Execution necessary for a winning game plan – Lessons for Marketers

With the CFL season in full swing, NFL teams beginning their training camps, and college players getting ready to start their pre-season work, well, it is nearly the best time of the year as a football fan. Of course, the best time is when all leagues are active.

Every team prepares in the off season by developing an overall strategy of their play based on the type and quality of players they have. When preseason arrives, implementation of these plans begins in the controlled environment of a practice and then moves to exhibition games for fine tuning for veterans and final evaluation of rookies and other young players.

When the season starts there is a separate game plan created for each successive opponent based on their strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies. Each team wants to build off their strengths and minimize mistakes and weaknesses.

All sounds fine in theory, doesn’t it? Well, after watching at least parts of the CFL games so far this year, I can confidently say that too many players have forgotten the basics. That is:

• Block the player you are assigned to block
• Tackle the player with the ball, and
• Catch the ball

Far too many mistakes on these basic aspects. If you cannot perform the basics, then a coach will not have the confidence to do more or different plays to try and generate a win.

For example, an overtime game saw one team kick a field goal on their possession. The other team had their turn with the ball to try and score and the quarterback threw a perfect pass to the receiver. DOINK! The ball bounced off the receiver and into a defender’s hand. Game over, you lost.

If you cannot execute on the fundamentals, there is almost no chance that great game plan will actually be a winning game plan.

And there are more examples, but I want to move to marketers to share important lessons.

As a marketer, please answer the following questions:

• How well do you understand the 4P’s of your business? Hint: Product, place, price, promotion
• Can you articulate why your company is successful in the market they have chosen to compete in? Hint: Please make sure that you know the market you have chosen to compete in first.
• How well do you know your customers? Hint: Not based just on a persona or a digital set of data, but what real insights can you describe about them as individual consumers or as a business.
• How well do you know your competitors? Hint: This is more than just a naming exercise or quick look on a website. Can you paint a picture of the environment your company competes in?
• Do you share any, or select, insights with your corporate colleagues so they are properly informed? Hint: Customer-centric companies do.
• Would you buy from you? Hint: the answer better be yes, and you must be able to describe why without saying you have great customer service.

This is all part of marketing training before you are allowed to be involved in the creation of strategy. Just like a football player, the coach (CEO or VP Marketing) wants to be confident that you know the fundamentals and you can build from there to provide value to your department, your company, and to your customers. Learn to execute on these (and there are any number of other resources – books, courses, etc. – and great thinkers that can help you) so you can be a key contributor on your team. Create and execute a winning marketing game plan.

Otherwise, you will be on the bench and not able to play.

Or you will be cut.

It is up to you to be the professional marketer your company needs every day.

Any questions?

Call Coach TK.

Corporate Arrogance – Lessons for Marketers

Rogers has certainly, and justifiably, been shredded for their outage and subsequent response. Or non-response as some pundits have posited. One of the best assessments, with recommendations, is from my colleague David Pullara here. His outstanding post includes an email he received from Rogers’ President.

And I am surprised that it only took scammers less than two weeks to start the scams. I received two texts the other day. The first one was actually well-written and conceivably from Rogers. The nature of the scam was that I needed to click on a link so an Interac (the second text message spelled it “Intera”) deposit could be made to me as compensation for the outage. Rogers cannot even stop these scammers or bother to send a note to advise customers to be wary. It does not look like Rogers is doing any better than before.

For comparison, Emirates Airline released the following notice this week in response to some sketchy requests from London Heathrow airport.

Let’s look at the Emirates statement:

14 July 2022 – Emirates values our partnerships with airport stakeholders across our network with whom we engage continuously, and collaboratively, to secure our flight operations and ensure minimal customer disruption, particularly over the peak travel months.

It is therefore highly regrettable that LHR last evening gave us 36 hours to comply with capacity cuts, of a figure that appears to be plucked from thin air. Their communications not only dictated the specific flights on which we should throw out paying passengers, but also threatened legal action for non-compliance.

This is entirely unreasonable and unacceptable, and we reject these demands.

At London Heathrow airport (LHR), our ground handling and catering – run by dnata, part of the Emirates Group – are fully ready and capable of handling our flights. So the crux of the issue lies with the central services and systems which are the responsibility of the airport operator.

Emirates is a key and steadfast operator at LHR, having reinstated 6 daily A380 flights since October 2021. From our past 10 months of regularly high seat loads, our operational requirements cannot be a surprise to the airport.

Now, with blatant disregard for consumers, they wish to force Emirates to deny seats to tens of thousands of travellers who have paid for, and booked months ahead, their long-awaited package holidays or trips to see their loved ones. And this, during the super peak period with the upcoming UK holidays, and at a time when many people are desperate to travel after 2 years of pandemic restrictions.

Emirates believes in doing the right thing by our customers. However, re-booking the sheer numbers of potentially impacted passengers is impossible with all flights running full for the next weeks, including at other London airports and on other airlines. Adding to the complexity, 70% of our customers from LHR are headed beyond Dubai to see loved ones in far flung destinations, and it will be impossible to find them new onward connections at short notice.

Moving some of our passenger operations to other UK airports at such short notice is also not realistic. Ensuring ground readiness to handle and turnaround a widebody long-haul aircraft with 500 passengers onboard is not as simple as finding a parking spot at a mall.

The bottomline is, the LHR management team are cavalier about travellers and their airline customers. All the signals of a strong travel rebound were there, and for months, Emirates has been publicly vocal about the matter.  We planned ahead to get to a state of readiness to serve customers and travel demand, including rehiring and training 1,000 A380 pilots in the past year.

LHR chose not to act, not to plan, not to invest. Now faced with an “airmageddon” situation due to their incompetence and non-action, they are pushing the entire burden – of costs and the scramble to sort the mess – to airlines and travellers.

The shareholders of London Heathrow should scrutinise the decisions of the LHR management team.

Given the tremendous value that the aviation community generates for the UK economy and communities, we welcome the action taken by the UK Department for Transport and Civil Aviation Authority to seek information from LHR on their response plans, systems resilience, and to explain the seemingly arbitrary cap of 100,000 daily passengers. Considering LHR handled 80.9 million passengers annually in 2019, or a daily average of 219,000, the cap represents greater than a 50% cut at a time when LHR claims to have 70% of ground handling resources in place. 

Until further notice, Emirates plans to operate as scheduled to and from LHR. 

Now, it is evident who has their customers at the center of their decision-making and regular operations and who does not. Message to marketers, and everyone in the business, BE CUSTOMER CENTRIC.

This clip from the movie “Taken” includes one of my favorite Liam Neeson scenes. And his answer to the bad guys is perfect.

Which company would you rather tell your friends you work for?

Wicked Tuna – Lessons for Marketers

There is an intriguing show on National Geographic channel called “Wicked Tuna.” The show chronicles the month long bluefin tuna season off the east coast of the US in the Massachusetts’s area and follows about 10 boats. There is quite a range of captain and crew, and it is a really physically demanding job. These fishermen use single lines with bait to try and capture as many bluefin (must be longer than 73”) that they can then sell to tuna buyers who will sell to markets around the world.

I love sushi and there is some mighty fine sushi that is caught.

During the season finale there were a number of points in the show that prompted me to consider how marketers are like these bluefin fishermen. I created the following chart to explain what I saw and how it links to marketing.

Point of Comparison	Tuna Fishermen	Marketer
Use of latest technology	From fish finders to radios to new leaders, gaffes, and harpoons there always seems to be something new that the fishermen are using	Lots of martech that marketers can use – is relied on incorrectly or accepted as gospel. Remember President Reagan? “Trust but verify.”
Trust your eyes and what you know to be true	The technology can help, however, there are things that a captain and crew know about a particular fishing area and what the tuna are feeding on in any given day that the tech cannot tell you. For example, want to catch big tuna? Use big bait!	In addition to data, look at how real people interact or use your product or service. If you are a store – how do they move between departments?
Size of boat doesn’t always matter	The #2 boat in the season was a twin outboard and only two crew.	Single location, online only, or some combo of these – you can be successful against the big guys..
Know your customer	Tuna moves to different areas – good fishermen have to move to find the big ones	if you know who your customer is, and you target appropriately. Know a lot about your customer.
Know what your customer likes and doesn’t like	In different spots, tuna will favour certain types of bait fish. The fishermen need to find out which bait is preferred that day.	From the data and what you see (not just you the single marketer but all the staff, too), what do you really know about your customer and why they choose you?
Follow the fishing rules – be ethical	You are allowed one fish per day. The day starts at 12 AM and ends at midnight. One minute late in recording your catch with a buyer, results in no ability to fish that day.	No lying, cheating, or stealing – EVER!
The captain’s word is final	The captain will seek input from the first mate or second mate. But the captain makes the final decision always.	The Marketing leader is the ultimate point of marketing accountability. A great Marketing leader seeks input from their team and then makes the final call – boldly and confidently.
Teamwork is essential for success	Every crew member has a job to do. And depending on how long it takes to land the fish, the roles can be juggled. Know every job very well so you can be counted on.	Know a lot about marketing, focus in key areas of interest and opportunity and be prepared to audible and adjust during your career. The key is lifelong learning and seeing more than one perspective.

So, there you have it. My quick thoughts on what I believe marketers can learn from tuna fishermen.

Anything that you can apply in your situation?

Any nibbles?