The Crystal Ball in 2012

If we had a crystal ball we’d be repeating the old Boy Scout mantra ‘Be Prepared’.

For clients, times will stay tough and may get tougher, but the flip side of that is that there are new ways of recruiting the marketing resource you need. The trick is having a bit of courage, some creativity and being able to work within your organisation to set new (and often better) expectations of your colleagues around marketing.

 For candidates, we think that quite new and interesting opportunities are now available for those with the ability to understand and drive ‘the numbers’ and for those that have the skill to manage their internal colleagues. The key question for marketers in 2012 will be: ‘Can you be flexible?’

In Hindsight…. What 2011 taught us:

1.  Marketers need to remember to focus on the needs of internal customers, like the ‘boss’ and a few other influential internal customers if they wanted to have any semblance of success externally. It’s no longer ‘good enough’ to know your market, you’ve got to be able to manage and compel your internal colleagues to advocate on your behalf too.
2. More clients are demanding a new breed of marketer – one that can demonstrate a complete grasp on the financials and as a result, sit at the top table and contribute to the very fabric of the business – the bottom line, with complete credibility
3. Flexibility is the other big 2011 legacy. Clients are looking for marketing staff that have deep sector, technology or product market knowledge but are flexible in their employment arrangements and surprisingly, this demand for ‘flexibility’ suits many of our marketing candidates who want to build their work around their life instead of their life around their work.

What Next?

 To talk about Recruitment in 2012, or if you’d like to explore some new thinking with us, contact any of us on 01932 253 352 or contact us at info@marketingmoves.com

About Colt

Colt is Europe’s information delivery platform, enabling its customers to share, process and store their vital business information, providing major organisations, midsize businesses and wholesale customers with a powerful resource that combines network and IT infrastructure with expertise in IT managed services, networking and communication solutions.

Colt operates a 21-country, 35,000km network that includes metropolitan area networks in 39 major European cities with direct fibre connections into 18,000 buildings and 19 Colt data centres.

About Carl Robertson

Carl Robertson was appointed Chief Marketing Officer, in January 2010.  In addition to the CMO role Carl is also responsible for CES Marketing, effective from January 2011. Carl joined Colt in October 2007 as Director of Marketing and Product for the SME Division and was responsible for establishing Colt as a leading provider of advanced ICT services to SMEs across Europe. Key responsibilities included transforming the partner community and developing a new digital channel to market.
Carl moved to Colt from Orange where he held a number of senior sales and marketing positions covering the residential, SME and MNC markets. As Director of Marketing and Sales programmes at Orange Business Services he was responsible for driving the services transformation. Carl also held positions at Equant, including Head of Global Sales Strategy and Director of Global Product Marketing. Carl is based in Paris.

 (Sandra Malone , Marketingmoves Director of Marketing, interviewed Carl)

SM: Hello Carl. Tell us what a Chief Marketing Officer at Colt is actually responsible for-

CR: Hi Sandra. We have 120 people in our marketing organisation, so first and foremost, I’m responsible for our marketing people as individuals conributing to our company, and then, their actual work. A CMO is responsible for real end-to-end marketing, so marketing that encompasses the customer experience, raising awareness of what we have to offer in the market place; Brand and Communications, Press and Analyst work; the P&L for 3 Solutions (Managed Networks, Unified Comms and IT Technology Marketing); Services Design and Business Strategy and Marketing.

SM: Wow! No kitchen sink?!

CR: Not really!

SM: Carl, in the recent IBM CMO study from ‘Stretched to Strengthened’, IBM had F2F conversations with more than 1700 CMOs worldwide. The results of the survey saw 4 challenges as pervasive: the data explosion, social media proliferation of channels and devces and shifting demographics. What are your thoughts on those challenges?

CR: I participated in that survey. We’ve just hosted a round table of 15 CIO’s discussing many of these topics. CIO’s are pretty stressed out because they need to transform themselves from simply managing IT infrastructure to delivering their IT as a service. The Harvard Business Review asked the question- “What does the ‘I’ in CIO mean?” It used to mean Infrastructure and it needs to move on the continuum to Information, Innovation and Intelligence. A CIO’s legacy is that they have spent 80% of their time on infrastructure. They agree they need to add value and understand the risks between the business and their internal capabilities.

SM: Your LinkedIn profile talks about your successful introduction of innovative sales and marketing techniques, can you give us some examples of what that means?

CR: I suppose its all around knowing how and when to add value. It’s about understanding the risks that businesses are experiencing and delivering a partnership model to ease the huge transformation that businesses must experience to be successfil and to survive. There are two types of innovation: The ‘Big Bang’ or small little innovations’ , so for example, launching a digital e-commerce portal for SME’s makes a huge difference to a large number of customers.

SM: Your career has spanned residential, SME and multi-nationals, taking multi-nationals, in your opinion, how have you see marketing change to address this market?

CR: That question brings to mind what I call ‘Speed Boat Methodology’ – traditionally, a company would develop products, build a team to sell them and then make a lot of waves and noise to get the market to be interested- it wasn’t a customer driven market. In today’s market, and in order to drive the cloud portfolio, we will launch releases that meet customer needs, not products. Our developers are now with customers every two or three days, so there is real customer integration with development – that’s what’s changed.

SM: Marketingmoves recruits marketing staff to support the IT industry. Can you give us your view on what a marketing candidate of today would need to do to impress you?

CR: They would need to demonstrate a deep understanding of what drives a customer and their business-what are the risks the customer faces and how can technology alleviate some of those risks? Our marketing people are closer than ever to the customer and launching propositions are today, more collaborative than ever. Knowing the financials of both marketing and the customers business is crucial – so is being able to demonstrate what value marketing has added to the equation. Speed, agility, flexibility and enthusiasm count for a lot.

SM: Carl, thanks very much for your time.

About Tellabs

Tellabs’ innovations enable the mobile Internet and help our customers succeed. That’s why 43 of the top 50 global communications service providers choose our mobile, optical, business and services solutions. We help them get ahead by adding revenue, reducing expenses and optimizing networks.

About Sonny

Sonny has worked for a range of dynamic and fast changing organisation and is now Head of Marketing Communications for EMEA and AP at Tellabs where he specialises in integrated marketing communications. He has worked throughout Europe, the Americas and the Far East mainly in the B-2-B space, but he has significant consumer experience including the delivery of the UK’s largest Wi-Fi usage campaign and programmes in conjunction with Universal Pictures, London Fashion Week, Lastminute.com, the BBC and Microsoft.

Sandra Malone, Director of Marketing for Marketingmoves, interviewed Sonny:

SM: Hi Sonny, thanks for agreeing to speak to us.  Tell us a bit about yourself.

SW: Hi Sandy. Well, I absolutely love the creative arts, but have no talent in that area! I have a passion for travel and I’ve been lucky to be able to combine that with my career. I suppose it’s fair to say that I’m outgoing and fairly easily pleased. A great meal and an outstanding bottle of wine can make me very happy.

SM: What’s your view on marketing budgets these days? We are finding that our clients expect the marketing staff to have a real grasp of the financials, along with their key marketing skills.

SW: Budgets are the bain of my life! It’s important to control and allocate the budget; keeping in mind the budget can manipulate the drivers for growth. Marketers are generally creative thinkers and see things in words and images, so as a ‘group’, we can’t be expected to be accountants. Marketing people should acknowledge their limitations and focus on their strengths, but of course, they should be numerate literate. It’s folly to expect a marketer to perform the duties of an accountant. I’m lucky because I work with a great finance team here at Tellabs.

SM: Can you see some new trends occurring with marketing in the sector?

SW: An absolute, rather than a trend, is the expectation that the right metrics have to be in place to measure the value of your spend. Times are tough and most of the industry has to fight to get investment for marketing. We can spend a great deal of time justifying the marketing budget and convincing internal colleagues of the value of the marketing spend. It’s interesting that every business book out there says that it’s more important than ever to get your message out when times are tough, yet the marketing budget is usually the first thing to get cut when the financials are looking less than rosy.

SM: Sonny, how do you make the most of the marketing spend you do have?

SW: Focus is key; addressing the areas where marketing will really help deliver revenue this year and build profitable revenue opportunities in future years. We operate in over 100 countries, but I don’t have the resources to undertake a marketing campaign in each of those territories. So I look at the markets where my team’s activity will really make a difference and focus there.

We review a range of elements, such as our company’s objectives, our market presence, overall business opportunities, customer awareness, current relationships etc. and decide where our support will deliver the best results. This way we ensure we’re aligned with business and corporate objectives and minimise activity that doesn’t support bottom line growth.

SM: Can you tell me what makes a great marketer?

SW: I think I look at what ‘great’ is differently than most other Marketing Director’s. If I’m recruiting, I look for people who are ‘better’ than I am and who are able to work outside their core competencies. I look for people with real team spirit, drive, ambition and ability to interact and engage with people. Their CV is almost irrelevant, believe it or not. In fact, and unlike many people in my position, I actively try and hire people outside of the industry as this brings a new perspective and energy to the team.

SM: Okay, great! Final question: What can you see in your 2012 Crystal Ball?

SW: Caution! There is more evidence of uncertainty in the economy than there is of certainty. Our target audience is deeply affected by what’s happening with the Euro and the Tiger economies. I certainly see more consolidation with vendors (our competition) too.

 From a marketing perspective, the need to build lasting and engaging relationships with customers will see a stronger innovation in social media usage and a greater use of education as a marketing tool.

My tip for 2012 is for marketers to look outside their home base and sector and to be more flexible and open-minded. Do things differently with your budget and develop a set of new marketing tools to carry you through this year. In a time when most people are being cautious, it’s very easy to create valuable differentiation by doing things slightly differently.

SM: Sonny, many thanks for your time.

About Emulex

Emulex, the leader in converged networking solutions, provides enterprise-class connectivity for servers, networks and storage devices within the data center. The Company’s product portfolio of Fibre Channel host bus adapters, network interface cards, converged network adapters, controllers, embedded bridges and switches, and connectivity management software are proven, tested and trusted by the worlds’ largest and most demanding IT environments. Emulex solutions are used and offered by the industry’s leading server and storage OEMs including, Apple, Cisco, Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, Huawei, IBM, LSI, Lenovo, NEC, Oracle, NetApp, Samsung and ZTE. Emulex is headquartered in Costa Mesa, Calif., and has offices and research facilities in North America, Asia and Europe.

About Jason Phippen

A consistent overachiever, Jason is a senior marketing director with 12 years’ experience in large technology corporations, and 22 years of storage software and hardware industry experience. He has a highly successful record of designing and executing marketing functions and strategies across the EMEA region.

With an extensive knowledge of enterprise software and hardware markets, expertise in OEM, direct, and 1 and 2 tier models, he was also a former Director and Co-Chairman of FCIAE Europe; and former Vice-Chairman of SNIA Europe.

(Sandra Malone , Marketingmoves Director of Marketing, interviews Jason Phippen)

 SM: Hi Jason. Tell us about Emulex and Marketing in your company

JP:  We’re the leader in converged networking solutions and we provide enterprise-class connectivity for servers, networks and storage devices within the data center. Emulex solutions are used and offered by the industry’s leading server and storage OEMs including, Apple, Cisco, Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, Huawei, IBM, LSI, Lenovo, NEC, Oracle, NetApp, Samsung and ZTE.

We manage EMEA marketing from the UK with a small marketing team and a very focused marketing budget. As we have a rather complex go to market model, the marketing team has to deliver results.

Our parent company (in the US) is focused on quarterly results, so, as in most businesses, this will result in a shorter term focus. Here in EMEA, for us to make the numbers, we need not only baseline 101 Marketing/Classic Marketing skills- we also need marketing people who have the desire and ability to grow. We’ve recently hired someone (Amanda West) with the help of Marketingmoves to manage the EMEA Marketing communications and were impressed with her wide ranging skill set, attitude and aptitude.

SM: Sounds great, but what else, in your opinion, is important for a marketer today to have in their own toolbox which will make a difference in the marke place?

JP: Execution abilities are key and so is being able to honestly measure the impact of the marketing initiative. Driving loyalty and awareness, although important, is now not enough. It’s critical that marketing people know how to use social media in a business sense- we use LinkedIn and we often do eblasts on LinkedIn because we know we can get the attention of  key people through this medium – as long as the content is relevant.

SM: Jason, you’re well known in the sector. What are some of the key actions that have made you successful in your space?

JP: For me, it’s all about approach. Understanding, really understanding what drives your channel and their end users is a responsibility and if you get it wrong, your approach to the market is either a ‘me too’ strategy or fails to drive sales. Understanding the market will help you to create the right messages for that market and of course, will deliver the level of influence you need to be successful in this incredible competitive market place.

SM: Thanks Jason.

About Lisa Hutt

Lisa has recently joined Concur® as the VP for EMEA Marketing, after a successful career as a Senior Director for Northern EMEA and EMEA Campaigns at Salesforce.com and Monster. She’s been a UK Marketing Manager at Sybase and has also worked in Corporate and Services Marketing at Dell.

About Concur®

Concur® is a leading global provider of integrated travel and expense management solutions for companies of all sizes. Concur’s web and mobile solutions help companies and their employees control costs and save time.

(Sandra Malone, Marketingmoves Director of Marketing interviews Lisa Hutt)

SM: Hi Lisa. Thanks for talking to us today. You’re really well known in the IT sector here in the UK, tell us how you view the sector at the moment.

LH: Hi Sandy. I think the sector is responding to a tough economy. Companies have to do more with less, and marketing teams are at the forefront of all of this, trying new and creative ways to create the wow factor, increase visibility, generate better leads and more sales.

SM: That must mean that quite a different marketer needs to emerge as well.

LH: I agree – at one time, being great at the job might have been enough, but today when we hire marketing people we’re looking for skills that will differentiate our organisation and give us a competitive edge.

SM: How does marketing get to the ‘top table’ in an IT company?

LH: Marketing has always had an issue in that it hasn’t been accountable for revenue. The language between a business and a marketer has rarely been aligned. Today, to be at the ‘top table’, a Marketing Director needs the tools in place to analyse their contribution to the bottom line. They need to be able to talk the language of ‘money’ and to have robust metrics in place.

SM: Interesting, is there anything else you’ve noticed that’s in demand for today’s marketers?

LH: There’s an absolute requirement for domain expertise too. Every marketer should be able to talk knowledgably about their company’s value propositions, competently demonstrate products, and make an overall contribution to the industry.

SM: Is that what you’re seeing at the moment?

LH: Actually, no. in a recent review of 40 job candidates, I was surprised at how out of date their skills were. That’s what’s so fantastic about the IDM (The Institute of Direct and Digital Marketing). They offer seasoned marketers a wide range of courses and information to keep them abreast of what’s new in the market.

SM: How could a marketing professional impress you?

LH: I am impressed by marketing innovation but most of all, I like to see real evidence that they have ‘feet on the streets’ and understand their customers and the industry. I’d be interested to see how proactive they are at developing themselves – Do they visit trade shows and use quieter times to read research and watch webinars? Marketers who don’t put their heels down in anticipation of change and challenge, understand the market, the customer landscape and the competition, are at the top of the game.

SM: Finally, give us your view on what makes a great Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)

LH:The best CMO’s pave a way for their team to align with the business, learn, experiment and evolve.

SM: Lisa Hutt, thank you very much.

95% of senior managers are men and women earn, on average about 72% of what their male counterparts take home. Less than 1% of top CEOs in the US are women and more than 90 companies of the Fortune 500 don’t have any female corporate officers.In France, fewer than 5% of top executives are women and there are fewer than 20 female directors in the FTSE 100 companies as compared to 400+ men. Out of all published companies, 65% have no women on the Board at al. Interesting then, that over 44% of the UK workforce is women.

The usual suspects emerge as reasons. Workloads and family commitments; career interruptions for child-rearing; travel demands that make it impossible to have a work-life balance and of course, exclusions from the old boy networks. Yet some of the professional service firms in the accounting, legal and consulting sectors have shown that these issues can be dealt with using job-sharing, flexitime and other policies. So how has the IT industry fared in the UK?

Well, not great as it happens. While many firms have introduced personal and family friendly policies (SAS, for example where staff turnover is always low because the company puts family as a priority), its more the unspoken culture of working that presents the real problems. The agreed policy in the HR handbook rarely matches the reality at the desk.

Whilst it may appear perfectly reasonable to ‘take time off in lieu’ os some other such accomodation, actually, it’s the grumblings of colleagues and middle-management, the gossip and the back stabbing, ladder climbing behaviours that put paid to working in any way that is less than dog-eat-dog. Driving growth and creating demand mean that the niceties of accomodating the work force will have to wait until another day, with some notable exceptions, of course.

Melvin Day, Marketingmoves Director said:, “We are in a unique position to advise both candidates and clients about the right ‘fit’. We work to ensure that our candidates have the right environment to succeed and we can only do that by completely understanding the culture of the company/client. This also allows us to influence company culture, for the better.” Mel continued, “We have a new initiative specifically designed to offer really flexible working conditions for both clients and candidates, which goes some way to alleviating the problems faced by both parties – it’s called Marketingmoves Hub. On the other hand, there is a much bigger strategy needed to ensure that women have equal rights and opportunities, so we’ve also set up Marketingmoves Inner Circle to address this and other industry issues.

For more information on The Marketingmoves Hub and the Marketingmoves Inner Circle, contact Melvin Day at mday@marketingmoves.com.

Putting the two together, the challenges faced by marketers and the factors common to successful companies, means that today’s marketing professional will need to stretch their thinking, their skills and their vision to stay in the game.

The most proactive CMO’s, like their CEO counterparts, know that the key to success is ‘customer intimacy’-that it’s important to understand individuals as well as markets.

Traditional mass marketing is ‘out’, but the distance marketing folk have to cover to understand individual customers has increased and grown in complexity. The focus is now on relationships, not just transactions, and the desire to form bonds with customers is driving more success, or in the absence of, spectacular failure.

The digital revolution has forever changed the balance of power between the individual and the institution. To effectively cultivate meaningful relationships with customers, marketing teams will have to connect with them in ways that their customers perceive as valuable. This entails engaging with customers throughout the entire customer lifecycle, building online and offline communities of interest and collaborating to fuse internal and external faces of the enterprise. So how should you respond?

• Focus on creating value for customers as individuals
• Leverage new digital channels to stimulate customer conversations and new relationships
• Engage with customers throughout the customer lifecycle, not just according to your company accounting cycles
• Build online and offline communities to strengthen your brand
• Use advanced analytics and compelling metrics to improve decision making and to demonstrate accountability

It comes down to defining key behaviours, beliefs and values needed to drive a relentless customer strategy.

Can you handle it?

(marketingmoves recruits only the best marketers. Only for IT and Telecoms)

Unilever has unveiled a new marketing philosophy around that concept in the hope of moving away from marketing by numbers to a new culture of creating a better balance between magic and logic. (See Marketing 2 November 2011).

But what does it take to be a ‘magical’ marketer?

Take the test – Are you any of these things? Brave, Risk-Taking, Creative, Full of surprises; Quick; Wizardly; Inspirational; Bright, Spectacular; Innovative, Mystical, Amazing, Tremendous or Enchanting?

Now that you’ve decided you have some of these attributes, if you look at your professional marketing track record, can you claim that you’ve had the freedom to deploy any of these skills whilst delivering your marketing programmes? Can you look back at your proudest marketing deliverables and point to the ‘magic’?

It’s tough. On the one hand, how aspirational; how enabling to let a whole team of marketers go deliver ‘magic’! But the reality of actual implementation may be somewhat more difficult. After all, the inference behind ‘magic’ is something of the unknown. There’s an element where we trust the magician to deliver the most beneficial of surprises and therein lays a very important assumption – the assumption of trust.

At Unilever, the message to the Marketing Team seems to not only be about giving ‘permission’ to balance magic and logic, but the sub text seems to be something about trusting the marketing team to create a bit of magic and all that entails. Sometimes magic experiments work and sometimes they don’t, but imagine for a moment, that politics, egos and the overbearing financial constraints were lifted – what would your marketing deliverables look like then?

At Marketingmoves we look for candidates that have a bit of magic about them. But we also look to work for clients that are brave, inspiring, and innovative and risk takers. The real pizazz is in matching the two and then it really is ‘Shazam’!

Sandra Malone

Marketingmoves .Only the best marketers. Only for IT and Telecom

What a nightmare it is out there! If it’s not already stressful enough to be looking for a job, you’ve got to be worried about how to manage the numerous recruiters all handling your potential career and all vying for a whopping  percentage of YOUR salary, once you are placed through their recruitment firm.

It’s time for you to take back control.

There’s an old adage around that says ‘Once you land a new job, the very next day, you need to be thinking of your exit strategy’ – there’s some truth in this.

The majority of us, perhaps without thinking, put our slippers on when we land that new role. We get stuck in and we are extremely keen to make a good and lasting impression. We want the hiring manager to know that they’ve made the right choice.

How laudable. But what we should really be doing is something quite different. We should have our eye on the bigger picture, on the end game. What’s the penultimate role we see ourselves in and what career steps do we need to take to get there?

Instead of lurching from one opportunity to the next, or worse, being pushed from one role to the next by reasons outside of our control, there is something to be said for planning your long term career and making it happen, instead of letting life happen to you.

For this, you’ll need a recruitment partner. With the best will in the world, if you are busy doing your day job, it is unlikely that you will have the networking capacity on your own to strategically locate the most promising roles on the way to your ultimate career success.

Here are some things to look for when you are proactively looking for a recruitment partner that will take you from strength to strength and help you to successfully manage your career:

1. Work with someone you can meet. There are plenty of on-line agencies out there and there are plenty of ‘global’ marketing agencies with a ‘truly national footprint’, but let’s face it, ‘Big Foot’ doesn’t necessarily mean they will personally look after you. It’s more likely that you will be a CV amongst thousands and will land on a junior recruiter’s desk whose only job it is, is to make commission off your head. As a senior marketer, how confident can you really be that a keen 20 something could possibly have enough deep sector knowledge to find the right career path for you? (Mmmnnn Good Luck….)
2. Your recruitment partner should understand the importance of personalisation and leveraging your uniqueness. Together, you will need to craft the compelling reasons on why a company or organisation would want to engage with you. Your recruitment partner therefore needs to spend time getting to know you and you need to spend time getting to know them. After all, you are entrusting your whole career to them.
3. Your recruitment partner focuses on results, but more importantly focuses on the cultural fit between you and a potential role. If your values aren’t in alignment with a potential company, neither party will be happy, time will have been wasted as well as money. You need to have absolute confidence that your recruitment partner knows the hiring company well. Ask them that question.
4. Every great recruiter is a people person. They like to meet new people and as such, their networking skills are second to none. A great recruiter cultivates relationships; they are willing to share career advice, mentor you and will have been working with a number of companies for a very long time. If you want a recruiter to handle your career, make sure they have these skills and are willing to use them with you.
5. By strategically planning your career and understanding that there will be several steps to undertake before a seat beckons you from the ‘C’ lounge, you will be miles ahead of the average candidate.

Partner with the right recruiter for you and you will successfully drive your career.

That’s got to be a whole lot better than letting ‘life’ just happen to you – too, too scary!

For more career advice on how to manage your career and  how to stand out from the crowd, have a look at our Advice Centre under the Candidate tab on our web site: www.marketingmoves.com

Gangster Branding

Andrew Hill in the FT notes that the BlackBerry smartphone model, the Curve, is the UK rioter’s handset of choice. BlackBerry, while suffering losses in the executive market, had moved positively into a younger customer market, only to have its positive association brutally reversed by its association with the recent rioting taking place in the UK. The riots  have also been an absolute disaster for names like Adidas and Levi’s which have both been touting their ‘gangster chic’ with Adidas new ads featuring rapper, gang member and convicted criminal Snoop Dogg.  Perhaps Adidas – a major Olympic sponsor – should have thought more carefully before trying to square Snoop Dogg’s CV with their stated brand objective of ‘creating positive role models for young people through excellence in sport.

Working Patterns Change for better or for worse?

The current economic climate has exposed the need for businesses to rethink the way in which they operate. On the commercial side, as economic pressures mount, downsizing continues to be the most frequently used tool to cut costs quickly.

The repercussions from that are numerous. The most talented of marketing professionals are getting their marching orders despite their contribution to the business – it becomes a numbers game to cut overheads and increase bottom line revenue.

Employers mistakenly believe that this means the recruitment market is client driven versus candidate driven. In other words, we’re seeing employers who believe that there is more supply than demand. But this is not exactly true. The reasons are obvious and quite simple:

Good marketing people aren’t desperate for a job; they can afford to be choosy and they will choose where to place their talents, whether they have been made redundant or not.

Jane Nash, a Recruitment Consultant from marketingmoves says: “Employers need to streamline the employment process – Candidates won’t hang about. Decisions are needed swiftly because most talented marketing people have several offers on the table at once.”

Employees tell us there is a mix between fear and excitement as the working landscape continues to shift.  Many are considering moving to a ‘portfolio’ career, or a ‘career of choices’ where an employee more or less agrees to a role, if it fits with their lifestyle, as opposed to traditionally accepting a role and all that infers.

Adrian Hardy
Director
ahardy@marketingmoves.com

A Portfolio Career – Would you benefit?

The need to balance the direction of today’s economy with the recruitment of talented marketing people capable of driving business growth , lends itself to thinking about working in a new way that will deliver expected business results as well as a quality career and lifestyle for marketing candidates. The benefits to Candidates could include:

1. A more flexible working arrangement to suit personal ambitions
2. The opportunity to work with several companies on interesting projects
3. The opportunity to run one’s own company
4. The opportunity to meet a wide variety of talented marketing people
5. The opportunity to explore different styles of marketing approaches
6. The opportunity to experience different management styles
7. The opportunity to create best practice
8. The opportunity to be recognised as an expert in IT Marketing

On the downside, the lack of stability may worry some potential candidates. People will need to keep in mind how much security they need to feel happy.

Contact Melvin Day to discuss the opportunities for you.
mday@marketingmoves.com

Cool Web sites

http://www.ukmarketingnetwork.co.uk/
UK Marketing Network | Your community for marketing related blogs, news, forums, videos, events and lots more!

www.ithound.com
The business technology article library

www.themarketingspot.com
Get fresh marketing ideas for market planning

And “Two become One”

Two of the most pivotal inventions in history, the PC and the mobile phone have of course, merged into the smartphone, so reports the Financial Times as they discuss how technology wheeling and dealing has now reached pre-recession levels. Big technology companies, sitting on mountains of cash are able to act far more boldly than they have in the past, resulting in an accelerated push to develop the future of the mobile market. With the decline of the PC market, opportunities abound for the more creative (and cash rich) firms. But have you considered how this could affect you?

As a marketing professional in either of the two markets (mobile or PC), your future depends demonstrating the capability to be flexible, adaptable and creative. You’ll need to have marketing strategies that convince not only the usual suspects, such as the early adopters, but also those market segments that are yet to realise they are a perfect smartphone match.  Smartphone brands are always on the lookout to appeal to different audiences, but what’s really notable is that they  use  specific interests to draw in their target markets:

Music Centred BlackBerry -
BlackBerry’s ‘Live & Lost’   campaign last year to attract younger users. The campaign saw music stars dropped off in a secluded area of England armed only with their BlackBerry and  £20 .They had 5 days to get to a location across England. To date, the campaign had over 182,000 followers. 80% of BlackBerry’s customers are now non-business users.

Sports Fans  Sony Ericsson –
Sony Ericsson , in partnership with ESPN pushed their Xperia Android range to football fans with a competition to win over 100k

Wild Card Apple -
Apple always plays the demographic card in its IPhone advertising from the young, to the business oriented families, to injured sports players – they don’t target certain groups, they let the customer decide for themselves.

The summary? Having new and great functionality is fantastic, but as a marketer in this sector, you’ll need your wits about you to keep  well ahead in this  growing battlefield.