A Shift in Leadership

I've been floored by the change over the past fifteen years.

Early in my career (late 80s), I worked at a hybrid seed company. There were Leaders everywhere.

At Lands' End in the early 1990s, there were Leaders everywhere. Too many Leaders, in fact, causing rampant intellectual and philosophical arguments. You actually wanted to be in a meeting to hear the different points of view.

At Eddie Bauer in the late 1990s, there were fewer Leaders ... this was 90s Seattle, where Leaders and Grifters partnered to make millions in dot.com money, draining average companies of Leadership. I recall a really, really average manager calling me (I was a director at the time) offering me a job as a manager at Amazon, where I'd be a nobody but would earn more money. I wouldn't be writing to you today had I gone in that direction ... I'd either be dead or filthy rich. Being neither means I get to play pickleball.

At Nordstrom in the early-mid 2000s, there was a fabulous blend of Leaders and humble doers ... a kind of blend few companies could emulate. A competitive advantage that Neiman Marcus or Saks or Macy's could never possibly replicate.

And then?

Somewhere around 2010, "it" changed. It is Seth Godin's fault if you ask me. No, he didn't do anything wrong. He wrote so well. He spoke in public, and spoke well. He appeared on blogs, on podcasts. He commented on this very blog. He eschewed typical business models. He charted his own course. He's still writing (click here). He had ideas for how a modern business could relate to customers. His ideas were so simple that nobody, to this day, wants to implement them. Personalized communications? Why do that when you can mass broadcast a discount on Instagram ... the latter takes twelve seconds, the former requires a task force.

That's when "it" changed.

It is hard to come up with a thesis for how to run marketing at a modern business. You discount or you mass broadcast or you do all the hard work Seth Godin wanted you to do.

Virtually nobody in marketing wants to do hard work. Especially when understaffed, underappreciated, and under-paid ... which happens nearly everywhere.

The "it" that changed was the rise of the Thought Leader.

Few marketers could create their own thesis for how to execute marketing in a modern world.

Many marketers could point out missteps from "big brands". How hard is it to put Eddie Bauer on blast mode for bankrupting itself via merchandise strategy and store execution?

The Thought Leader uses seductive language to stop a marketer in his tracks.

• "Saks didn't adapt to a modern reality of retailing. The modern consumer has zero tolerance for uninspiring merchandise assortments in a dingy department store that fails to embrace experiences or engagement. Tomorrow's customer demands an intimate relationship with trusted brands. Those who haven't laid this foundation risk obsolescence. Those who are actively pursuing this foundation will reap the rewards."

That is the kind of acid-reflux inducing advice offered by a modern Thought Leader. If you don't tamp it down with Pepcid you become a Lemonhead.

The Thought Leader did not solve a single problem that Saks possesses. He simply said flowery words that sell books, that result in 79 comments from Lemonheads on LinkedIn, that allow him to pay $20,000 to speak at conferences, that enable him to sign a contract to provide "Management Advice" at a competing brand that will never be implemented. He pays to write for Forbes. He criticizes everybody in an attractive manner. He uses terms he lacks the ability to understand or implement ("AI" comes to mind). He is the opposite of Seth Godin in every possible way.

These very traits are attractive to the Lemonhead. The Lemonhead is understaffed, underappreciated, and under-paid. 

The Lemonhead lacks Leaders within his own company. With nobody to lead him, to guide him, to protect him, he's at the mercy of the Thought Leader. The Thought Leader gladly adds his subscriber counts, clicks, and otherwise empty engagement metrics to his collection. The Thought Leader needs the Lemonhead. 

The Lemonhead needs somebody to respect him, to appreciate him.

Which brings me back to you.

Be a Leader.

Your employees need you. They're counting on you. You might not be able to pay them enough. You might not be able to provide them with the resources they need to be successful. You might not be able to staff your department appropriately. But you can respect your employees and appreciate your employees. Daily.

Your employees do not want to become Lemonheads. They need a real Leader to help them navigate five miles of marketing dreck coated in delicious frosting.

No Awareness

Modern prospecting and awareness are intertwined.

I decided to look at a brand called Potpourri. I visited the website, and was promptly interrupted.

Why did I visit the website? I wanted to find links to their social media presence.

There were no links.

As best I can tell, there's not much of a social media presence. Maybe I am missing it.

Honestly, Potpourri is part of a conglomerate, so they can prospect off of sister company lists. That helps ... a lot!! 

Long-term, your organic social presence promotes events ... the events convert prospects into shoppers that become buyers that can be nudged toward loyalty yielding profit.

I mean, it's 2026. The best time to start the organic social stuff was in 2010. The second best time to start is tomorrow. But you have to have something to say. Create an event every three weeks, events that fuel the prospecting part of your universe, that seed the search/ai aspect of your business.

Every Three Weeks

Back to our playbook.

Every three weeks there needs to be an event. Again, not "40% OFF PLUS FREE SHIPPING", that's not an event, that's a bribe that devalues the customer relationship.

Events are important, because they fill your marketing ecosystem ... the kids call this stuff content and engagement ... it's so much more than that. You are giving the customer a reason to pay attention to you, and better you do that with merchandise that leads to content than to do it with content alone.

All this stuff helps you retain customers ... and based on your feedback, you much prefer retaining customers than acquiring customers (though most of you benefit more by acquiring customers than retaining customers).

The Playbook: A Missing Element

Here's our playbook.

You, of course, are a play caller. You make decisions. You have a playbook with all sorts of "plays".

Those of you in old-school cataloging ask a common question.

• "If we didn't have a catalog, we wouldn't have anything to say. How do we close that gap?"

Yeah, there's a missing element for those folks ... an element that (some) ecommerce brands possess.

The missing element?

Events.

You just watched the Super Bowl a few days ago. That, ladies and gentlemen, is an "event". The entire football calendar is built around events.

Events can be sales, but they should be more than sales. Customers don't care about your MARCH SALE - HURRY, 50% OFF PLUS FREE SHIPPING when the customer knows that a month later there will be an APRIL SALE - HURRY, 50% OFF PLUS FREE SHIPPING. Those are events by definition only.

The old-school cataloger essentially had monthly events ... a catalog delivered to a mailbox. Take the catalog away and there is a void.

The void must be filled ... with events.

Here's Olive and Cocoa (click here). That's a business based on events ... they don't have to create events because the entire business model is based on events.

You remember Amazon? Prime Days? Yes, there is a price component to that ... but not all prices are cut, and it isn't a sale with a blanket 30% off everything.

Williams Sonoma has virtual events (click here) to complement in-store events. How hard is it to create virtual events?

The catalog is going to go away (for my catalog-centric readers) - your partners are going to increase costs to unmanageable levels ... it has already happened and will continue to happen. You will replace catalogs with events. You have no choice.

The Playbook

A rudimentary drawing of what you are dealing with.

Print the image.

Review all of the "connectors" in the image ... this isn't perfect information so I'm not looking for an email that says "you don't have display ads in here, so the whole framework collapses" ... this is designed to get you to think, not criticize.

Prospects align with the channels below them.

Shoppers align with the channels below them.

Buyers / Loyalists frequently align with the channels west/southwest of them.

We're trying to push prospects to loyalists, right?

The Play Caller

That's what you are. You are a playcaller. Your job is to call plays to score points (i.e. profit) for your company. It isn't necessarily an easy job.

Readers ask "what do you look to for inspiration?" ... well, it sure isn't marketing literature ... six miles of unimaginable dreck coated in sugary frosting".

One of my daily reads is called "One Play A Day" ... you can subscribe here if you are a football fan. The coach sends one play design per day, showing how a play caller baffles the defense.

You just watched the Super Bowl. Did the play caller run the same play over and over and over and over? No! The play caller mixes things up, deceives the defense, runs a play in the first quarter then runs a completely different play out of the same formation in the third quarter.

The play caller adjusts to the strengths of his/her team.

The play caller uses analytics ... sometimes agreeing with analytics, sometimes disagreeing, sometimes simply leveraging gut feel and instinct.

The play caller knows that yards (net sales) are kind of irrelevant ... the play caller knows that points (profit) are highly relevant. The play caller knows that chunk plays (rushes of 12+ yards or passes of 16+ yards) make a big difference ... they are like events in marketing.

The play caller adjusts when his players aren't capable of performing at a high level ... no different than the marketer adjusting when customers don't embrace merchandise. Players in football are comparable to individual items in a merchandise assortment. Everything needs to work in harmony.

In upcoming posts, we're going to talk about retention and acquisition in terms of a play caller. You are no different than an NFL or College play caller. Which means, of course, that you have an important job that requires creativity, imagination, flexibility, and raw skills/knowledge.

P.S.: You can't always trust AI to produce an accurate image ... look at the flaws in this one.

Two Tidbits for Friday

You are going to have to have a handful of key items that you build your customer acquisition strategy around. It's virtually non-negotiable in a world that is transitioning search from Google-centric algorithms to discovery via AI.

We briefly veer off-topic for a moment. Here is a comment from former football coach Mike Martz ... about going for it on 4th down and the relation of the tactic to "analytics" in football.

"When somebody says 'analytics' on TV, I just run to the bathroom to vomit".

Do you think I'd align with a pure analytics view, or would I have empathy for this comment?

I have empathy for this comment.

There's a newsletter I receive from an agency. It's pure analytics wonkery. "For our clients, sales were up 2.49% on an ad expense increase of 4.11% leading to a ROAS of 2.88, proving that Facebook is struggling to deliver new customers."

Anytime you make decisions based on somebody else's success or failure, you are sub-optimizing the very decision you seek to optimize. If somebody told you that diners enjoyed eating meatballs just 41% of the time, would that dissuade you from making meatballs? Or would diners enjoy your meatballs 89% of the time?

Business should be FUN ... and you have the knowledge to make your own decisions independent of data. You know what works for your industry, you know what works for your own customers (often the tactics are different), and you make decisions independent of the industry narrative. That's the best use of analytics.