Marketing Excellence: Winning Companies Reveal the Secrets of Their Success

389 Pages·2007·5.916 MB·English

by  Hugh Burkitt, John Zealley

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 [phone]
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. Requests to the Publisher
should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern
Gate, Chichester, West Sussex PO19 8SQ, England, or emailed to [email protected], or faxed to
([phone].
Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All
brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or
registered trademarks of their respective owners. The Publisher is not associated with any product or
vendor mentioned in this book.
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the
subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the Publisher is not engaged in rendering
professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a
competent professional should be sought.
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