Customer Satis-fiasco

I sat in on a webinar the other day sponsored by the American Marketing Association talking about the disconnect between Chief Marketing Officers and other C-level executives within an organization, particularly the Chief Financial Officer. The webinar facilitator maintained many CMOS fail to be credible because they don't implement accountability measures to prove the value of the initiatives they are trying to adopt. Marketing executives, he added, often hide behind catch phrases that further cause them to be dismissed. He threw out some words of his own to make the point:

dash-bored

montric (versus metric)

customer satis-fiction

This last phrase took on personal meaning when my wife and I were out celebrating our 22nd anniversary this past weekend at a respected restaurant near our home. Anyone who knows me knows I am not a picky eater and I seldom criticize any dish put in front of me. However, the menu item I selected tasted rather bland (chicken, so that should somewhat be taken into account) and the accompanying glazed green beans were not only tasteless but weren't completely cooked.

When the waitress returned to our table to see how we liked our meal, I was honest with her. She had recommended the meal I ended up selecting. I trusted her recommendation. A short time later, she was concerned when I told her my reaction to the food. She offered to get me something else but by this time I wasn't hungry any longer and politely refused. At this point I was disappointed that the food wasn't to my liking but I wasn't overly upset about it. I tried to communicate this to the waitress but that's obviously not the way she took it.

For the remainder of the time at the restaurant, any time she came by the table or passed by, she completely ignored me. My wife protested that I hurt her feelings. You should also know my wife felt I was rude being truthful to her about the food. I maintained that it was dishonest and unfair not to tell her the truth. I believe people who suppress such feelings are more inclined to go out and bad-mouth the business where their experience was sub-par. It was in her best interest to level with her.

But I have to tell you that her reaction to my honesty made me even more upset. Not only did she not validate the mixed feelings I had about the meal. But she ruined our anniversary celebration causing a rift between my wife and I. I will not eat in that restaurant again. This episode reminded me that in any business interaction with customers you must emphathize with them if their experience is less than satisfactory. Note I said emphathize, you don't have to agree with them totally. And you must not get your feelings hurt if they don't have the experience you want them to have. Otherwise you can make an innocuous or bad situation worse.

Mural Project Nearing Completion along NKY Riverfront

In the next month, a decade long project beautifying the Northern Kentucky riverfront with a canvas of concrete will be completed.

http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070907/NEWS02/709070356/-1/BACK01

ESPN Sightings

ESPN was in town this week for the Monday Night game between the Bengals and Ravens. Their presence generated a lot of excitment as Greater Cincinnati icons new and old were on display, as evidenced by a recent story in the Cincinnati Post.
http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070908/NEWS02/709080341/-1/BACK01

Marketing At a Crossroads

Now that I'm nearly two months into my role as President of the Cincinnati Chapter of the AMA, I'm beginning to see that the marketing profession is due for some self analysis. This is never more evident with a recent report from the University of Texas about the impact of CMOs or Chief Marketing Officers. Read below....


BOARDROOM MARKETERS' NIL IMPACT ON FISCAL PERFORMANCE: REPORTAUSTIN, Texas: In what some see as a setback to the ANA's campaign to elevate the marketing function to the top of the corporate hierarchy, a new report from the University of Texas infers that the impact of chief marketing officers on their employer's financial results is ... zip, zero, nil or nix! The January 2008 issue of the American Marketing Association's quarterly Journal of Marketing is due to carry a controversial new report, Chief Marketing Officers: A Study of their Presence in Firms' Top Management Teams.It posits that the presence of a CMO in a company's senior management cadre has no effect on that firm's financial performance The review was conducted over a five year period with 167 top companies (among them Procter & Gamble, Microsoft, IBM, Intel and Apple), all with minimum annual revenues of $250 million (€183.47m; £124.26m). It disinters the longstanding debate on how best to measure marketing performance. Should CMOs be evaluated on tangible or intangible metrics?By unassailable statistics such as sales? Or on more nebulous concepts like brand equity or consumer awareness? Even the report's authors are hesitant to draw conclusions and concede that their study is limited because it concentrates on financial metrics like sales growth and profitability, whilst ignoring key factors such as brand equity. Vijay Mahajan, a professor in the department of marketing at the University of Texas and co-author of the report, agrees that the financial metrics used to measure the performance of CFOs and CEOs have less relevance to CMO role. "Those [weightings] are very short-term," says Mahajan. "You cannot use short-term metrics to measure the performance of someone who is supposed to have a long-term impact." But despite that qualifier, the report's findings will do little to enhance the status or influence of marketers, especially in medium-to-smaller companies where Byzantine concepts like brand equity are rarely bandied in boardrooms. Less than half the companies studied (40%) had a CMO in its top-management team - versus 92% with a CFO aboard. The actual title CMO is uncommon, used only by circa 20% of companies. And it will be of scant comfort to marketers that the report concludes that CMOs do no harm: "It is important to note that CMOs do not have a negative impact on performance," it opined. Data sourced from AdAge.com; additional content by WARC staff, 10 July 2007
-------------

While it's too early to sound the alarm, I think that marketers in general need to take these opinions seriously. I sat in on an webinar yesterday entitled Marketing ROI: 10 Strategies for Winning Over Your CFO and other Marketing Skeptics. I had to slip out early but the general sense conveyed was that other C-level executives in our organizations outside of marketing are looking for return on investment for everything done. No big suprise there. As a result, credibility needs to be established early in the process with such factors as alignment, a comprehensive measurement system, objectivity (marketers tend to be overly optimistic) and accountability being central. Much of this begins as companies reflect on the role of marketing and decide on its purpose for their particular situation.

On September 21, the Cincinnati AMA will launch its 2007-2008 season with a luncheon at the riverfront Radisson Hotel in Covington on the challenges faced by CMOs (www.cincinnatiama.org). Many of these issues will be discussed and debated. Hope you can attend.

New numbers on the Creation Museum

I just heard yesterday from the Mark, Looy, Vice President of Outreach for the Creation Museum. He said they are up to 70,000 visitors based upon the opening Memorial Day weekend and the special guests that passed through the Museum in the week prior to the public opening.

Creation Museum Commercial Adds to Facility's Intrigue

The popularity of the Creation Museum by Answers in Genesis continues to astound people, even its founders, Answers in Genesis. The state-of-the-art attraction drew more than 40,000 guests less than 30 days after its opening on Memorial Day, 2007. No doubt many of those visitors came from outside the Greater Cincinnati area where the Museum has been advertising in feeder markets such as Louisville, Lexington, Columbus and Indianapolis. The Museum's intriguing 30 second tv commercial follows.

NKY Attraction in Limbo

Belated apologies for not writing for so long. It was a matter of too many out of town work trips, college visits for my graduating high school senior and the subsequent graduation of said senior. In fact, some much time has passed, I need to change the focus surrounding the picture to the left. I visited New York City in mid-May as part of a hospitality after-hours party for national media, hosted by the Kentucky Department of Tourism and several of the state Convention and Visitors Bureaus and leading attractions. The purpose of the party was to educate writers on some of our leading tourist sites in the state---Northern Kentucky included. With only 24 hours to spend in NYC, I had little time to do sightseeing but wanted to take in a nearby Big Apple attraction, Top of the Rock (that's me pictured left standing atop Rockefeller Center--with the Empire State Building in the backdrop). Top of the Rock shared a distinction with the now-suspended Purple People Bridge Climb attraction. Both were named earlier this year to Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel Magazine's Top Ten Thrills. The Thrill is gone in Newport for now since the Climb's operator shut the attraction down because of financial difficulties. I have been questioned often since as to whether the PPBC will ever reopen. Not much is known at this point. However the non-profit board that regulates the Bridge has decided not to tear down the climbing steps and railing on the Bridge right now. So there is always hope that the attraction can be revived at a later date.