In marketing, the "P-Word" (process) is deemed to be a bad word. It should be looked upon as a magic elixir. There are some who continue to resist the onset of process into marketing, abjuring the shift from art to discipline. Yet those who resist process are condemning their brands to an endlessly repeated cycle of mediocrity.
 Opponents of process misunderstand what it brings to marketing excellence. And even its supporters often do not realize the power it unleashes. Here is an inventory of its benefits.
Process is best practice. In order to capture a process so as to share it and make it a standard for the department or for the achievement of a particular goal like great advertising, it is inevitably the case that the current best practice will be captured. Within your own company, you will look around to make sure that the best ideas for getting the best result at the fastest speed and optimized cost are incorporated in the process you document.
You may look outside the company to others who get better results, or are more agile or more efficient. You will not knowingly codify a process that is inferior. Hey, presto! Those who follow your process in your company are working at best practice levels.
Process is a springboard from which to leap higher. Having codified best practice as you know it, you have constructed a springboard from which to leap even higher. Marketing practitioners throughout the company who view and use your process will volunteer improvements. And many will try to exceed the standards you have set for output quality, speed and cost. Encourage them to succeed! Every improvement makes the process -- and the marketing department and its stable of brands -- stronger and more beneficial.
Process is viral. No process is an island. If you choose to capture and improve the new product development process, for example, it affects your consumer knowledge process (and vice versa); your communications process with manufacturing, finance and sales; your agency relationship management process; and many more. Once you embark upon enhancement of one process, you are driven to improve the whole marketing process from end to end and top to bottom.
A well conceived process that is fully developed and generously presented constitutes some of the best training a corporation can offer.
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Process generates measurable improvement and ROMI. Sound process management requires standards, so that process enhancers in both this and the next marketing generation know how to share excellence across a common platform. While there are many principles to be applied to ascertain whether improvements are genuine, the best one is performance measurement: is the output better?
Process mavens drive towards a result -- faster, more profitable growth; higher marketing output for less input; higher marketing productivity per head. Return on Marketing Investment can be tracked only if out puts and inputs are measured, and measurement can be linked to the relevant activity that produced it only if there is a process to join inputs to outputs.
Process is an invitation to innovation. A documented process is a snapshot in time. It defines standards, and the results that are achievable by employing this current best practice. By definition, as your energetic process users seek improvements, they will innovate. Eventually, they will exhaust the improvements available from fine tuning and revving-up the current process, and they will develop another. The current process is the benchmark against which the new one can be measured. What does it do better / faster / more efficiently? If there weren't a documented process to begin with, there would be no basis for advancement other than the random one of "Let's try this."
Process is knowledge and training. Corporations don't do much marketing training any more (too easy to cut from the budget) and individuals don't take to it as much. Research shows that marketers want on-the-job training they can apply immediately, rather than classroom learning.
A well conceived process that is fully developed and generously presented constitutes some of the best training a corporation can offer. The process, having been distilled from years of experience and the learning that comes from repeated use, represents the accumulated knowledge of the corporation and its experts in the area where the process applies.
Without process, creativity can not be presented effectively. What problem is it solving? What opportunity is it seizing?
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To absorb it, a marketer must learn its principles and the foundations on which it was based. In using it, the marketer will interact with everyone whom the process touches and will learn the human elements of excellence as well as the procedural ones. Good processes have knowledge "attached," so they reveal why they were developed the way they were. Users absorb the knowledge by applying the process -- the best kind of training.
Does process kill creativity? The resistance of the anti-process lobby seems to be lodged in two complaints: that process kills creativity, and that process seeks to override the vital human interaction and free oral exchange characteristic of a vibrant corporate culture.
Wrong on both grounds.
Creativity without discipline is a random act wasteful of resources. Without process, creativity can not be presented effectively. What problem is it solving? What opportunity is it seizing? What is the history of learning and effort of which this creative act is the culmination?
And without process, creativity can not be judged. How is it better than what came before? How does it fit with other initiatives we have developed? How does it advance the chain of success or break the chain of failure? Perhaps the purveyors of freewheeling creative ideas do not want to be judged, but any self respecting investor of marketing dollars will ask for some aid to evaluation.
If creativity is directed towards improving measured performance, then it can be judged. If we allow process to define the box, creativity can find the outside. If we allow process to set the bar, then creativity can raise it. But if we don't know the dimensions of the box or the bar, we'll never find the outside or the upside. Innovation can only occur in context, and process provides the context.
Turn loose the power of the P-Word in your marketing department!
Hunter Hastings is managing partner of EMM Consulting Group, which advises companies on how to implement Enterprise Marketing Management, a multi-faceted system for global brand management combining marketing knowledge, best practice processes and training with collaborative software, marketing tools and infrastructure. He can be reached at HunterHastings@EMMConsulting.net
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