Warning! Two-Dimensional Marketing Thinking Does Not Work

Written By Ted Grigg

It has taken me a long time to come to this point. But it is clear that some company leaders and CMOs cannot think three dimensionally. Why is this dangerous?

If you can only see one step ahead or backward, then you will loose.

Most of you probably remember the old Star Trek television series in the late 60s. The genius, Mr. Spark, used to play three-dimensional chess. Here he was, a genius who trained his mind to think beyond single board chess. He visualized complex chess moves on a single board made many times more complex as each move impacted two other chess boards simultaneously.

If Spark could only anticipate an oponent's move on a single board, then he would loose the game.

In the same way, today's marketer must move beyond two-dimensional thinking and look at the interconnectivity of all marketing initiatives.

The graphic below symbolizes marketing as a whole. For simplicity, the visual displays only a few marketing activities and how they interconnect to form the whole as a three-dimensional pyramid.

Let's think about how these few activities interrelate.

DMCG Results

For example, the graphic shows CRM as a key activity. But CRM requires a robust database that automates all prospect and customer contacts such as email, direct mail, phone follow up and so forth. So an incomplete or inaccurate database adversely affects the results of CRM.

At the same time, a decentralized tracking system that fails to record all customer and lead activity on the database emasculates back end marketing evaluation and CRM initiatives.

And breakthrough creative work dies because a decentralized tracking system fails to identify the cost per lead, cost per sales or cost per customer numbers that identify great or failed creative executions.

Even a strong database with good tracking looses steam if the lists are not cleaned prior to mailings for list enhancement, outbound telemarketing, email or direct mail activities.

My take. Marketing requires a fluid mind that understands the interrelationships between marketing activities and how even one weak link will kill the most brilliant of marketing programs.

Another take. Having worked with hundreds of marketers and marketing planners over the years, I have come to the conclusion that creativity and three-dimensional thinking separates strategists from tacticians. No amount of education or training creates a strategist. You either have the gift or you don't.

Ted Grigg

Ted Grigg is a direct response strategist who helps growth-focused companies reduce risk by identifying weak assumptions before they become costly mistakes.

Over the course of his career, Ted has evaluated several hundred million dollars in direct response testing across direct mail, digital, print, television, telephone, and other channels. His work combines direct response strategy, acquisition economics, customer analysis, creative evaluation, offer development, and disciplined testing.

Ted has worked on both the client and agency sides of the business. That experience gives him a practical understanding of the pressures facing executives, marketing teams, agencies, and service providers—and of the problems that arise when activity, media volume, or creative preference replaces a clear economic objective.

His consulting work helps organizations examine such questions as:

  • Are acquisition goals economically realistic?

  • Is the allowable Cost Per Sale supported by customer value?

  • Are targeting, offers, creative, media, and response paths working together?

  • Are tests structured to produce reliable business decisions?

  • Are unproven assumptions being treated as facts?

  • Is the organization measuring sales outcomes rather than convenient proxies?

Ted’s experience includes the development of direct mail and multichannel acquisition programs for insurance, healthcare, financial services, technology, nonprofit, manufacturing, retail, transportation, communications, government, and business-to-business organizations.

For a national direct-to-consumer insurance company, he developed a direct mail format that defeated established controls and helped expand the productive use of compiled prospect lists from less than 10 percent to more than 30 percent of total direct mail circulation within one year. He also planned Medicare lead-generation programs for more than 60 regional and national HMO and PPO organizations, with some programs exceeding sales projections by as much as 60 percent.

Ted founded Wyse Direct, a direct marketing division of Wyse Advertising in Cleveland, where he developed acquisition programs and helped launch a new technology product for Seiko Instruments by generating a predictable flow of qualified sales leads for its national sales organization. As vice president of new business development for the Grizzard Agency, he helped broaden the agency’s strategic capabilities and pursue new commercial and fundraising opportunities.

He is the author of The HMO/PPO Marketing Plan—A Step-by-Step Guide, published by Executive Enterprises, and has written numerous articles and conducted webinars on direct response strategy, testing, creative development, and marketing economics.

Ted earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Abilene Christian University and completed two years of graduate study at Texas Tech University. He is the founder of DMCG, LLC.

http://www.dmcgresults.com
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