Global chaos? All the more reason for total business integration!

I have written a good few articles over the last few days on brand equity, customer equity, customer lifetime value and customer relationship management (CRM). The significance of all this work as a suite of concepts is aligned to the fact that brand management has entered an era where the entire customer experience needs to be managed, as you no doubt know. So how does all this come together, and why is this important?


Well, there's more to these articles than just considering the various attributes of the marketing value chain in the way I have written about them, especially when we realise that achieving success in markets defined by economic and market turbulence (global financial crisis part II) and changing customer demands (especially in terms of Gen Y's) requires, more than ever, a particularly serious and concerted effort to integrate ALL of the organisation’s capabilities into a cohesive whole. This is so because in order to properly manage the entire customer experience, increased corporate integration is required, all the way from marketing, to operations, to shareholder value creation. 


As an example, from the customer's perspective, think about how many times in your life the actual sales experience (operations) was significantly different to the brand promise (marketing), the total experience leaving a sour taste in your mouth. And while this was all happening, think about the company concerned, who would experience less than expected shareholder value creation, or even worse, value destruction as a result of the negative impact on their reputation caused by the dissonance between brand and operations. I think I could write a whole book about this!


In conclusion, we know, in the context of the customer experience, that brand management needs to focus on at least four basic goals: acquisition, retention, increasing wallet share and bonding with customers to ensure that they become passionate brand advocates. What's interesting is that these goals can and should be integrated into an internal management framework linking all the operating model elements such as people, process and technology together, all focused towards the goal of forging the link between customer lifetime value and shareholder value. This is useful because it enables us to restate one of the questions asked of all brand managers, i.e. “Where does our brand value lie?”, to a much more specific “Where should our acquisition, retention, cross sell and relationship management investments, and therefore our operating model activities, be directed to be of best effect?” More on this will soon be written in an upcoming article on optimising customer equity.


PS For an overview of the end-to-end marketing value chain, click here for a full context.