Sergio Zyman

Everybody loved it.

The CEO of the company loved it; his wife loved it; Zyman’s neighbour loved; the security guard at the front desk loved it. It was going to win awards.

After two days, Zyman pulled the ad. It was having no impact on sales.

B2B OR NOT B2B?

I often mention this story when  interviewing Marketing candidates or discussing Marketing strategies with Clients. It’s the kind of decision that true Marketers dream of making – where creativity, strategy, metrics and market performance meet, to directly impact the revenues of the company and ultimately the share price.

After more than 20 years in  the Tech sector, I’ve come across no more than a couple of examples that really make that kind of  link between ‘Marketing’ and business results.

B2B Tech Marketing has lost its way. The reason is part geographic, part the mind of the customer, part structural:

Geography: In The Hands of the Gods

Like it or not, the vast majority of tech companies are either American or Asian. So that’s where the big, strategic decisions are taken. The current buzz about the Apple Tablet – a wonderful piece of market destabilization – is a strategic play driven by California.

And that means that an entire company is dependent on the person at the top ‘getting it’. Steve Jobs certainly gets it: that’s why he’s Fortunes’ CEO of the Decade. When you think of great marketing in Tech, it’s always Apple – from design and user interface, through pricing and channel, to communications and impact.

Lou Gestner at IBM is the other great Tech marketer. Who’d have thought that boring Big Blue would create  the most memorable campaigns to support its strategic play into services? But Gerstner – dismissed by some  as  a  ‘biscuit salesman’ – brought insight from Nabisco  about the importance of communicating during times of great change.

The company is still reaping the benefits of that today, some 7 years after his departure.

The Customer: Just the Facts, Ma’am

B2B customers tend to be better informed than individual consumers. They are specialists in their niches, with a clear grasp of their subject, and the requirement to justify their decisions to their superiors, so facts are imperative. They rarely buy on impulse.

Account managers may have a vital role to play – and even in the ruthlessly logical world of the corporation, relationships do matter – but the imperative is to provide facts to help support a decision, and that’s the role of the Product Manager.

There’s also the issue of credibility. Tech has a sorry history of over-promising and under-delivering, to the point where the trust agreement may have been damaged beyond repair. Vendors want to be cautious because they think that equals credibility.

Structure: Make It and Sell It

In the Tech sector, Philip Kotler’s classical 4P Marketing bundle has divided into two main camps: Product and Place.

All that goes with Product – product management, product development, product marketing – tends to sit in a separate function, reporting along its own line. This is especially true in the software sector, where – in the apocryphal words of Larry Ellison of Oracle- if you not selling it or not making it, what are you doing in my company?

For ‘Place’ read ‘Channel’ which is usually run by the sales function. Channel isn’t a marketing decision; it’s all about sales execution. And no amount of dressing up of the Channel Marketing function can hide the fact that it gets driven as a tactical sales support role, providing sweeteners to distributors, VARS or retailers to shift more units.

(Interestingly, Kotler’s own website has a section on Tech Industries, in which two out of three service offerings are specifically related to the sales function).

MARKETING LITE?

So that leaves Promotion, or, as it’s now known in most Tech circles, Marketing.

Marketing in Tech B2B is about messaging and communicating. It’s about putting tech people on platforms, and about getting column inches in the trade press or tweets in the mediasphere. It is about enabling conversation.

It could be – should be – energising and challenging and setting the agenda. Not just for technical debate, but social, economic, artistic and educational issues. Indeed, there aren’t many aspects of public and private life that technology doesn’t touch.

So why is so much of B2B Tech Marketing so underwhelming?

Because B2B Tech companies are risk averse. Hence, every marketing program from every Tech company is exactly the same. There may be nuances of audience or twists on the Channel programme theme. But at heart, all B2B Tech marketing is a copy of all other Tech marketing. Because it is what is known.

But when everyone is reasonably competent, the playing field is very level, and the view across to the horizon is very bland.

No one puts their head above the parapet, and no one takes a risk.

The role will always be needed – someone has to run the PR agency and create the lead generation programs – but this isn’t big, brave Marketing with big, brave ideas.

LONG LIVE TECH MARKETING

So is this the end of the road for Tech Marketers – to be consigned to a backroom, writing press releases and sending out invitations to seminars?

Only if Marketers let that happen.

The truth is that Marketing has an infinite opportunity to take the reigns and change the game. Because they sit at the heart of a central paradox: the people who run Tech companies don’t understand the beast they have unleashed.

Many senior Tech execs don’t really understand the Web.

Sure, the company has a website, maybe some e-commerce, perhaps the CEO even has a personal LinkedIn account (although not a fair number of  the SVPs and CEOs I know). But many still seem to regard it as just a Comms channel -  a cheap way of issuing press releases and cutting down on sales collaterals.

So if you’re a Marketing professional in the Tech sector (or anywhere else for that matter), your opportunity is to fill that knowledge gap. We have only scraped the surface of how the websphere impacts our relationship with customers, partners and influencers. What it means to your company and its business model.

Dive deep and drink long. Now is the time for Marketing to reclaim its seat around the table.

His thinks that ‘real’ music makers are looking for new ways to create and share their work – like his ’17′ project, in which he’s recording 100 choirs of 17 people all singing a single note, which he will play back to them at a one-off, never-to-be repeated event, before destroying the recordings.

Bill Drummond might be mad. And I love him for it.

WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONARE?

To set this in context, he was behind KLF, the acid house group that made a fortune in the early 1990s, then incinerated it to kick off their ‘K Foundation Burn a Million Quid’ tour.

He also considered cutting off his hand at The Brit Awards, but had second thoughts on that one.

Since then, he has popped up (I was about to say ‘on the art scene’, but Drummond really transcends that sort of pigeonhole), acting as one of life’s agents provocateurs, challenging conventional wisdom, posing difficult questions, and generally making people feel uncomfortable.

His latest notion is that recorded music is dead. The more I think about this, sitting  at my PC, listening to some easy jazz on Windows Media Player, the more I think he’s onto something. Here’s a summary of the story so far:

1) The most important artist in the history of recorded music is… Enrico Caruso. In his short life (he died aged 48) he made over 220 recordings of tenor arias which meant that his public could now listen to him at home.

While that appears to be stating the blindingly obvious,  that’s because we’ve all grown up with it, and  assume it to be part of the  ‘natural’ state of affairs. In Caruso’s time, that was as significant a leap as powered flight. It changed everything.

He reached an audience with a representation of his work that hitherto had been the preserve of those who could get to La Scala or The Met. It was the beginning of the ‘democratisation’ of music.

In his way, he was the Bill Gates of the early recording industry. Edison and, later, Berliner may have created the hardware platform, but Caruso created the software. What did a member of the gentry want with an ugly wooden box and a great horn stuck on top of it? In itself, they didn’t – but they did want to listen to and to show their friends that they listened to the world’s greatest tenor.

2) The most important day in the history of recorded music is 5 July 1954, when a young truck driver walked into Sun Records to record a couple of songs for his mother. Fooling around between takes, he sang ‘That’s All Right (Mama), and the legend of Elvis Presley was born.

Putting aside Presley’s importance as a cultural icon, his significance in this context is that prior to recording, he had no musical career. He was entirely created by the record industry, a reversal in the relationship between artist and medium.

3) The most important year in the history of recorded music is 1966, when The Beatles and Glenn Gould made the same, paradigm-shifting decision: they would no longer play live:

Classical pianist Gould wanted to concentrate of the Bach canon, and felt that the intimacy of the chamber genre couldn’t be communicated from the concert platform;

For The Beatles, the decision was more complex, but there’s no doubt it was heavily influenced by the fact that the techniques they had started to use on Revolver (tape looping and early sampling) couldn’t be toured. Sgt Peppers would be impossible to perform live.

And so the template changed again. The record (more specifically the album, by now format-of-choice) became an artefact in-and-of itself. Not a device for promoting the live performance, but an artwork that would stand alone.

4) The most important technology in the history of recorded music is the mp3 file. Think about how it is changing our relationship with recorded music:

* The album is redundant: through iTunes, Napster or any other file sharing site (legal or pirate) we can now pick and choose our tracks;

* Music is ubiquitous: we can play it anywhere, any time, in almost any circumstance. Muzak used to be limited to lifts, hotel lobbies and shopping centres. Now we take our own aural wallpaper wherever we go;

* There is no barrier to access: we can now reach any artist, any genre, any song, any composition, any time. And that ease makes us lazy. Music has become background sound, filling the empty spaces of our days, and plastering over the sonic mess of everyday life.

THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED

Drummond points out that before recording technology, music was context-depended: from orchestral compositions for State occasions to folk-songs in the field. Once it could be packaged and transferred into another setting – more importantly, any setting – it started to lose its meaning.  Which in turn, diminished its value.

It is the paradox of the democratisation. When something is available all the time, at very little cost, we value it less. This is not an argument for exclusivity; rather it’s just pointing out that when the tap can be turned on at any time, we take water for granted. And with that, the thrill has gone.

The thrill of knowing that your favourite artist’s new record would be released in three months. Saving your pocket money to buy it. Selling stuff at school to make up the difference. The bus trip to town on Saturday. Entering the record shop and seeing its bright cover, smelling the cellophane wrapper, turning it over and reading the track list – the liturgy for the mass that will follow. Handing over the money, receiving the plastic bag and realising that the prize was yours. Cuddling it on the bus ride home, the hero returning from his/her quest. Rushing upstairs to your bedroom, turning on your record player, and then, and then…

The black circle, etched with a fine line that fragmented the light on its surface. Your hand, palm-spread as wide as possible across the underside, balancing it with care so not to mark the surface. Two hands now, fingers either side of the round, lowering it gently into place. Start the turntable. Bend down, eye-level with the needle. Gently lift the arm and …pause…anticipation…will it be as good as…swallow nervously…holding your breath… you drop the needle onto the surface…the speakers ‘bump’ then ‘hiss’ then…it begins. And it’s the best moment of your life. It is glorious.

Today? Point. Click. Type. Listen. Forget.

WAKE ME UP BEFORE YOU GO-GO

Do not think that this is a Luddite’s blast against the new and a return to the ‘good old days’. I love the web to the point of addiction. But there is no doubt that a lot of the ritual has gone, and with it, the magic.

This is what Drummond – with his off-the-wall, left-of-centre performances – is addressing. More specifically, he’s asking us to wake-up. If you’re one of 1700 people to have participated in his choral project, and you know that when you hear it in its full performance, it is the only time it will ever happen and that it will be destroyed immediately after – wouldn’t you pay attention?

Like you did the first time you placed the needle on that album.

The quality of that moment wasn’t in the music itself (the experience is equally relevant to the classical collector, the punk and the Roller’s fan). The quality was in the attention.

In the film Diva, the plot centres on a pirate recording of a operatic soprano who has never made a record. The only way you can experience her voice is to see her live. She believes that scarcity increases the quality of the moment.

That truth and the iPod are not easy bedfellows.