Introductory thinking to what you need to do to be successful in marketing.

1. 1
Hit the Deadlines: Don’t Look Out of Control. Everything Can use Process: It should enable us,
We have enough to do, that things will just stockpile not hinder us.
on each other. A good process can force your thinking towards a
solution. If it restricts your thinking, it’s not a good
Know Your Business: process. But if it means, you free up your time for
Don’t Get Caught Off-Guard. strategic thinking, instead of format thinking, we’ll
Make sure you are asking the questions and carrying move much faster.
forward the knowledge.
Continuous Ideas: We Implement 1 in 100 ideas
Open Communication: No Surprises. we have.
Make sure you keep your team informed There is a need for more ideas so the ideas we
and involved. implement are the best we have. Never be afraid of
an idea, always be willing to say “what a crap idea”.
Control Our Destiny: We run the brands, they
do not run us. Regular Feedback for Growth: That’s the only way
When we don’t know something, we speak in we get better.
an “asking way”, but when we know, we speak in I will give you as much honest feedback as I can.
a “telling way”. While it’s crucial that we seek to The challenge is that I’d like as much back as I give
understand, it’s equally important that we know our you—what you have to say is important to me, and
role as leaders is to give direction or push towards can be one of my best sources for growth.
the end path.
Let’s Celebrate Our Wins: Love What You Do.
These are tough jobs. It has to be the passion for
what we do that keeps us going.
MARKETING How we need to Show Up:
High Performance Team
WHAT SUCCESS
LOOKS LIKE
My belief is that good marketers 1) get what they Keep it Simple
need, and 2) that what they need is the right thing I’ve always said, “If you have a complex answer to
to do. Bad marketers fail on 1 or 2. something, odds are you are wrong”. Keep it simple
enough to explain, and so that the people who need
The Need For Speed to execute our ideas understand and can really
We don’t do things fast for the sake of it; we do execute them.
things fast so we can take advantage of opportunities
that have a window. Also, doing things fast Focus on the top 3 things that matter…likely only
does not mean sloppy as we all need to hit our you care about the 4th. Speak in terms of “telling
commitment deadlines. stories” that are built on facts.

2. 2
Follow Your Instincts. Put it to the test: think about it 19 times, test it
Listen to your inner thoughts: too many times out, see if you can stretch it or move it…see what
people fail because “they went along with it”. I still it looks like in concept…ask around to see what
have to catch myself to think about it 19 times so I people think. It may still fail, but at least you’ve taken
can make sure we are doing what is right. The less it on the journey.
you let slip through, the better you’ll be.
In terms of pressure points, ambiguity and pressure
You Run the Brand, Don’t Let the Brand Run You. usually work against each other. What I have found
Be thoroughly organized, well planned ahead, and is the longer I can stay in the “ambiguity zone” the
know the pulse of your business. The more planning better the ideas get—whether it’s the time pressure
you do, the more agile you’ll be because you’ll know that forces our thinking to be simpler or whether
when it’s ok to “go off plan”. it’s the performance pressure forces us to push for
our best idea…I always say, the longer I can hold my
You must be the champion of the brand. The best breath, the better the work gets.
ideas are those that erupt out from the brand team.
You have to be a self-starter that pushes your idea Find Your Brand’s Strategic Pathway.
through the system even in the face of resistance Every brand operates under a different business
or doubt. model—the pathway to success is different
every time.
Innovation = Fundamentals + Magic. • Reactine has a low cost of goods, lower
If you only have one, you’ll fail. A good strategy trial rate and high product satisfaction.
not executed with magic is boring and will never • LPP has a high trial, high novelty and below
connect to the consumer. A great idea built on the category norm on frequency.
wrong strategy won’t move the business. • LMW has high awareness, low usage
frequency but its clinical success is part
Strategies should be well thought out and kept of a routine.
simple enough to be executed. The execution
should be thought of as an expression of Once you find the convergence of the
the strategy. pathway, nailing the strategy becomes easy. For
Reactine, it’s about trial, for LPP it’s about frequency,
Revel in Ambiguity. for LMW it is about connecting to the routine. The
Never be afraid of an idea—and never kill it quickly. test is whether you can then focus all your ideas
towards that.
Strategic
Thinking
We get fixated on trying to do everything, but payback for the minimal effort. In fact, strategy itself
one simple test is to measure it against size is big win against a small focused investment.
and degree of difficulty. It’s a simple return on
effort equation. The small easy wins are great to do, but don’t really
make the deck. We should just do those on a day
We want big and easy ideas. That’s the most to day basis.

3. 3
ORAL CARE AND NRT
Strategic Thinking
If it’s a big win, you start
Big
to explore how, and you run into
roadblocks or complexities, that’s
where innovation can really help Explore Big
Other Win
you to find new simpler ways. Ways
Don’t throw the idea out, just find
a new way to get there.
On small difficult ideas, stop doing
them immediately. Don’t Just
Do It Do It!
Sometimes in marketing, we think
that strategy means more then
execution. The problem is that if Small
a good strategy is not executed to Difficult Easy
perfection, you’re rolling the dice
Strategic
on your results. Planning
If we have great thinking followed by
equally great execution, we’ll always Great
win big.
Random Executional
Even if your thinking is ok, if you Results Excellence
have great execution…we’ll likely
see steady results.
Obviously, ok thinking and ok
execution is not the place we OK
want to be. This is where we Failure Results
meet failure. We won’t be
in business very long.
OK
The one I want to focus on is “great OK Great
thinking, but only ok execution”.
Here the problem is that the
results become randomized. If we miss deadlines, We need to put as much attention into our
have poor quality in our executions or don’t match execution as we do with our strategic thinking.
up the strategy and executions, we run the risk of
not getting the results we expected and we won’t
know why. Even worse, we’ll course correct by
changing our strategy.

4. 4
EXECUTION: What we go through
Too many times, we
have a nagging feeling
because 1 of these
GUT
Instincts
4 is not lined up.
You’re job is to find
a way to listen to the
outlier and then see
if you can fix it. HEART
Emotional
YOU BRAIN
Logic
If your gut says it’s
off, it likely is..and you
just can’t see straight.
Listen to your gut. BRAND
Strategy
If you don’t love
it, will you fight for
it’s life? Will you put everything you have into it? If it’s off strategy, then you’ll be taking a break
Not likely. from the pathway to your longer term vision. It
becomes a short term go for it, and a longer term
If it’s not the logical move, trust me, before it gets course correct back on strategy.
approved, someone else will see that logic flaw,
and it’s likely senior management.

5. 5
ASSOCIATE
BRAND MANAGER
SUCCESS
1. ANALYTICAL STORY
There are 5 key areas you should
focus on:
TELLING A great ABM is able to tell stories, where others just see data
There is tons of data all over—share results, tracking, Never give a data point without a story or action.
test scores, etc. One of the most critical skill an ABM You risk letting someone else take your data and
can work on is developing stories with the data. It’s run with it. Never fear bad data, as long as you have
one thing to have the data point, but another to an action plan. Never twist the data to tell a story,
have thought it through and know what it means, because if it’s challenged, the whole story crumbles
and what action you will take on this data. with it.
When you come across data, the best thing you This skill is one that you carry with you as you move
can do is look for patterns or data breaks, try to upwards in marketing. In fact, the more practice you
twist the data in different ways to see if you keep have, the faster you’ll become.
getting the same story, ask questions to find back
up, start putting together stories and challenge
the stories.
2. BE PRO-ACTIVE
A great ABM takes action and moves before being asked
Most of the projects are already set for an ABM, so even new ways of seeing things. You need to push
many times, it’s comfortable to wait, ask the right your ideas into the system.
questions and proceed. That’s good for learning, but
a bit too cautious. While it’s still key to communicate to the right
stakeholders, you should be pushing your ideas
Some of the best ideas come with a fresh set of into the system, which almost creates new projects.
eyes. We need a continual influx of new ideas and Don’t get into the mode of waiting or figuring that’s
not within your job scope.
3. MAKE
IT HAPPENA great ABM can get what they want
It’s obvious that project management is a big part to make it happen, faster, bigger and better.
of being an ABM. But, instead of just functionally
managing the steps of the project, you need In terms of speed, you need to understand what are

6. 6
the important milestones that need to be hit. Always factor, and make it have a bigger impact then was
think in terms of key bottle necks. Bottle necks are expected. Better means you have to take the same
simply the task that has the longest completion time, people and get them to give their best ideas or their
which then impacts the entire project. If you let this best effort or their best work.
slip, the entire project slips. This has to be managed
in detail, but also many times with an inflexible fist to Guaranteed you will meet many points of resistance.
getting it done. Bigger means you want to do more Every project will. Solving these and still getting the
then is required. Make the work zing, find the wow most you can, is the separation of good from great.
4. CONTRIBUTE
STRATEGICALLY
A great ABM puts their strategic thoughts forward
All great ideas must flow upwards. Most people and represent your thinking. Standing up for your
tend to think they are “strategic”…and they tell me thoughts shows that you are in the game, that you
that all the time. After all these years, I’m still not are thinking, and that you believe in your strategic
even sure what that means. But I do know there is thoughts. If you don’t stand up for your thoughts,
a big difference between thinking strategically, and then it doesn’t really matter does it?
contributing strategically.
Also, it’s so easy to get lost in the daily executions,
You need to be in the frame to challenge thinking, but you have to be constantly thinking. Keeping
whether it comes from your agency, cross functional things aligned to the strategic is just as important as
peers or me. It’s important that you speak up being strategic.
5. ACCOUNTABILITY
A great ABM is accountable in the ownership of their work
Accountability is the stepping stone to ownership. You have to be action oriented, and solution focused.
And ownership is what being a Brand Manager is You can never allow your team to get stuck. They
all about. will be looking to you for the ingenuity to help solve
the problem.
You cannot let things slip or miss. Many times, the
devil is in the details. You have to stay on top of the Maintain the composure, ask questions and learn to
timelines and lead those on your project teams. If revel in the ambiguity.
you have to step in, and work hand in hand with an
expert then jump in. You have to be the hub of communication to
all team members, and to key stakeholders,
including upwards.

7. 7
BRAND
MANAGER
SUCCESS There are 5 key areas you should
focus on:
1. OWNERSHIP A great BM takes ownership of the brand
I’ve seen many BMs struggle with the transition from to be looking to you for the answers. They’ll be
being a helper to being the owner. As you move recommending you’ll be deciding.
into the job, you have to get away the idea of having
someone hand you a project list. Not only do you When managing upwards be careful of asking
have to make the project list, you have to come questions—try to stick to solutions. “I think we
up with the strategies from which the projects fall should build a big bridge” instead of “any ideas for
out of. how we can get over the water”. You just gave
up your ownership. I’d rather have you tell me
A good owner talks in ideas in a telling sense, what you want to do, and we debate from there,
rather then an asking sense. It’s great to be asking rather then you ask me what we should do. I’ll be
questions as feelers, but realize that most are going better able to judge your logic, your passion and
your vision.
2. STRATEGIC
DIRECTIONA great BM provides the vision & strategies to match up to
Vision is sometimes a hard thing to articulate. It’s The communication of strategy is a key skill. Learn
sometimes easy to see times when there is a lack of to talk in strategic stories that can frame your
vision. You have to let everyone know where you direction. Learn to think in terms of pillars—which
want to go. The strategy that matches becomes the forces your hand around 3 different areas to help
road map for how to get there. achieve your strategy. Having pillars constantly
grounds you back in your strategy, and is an easy way
As the brand owner, you become the steward for communicating with the various functions—they
of the vision and strategy. Everything that is off may only have 1 pillar that matters, but seeing the
strategy has to be rejected and your role is to other parts makes them feel as though their work
find ways to steer them back on track. It’s easy is worth it.
to get side-tracked by exciting programs or cool
ideas, but if they are off-strategy the excitement has
to end.

8. 8
3. MANAGING
OTHERSA great BM spends the effort to make their ABM as good as can be
If you make your ABM better, then it reflects back stuff. But if the ABM job is a learning position,
on you. Too many brand managers struggle to shift then you have to provide areas for improvement.
from “do-er” to “coach. They think they can do it Intuitively, you’d think the BM/ABM relationship
faster, so they may as well do it. They think their would be constant “negative feedback”, but I see too
ABM will learn the hard way, just like they did. They many BMs afraid of going “negative”. My question is,
struggle to share the spot light, so it becomes hard that if you were coaching a gymnast and their “toes
to showcase the ABM. weren’t straight, wouldn’t they want to know?” Then
why are you not working on a relationship where
The work of your ABM reflects 100% of who you can get to that point.
you are. This challenge forces your hand on
helping to develop your ABM. Sometimes it Share them better ways for doing things—which
can feel more motivating to just talk the positive you have learned. Spend some time teaching from
your experience.
4. WORKING
THE SYSTEM A great BM gets what they need
The organization is filled with groups, layers, external communication becomes key—you can’t let missed
agencies, with everyone carrying a different set of communications cause angst or concerns.
goals and motivations.
Also, its crucial that you get the best from everyone.
Working the system entails taking what you have I have found it useful upfront to ask people for their
learned about ownership one step further. You best. It’s a strange step, but I have found it useful.
understand the organizational components, If you really have someone that’s good, you know
and then you go get what you need. Again they’ll respond to this. The good news is that only
0.1% of people ask them, so it’s not like they’ve
5. DEALING WITH heard it that many times.
PRESSURE A great BM handles pressure with grace, but also fire
There are a few key types of pressure: 1) dealing to course correct, rather then continuing to repeat
with ambiguity 2) the results aren’t coming in how and repeat and repeat.
we hoped 3) personal pressure of a relationship 4)
time pressure of a crunched project. Relationships. I’m still learning. But be pro-active
in making the first move. Try to figure out what
Ambiguity is one of the hardest. This is where motivates as well as what annoys them. Most times,
patience and composure come into play as you the common ground is not that far away.
sort through the issues. The consequences of not
remaining composed is likely a bad decision. Time Pressure. It’s similar to the ambiguity. Be
organized, disciplined and work the system so it
If the results don’t come in, it can be frustrating. doesn’t get in your way. Be calm, so you continue
Reach for your logic as you re-group. Force yourself to make the right decisions.