Marketing Excellence Winning companies reveal the secrets of their success Hugh Burkitt and John Zealley Marketing Excellence Marketing Excellence Winning companies reveal the secrets of their success Hugh Burkitt and John Zealley Copyright © 2006 Marketing Society Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex PO19 8SQ, England Telephone (+44) 1243 779777 Email (for orders and customer service enquiries): [email protected] Visit our Home Page on www.wiley.com All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except under the terms of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP, UK, without the permission in writing of the Publisher. 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Other Wiley Editorial Offi ces John Wiley & Sons Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA Jossey-Bass, 989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741, USA Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH, Boschstr. 12, D-69469 Weinheim, Germany John Wiley & Sons Australia Ltd, 42 McDougall Street, Milton, Queensland 4064, Australia John Wiley & Sons (Asia) Pte Ltd, 2 Clementi Loop #02-01, Jin Xing Distripark, Singapore 129809 John Wiley & Sons Canada Ltd, 6045 Freemont Blvd, Mississauga, ONT, L5R 4J3, Canada Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Burkitt, Hugh. Marketing excellence : winning companies reveal the secrets of their success / Hugh Burkitt and John Zealley. p. cm. “Thirty-four success stories . . . selected from the last fi ve years of the Marketing Society Awards for Excellence”—Introd. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-470-06027-8 (HB : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-470-06027-1 (HB : alk. paper) 1. Marketing—Great Britain—Case studies. 2. Success in business—Great Britain—Case studies. 3. Business enterprises—Great Britain—Case studies. I. Zealley, John. II. Marketing Society. III. Title. HF5415.12.G7B87 2007 658.8—dc22 2006033563 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 13 978-0-470-06027-8 (HB) ISBN 10 0-470-06027-1 (HB) Typeset in 11/15pt Goudy by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall, UK This book is printed on acid-free paper responsibly manufactured from sustainable forestry in which at least two trees are planted for each one used for paper production. Contents Foreword vii Introduction: so what’s the big idea? ix Acknowledgements xi About the authors xiii 1 Marketing measurement excellence 1 2 Customer insight 11 3 Launching new brands 29 4 Brand extension 73 5 Brand revitalisation 93 6 Sustaining the brand promise 155 7 Marketing communications: getting the message across 191 8 Creating loyal relationships 241 9 Crossing borders: international brand development 263 10 Internal marketing: engaging employees 295 11 Developing marketing capabilities 315 12 Doing well by doing good 335 Appendix 357 Index 359 Foreword In a discipline known for its addiction to puffery and hyperbole, it becomes critical when introducing a book on “Marketing Excellence” to wrestle with some defi nitions. In a world where superlatives like “outstanding” and “perfect” have been debased through over-use, it behoves one to attempt to say what excellent really means in our world of marketing and commerce. Well, to begin with, excellence has to be unusual and rare. My old football coach used to say about winning that if it was easy we’d all be doing it (true; not that it helped our team very much). The same goes for excellence – to excel is to outperform, not merely perform averagely or have tried really hard. Secondly, excellence is linked to endurance and sustainability. In some walks of life one piece of brilliance can count as excellent. But in our world it is the execution of ideas over a long period of time which is a non- negotiable criterion for excellence. A great quarter does not a reputation make. This requirement for grinding out results is especially true in competi- tive markets, where, for every action, there is counter-reaction and the merit of what marketers do can only be judged by the tough laws of competition. Celebrating the internal beauty and logical consistency of the marketing plan is not the objective of this book – but rather, sustained success in the mess of the real world. Finally, building on the theme of dealing with the real world and not the virtual reality of the plan, excellence is most certainly not the same as per- fection. Perfectionists are usually the death of organisations in competitive markets. Perfectionists hate the grubbiness of compromise and trade-off, which sustained excellence usually requires if it is ever to be delivered. A viii FOREWORD former colleague of mine, George Sewell, who built the Quaker business in the UK over the last ten years, always liked to remind me that in his opinion “excellence is the continued delivery of 80% of the critical elements of one’s business”. He was, and is, right, and his wisdom is worth its weight in gold. Market- ing is about grappling with real life; that’s why it’s hard and challenging. Striving for perfection will kill you, but uniformly high and consistent stan- dards will mark you out and usually result in success (if they are better than your competition). This book captures the examples of excellence that meet these defi nitions. It’s a book for practitioners, but will nonetheless inspire anybody for whom winning in the commercial world is important. The book is essential in itself for celebrating excellence, because excellence is a fragile concept that requires, demands and screams out for the oxygen of publicity. It’s the kind of thing that, if it isn’t celebrated and talked about, will diminish in quantity. As the 17th century poet Lyttleton said of it: “Where none admire ’tis useless to excel; where none are beaux ’tis useless to be belle”. So enjoy and learn from the book. Occasionally, especially if you are new to marketing, you may think that you are, for example, simply seeing exam- ples of “common sense”; so Innocent and Green and Black’s weren’t geniuses to spot the demand for natural food, Tesco didn’t need a PhD in human behaviour to spot the demand for home delivery, and Avon was hardly the pioneer of the idea that cause-related marketing can be enormously effective in these more civic-minded times. But this brings me back to defi nitions of excellence and the enduring insight of my old football coach, who used to say, “We live in a world where common sense is rarely common practice”. How true. Perhaps the best and most practical way to think about market- ing excellence is when, for a time, common sense manifests itself as common practice – to the unbridled relief of the consumers and customers who reward us with their custom. Martin Glenn, former President of PepsiCo UK and Ireland