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A Brand Crisis Is A Terrible Thing To Waste . . . What’s Your Crisis Management Strategy?

Posted by Sheryl Pattek on November 19, 2012

While I’m not usually a political or news junkie, in looking at the activity of the past few weeks, it’s been quite a few weeks! It ranged from the saga of David Petraeus to the absurdity of a famed Nascar driver intentionally crashing a competitor (resulting in fist fights between the crews), brands' use of Twitter during Hurricane Sandy (the good and the not so good), and finally the culmination of BP pleading guilty to 14 criminal charges and paying a record $4.5 billion in fines and penalties resulting from the 2010 oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. Each of these stories highlights how important it is to have a strategy in place to protect your brand in times of crisis. While every one of these examples is interesting, in this post, I’ll concentrate on the insights we can gain from the Petreaus and BP incidents to manage brands effectively through a crisis. 

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Data Elected Our 44th President . . . B2B CMOs Must Make The Right Data Work For Them

Posted by Sheryl Pattek on November 9, 2012

No matter what your politics, from coast to coast, the country is breathing a sigh of relief that the 2012 election season is finally behind us. Already, quite a bit has been written about what marketers can learn from the election. So, in this post, I won’t be talking about the huge dollars spent on advertising, how social, digital, and mobile communication continued to be important touchpoints, the impact of grassroots marketing, or how important effectively communicating the candidate’s message or brand affected the outcome. No need for another political pundit in the mix!

While all of these areas have something to teach B2B marketers, what I found the most fascinating is how the use of data, the right data, served as the foundation for Obama’s successful re-election. Starting on election night, the analysts on the best-known news shows were already talking about how calm and confident the Obama team members were. And, why were they confident? According to Obama’s team, it had the data to back up its march to a second term. The team members believed that data and how they used it was one of the biggest advantages they had over the Romney campaign. Think about that for a minute. Obama, traditionally seen as the image and message guy, ran his re-election campaign based on using the right data effectively. And, it worked. 

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At The Starting Line . . .

Posted by Sheryl Pattek on November 8, 2012

Following a 25-year business-to-business (B2B) executive marketing career, I joined Forrester’s CMO & Marketing Leadership Team as VP, Principal Analyst, less than a month ago. And, what a month it’s been! A whirlwind of meeting other Forrester analysts, attending the Seizing Opportunity From Digital Disruption: A Forum For eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals in Chicago, leading a session on rebuilding brands at the CMO Club Summit in San Francisco, and meeting with as many CMOs and marketing leaders as I can.

I’m not sure exactly what I expected my first month to be like, but I will tell you that I’ve quickly learned that as CMOs, we all share strikingly common concerns that will form the basis of my research at Forrester. When asking what keeps you up at night, the CMOs I’ve met with so far from a variety of industries confirm my practitioner experience. We are all trying to effectively understand and respond to the significant marketplace and customer changes happening as we enter the always-connected and empowered age of the customer.  

With this in mind, over the next year, I will be exploring the following areas that have consistently emerged from my discussions with you:

  • Aligning marketing strategy to the newly empowered customers with an emphasis on understanding the buyer's journey.
  • Helping CMOs understand how to think about technology, make sense of the ever-expanding technology options, and then partner with their CIO to create a robust and flexible technology infrastructure for marketing.
  • Understanding the evolving role of the CMO and defining marketing organizational design and associated skill sets required for the future.
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Wal-Mart Uses Boxee TV To Accelerate Cord-Shaving

Posted by James McQuivey on November 1, 2012

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This week Wal-Mart announced that it would put significant weight behind the new Boxee TV box, a $99 set-top box that competes with the market-leading Apple TV and the runner-up Roku boxes. Wal-Mart also sells the Apple TV and Roku devices, so it might not seem like a big deal, but it is. Because Wal-Mart is going to promote Boxee TV with in-store displays and outbound marketing support. Why? Because in addition to the regular apps like Hulu, Netflix, and the rest, Boxee gives Wal-Mart customers three things they can't get from Apple or Roku:

  1. Regular TV shows from local broadcasters. Boxee's new box has a digital tuner that lets you tune to digital signals from ABC, CBS, CW, Fox, NBC, PBS, and Univision through either an over-the-air antenna or via ClearQAM. 
  2. Unlimited DVR. Not only will Boxee let you watch these channels, it is offering unlimited cloud DVR for $9.99 a month (in only the top eight markets for now) to record any shows from those networks, without managing a hard drive or paying extra if you want to store hours and hours of video.
  3. Multidevice viewing. This is the real coup for Boxee. Because its DVR is in the cloud, it can send your recorded content to any device you log in to -- whether it's in your home or in your hands while traveling for business. 
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