2

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION | A Journey of Discovery .......................................................................................... 3

INSIGHT 1 | Assess the impact on marketing management of new technologies ............................. 4

INSIGHT 2 | Assess how a strategic marketing planning approach can assist in identifying

opportunities for a business. .............................................................................................................. 6

INSIGHT 3 | Application of key marketing tools and frameworks to business issues. ....................... 8

INSIGHT 4 | The importance of developing a marketing culture that embraces innovation ........... 10

REFERNECES ...................................................................................................................................... 12

3

INTRODUCTION | A Journey of Discovery

As an emerging leader at International Business Machines (NYSE: IBM), my career path to date has

been one that has provided me with many insights into the marketing profession and the value that

it delivers to our business. My participation in SMBA6006 Innovation in Strategic Marketing,

however, has served to galvanise in my mind the criticality for business leaders to ensure that

marketing is central to the organisation’s end-to-end operations and introduced to me a range of

innovative and emerging practices that have strengthened my capabilities.

This reflective essay seeks to; (i) Highlight the most important learning points I take away from the

unit; (ii) Articulate how these insights impact my approach & understanding of business issues as

they relate to my current organisation, and finally; (iii) Document specific actions that I will take to

apply my new marketing knowledge to deliver greater value to my organisation and key

stakeholders.

4

INSIGHT 1 | Assess the impact on marketing management of new technologies

I arrived at SMBA6006 shortly after attending the 2014 ADMA Global Forum. As Australia's

preeminent event for marketing professionals, I left the event with a newfound appreciation -

bordering on complete wonder - of the capabilities of new technologies on marketing management.

Keynote speakers such as Andy McKeon (Global

Customer Marketing Lead at Facebook) and Scott

Brinker (founder of Chiefmartec.com and Harvard

Business Review contributor) provided amazing insights

as to how their organisations were employing

technology. They spoke of tailored client journeys,

signature brand experiences and personalized

interactions that, only a few years ago, were the

preserve of Hollywood blockbusters such as Minority

Report.

Engaging with the various case studies in this course, however, helped me to more fully appreciate

the pervasiveness and speed at which new technologies are emerging. From bricks-and-motor

retailers such as Nordstrom who are using sensors to monitor customer’s in-store behaviours (i.e. so

as to inform their approach to marketing); to online retailers such as Amazon who are piloting the

use of drones (i.e as a channel for order fulfilment); to inside the consumer’s home, such as is the

example of Nest who have developed an automated thermostat (that captures & monetizes data on

customer’s behaviour) it is clear that we now live in an age of disruptive technology. These dynamic

is transforming the way that we live, work and the options available to marketers to reach & engage

with consumers.

As these new capabilities evolve, so too do the skills, capabilities and understandings required of

today’s marketing professional. This view is supported by Brinker who asserts; “marketing is rapidly

becoming one of the most technology dependent functions in business” (Brinker & McLellan 2014).

Marketers can’t rely upon established methods, approaches or their current knowledge-base but

must be proactive in adopting a real interest in technology if they are to ensure that the impact of

these emerging technologies on their organisation’s competitive advantage are anticipated,

understood and effectively addressed/leveraged.

Despite the absolutely incredible capabilities of these new technologies, Professors Frow & Briley

helped me to appreciate that a distinct interplay between the digital/online world and the physical

world in which your customers are located remains in-place. With reference to the online retailers of

Bonobos, Diapers.com and Warber Parker, MIT Sloan Management Review’s research entitled; What

Matters Most in Internet Retailing (2012) helped me to more fully understand this dynamic. The five

(5) key findings of this research, specifically that; (i) Individual consumer acceptance depends on

off­line shopping costs; (ii) Sales evolution is structured and predictable; (iii) Migrating from “good”

to “great” requires expansion to niche locations; (iv) “Isolated” prospects are worth pursuing and

finally; (v) Different locations require different customer acquisition strategies (Bell et al. 2012) have

helped me to understand how marketers can leverage their knowledge of their customer’s offline

circumstances to deliver improved business outcomes with technology.

Figure 1 | Facebook's Andy McKeon speaking at the 2014 ADMA Global Forum

5

Beyond maintaining my passion for technologies and being committed to understanding my

customers’ offline circumstances I see two further actions that I can take as an MBA candidate to

positively impact management practice. Both actions relate to my position as a marketing

management professional at IBM. Firstly, I hold the privileged position of studying alongside both

other marketing professionals (e.g. Aaron, Darren) and IT professionals (e.g. Bruno, Ross, Phon)

within the Sydney University MBA Cohort. As Brinker asserts, closer collaboration across these two

functions is absolutely critically in ensuring ongoing business success in a period of disruptive

technology (Brinker & McLellan 2014). Given that I am committed to the ongoing success of

Australian enterprise, my classmates & I, in committing ourselves to understanding the priorities,

challenges and opportunities of or respective professions can act as the catalyst for greater inter-

departmental collaboration within our own organisations. Secondly, my position as a marketer at

IBM given that; (i) influential industry analysis such as Gartner predict that by 2017 the CMO will

spend more on IT than the CIO (McLellan 2014) and; (ii) IBM is rapidly developing its portfolio in

marketing technology, presents me with the opportunity to lead my organisation’s engagement of

other marketing professionals who would be likely to see business value in our solutions.

6

INSIGHT 2 | Assess how a strategic marketing planning approach can assist in identifying opportunities for a business.

For the past four years at IBM, I have worked within their Sales & Distribution organisation. More

specifically, the IBM Inside Sales division whose mission is to provide efficient and effective client

coverage of small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) throughout Australia & New Zealand. To these

ends, I found tremendous value in learning more about marketing best practice in relation to

segmentation. IBM’s approach to segmentation, as outlined by IBM’s global leader of Sales &

Distribution Bruno Di Leo (2014), is outlined within the figure below;

In purely simplistic terms, the factors considered when applying this segmentation model to the

entire population of accounts which we serve are; (i) How much did the client spend with us in the

previous year? (ii) What do we forecast they will spend on IT (i.e. IT wallet) in the current / year

ahead? And finally; (iii) How likely it is that we can increase our share-of-wallet within the current /

year ahead? In making some informal enquires around the office, I’m led to believe that this

methodology has been in-place for many years. The segmentation applied drives the choice of

channel, ranging from; call-centre for midmarket clients through to; small teams servicing 10-50

accounts in the Enterprise segment all the way to; large teams servicing one client, often at the

client’s own offices.

My participation in SMBA6006, however, has raised many questions as to the efficacy of this

approach. Professor Frow and Jetstar’s Rob Deming instilled in me an appreciation of the criticality

of channel strategy and, more importantly that choosing the correct channel for the right product at

the right time is of paramount importance. This is particularly relevant to my organisation given the

breadth of our portfolio and the fact that developments in cloud computing are making enterprise IT

increasingly affordable and accessible.

The current approach to segmentation, as described previously, does not take into account that a

large “industry account” would often feel comfortable in procuring a simple technology (e.g.

Industry

•For the Industry segment, IBM invest in customized coverage for key clients to increase client intimacy and build enduring relationships through cross-brand teams dedicated to their needs. IBM accelerate growth within the client by bringing deep industry expertise and client growth strategies to unlock new opportunities across the C-suite, including line of business buyers and the CIO. One client, one team.

Enterprise

• In the Enterprise segment, IBM dedicate integrated IBM S&D and Brand teams to a local market, bringing IBM solutions, talent and specialized industry skills closer to a broader set of clients. We will develop relationships and new sources of growth with line of business buyers, win-back opportunities and new clients. One territory, one team.

Midmarket

•The Midmarket segment is unchanged and IBM continue to cover medium-sized enterprises with less than 1,000 employees, with the focus on transactional sales led by Business Partners.

7

additional software licence) rapidly via self-service without the need to engage an IBM or that a

small “midmarket” client, seeking a more sophisticated solution (e.g. IBM consulting engagement)

may require a formal solution overview from an IBM consulting partner. Under the current

segmentation framework that is based solely on the customer’s size & IT Wallet with little/no

consideration of the solutions that they are seeking, client frustration could often ensue.

Furthermore, increased channel costs, and ultimately, a failure to capture latent demand for our

products/services, are increasingly likely.

In reflecting further on my learnings in this regard, and critically how they issue identified could be

addressed, I return to the concept of ACURA. The Acquire, Cross-Sell, Up-Sell, Retain, Advocacy

framework was introduced to me for

the first time in this unit, yet I can

immediately see the benefit that its

application would lend to my business.

Defined as; “the formal processes for

maximising value creation - both for a

company and for a customer” the

model is an entirely foreign way of

thinking in respect to my

organisation’s current approach (Frow,

2014).

Two key advantages, include the fact

that the model prompts one to think in

terms of the segments which

represent the greatest long-term profit

potential, as opposed to the greatest

profit potential in the current quarter/year. Returning to the impact of technology on marketing

practice, and the fact that these very technologies are disrupting established industries, serving to

replace established players with their newer competitors (e.g. Blockbuster vs Netflix), adopting this

perspective so as to ensure that our company establish an early footprint in these organisations is

absolutely critical. Furthermore, in identifying what is the best ACURA strategy for each segment an

admittedly more complex, yet dynamic and responsive, approach to delivering clients with the most

appropriate offerings, at the right time and via the right channel could be achieved. This

conversation is one that I will take up with my businesses’ leadership.

Acquire

Cross-Sell

Up-Sell

Retain

Advocay

8

INSIGHT 3 | Application of key marketing tools and frameworks to business issues.

A key insight that emerged as a consequence of my participation in SMBA6006 is that marketing,

when permitted to fulfil its complete scope, touches almost every aspect of the business. To the

uninitiated, marketing is quite often seen as the “creative type”, developing the latest tag line or the

next viral advertisement. Whilst these duties fall to the marketing department, true best practice

occurs when these tasks take place within a broader ecosystem of planning, analysis and intentional

execution in the pursuit of specifically defined outcomes of value to both the organisation, and

critically, their customers.

In a week where IBM have; (i) announced their 10th consecutive quarter of declining revenues; (ii)

have abandoned their 5 year strategic plan as it is no longer achievable; (iii) have seen their stock

price drop 11% in a week and; (iii) now hold the grim

reality of being the stock in the Dow Jones Industrial

Average that has lost the most support from Wall

Street analysts - hinting to further decline, I’ve been

reflecting on whether my own company appreciate

the importance of placing marketing at the centre of

their operations. Unfortunately, there is a growing

body among the commentariat who believe that this

may not have been the case for some years (Denning

2014).

Delving deeper into the commentary, in particular, to

our CEO & chairman’s own analysis, these revenue

results reflect the fact that our legacy business lines

(e.g. hardware) is being disrupted by the emergence

of new technologies (e.g. cloud computing), and

critically, changing customer preferences (i.e.

procuring solutions as-a-service and paying for what

they use daily as opposed to multi-year contracts paid

for up-front) faster than we’ve been able to transform

ourselves (Rometty as cited by Waters, 2014). Harvard

Business review assert; “marketing, as the primary link between the enterprise and the external

world of competitors and potential customers, are often in the best possible position to understand

what customers need and value” (HBR, 2006). Given the situation my organisation finds itself in

today, late to transform to meet customer’s preferences and seen as an enterprise who value

investors more so than their customers, it is difficult to fully believe that marketing have the

influence into the organisation’s strategy that perhaps they truly should. As an emerging business

leader, I must champion for the role of marketing in actively contributing to our organisation’s

strategy so as to ensure that we address these concerns, and through doing so, deliver to our

customer’s expectations.

In the context of IBM, given the commentary above, a marketing tool/framework in which I perceive

significant immediate utility is the Boston / ‘growth – share’ matrix. Once again, this was a

framework that was introduced to me for the first time within SMBA6006. Given the breadth of

Figure 2 | IBM’s, Ginni Rometty (CEO and Chariman) as depicted by Forbes

9

IBM’s solution portfolio, this tool is incredibly useful as a means of analysing our different business

units and allocating resources effectively. At a high level, I can see that our legacy hardware

businesses are our “dogs”, our analytics and cloud computing capabilities our “stars”, our services

division our “cash cow” and our artificial intelligence Watson capability as being our “question

mark”. That I can observe this allocation being mirrored by our organisation’s divestment,

acquisition and investment strategies, (e.g. The 2004 sale of IBM’s PC division to Lenovo; the 2013

sale of the x86 server business to Lenovo, the 2013 acquisition of cloud-computing start-up

SoftLayer; the March 2014 announcement that IBM would create an entirely new “Watson Division”

and finally; the October 2014 sale of our semiconductor plant to Globalfoundries) is a powerful

reminder of how marketing, when permitted to fulfil its complete scope, play a pivotal function in

guiding the business’ overall strategy. Armed with these new insights as to the importance of

positioning marketing centrally within the organisation’s overarching strategy, I conclude SMBA6006

renewed in my motivation to champion for the role that marketing must play in ensuring the future

success of the organisation.

10

INSIGHT 4 | The importance of developing a marketing culture that embraces innovation

One of the new insights I gained from my participation in SMBA6006 was that of co-creation. I found

the whole concept a true step-change from what I have become accustomed to at work, given that

for the past 5 years, the entire organisation have been mobilised in the pursuit of a strategy

designed around one guiding principle, namely; shareholder value. In working closely with my group

(i.e. Willis, Alex, Chris & Ben) as we explored how Air New Zealand had been employing, and stood

to gain from proposed, co-creation strategies I came to realise that a marketing culture that

embraces innovation is one that can deliver tremendous value to the organisation.

Re-envisaging the process of value creation from one that emphasis the value delivered by the

enterprise alone, to a richer perspective that appreciates that all stakeholders (i.e. customers,

employees, suppliers alike) can jointly collaborate to develop value has been tremendously

impactful. I depart the course complete in the belief that this approach to value creation will be a

hallmark of successful businesses within the years ahead.

As an MBA candidate, I’ve come to appreciate that employee morale and engagement is a critical

predicator of an organisation’s profitability. My experience in SMBA6006 has instilled in me a belief

that co-creation can be an extremely effective strategy in helping to improve employee engagement

and that the need for marketers to unlock the latent potential of the organisation’s workforce in the

pursuit of their, and the organisation’s objectives, is absolutely critical. This view is supported by

Aarons & Driest (2014) who assert: “Marketing has become too important to be left just to the

marketers. All employees, from store clerks to IT specialists, must be engaged in it”. This

understanding will guide me in seeking out the input, participation and involvement of a broader

selection of my colleagues when defining, testing and analysing my strategies.

Returning to my own organisation, many commentators cite organisational challenges which could

impact upon our ability to quickly implement co-creation strategies. Cringley (2014), for instance

asserts that;

IBM’s workforce is operating in survival mode. They have no voice, no means to make IBM

better, and they are certainly not going to stick their necks out. IBM is squandering its

greatest resource and most of its best minds.

That these points resonate with me at a time when our business face challenges, I am once again

reminded of the inseparable position that marketing plays within the organisation and the role that

a marketing culture that embraces innovation can play in delivering valued business outcomes. My

thinking is such that I can envisage a step-change from our leaderships’ current approach that has

propagated a hesitance among the ranks to engage with and propose bold ideas, to a new

framework, based on co-creation principles, that unlocks the latent capacity of the staff to instigate

new initiatives to address the challenges we face. Not only could this deliver greater value to the

business and our clients, the staff would invariably feel more engaged, motivated and committed to

our organisation’s success. That a marketing culture that embraces innovation could address human-

resource (HR) considerations such as employee morale and engagement, serves to reinforce the

importance of placing marketing at the centre of the organisation’s operations.

11

Fortunately, while things may be grim on the employee-front, there are signs that my organisation is

shifting to this new mindset when it comes to our customers. For instance; (i) IBM has recently

released a development platform called Bluemix that allows developers to build their own

applications on the IBM Cloud Platform and provides a commercial outlet for Bluemix developers

(clients & IBMers) to sell their wares under the IBM brand umbrella and; (ii) Developed Watson

technology and commercialized it as a cloud platform with IBM and outside parties building a variety

of applications on top of it (Miller, 2014). These are exciting developments for my business, and

armed with the new insights I take away from SMBA6006, most notably, the conviction I hold as to

the importance of a marketing culture that embraces innovation, will guide my career trajectory.

12

REFERNECES

Arons M, Driest F & Weed, K, The ultimate marketing machine Harvard Business Review 92(7)

July/August 2014 pp.54-63

Barinka A 2014, IBM Stock Plays Catch-Up to Wall Street: Chart of the Day, retirved on October 24th

from: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-24/ibm-stock-plays-catch-up-to-wall-street-chart-

of-the-day.html

Bell D, Choi J & Lodish L 2012, What Matters Most in Internet Retailing, Fall 2012 Research Feature

September 18, 2012, retieved on October 24th from: http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/what-

matters-most-in-internet-retailing

Brinker, S & McLellan L, The Rise of the Chief Marketing Technologist, Harvard Business Review, July-

August 2014

Cringley R 2014, How to Fix IBM, retrieved on October 24th from:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertcringely/2014/10/23/how-to-fix-ibm/

Denning, S 2014, Why IBM is in Decline, Forbes retrieved on 24th October 2014 from:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2014/05/30/why-ibm-is-in-decline/

Di Leo, B 2013, One Purpose, One Team; Aligning for client growth & value. Internal blog, accessed

on 24th October 2014 from:

http://w3.ibm.com/news/w3news/top_stories/2013/06/sd_coverage_change.html

HBR 2006, Marketing Strategy: How it fits with business Strategy" From the Marketer's Toolkit: The

10 Strategies You Need to Succeed: Harvard Business School Press 2006.

McLellan L 2012¸ By 2017 the CMO will Spend more on IT than the CIO, Gartner Webinar, retrieved

on; 25th October 2014 from:

http://my.gartner.com/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=202&mode=2&PageID=5553&ref=webina

r-rss&resId=1871515

Miller R 2014, IBM Earnings Reflect Just How Difficult Transformation Really Is, retrieved on October

24th 2014 from; http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/24/ibm-earnings-reflect-just-how-difficult-

transformation-really-is/

Waters, R 2014, Rometty’s Overhaul Becomes More Urgent, Financial Times, retrieved on October

24th 2014 from: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cf8a2e84-5b93-11e4-a674-

00144feab7de.html#axzz3HCzhBgAY