20 Ideas for marketers & agencies

By Steve Boehler

Can you imagine working daily with the smartest, most successful CEOs, CMOs, and marketers? Or interacting daily with the very best agencies in the world – of all sizes and shapes – and across all disciplines (creative, media, PR, digital, etc.).

That’s my job and I love it. I’ve learned a lot, seen a lot and had innumerable fascinating conversations along the way.

What are some of the most compelling ideas I’ve heard from these amazing partners?
Try any of the following ideas and principles on for size:
Leadership

• Serve. A hearty aspect of senior management is a focus on service: serve your people, customers, operations and key initiatives. Eliminate obstacles. Help the team succeed.
• Be kind. Nobody really wants to work for a jerk.
• Hire for potential and culture fit. The higher you go, the more time you should spend on hiring. This is one of the core ways you ensure competence and culture.
• Develop people on the job and in special training and workshops. Learning by doing is critical; deep knowledge and expertise comes from curiosity and other experts.
• Delegate authority to meet accountability.
• Create an environment where people can be self-confident in the context of teamwork.
• Build a system that insists on cross dissemination of ideas, knowledge, systems.
• Actively communicate and pay attention. Ask, ask, ask. Listen, listen, listen. Request, request, request. Follow up, follow up, follow up.
• Minimize staff. Get it done with operating people. Keep staff within the business unit when possible. Keep everyone accountable.
• Pay competitively while building a company employees love.

Product, Service & Marketing

• Invest continually in understanding the business you’re in, the customers you serve and your competition.
• Distinctiveness and likeability are the best strategies. Be distinctive and you’ll enhance memorability; be likeable (product, service, people, brand, advertising) and the revenue will follow. Distinctiveness is more important than “differentiation”. Likeability gives meaning to distinctiveness.
• Deep expertise is not optional. Marketers, for example, need to know what works best now, what may be changing and why. Agencies must be experts in their craft and continuously improving their knowledge, tactical excellence, capabilities and outcomes. Every function needs this mentality.
• “Profitable delivery of superior value” is the ideal focus.
• Drive to manufacture/operate/service at the lowest cost that allows superior value.
• Keep strategies actionable: the evolution of a simple important idea over time, not a lengthy action plan.
• Focus on the process and the product or service.
• Be practical about economics. It’s rare to increase market share and earnings at the same time.
• Be practical about R&D. It generally is of limited value if you have a small market share. Instead, live off the vendors and quick copy from the competitors.
• Basics needed to run a sustainable business:
  — Be market driven
  — A focus on the firm’s reputation
  — Quality culture
  — Quality processes
  — Concurrent focus on short term results and longer-term vision

About Author

Steve Boehler, founder, and partner at Mercer Island Group has led consulting teams on behalf of clients as diverse as Ulta Beauty, Microsoft, UScellular, Nintendo, Kaiser Permanente, Holland America Line, Stop & Shop, Qualcomm, Brooks Running, and numerous others. He founded MIG after serving as a division president in a Fortune 100 when he was only 32. Earlier in his career, Steve Boehler cut his teeth with a decade in Brand Management at Procter & Gamble, leading brands like Tide, Pringles, and Jif.