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For 10 years now, brands have been flooding channels with a profusion of content, adapting to the specificities of each of them. It seems that the end of “play time” has come and that the time for vital choices has come : relevance and efficiency seem to be driving the strategy of the means that got lost in the “Brand content” wave!

After having functioned as real hives of content production, it is clear that the brands that are doing well are those that refine their discourse and dare to make choices in their strategy of channels & resources.

What is new is the challenge to the market/com departments to respond with efficiency kpi’s to the assets they develop and deploy. And this is accompanied by a second novelty, the challenge of the kpi’s themselves ! And the choice to often have the effectiveness of these assets challenged by an independent third party to ensure an objective and energetic feedback of the sequence.

CEOs are getting their noses into these subjects and are challenging these river productions themselves. This has a cascading effect on agencies, which are beefing up their planning strategies and investing in performance tracking tools.

We no longer count the number of analysis missions on global brands where the challenge is to align the creation and production of the head office with what the countries deploy and implement. The results often speak for themselves in terms of wastage! It is a sign of healthy maturity and courage that brands are asking themselves these simple questions in order to work on efficiency, relevance and objectivity in creation. It is also a way to considerably lighten the workload of operational teams, which has become unreasonable in these areas as a large number of missions have been internalized.

In this respect, no sector seems to be spared. What do marketing and communication department teams have to say about their reality? Pell-mell: meetings, meetings, meetings; exponential workloads, overloaded agendas that take them away from their real added value and key missions, mandates

 henri kieffer, founder harpagon

and fragmented and confused responsibilities, disoriented and tired teams and high turnover.

To complete the picture, as Les Binet and Peter Field have shown in The Long and the Short of it, the business impact and effects of marketing and

communication campaigns are declining! However, three ingredients seem to constitute preambles to simplify operational models and accelerate:

1. Knowing how to surround yourself with a team from diverse backgrounds and cultures in which you dare to put forward fundamental disagreements with the vision of the leader. Find opponents who dare to challenge and assert a recommendation based on powerful expertise. Leaders should organize their management committees around a maximum of 9 members, regardless of the size of the organization.

2. initiate a reorganization project aimed at eliminating the hierarchical levels beyond the 6th between the CEO and the customer, again, regardless of the size of the organization… is the general management properly connected to the field?

3. Rationally revisit the grey areas in the processes, mandates and missions of the teams in order to be able to take an active approach to reducing the number of meetings and contributors. Restore decision-making power and trust to promote know-how and get out of micro-management.

The solution is in the way.
Have a good trip!

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By henri kieffer