Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Arun Sinha is the Chief Marketing Officer at Pitney Bowes, where he is respons-ible for marketing, brand management, public and media relations, Web strategy, and marketing research worldwide. Throughout his career in senior marketing positions, he has successfully launched twenty new brands and grown the brand equity of many world-renowned brands at Colgate-Palmolive, the Ford Motor Company, Philip Morris, and Pitney Bowes.

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Hit Your Company's Sweet Spot...

The sweet spot is that moment in sports when effort and talent combine perfectly to produce smooth and successful execution. When baseball's best hitters find the sweet spot, they can make the hardest task in sports look easy.

What if your business could make growth and innovation look easy? What if you could beat the competition day in and day out? Now you can. When you bring innovative branding and marketing together with smart leadership and great products, making customers happy is a walk in the park. If you want to learn how to align all the parts of your business to create a competitive advantage?and long-lasting success?it's time to find your Sweet Spot.

"Arun Sinha confronts the realities of marketing. The book is packed with contemporary examples. An easy and compelling read."
?Ram Charan, bestselling coauthor of Execution and Confronting Reality

"Sweet Spot demystifies and simplifies the complexity surrounding marketing and branding. Sinha's personal storytelling, experience, and business examples provide an easy framework for achieving marketing nirvana and creating business advantage."
?Allan Steinmetz, CEO, Inward Strategic Consulting, Inc.

"I am in heated agreement with Arun Sinha that success comes to those companies where marketing is central to the business. The question is how to actually make this happen. Arun gives us a thorough examination of what the world's best companies do specifically to maximize their marketing game, and how they get all the pieces of the organization in perfect alignment to hit the 'sweet spot' of success."
?Shelly Lazarus, Chairman and CEO, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide

Aus dem Klappentext

Everyone knows about the sweet spot in sports--that moment when everything feels and works just right. The sweet spot is that instant in which athletes at the top of their game make difficult tasks look easy. But sweet spots aren't the sole preserve of sports. Business, too, has its sweet spots--when a company's brands, products and services, finances, leaders, and marketers are all in tune with each other and with consumer needs, aspirations, and budgets. When a business hits its sweet spot and everyone in the organization is aligned properly, growth, innovation, and success become natural and easy.

Arun Sinha has held high-level marketing positions with some of the most innovative and successful companies in the world, and he knows how the business sweet spot works. In Sweet Spot, he argues that the key to growth is finding those sweet spots repeatedly. Packed with fresh ideas and innovative strategy--and numerous case studies and illuminating anecdotes from his own battle-tested experience--this guide to revolutionary marketing shows marketers and executives how to align, connect, and grow in tune with each other.

Sinha reveals how too many companies today are mired in the old way of doing things. They keep marketing a separate and distinct function in the company, expecting marketers to save the day when problems crop up or take the blame when products and campaigns fail. But the most successful companies, rather than marginalize it, include marketing in the leadership fold so that it can contribute to the company's overall good health and success. To prove it, Sinha includes a wealth of real-life marketing feats that show what happens when a company truly finds its sweet spot. These true stories provide the inspiration and motivation needed to move marketing forward in your own business, integrating it into the heart of your leadership and decision-making processes. Not only does the book reveal these "great moments in marketing," but it also explains why and how these moments and ideas made a critical difference.

Marketing has to move away from the old ideas in order to survive; and businesses have to change the way they use marketing if they want to grow. Today's best and fastest growing companies know that marketing is more than a function; it's the heart and soul of a successful operation. Follow their lead and you'll put your company right where it needs to be--in the sweet spot.

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Sweet Spot

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen. -Michael Jordan, basketball legend

I'm a marketer at heart and by career. I have always worked hard to become a leader in the marketing of consumer and high-technology products in both the business-to-consumer and business-to-business areas. I love marketing for what it is and what it could be, and I've been blessed to work with high-talent teams to successfully launch 20 new brands in a mix of companies and industries. Some have mushroomed into $1 billion-plus brands. Along the way, I have contributed to growing the brand equity of many world-renowned brands at Philip Morris, Colgate Palmolive, and the Ford Motor Company-as well as Pitney Bowes, where I serve as the chief marketing officer (CMO).

I speak as a marketer who has transformed the Pitney Bowes brand of this $5.5 billion company, garnering top industry honors along the way. I have played a small part orchestrating the huge efforts of many other talented people. Yet, for all the achievements of all of those I've worked with, I look at the marketing world at large and lament at much of what I see and hear.

I am on the road for much of the year talking to our customers, our employees, our competitors, and marketers from an array of other businesses. Their views are as arresting as they are worrying. For far too many companies, marketing is managed the way it traditionally has been. It's as if the marketing function (and the universities that teach marketing fundamentals) somehow missed the millennium and just kept plugging along without recognizing that the world-most certainly the business world-has moved into a new century.

Most importantly, too many in the marketing field today think that their work should be isolated, kept apart from the rest of the company. They believe that marketing should be an arcane practice-that marketers are somehow above the rest of the company, ready to save engineering, production, shipping, the rest of the C-suite officers-even the salesforce-when the business horizon is most bleak. Sales collapsing? No winning products in the pipeline? Customers whining on the Internet? Let it all simmer for a few months; then, with trumpets blaring ... Never fear! Marketing is here!

One CMO of a large Fortune 500 company confided to me that he only spoke to his CEO when there was a problem. The rest of the time they co-existed in glorious silence. The CMO couldn't see what the CEO could offer when it came to marketing; the CEO was above such things. It's a mind-set right out of old Saturday-morning cartoon shows, and just as unrealistic. But this attitude is only the first mistake of the traditional marketing minds. Never fear: They're making many others.

It doesn't have to be this way. In essence, that's what this entire book is about: Marketing as we want it, starting with marketing as I now believe it should be defined and practiced.

The Work of Marketing

Let me capture some of my thoughts so you're not left hanging in suspense. Perhaps the most important thing for me to say is that marketing, to my mind, is not static. I meet too many people who think that marketing has become so refined in its tools and techniques that it is the only department in the modern corporation that is supposed to run on automatic pilot. The view of too many is that marketing merely does a few surveys or focus groups and, voila, the next mega product or super brand is born. In truth, marketing is much more work than that. It is the energy center for any company; and, as such, it has to be ferociously engaged with people outside the company (namely: customers) as well as people inside the company.

You heard me right. I did say inside the company. Now, most people would agree that marketing needs to be in contact with customers. But I will show you, as we proceed, that being engaged with customers is not simply about demographic polls, surveys, and focus groups. It's about a constant dialogue with the customer to such an extent that the people inside marketing are also inside the heads of those who buy from the business. Yet, though that suggestion will startle many people, I find people are more startled when I propose that marketing needs to be equally in touch with as many employees, as many managers, and as many departments as it can. Your to connect list should be as long as your to do list.

The most important thing I have learned in my global journey is that marketing must elevate itself to the level of a truly free marketplace. We often use that term, "free marketplace," as a toss-off, something that sounds good in almost any context. But in an age in which customers can buy just about anything they want from vendors large and small located down the street or in another country, the demand on marketing to align the company with the marketplace isn't some nice thing to do. It is a core requirement for doing business in the twenty-first century. I've learned that you can't demote, disregard, or demean the central importance of marketing. It has become the heart of business and, as a result, has to take its deserved seat at the boardroom table. That's why I want to share all that I've learned since I left India. I not only left my homeland, I also left the assumptions that too many still hold about what marketing can do for the success of any enterprise. I've learned what marketing must do if any company is to be successful today.

Sweet Sweat

For me, the past five years, in particular, have been fascinating, exhilarating, and at times downright exhausting. Having observed and sometimes worked with some of the great brands, I tried to first identify and then codify what their companies do. But simply trying to figure it out was not enough. For a practitioner, it never can be-not if you want to try to write a book like this. I've always loved that Nike slogan: "Just do it." On the wall of every office I have ever had, I have tacked up a now slightly tired-looking Nike poster with those three inspiring words.

That is what my career and thinking has been driven by: making marketing happen. At Pitney Bowes, I got the chance to take my ideas and put them to the test (more about that later). I am particularly grateful to Mike Critelli, my CEO, for that opportunity. And, did I learn some things. The devil, they say is in the details-and how. My neat theories have been revised along the way. But I am pleased to say the big idea has come through relatively unscathed. It is what I have learned at all the companies I have been lucky enough to work with that really allows me to say for sure that I have discovered a new way of looking at business-one that works. It is a new (and improved) approach to marketing that drives growth. I call it the sweet spot, and, in my experience, it boosts revenue and profits. I have seen the results myself.

My notion of the sweet spot isn't a mathematical formula. Success in business cannot be reduced to a neat formula-no matter what a business school professor might tell you. In business, a sweet spot is a place, time, or experience in which a company's brands, products and services, finances, leaders, and marketers are in tune and in time with consumer needs, aspirations, and budgets. Everything and everyone is aligned; the company's differentiator from all other companies and competitors is cogent, persuasive, and alluring. Repeatedly finding these sweet spots is the key to growth in increasingly competitive times.

The Sweet Touch

So what is this new approach to business all about? It is based on simple observation. Once you start thinking about sweet spots, you begin to see them all around. But though businesses in a sweet spot may be easy to see, the sweet spot is not easy to achieve. Indeed, it doesn't happen often. Sweet spots don't just materialize. Some companies seem to encounter sweet spots and are able to commercially maximize them over and over. Others do not. Though it doesn't happen overnight, some business leaders seem to know exactly what their managers and employees need to focus on today so that things happen by a near-term tomorrow. Sweet spots don't happen by accident or good luck. And those who confuse it as such are doomed to fall fast and far behind the competitor possessing its awesome power. Like the tennis player (or any athlete, really) whose prowess is enhanced by a sweet spot-a competitive edge that's an almost mystical mixture of muscle, turf domination, timing, experience, flexibility, resilience, know-how, attitude, and high-performing equipment-companies that achieve a business sweet spot seem to know their game and play it better than anyone else.

Look around. There are many companies tied to computers. There's only one Apple Computer. Others deliver packages overnight; there's absolutely, positively only one FedEx. Coffee shops go back thousands of years. Then there's the aroma, taste, and smiles you derive every time you walk into the door of a Starbucks, any Starbucks. Until mid-2004, anyone searching for news and information online had his or her own favorite search engine. That was before "Googled" hit the Internet world unlike any other word, before or since. Lumber and nails are two of the most basic commodities, but Home Depot has transformed the lumberyard of old into a business that has awakened the dream-it-and-do-it-yourself spirit of more people than anyone could have imagined.

Each of these companies has found "it." They're all businesses enjoying a sweet spot. They have created a business opportunity that was untapped before them. Then they leveraged their marketing so it became the main propellant for their ongoing success. And what they achieved was not points on a score sheet, but maximal business success and as close to a warranty on sustained growth as any company can enjoy in today's marketplace. While some executives of powerful companies might allege that their business was as simple as being in the right place at the right time, sweet spot companies know that it's always been about setting goals higher than anyone else-then developing one's abilities to be able to achieve those goals. So how do they do that? That's the question that I couldn't get out of my head. Indeed, it is the question that should always be in every marketer's head. How do they do it?

Others in my field have sensed what I sense about the need to permanently shelve old-way marketing. For example, in 2000, Sergio Zyman wrote The End of Marketing as We Know It. Now, Sergio is no wallflower; and when he was chief marketing officer for Coca-Cola, he helped to boost annual sales from 9 to 15 million cases-he knows his stuff. (Sergio even offered me a job with Coca-Cola but that would have meant going back to India and sorting out its business there. Coca-Cola had paid some $65 million for an Indian business, but it hadn't secured the distribution channel. Sergio asked me to sort it out; I chose not to. In the end, because they didn't understand Indian business culture or the marketplace, the company spent the same amount again to buy the distribution channel. And for the record, I still think I made the right decision, but that's another story.) Sergio has been most vocal on how traditional marketing today too often misses the mark and leads companies toward a cliff, if not off of it. Even the best companies (like Coca-Cola) can find itself on the wrong path as a business because its interface with the market hasn't been clearly and convincingly thought through. Christian Sarkar interviewed Sergio on this point, leading to this humorous, if sad, example:

There's nothing wrong with innovation ... [but you'd] be amazed at how many companies confuse what they know how to do, their core competence, with what consumers will buy from them, what I call their core essence. For example, Coke once got into the shrimp farming business-we had core competencies covering purchasing, distribution, sales, logistics, and global operational capabilities. Where it all fell apart was that we never thought about why customers would buy shrimp from us in the first place. Shrimp farming was not a core essence. Consumers simply couldn't make a connection between shrimp and Coke.

Coke, selling shrimp-like Forrest Gump? Don't laugh at Coca-Cola until you look at your own business history. It's easy in the corporate world (especially using old thinking) to become convinced that if you can do something, all you have to do after that is market it successfully. The takeoffs on two old sayings-if you build it, marketing will get them to come, or success is 1 percent inspiration, the rest is marketing-were never true. These tired sayings are beyond false; they're vapid. Anymore, such viewpoints will be especially delusional.

Who Needs Marketing?

So, is marketing important? Yes, now more than ever. Most consumer-facing companies know that (although I am staggered by how few business-to-business companies really-and I mean really-understand and practice marketing). So what is marketing today all about? "The goal is for companies to better understand customers' buying preferences and link that knowledge to the delivery of products and services that are more relevant to customer needs and to develop closer channel relationships. But the demands on marketing don't stop there," observe Gail McGovern and John Quelch of Harvard Business School. "Companies are looking to chief marketing officers to contain costs in media expenditures, marketing services procurement, and market research. Now that firms have reengineered manufacturing and supply chain processes to cut costs, there is a natural desire to make marketing more effective, too." That's quite a roster of things on the CMO's to-do list.

As I see it, marketing is the essential link between the seller and the buyer. Of course, it's infinitely more complicated than that. And the "new marketing" advocated by Sergio Zyman and many others has not taken hold across any industry I can think of. Those relatively few enterprises that have caught the essence of marketing the way we all would like it to be have indeed enjoyed sweet success. But before we focus on the sweet spots in the business world, let's just review what it is we're trying to get away from and make some quick notes on marketing as we would want it to be.

At a Chief Marketing Organization Roundtable, I gave some thought to the ebb of old marketing and the much-needed flow of new marketing done right. This is by no means a complete list, but it will give you a strong flavor of how marketing was-and is-changing:

Modern Marketing, New and Marketing, Old Style Definitely Improved

Flock appeal: Consumers are like Power to the consumer: Consumers are sheep. They just need to be herded. now empowered. They are able to do Presented with the right message, things they could not do just a they will automatically buy and keep decade ago (e.g., research product on buying. Marketing creates and choices online). Marketing needs to transmits that message. encourage this trend and make such consumer communication a two-way (and easier) process.

Gullibility rules: Consumers are nave; Smart rules: Hype and spin may be if they can be led to believe that they okay for the political world, but the are being told "the truth," they will commercial world has evolved. Consumers suck it up. In short, they will believe are demanding that they be the message more than they will treated as educated buyers, perhaps believe their own senses. (probably?) as savvy as the seller.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Sweet Spotby Arun Sinha Copyright © 2007 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Excerpted by permission.
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