Heidi Lorenzen's Blog

A high-impact strategic marketing professional, Heidi is the Vice President of Corporate and International Marketing for Autonomy Interwoven. Heidi’s blog provides counsel for mid-to-senior level marketers in the vital, yet insufficiently understood, world of global marketing. Her blog discusses how companies can leverage the new 4 P’s of marketing -- participation, personalization, peer-to-peer communications, and prediction -- to make the most of existing business opportunities. Heidi speaks Mandarin and lived overseas a bulk of her career. She received her BA in East Asian Studies at Middlebury College, and an MBA from both the New York University School of Business and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Zen and the Art of Marketing in Tough Times: Balancing Leverage and Agility

October 29, 2008 @ 7:40 am by Heidi Lorenzen

The winds of 2009 planning have begun to blow.  With this year’s financial turbulence and its dramatic flow-on effect to business, the breeze is feeling more like a howling gale.  Even companies not on a calendar fiscal year are having to take an unsentimental look at plans set not long ago.

The net for global marketers: Budget allocations and organizational efficiencies are under the microscope.

But don’t put away your long-distance telescopes just yet.  A strategic perspective – a marketer’s strength – is vital to make immediate term gains, without risking a debilitating blow to longer term prospects. 

Here’s why:

A classic response to what’s found under the microscope is to open the “debate” about centralized vs. decentralized budgets, org. models, processes, etc. 

• “If we were more centralized, we’d operate a lot more efficiently. We could ‘do more with less’!” insist the centralization aficionados.
• “Wrong. Centralization creates nothing but bureaucracy and stagnation,” counter the decentralization devotees. “We need to be nimble. We need to be close to the customer!”

My experience indicates they’re both right. 

Marketers should always proactively seek to create efficiencies and scale. That’s simply being a good corporate citizen and an effective professional. 

Marketers should also always remain close to the economic engine of their organization, responding with the necessary engine-tuning for evolving market conditions and opportunities.

While most people think the centralization pendulum must swing one way or the other,  you can’t have one without the other.   Especially now.  We can’t afford – both literally and figuratively – to be at either extreme. 

Let’s think of centralization as leverage, and decentralization as agility – because that’s fundamentally the benefit of each model.

As marketers brace for difficult business conditions, we seek to increase return on marketing investment and drive expenses down.  But to emerge strongly from the downturn, we need to significantly increase customer preference and demand.  To do both, we need more leverage.

Leverage across geographies.  Leverage across products and solutions.  Leverage across campaigns and programs.  Leverage across resources – human and financial. With leverage come consistency and frequency – the underpinnings of effective marketing.

Contemplating the right 2009 path also yields a desire to be more responsive and focused.  Build pipeline fast.  Closely link to field operations.  Optimize results.  Decentralized empowerment of field marketers generates more relevant and targeted marketing programs, as well as faster delivery time to market.  In other words, agility.

So, how to balance the two?  Look through both lenses.  I’ve been a field marketer overseas; thinking (knowing!) that my highly centralized HQ ‘doesn’t get it’.  But my years at head office have also clearly demonstrated the brand-elevating, growth-accelerating impact of a highly leveraged, well-aligned marketing engine. 

With your telescope, identify areas of leverage.  Ensure that corporate / global marketing functions objectives support those of the business units or geographies.  Create templates.  Exploit shared services and define corresponding service level agreements.   Build on-brand modular campaigns and assets that the field can “transcreate” for effective impact in their markets.

With your microscope, zoom in on focus areas – target accounts, geographies and solutions where the field can use a consistent set of messages and tools to maximize results more quickly and with more relevance. 

Over-correction is a typical reaction when belts are tightened.  Don’t go there – you’ll blow either the short term or the long term prospects for your organization.   Find your balance.  Ooommm.

1 comment | Category: Global Marketing | Marketing Leadership

Dancing to a New World Beat: America’s Marketers Join the Party

August 26, 2008 @ 5:00 am by Heidi Lorenzen

Welcome to my blog on world marketing, a little cool, not so mainstream – kind of like World Music. It’s a new dance together, but not many people know how to dance to this world beat. My blog today is on a big world out there which we ignore at our own peril.

If you want to make my blood boil, all you have to do is suggest introducing a marketing program in the US “as a pilot” before running it in Europe, the America’s, Asia-Pacific; and the Middle East. In a global economy, what makes sound business sense about that strategy?

Chances are your international marketing teams are as bright, skilled and creative as your experts in the US. And chances are that your company is focused on ensuring that an increasing amount of revenue is generated – as quickly as achievable – from non-North American international markets.

If you check with your finance team, I’ll bet your company’s revenue growth rates outside the US are higher, too. Only those spending their days under a rock can miss the recent domestic and international economy-dominated headlines: “America’s Vulnerable Economy” (The Economist), “USA 2008: The Great Depression” (The Independent, UK), and “Consumers’ mood as grim as early-80s” (Reuters).

I’m making a lot of sweeping generalizations, but for the majority of industries I follow professionally, and for many customers, globalization sits on top of their ‘to do’ list of strategic imperatives. So…why is global marketing still so elusive at best, or at worst ignored by North American businesses?

A partial answer to that rhetorical question is that because of the size of our own domestic economy, most North American companies don’t have a comfort zone or real familiarity with many countries or international regions they’re depending on for business growth.

Off-shore, many executives take a combined personal and professional approach, to both global marketing and their careers that goes well beyond most American companies and executives’ lip-service to global focus. On a conference call with an Australian-based senior marketer recently, she gave a quick snapshot of her career, living and working professionally in five countries.

Across three continents, including years in the major hubs of Tokyo and London, she gained invaluable market-entry and cross-cultural grounding. Her company boasts Australian, Canadian, Dutch, Swiss, English and New Zealand executives who have worked in Canada, the US, Europe and the UK. Three other staffers separately worked in Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and Antigua for 5-9 years. Their virtual teams check in across time-zones from Bangkok, New York, London and Prague.

I personally have spent over a third of my career outside my native US – Taipei, Hong Kong, the Duesseldorf-area, and Singapore, in that order. International experience is widespread among my contacts and those of the marketer in Sydney. She listed off a US contact with Walmart in China, an English couple who just relocated to Dubai, Australian professionals now in Bangkok and Barcelona; and US, New Zealand and English colleagues based long-term in Japan. A few of my closest pals in the world are an Indian in Dubai, an American in Singapore, a Taiwanese in Shanghai, a German in St. Maarten, and a New Zealander in the UK. These skilled senior executives have developed a formidable understanding of international business and marketing.

Am I saying all American marketers should stampede for the passport counter? No, but we lag behind much of the world in understanding international marketing. Your marketing team both at HQ or overseas is on the front line of business development, building exposure for your brand and laying the groundwork for international expansion.

It is their role to look beyond that front line, acting as a change agent within the organization, to recommend opportunities looming rapidly on the horizon.

How do American marketing executives move out of their comfort zone and play catch-up with their international peers and worldwide competition? It is a crucial challenge facing American companies – one we collectively have to address for both business success and survival. And by taking non-US growth opportunities with the seriousness they deserve, American marketers can lead the charge into global marketing for US companies.

We’ll talk more about the “how’s” of global marketing in upcoming posts of Worldly Wise Marketing, as well as how marketers are successfully seizing their global career and business opportunities.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts – from wherever you are located – on companies engaged in global marketing. I can hear that world beat drumming louder and louder – are your feet tapping yet?”

2 comments | Category: Global Marketing | Marketing Leadership | Online Marketing