Creating one, seamless collateral delivery system
In the everyday reality of corporate business, the habit of producing marketing collateral is frequently undertaken as a response to a need without necessarily addressing the business case for producing it:
- Most organisations produce marketing collateral out of habit
- Most organisations produce twice as much as they need
- Most organisations don't know what they actually need
Companies produce marketing collateral because the internal system says so – producing large arbitrary quantities of material without understanding why that collateral is being produced, to what end and without the means to measure its effectiveness or considering the long-term cost implications.
Albeit well-intentioned, the temptation locally is to by-pass the formal system and produce market specific material – unusable anywhere else. Multiply that activity across the company worldwide, and the cost and waste is considerable.
"Add focused analytical rigour to the often unfocused marketing budget debate," says Professor Robert Shaw of Cranfield Management Research. "Replacing entrenched territorial behaviour ("it's MY marketing budget") with corporate accountability is critical. Defining objectives and tasks of marketing spending is an effective approach, and many companies are moving towards a zero-based approach to marketing budgeting". Whilst it isn't possible to put an entire business on hold in order to reinvent processes and protocols, it is possible to challenge the status quo. Organisations should undertake a 'front-to-back' assessment of the systems in place for commissioning collateral. At its core, understanding what is produced and why is the most significant challenge. In response, methodologies are applied for flexible, integrated, on-demand buying and fulfilment.…
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