario isn’t too far off. I go into an Apple store, find a product, scan it, pay for it, and leave the store with no bag or receipt. When I visit Lola’s in Cleveland, I use my iPad to order everything. It even helps me compute the tip. No more “can I get a check please?” E-commerce meets brick ‘n mortar.
Some restaurants have had this mobile stuff in place for a while, for example Wagamama takes my order via my handheld and zaps it electronically to the kitchen. Now, retailers are catching up with what leaders in other industries have already been doing. Urban Outfitters CIO Calvin Hollinger for example just announced that his stores will switch from cash registers to Apple products, namely iPads on a swivel.
The business case for such a move is pretty good. Besides being cooler (no doubt a factor) iPads costs about a fifth the price of cash registers. Replacing them is also much easier (after all, they are widely available consumer products). The swiveled iPad lets customers see the screen as their transaction is processed. It also makes store employees more mobile, allowing a point of purchase to be made anywhere in the store.
The re-engineered retail experience rids the shopping experience of what I dislike most: waiting in a crowded line to check out.
Category: Digital Marketing Marketing Strategy Tags: digital marketing
by Richard Fouts | September 18, 2012 | 2 Comments
Real time marketing often conjures up scenarios of customer service issues posted on Twitter or YouTube, where an unhappy customer attempts to embarrass a company into fixing their problem fast. But real time marketing goes far beyond real time microblogging.
The high-tech industry, with its many winner-take-all stories can be especially generous to providers that get there first. For example, those that perform well in analyst reports such as Magic Quadrants are often characterized by organizations that see opportunity, find an area where they can add customer value, then follow with a skillful mobilization of resources for fast execution. Leaders get there first.
What can we learn from these organizations?
Organizations that operate at customer speed … in ways that cause others to ask, “Why didn’t we think of that?” are the real time marketers. They are the type of digital marketers that realize speed is a trait available to anyone seeking business advantage. It starts with a burning desire to act more quickly, more nimbly. It means taking measured risks, and yes – granting people the freedom to suffer the occasional setback. For many organizations, this type of environment represents a major disruption. But it may indeed be worth the effort.
How did the term real time marketing evolve?
The speed at which everything is taking place has kicked off a new wave of thought leadership known as real time marketing. While it feels new, many of you might recall that Regis McKenna (considered the marketing guru of Silicon Valley) talked about real time marketing as early as 1995 with his HBR piece, “Real Time Marketing.”
The term “real time” (RT) traces back to engineering: applications that automatically trigger an instant response to an event (e.g, when the room temperature hits a defined threshold, the AC kicks on; or when a stock dips to a pre-defined price, a trade is triggered). These type of applications are often governed by operating systems (or operating environments) – optimized to serve real time requests.
Of course, marketers have taken some creative license with the term. While cases of true real time marketing do exist, particularly in sales (airlines use of dynamic pricing for example) real time marketing doesn’t imply knee-jerk response to every market event that happens along. The real time marketer rather, is one that readies the organization for speed, agility and rapid response to unplanned events – within time frames that can impact business advantage. It means having a process for discerning which events require fast response and which don’t. But it also means having a proactive environment for rapid response, where you’re the one putting competitors (that still operate on their own timetables) on the defense.
Hence, real time marketing is designed to avoid threats (escalating a customer service situation that is on the verge of becoming public) as well as opportunity (streamlining go-to-market strategies with digital techniques that cut out margin-adding middlemen).
What are some other examples?
Some scenarios illustrate common marketing and sales processes. When I request client references from company A, the turnaround is two weeks. Company B returns them in an hour – not from any extraordinary use of technology (other than a good customer reference application) but rather due to a marketing organization that puts value on turning things around fast (to secure a deal). Sure, technology helps, but the existence of an application doesn’t guarantee operational response; that’s something that occurs at a process and cultural level.
Real time marketing isn’t just applicable to sales and customer service situations. Another example is an agile product development process that commands premium prices for getting functionality out the door before competitors. It’s about shaping news stories as they happen (versus responding to them later). It’s about crowdsourcing a product development idea over days versus months, reading buying signals in real time as people interact with your web, or commenting on blogs where discussion about you is occurring.
How does an organization migrate to a culture of speed?
Becoming a more responsive organization doesn’t necessarily mean you’re facing a full scale transformation. If you’re part of an organization that runs on its own timetables (versus those of customers) and is missing out on opportunity due to lack of speed and agility, there are things you can do immediately to start turning things around. For example:
Create a list of the previous year’s Top 10 Firefighting Moments, where the lack of rapid response prevented you from achieving a specific business advantage through speed. Turn your focus to the top three.
Identify the inhibitors that prevented you from rapid response. Think about how you can re-engineer the process to eliminate the inhibitors. Many times, this stems from empowering marketing program managers with enough information to make their own well informed decisions. Or, it means giving people enough information and empowerment to make higher quality recommendations to senior management to enable rapid signoff.
Or, you can start even smaller. For example, TD Bank conducted a Kill a Stupid Rule contest where employees were asked to cite rules that add no customer value. Once the best idea was implemented, more followed resulting in much more streamlined, agile , responsive organization.
Keep in mind: real time marketing, as a set of priorities, processes and attitudes, won’t be realized with a large scale business transformation initiative that forces the issue. Those efforts usually fail because they try to deal with too much, and they often fight well established culture norms that need to handled more delicately. A more measured approach that leads by example is usually the better way to go.
So build your top ten firefighting moments. Pick three (or even one) that has the opportunity to create real business advantage. Re-design it for rapid response, test it, measure the results, and let me know how you do.
NOTE: This blogpost is an overview of a series we intend to publish on real time marketing in Gartner for Marketing Leaders. The second note in the series “Readying the Organization.”
Category: Digital Marketing Tags: digital marketing
by Richard Fouts | September 10, 2012 | 4 Comments
Gartner’s annual marketing budget research with high-tech providers found increased budgets in every type of provider, in every geography, and every size of provider.
Conducted in August, 2012 with 383 providers (hardware, software, IT professional services, communications services and semiconductor companies) in the U.S., Europe and Asia Pacific, highlights of the research include:
One-third of providers are planning to spend over 8% of revenue on marketing in 2013. 15% of providers are planning to spend over 10% of revenue on marketing in 2013.
- The average 2013 marketing budget shows a 13% increase over the 2012 average.
- 2013 marketing budgets are increasing for 44% of providers, flat for 47%, and decreasing for 9%. However the net change from 2012 represents an increase across all provider types.
- Providers with greater than $1B in revenue are increasing their 2013 marketing budgets more than smaller providers.
- China and India-based providers lead the 2013 marketing budget increases.
- The average provider marketing budget has increased from 3.7% of revenue in 2010 to 6.2% in 2013, but high-tech providers’ marketing budgets still lag those of other industries.
- Three-quarters of providers have their own capital budget, and 85% control it within marketing.
- 40% of providers have a capital budget of over $1 million; 15% of them have a capital budget over $10 million.
- One-third of spending on marketing technology is for capitalized software and infrastructure; two-third is for services.
Colleague Laura McLellan believes even the average 6.2% of revenue providers say they plan for 2013 is understated, with additional “shadow” marketing spending occuring in the regions and in other functions.
Check out our free webinar “Planning 2013 Marketing Budgets” to be held on Tuesday, September 11th at 11 AM EDT.
Look for detail in the forthcoming series of reports, starting with “Marketing Essentials: High-Tech and Communications Provider Marketing Budgets, 2013” to be published in October.
Register for the September 11th webinar here.
Category: Uncategorized Tags: digital marketing
