In our marketing endeavors over the past several years, we've come across a few insights that might be of interest to the curious marketer.

I'll begin with a "worst practice" before getting into the good stuff, just to have something to build from.

The most unfortunate thing about marketing these days is that it works pretty well. Our analysis, working with IMI International (a very cool research firm), shows that only about 10% of marketing programs are true home runs. And approximately 40% are abysmal failures. This means 50% of marketing programs work just ok. And for too many marketers (but evidently not CEOs or CFOs), ok is good enough. "The incentive to push into the top 10% is not as compelling as the disincentive to avoid the bottom 40%- so be satisfied in the middle 50%," seems to be today's marketing mantra.

In economics, loosely put, marketing is approaching its marginal cost, thus making the whole profession a commodity. It's pretty hard to truly screw up and hurt your business, but it's also really hard to move the business and the brand forward significantly. This naturally turns the marketing agenda to activities and not results, to outputs rather than outcomes.

Think about the struggle of today's typical marketer: having to juggle creativity, internal misalignment and conflicting agendas, ROI, timeframe shifts, competitive threats real and perceived, channel shifts, and how to manage- promotions, advertising, digital, line extensions, packaging, loyalty programs, product placement, branded entertainment, video game placement, cause marketing efforts, experiential/events, sponsorships, direct/CRM efforts, partners, media mix, and consumer shifts in tastes and habits. Put all that into the marketing department blender and try to make sense of it!

All too often, the outcome from the blender is what we indelicately call "one-off marketing." "One-off marketing" works something like this. Your budget is cut by 10%, so you take last year's marketing plan, chop it up even more finely, add a bunch more activities (just because you can) and hope for 110% of last year's results (which were mediocre to begin with). This isn't the same as doing more with less. (We in the EMAK agencies applaud doing more with less …) No, this is simply doing more and hoping for more. Confusing activities for results. Settling for outputs rather than outcomes. What's the logic here? Why do some marketers end up doing one-off marketing? (It is the classic example of Einstein's definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.)

First, what exactly does one-off look like? Well, definitely the brand distributes more than its fair share of coupons (the easy way out) and other cheap price discounts. And, the brand borrows interest and hooks up with anyone and everyone possible. If the brand doesn't have any equity of its own, or any budget to invest in any equity, the one-off marketer must grab some somewhere. Many trade deals, rebates, short term economic offers. Commodity product with no point of difference. Advertising, if any, running at 2am on Xena reruns. Sponsoring a golf tournament with no activation, then canceling after a year. The bottom line here is that one-off marketing simply rents consumers and volume short-term. But the consumers don't stick around. One-off is like those fat burning pills - the easy and ineffective way. One-off is sub-prime - looks cheap, but there's hell to pay eventually when the business tanks. This is why the average CMO doesn't last much longer than 2 years in his/her job.

How do some marketers and brands end up at one-off? For some, it has been years of slow, almost imperceptible erosion. For others, competition has changed the game and blind-sided them. Or, budgets have been shifted for the short-term and not shifted back. Sometimes management is just more comfortable playing defense rather than offense. In some companies, marketing is really just sales-support with little responsibility or accountability. And some managements are uncomfortable with the whole idea of marketing - it's viewed as an expense, not an investment. The common threads are that the one-off marketers get out of touch with the market and lose their passion to drive good ideas into the marketplace. It begins to feel desperate.

Of course there's a better way. Instead of one-off, let's call it "pay-off marketing". Where everything works to deliver an ROI. Where in-market success is defined prior to launch – eliminating activation/monies that are destined for failure! Where the activities all add up to something. Where a dollar spent delivers much more than a dollar earned. Where consumers are converted, not just rented. And where the brand performs well today and tomorrow. What does pay-off marketing look like?

 Pay-off marketing is done by smart marketers who know how to ask two key questions: "So What?" and, "Now What?"

 "So What?" is all about what the brand is all about. Am I relevant? Do people care? Should people care? The fundamental defining questions are: Who is your brand? What makes it different? And why should we care? Its short hand for asking what business am I in? Think of it this way - are you relevant? If the response to "So What?" is just lukewarm, you've got to work on driving relevance and heightening importance (or examine your business to make sure you're not becoming obsolete). The best way to be and stay relevant? Great product and/or service. And fostered by great marketing! Good marketing will communicate your relevance. Great marketing will increase it.

"Now What?" is all about getting the right behavior. We call it, "get out of your barkolounger, turn off the TV, grab your keys, get in the car, drive to the store, and buy buy buy." Can you specifically answer what you want your consumers to do? Having an important and relevant story is necessary but no longer sufficient these days. People may be aware and may see the value of your brand proposition, but they need to be compelled to act. They may believe what you're saying, so now what? Unfortunately, in today's' cluttered world (1334 TV stations, 1345 cable networks, 8929 radio stations, 9893 magazines, 72M websites, a growing collection of social networks to join and maintain, 248B coupons, countless registered brand names, and more retail space per citizen than anywhere in the world), awareness and relevance alone don't necessarily lead to the right behavior.

This is where the right marketing plan can play an important role. I'm talking about brand-building, sales-driving, compelling marketing campaigns. Marketing that is designed to lead the marketing plan and make "Now What?" happen. Promotions like the Pillsbury Bake-Off, Cuervo Nation, Barq's Soviet Union Going Out of Business Sale, Diet Coke and the Friends TV show, Oreo Stacking, McDonalds Monopoly, Purina's Celebrity Pet Calendars, Lever's Singing in the Shower, Alka Seltzers' Tax Time Relief, Miller Genuine Draft's Blind Date, American Express' Save the Statue of Liberty, Anhueser Busch's' Bud Bowl, Dove's Real Beauty, Axe's Game Killers, The Simpson's Movie launch, Coke's global Olympic torch run … All of these increased the brand's image and generated significant incremental revenues.

The pay-off version of marketing isn't driven by coupons and price discounts. It's driven by brand-centered ideas which are compelling, motivating. We say that great marketing pulls the behavioral trigger within the targeted consumers.

The easy answer to "Now What?" is to give them a lower price. And, when you ask consumers what they want, they'll always tell you they want a lower price. However, what consumers say they want and what they really want can be two different things. We've all seen this in focus groups. Ask teenage girls if they have a favorite shampoo and they say yes - look in their showers, though, and you'll find 6-8 different brands. There's a different approach to getting at the real behavioral triggers, the ones that lock in the consumer and have a positive residual effect beyond just the transaction.

We know it begins with active and aggressive "investigation" into the consumers' lives and habits and opinions. This isn't easy because it requires extra time and effort. The outcome from a thorough investigation is always a better insight, and better insights lead to better ideas. Good ideas should then be tortured into greatness, and then screened by consumers. This entire approach to getting to "Now What?" takes a lot of doing, a lot of creativity, and a lot of discipline all at the same time. It takes a very deliberate process. What it does in the end is to ensure a positive ROI, a stronger pay-off.

How does one avoid one-off marketing and get a positive pay-off? By asking "So What?" and "Now What?" By not settling for one-off efforts. By having true insights. By pushing the ideas hard. And by hiring the right marketing resources.

One of the first things you should be asking yourself is, "Can a brand-building marketing effort benefit my business?" And after reading and answering the following questions, if you find yourself saying – "yeah, that's pretty much the boat my brand is in" – adopting a pay-off marketing system is warranted. So, answer these questions:

1. Do you have excess manufacturing capacity, empty seats, vacant hotel rooms, growing inventory?
2. Is your advertising working less and less effectively over time? Are consumers just not responding as readily now? Do they need a little push?
3. Is your media plan getting less and less viable, as reach declines and prices escalate? Are you having to do less and spend more to get it?
4. Do your channels of distribution (retailers, distributors, franchisees) need to be rallied and pumped up? Do your employees internally need to be rallied and motivated?
5. Do you need to "prove it" to your consumers?
6. Do you have important target segments who are hard to reach (college kids, race fans, ethnic groups, urban trend setters)?
7. Are you over-spending in price discounting?
8. Do you see trends in the marketplace that you want to capitalize on, but just don't quite know how? Or, do you not see any trends but wish you could?
9. Do you need to make a splash in the marketplace?
10. Have you gotten all of the awareness and distribution that you need, but revenues aren't up to budgeted levels?
11. Do you want your consumers to storm the aisles?
12. Do you need a faster-acting solution?

There are very few businesses and brands which wouldn't benefit from a great pay-off marketing plan. I can count on one hand the brands that can be driven to their potential just by being available (Google, for instance). And, unfortunately, there are too many brands which are relying on price adjustments (discounts, coupons etc.) to try and grow - the curse of one-off marketing. Where does your brand fit in? Hopefully not as a one-off!

Once you determine that you may need some serious pay-off marketing help (i.e. if your answer to at least a few of the questions above is "yes"), how might you go about making that happen? Here are our top 10 thought-starters for you to consider:

1. Your brand is your company's most valuable asset- build it, evolve it, love it … and do it based on facts and insights, not on fads and activities.
2. Begin with ensuring that your brand is relevant and compelling to the right audience(s).
3. Embrace consumer needs - do you have real insights driving your marketing? (The 40% of bad marketing out there is based on invalid insights, and the 50% of marketing that's mediocre is likely based on shallow or no insights at all, while the 10% of home-run marketing begins with deep, unique insights.)
4. Take an objective inventory of your other brand assets: price, distribution, service and satisfaction, consumer-perceived value. Make sure these stack up positively against the competition.
5. Build your brand ROI/measurement scorecard based on two categories: a) brand purchases as a result of marketing, and b) brand perceptions as a result of marketing.
6. Ensure that all marketing drives awareness, knowledge, engagement, and trial/usage (don't just stop at awareness, or it'll be stunt-style marketing, like the dotcom advertising era- - remember the gerbil being shot out of the cannon?)
7. Apply consumer response data to your marketing mix. Did you know that our data shows:

   % US Consumers Purchasing Product in Past 30 Days Due to:
   Limited time offers: 67%
   TV ads: 47%
   Promotions: 53%
   New Products: 57%
   Product Placement: 38%
   Experiential: ?
   Word of Mouth: ?
   Social Networking: ?
   Other: ? 

8. Ask this provocative question: How little do I have to spend to get the desired results I am seeking? This is the ROI mindset.
9. As you develop your plans, always challenge your team on "consumer comprehension" - will your average target audience member "get it?" Will they see it? Is it easy to understand? After insights, comprehension is critical to be successful.
10. Activate! For example, a sponsorship with added consumer activation can have 7 times the impact on purchasing than the sponsorship with no activation.

So, there is a way to move from one-off marketing to pay-off marketing. It begins by asking So What? And Now What?

Shoot us an email and we'll help close the loop for you by sending along the second section of this white paper.

About Jim Holbrook
Jim Holbrook is the CEO of EMAK Worldwide. To contact Jim, please visit www.emak.com or email/call him at Jim.Holbrook@emak.com/323.932.4068.

About EMAK Worldwide Inc.
EMAK Worldwide, Inc. is the parent company of a family of marketing services agencies including Equity Marketing, Logistix, Mega and Upshot. Its agencies are experts in "consumer activation" by offering strategy-based marketing programs that directly impact consumer behavior. The agencies provide strategic planning and research, consumer insight development, entertainment marketing, design and manufacturing of custom promotional products, kids marketing, event marketing, shopper marketing and environmental branding.

The Company's blue-chip clients include Burger King Corporation, Frito-Lay, Kellogg, Kohl's, Kraft, Macy's, Miller Brewing Company and Procter & Gamble, among others. Headquartered in Los Angeles, EMAK has offices in Chicago, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London, Paris and Hong Kong. More information about EMAK Worldwide is available on the Company's web site at www.emak.com.