Transcript



Future of Work Series

Conversations with Global Thought Leaders

That Focuses on Lessons Learned in the Digital Trenches

July 26, 2012

Host: Welcome to the Future of Work series, which is an ongoing series of conversations with global thought leaders that focuses on lessons learned in the digital trenches and information to help you transform your organization to gain competitive advantage of the 21st Century. This show is proudly produced and sponsored by Human 1.0.

Scott K. Wilder: Hi, there this is Scott Wilder for The Future of Work Series. The Future of work uses practical information and tools for tomorrow’s practitioners. Today our guest is John Kennedy who is a fifteen-year veteran of IBM. He was a VP of Corporate Marketing, and he oversees all of IBM’s global branding and marketing programs. Before that John was with Proctor and Gamble where he worked in product management. In 2010 BtoB Magazine named him BtoB Marketer of the Year. So, John thanks for joining us today.

John Kennedy: My pleasure.

Scott K. Wilder: So, before we get into some of the discussion. I really would like to hear about your journey in terms of how you got to where you are today, and what were some of the key decision or turning points?

John Kennedy: Just to clarify is that in terms of IBM and what IBM is doing in the marketing space, or do you mean me personally?

Scott K. Wilder: Personally.

John Kennedy: Oh, me personally. Okay. I will do this fairly quickly because this may be the least interesting part of the conversation. Originally, I started my career in banking, believe it or not, way back in the very beginning. After business school, I made a decision to join Proctor and Gamble in packaged good marketing. I had the privilege of spending three – four years there in Cincinnati working on brands like Downy fabric softener and Spic and Span household cleaner and things like that. At one level that world in some ways can be seen so far removed from B2B technology, but fundamentally the basic principles of marketing are so true regardless of what you are marketing. That was a very defining experience in my career.

I joined IBM in their consumer division, which does not exist anymore. That took me through various parts of the company. I spent about half of my career in Asia working with parts of our business there. I have been in my current role for about four years.

Scott K. Wilder: Great, great. I always like to get some context of how people got to where they are. I am just going to jump right into things. I am really curious about your thoughts in terms of how the CMO should prepare for tomorrow? Your recent study indicated that only 48 percent feel like they are really prepared for the future. The second part of the question is what are some of the challenges or should they work with their counterpart the CIO?

John Kennedy: Those are two really great questions and both of them are grounded in these phenomena of the incredible amount of data and information that companies are confronted with. This is a result of IT moving from the back office to the front office of companies and the digitalization of the front office. This is how technology is increasingly influencing and sometimes is defining relationships companies have with their customers.

Increasingly, CMOs are finding themselves as the C-Suite leader being asked to convert mountains of increasingly

social data into valuable information for their companies in terms of how they can either create new relationships or enhance existing ones. This is a bit of a new role for the CMO. All of that then is being intensified by trends like social media, mobile marketing, and so forth.

So, it is against that backdrop that CMOs look out into the future and see this expanding responsibility, growing expectations, and new ways for their functions to contribute. Half of them say they are uncertain how to progress down that path. That is a hard thing to do and a simple thing to describe, but having some sense of place for how they should mature against this backdrop is really the first step and marketers need help doing that.

In most companies the CIO has had deep relationships with other disciplines like finance, HR, supply chain, etc. Marketers have always dabbled a bit in technology, but now as data technology and systems are becoming so critical to the success an the contribution of marketing, CMOs and CIOs need to develop a kind of understanding and partnership so that they can jointly build an IT or technology agenda that matures the marketing department’s capabilities. And importantly relative to this new expectation about interpreting the data and creating value in that information allows the marketer to deliver on that new expectation.

Scott K. Wilder: Are there companies that are doing this well? If you were putting a playbook together what would you recommend in terms of how to approach this?

John Kennedy: This is probably not surprising. Where we see the most maturity in this space is in industries like banking, telecommunications, and retail. These are highly transactional kinds of industries and also have very broad, extensive customer bases and have been some of the first to use technology to change the customer experience. We are seeing the most maturity there and as a result also some of the tightest relationships between CMOs and CIOs. I think other industries are watching those and learning from those. That is where we are seeing the best examples.

Scott K. Wilder: That is really interesting. One of the themes that has come up in these Future of Work interviews is that financial institutions, airlines, people with (Inaudible) sort of programs seem to be ahead of the curve of taking lifetime value and data intensive customer retention programs to the web because they have been

doing that for so long. Being based in Silicon Valley a lot of the companies here are just figuring out how to do that.

John Kennedy: The other thing that those industries are doing is that they are all increasingly very good at using data to understand their customers at the level of the person. It sort of speaks to one of the first big transformation points or

shifts we are seeing as a result of technology influencing marketing.

Scott K Wilder: Uh-huh [affirmative].

John Kennedy: Taking the totality of the interactions or relationships that they have with a person, a bank, airline, or travel company and then being able to understand that customer at a level of detail so that they can then understand better what to offer that person and paint what we call a more vivid picture of that customer as an individual. In fact, we experience that all the time in our daily lives, and we think that is one of the first big shifts that all marketers regardless of industry, regardless of B2C, regardless of B2B is what we will be confronted with.

It is using all that data to understand customers at the level of a person, and we believe, again, whether you are a professional for B2B or someone purchasing for a household in B2C that is increasingly going to be an expectation that customers have in the relationships with the companies that they do business with.

Scott K. Wilder: Interesting. Do you find that these marketing organizations are bringing technical people into their group, or that is just another way that they are tapping into the CIO’s organization?

John Kennedy: We are seeing both changes. We are seeing marketers really hire or supplement their teams with leaders or staff who are technically proficient across a variety of spaces. One of the first ones is around analytics. You are seeing marketing departments put a much bigger premium and emphasis on marketers who are comfortable with data. Marketers who are comfortable with information, and have an orientation towards using data as a way to make decisions on marketing campaigns and bringing orientation to being very objective and looking at results and so forth.

In addition to analytics, which sort of gets to this second shift as marketers understand their customers better as a person. You are seeing marketers deliver a new kind of benefit as opposed to just transactional product service product sales kind of relationships. Marketers are creating content. Marketers are creating applications. All these apps marketers are creating new experiences. Those are all ways to engage with a brand that is beyond the product service transaction.

A lot of those experiences are now being done digitally. Again, apps are all the rage now; therefore, you are finding other types of technical capability that is finding its way into marketing departments. They are things like app development, software development, and design expertise. They would get other examples of new kinds of skills or competencies that are finding their ways into the marketing department.

Now the CIO relationships becomes important though because the CIO is looking at the technology across an entire enterprise, and as customers expect that their interaction with a company is consistent, they may interact with one part of a company versus another company versus another part of a company versus another part of a company.

The customer is going to expect that those experiences are all the same and all those experiences are going to culminate in some way that those interactions are going to lead to something that much more personal down the road. That is where the marketer needs the CIO who is looking across the enterprise, looking across the technology in the company, looking across the data in the company so that all of this scales and again results in something that is more consistent across the entire company.

Scott K. Wilder: Is marketing getting some of the CIO’s budget in all of this?

John Kennedy: That is a very good question. There is data now. In fact, there is data from Gardner that suggests by 2017, the CMOs will have a greater influence over the technology spending than the CIO. I think what that says is as the front office digitizes, which is a shorthand way of saying technology and digital is enhancing and changing the way marketers and companies engage with customers, that is going to compete for more of the back office IT spent. That is where we are seeing more companies begin to prioritize to the front office, and the CMOs are driving a lot of that shift.

Scott K. Wilder: Where do you see the other members of the C-Suite in all this? I guess we think about the CFO and how CFOs often like to keep their hand on the budget so to speak.

John Kennedy: Yeah, there are kind of two parts. At one level, yes. I can’t really speak to the resources in a company where everyone is being asked to do more with less in this kind of

environment. I think that’s where the C-Suite shows up. Hopefully, you are following these shifts that we are seeing. It is the shift to knowing the person. Marketers now have enough data that they can understand the person and then there is a shift of as a result of knowing your customers more at an individual level. Marketers are engaging in new ways product service, transaction apps, content experiences. The third thing that is interesting is now the brand and this gets to your point around the role of the C- Suite.

Scott K Wilder: Uh-huh [affirmative].

John Kennedy: The same way that marketers have more transparency and visibility to the person, markets and audiences have more transparency and visibility to the company. So, meaning markets, audiences, customers, they can quickly see when there are gaps between what a company may promise in its brand and what a company’s brand promise may be and then what the reality might be behind the firewall. It is how the company really operates. What the company’s practices are. What the company standards are.

It is starting to raise this question around well the brand has been something that marketers have created and have

tried to manage and manage the perception. There is really full visibility in today’s world fueled by social media on what a company is really lik e on the inside. The C-Suite has got to make sure the brand and what the company’s character is. They kind of got to be one in the same.

Scott K. Wilder: Yep.

John Kennedy: Because if you say one thing and act in another way, those gaps and those experiences they travel though social media. It is going to undermine your brand equity. Increasingly, you are seeing marketers finding themselves in discussions around corporate character and the brand. It is how they are on the inside and what is marketed on the outside. Do they really line up? And how do we of the C-Suite ensure that they line up? Because now any interaction someone has with the company good or bad can be tweeted about or posted in a Facebook page or put in a blog or what have you.

We kind of got to think about the brand as everybody in the C-Suite not just the marketer. So, when you ask the question: What is the implication for the C-Suite? It is sort of a long-winded way of asking the question. This point of the brand is everybody’s responsibility because customers aren’t making a distinction between what the marketers are saying and what the brand is and then what their experience might be thorough that something that happens in the supply chain or something that happens with an interaction with another kind of employee or something that happens in a support kind of experience.

I think that is where this third shift around the character and brand coming together means at one level you are finding the marketer and finding him or herself in more

discussions around well how should we shape the culture of a company, but at the same time that means the brand becomes the responsibility of everybody in the C-Suite and the marketer playing a much more broad collaborative role across the C-Suite and then taking leadership in some new spaces.

Scott K. Wilder: I have always been impressed with IBM’s approach in terms of the freedom it has given its employees to tweet, blog, etc. It would be interesting to hear how that came about. That must have a tremendous impact on the brand externally. In other words, in consulting with a lot of companies in many organizations there is a top down sort of system. You can not blog, and you can not tweet unless corporate marketing blesses it. I have been pleasantly

surprised over the years of how you guys have approached it.

John Kennedy: I will come back to comment on that part. But what you are stepping into is that example I just gave you about you better make sure that your brand is in corporate character because when you have gaps it can find its way on social media and hurt you. That is a bit of thinking about it as defense.

What you just described though is the power when you do have it. I am not saying at IBM it is a very hard thing to get right, but if there is a sufficiency of clarity around the character and the culture, that can also become a very powerful asset when you have touch points that can reflect on and emanate the brand if you will.

The only reason that I share it that way is because that is something we just work really hard on. We at IBM believe that the IBMer is actually where we try to get the brand right first. So, we have spent a lot of time on trying to activate a system so that employee can have a sense and a clear understanding of what an IBM expectation would be.

We then turn them lose to be very active in social media. The goal is that the result will be something that builds our brand and crates value in the brand. It is a very intentional strategy. Also, the other reason is that IBM is an IP company, right? We like to think that we are a company of experts and for that reason we are actively encouraging employees to be very active in social as a way of sharing their expertise and making our expertise accessible to our customers and to the world.

Scott K. Wilder: It is really amazing. Just to drill down a little bit. What are other specific things that you do to arm, active, or provide guidance to your employees?

John Kennedy: I will mention a few things – maybe three things. The first is it is grounded in, and there are very clear guidelines and expectations so that when it comes to social media employees understand what their responsibility is. They have responsibilities to the company and responsibilities to themselves and those are updated from time-to-time so that they are grounded in that.

The second thing we have at a much broader level is something that we call the IBM Brand System, which is an intentional series of steps that we take throughout the

year to educate employees around what it means to be an IBMer, so that they are clear on that. Over the 100 years of our history we aspire to contribute to the world as a company so that they have clarity on their place in that history but as well as our vision of the future.

The third piece is that we have a system which we call the IBM Expert Locator so that right now there are about 10,000 IBMers who have identified themselves as experts, and we would like to believe that all 420, 000 of our employees are experts.

That expert locator are people who then have self- identified themselves in certain areas of expertise that then we can refer to in social media as people who are experts that are accessible for information and for networking and so forth.

Scott K. Wilder: Wow, that’s great. I know that we are a little short on time, so I am just going to ask one or two more quick questions. So, I always like to ask people what they read and which websites they to go to. I like to know which eBooks or old- school books they read. I like to more than the professional stuff but also how they really stay up-to-date of what is going on because there is so much information out there.

John Kennedy: I am a bit of a news junkie so even during my day, although this may come back to haunt me, during my day I am always strolling between various news sites to stay sort of current of what is going on. There are a handful of magazines that I like to read. I am a big fan of The Atlantic.

I am also just a big fan of networking and using a network of people and either through industry associations or even building my network of other marketing leaders to share best practices and talk about what is going on in the industry or in terms of my own job content and the work I do her inside the company. I find that is the best way to get a real pure view of what is happening inside companies, and what people are really doing. Again, I supplement what I am reading and trolling with my personal network as well.

Scott K. Wilder: Are there any bloggers or authors that constantly captivate your attention?

John Kennedy: There is this guy Scott Wilder that I have met recently.

Scott K. Wilder: (Laughing)

John Kennedy: Who I really like. There is no one in particular. You know maybe I should. You know a few people kind of more in news in politics, but that is kind of outside the zone of this conversation.

Scott K. Wilder: So, John, I want to be sensitive to your time. I think I am going to call it now because it has been 30 minutes. Is there anything that I haven’t asked you that you think is important for tomorrow’s practitioner?

John Kennedy: In this tremendous amount of change, it is useful for these marketers to have a frame for thinking about and how to interpret this fast moving intersection of technology, and (inaudible) greater instrumentation, interconnectivity, all of the analytics that are coming into marketing.

So, we have been testing this frame around the idea that marketing has become where you have this power to understand a person and as a result of that it expands the range of which you can relate to that person. You can think about that as a way of engaging in a more systematic way.

Thirdly, what does that mean for your brand and your culture? So, that is a lens we think is useful for understanding it and from within that taking the time to be

thoughtful where are you against that lens is sort of the first step towards charting your own transformation journey. That is what we are finding more companies doing and of course that is where we like engaging and helping companies figure that out and help them along the way.

Scott K. Wilder: Yes, definitely. I assume you were involved in the CMO study that you guys did? That is also a wealth of information.

John Kennedy: Well, it is and like the CMO study we did that last year and the seeds for this what we are calling a “point of view” are really embedded in there. Those were in person interviews with 1,700 CMOs all around the world. That is where, again, some of these clues that have moved into this point of view first started to surface. Look, Scott, thanks so much. I really appreciate the time. This has been a lot of fun. Did this meet your expectations?

Scott K. Wilder: This has been great, John. Thank you very much. Once, again, this has been Scott Wilder talking with John Kennedy of IBM, who is a fifteen-year veteran of the corporate marketing group. John, thank you very much.

John Kennedy: Okay, thank you.

The End

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