Hermawan: Greg, I met you at your Public Seminar in Jakarta organized by Detik.com, Kompas.com and KapanLagi.com at Pacific Place. I was speaking before your session. Why did they bring you all the way from New York City?
Greg: Hermawan, yes I enjoyed our discussion and getting the chance to meet. I’d heard a lot about you. My reason for being in Jakarta was the major portals there, Detik, Kompass and Kapanlagi all believed that marketers in Indonesia were not using the online advertising medium to the degree they should. Abdul Rahman, President Director at Detik saw a presentation I’d given in New York late last year and he thought that information would be beneficial to marketers here.
Hermawan: In Jakarta you convinced everyone that all marketers must change the paradigm. What are the fundamental reasons behind your strong statement?
Greg:My book, What Sticks, was based on the innovative cross media research studies looking at the comparable economics of each medium for over 30 blue chip brands, such as P&G, J&J, Kraft, Ford, VW, Motorola, in EU and U.S. I believe it is the largest advertising research project in the world. In some cases, we measured change in brand impact, and in others we measured advertising’s impact on sales. We found that online advertising was undervalued and under-used by advertisers across the board. Advertisers were not getting as much competitive firepower as they could, and they are not capitalizing on fundamental changes in the media landscape.
Hermawan: Why do you spend so much time convincing people of the value of the online medium? Even in your book What Sticks, you spent several chapters to do the same thing. Do you think that it is really hard for marketers to adopt the new paradigm?
Greg: While I was CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau in the U.S., we did research on advertiser attitudes. I was shocked to find 65% of marketers view themselves as “Tried and True”. That suggests marketers are not as progressive as I thought and are not sufficiently able to react to the environment today.
I love the business of advertising and marketing. It’s been a lot of fun and I feel like I have made some differences for some brands. However, I am concerned that ad campaigns are not consistently as good as they could be. I’d like all advertisers to get more positive recognition for what they do.
Hermawan: What are the fundamental principles underlying your model in your book?
Greg: My co-author and I tried to capture the best from the 30 marketers in our study. Some of those marketers were very good, and others were not. One best practice is making sure everyone on the marketer’s team and at their agencies has a clear understanding of what defines success for the campaign. Is the goal sales? If so, then is that sales to new customers, existing customers, or others? Unfortunately in our research, we only found one marketer where that was true. You have little chance to hit the goal if you are not all aiming at the same thing. There are many “tricks” we learned and documented in the book.
Hermawan: I agree with you that nowadays marketers, especially CMOs, must be more accountable. The average tenure of CMO’s in US is even 18 months. Why?
Greg: That length of tenure supports what we found–results are too inconsistent and CMOs are wrong too often. Of the 30 campaigns we examined, 36% failed to develop a motivation that worked and 31% had a message that did not work. Overall, 47% of campaigns failed for one of those reasons. That’s a fairly high rate of breakdown. The truth is marketers are not being being victimized, they are fired because they are not getting the job done. They have mislead management as to how successful their campaigns will be (managing perceptions), or because they aren’t that good at consistently meeting goals (managing results).
Hermawan: People are talking about Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI). Every dollar and cent must be counted. Do you agree with that? How do you apply it in your model?
Greg: Absolutely! Marketers need to understand the value of each Rupiah spent. Simply put, if we don’t know if it’s working, then we don’t know how to optimize those monies. It’s just that simple.
Hermawan: What is the most crucial point when marketers want to apply your model?
Greg: I don’t know that I’d call it a model as much as a series of principles. One principle is we need to get the motivation right. Then we have to get the message right (meaning it has to work). Lastly, we have to optimize the media. Those are basic building blocks. We focus on these because so many are getting it wrong.
One of our important questions was: When do you know if something is wrong and what would you do about it? That means having a plan B. And having a plan B suggests you would know if plan A was working.
Hermawan: What are the supporting aspects marketers need to apply your model?
Greg: Really, you just need an open mind and the desire to use marketing to improve company performance, brand value, and, most important, to build your career. We found that those who commit to really making sure their marketing works benefit at all levels.
Hermawan: Greg, as I told you personally in Jakarta that I agreed with 99% of your book. However, I don’t agree that marketing is only marketing communication. Your comment, please.
Greg: I completely agree. We focused on advertising and marketing communications because we had unique insights based on the research and because we saw so much value to gain from getting it right. But you are right. Marketing is much more than that just marketing communications.
Hermawan: This the last question. After visiting Indonesia (for the first time) and meeting key marketing people, what is your impression of our level of marketing sophistication?
Greg: I had a great time in Jakarta and only wish I could have seen more of your country. I had many great dialogues about real issues of concern by media and marketers. I found that your country is very open to new thinking and new learning and figuring out the right thing to do. That, in my opinion, is the most important thing any industry could have. Thanks for your time Hermawan. I really enjoyed it.
