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When I was a kid, I was obsessed with whips. Who wouldn’t want to be Indiana Jones? Unfortunately, I accidentally punched myself in the face when I first got my hands on it. A whip may not be the best toy for a child, but it’s a perfect analogy for how a business structure and its functional groups interact.
Image Credit: Jasmine Holmes
Let’s delve into how the whip works
A whip uses the momentum (energy) of a loop traveling along a tapering strip of leather to generate force. As it moves, the energy is concentrated in an increasingly narrow structure. This amplifies the energy and he drives the tip over 30 times faster than the initial movement of the handle. That distinct “crack” in the whip is a tiny sonic boom.Isn’t it crazy that 2,000 years ago humans were able to break the sound barrier with just a scrap of leather?Scientists can mechanically reproduce it. It took him over 1,900 years to come to fruition.
Image Credit: Jasmine Holmes
Related: 5 Marketing Strategies That Will Boost Your Business
How does this relate to your marketing structure?
In many organizations, marketing has many complexities and is the most operationally challenging department. The best marketing structures are smooth, sophisticated, and deliver sound-bar-breaking results regardless of the season, campaign, or product being sold. To understand how to achieve satisfying cracks on the market, let’s go back to the beginning… hands.
hand steward holding a whip. Traditionally, the brand steward was the CMO and specialized in marketing. In a startup, it’s usually the founder. However, in progressive organizations, it is the Chief Growth Officer. The CGO is a catalyst for cross-functional collaboration and sustainable growth, while the marketing whip acts as an extension of the brand itself. Thus, brand managers brandishing the whip will channel the power and influence of the brand to each section, directing all strategies and movements in the same direction.
of whip handle You can compare it with the brand itself. It stores governance, market equity, and brand fundamentals (including brand ideology, identity, market positioning, and culture). This is where brands establish their market presence, increase consumer awareness, and attract their target audience. With the slightest movement, the brand steward enters energy into the handle, moves down the whip, and amplifies it to cause a major rift in the market.
the functional group is body (or string) A whip whose branded energy flows and amplifies speed and power while moving from group to group. Like whips, groups are woven together to support each other, maintaining the perfect balance that allows creativity and productivity. Most importantly, it strengthens the entire structure. Even if he breaks one strand, there is no chance of a major crack. These groups can be teams such as sales, finance, creative, communications, trade marketing, or any team that contributes to your go-to-market. Like whips, better ingredients (i.e. team skill sets) yield better results.
Image Credit: Jasmine Holmes
hitch This is where the body of the whip gets thinner and the product launch moves faster and faster and all the efforts of the functional group focus on sales tools. Logically this can be very complex and time consuming , minimizing the amount of time the trade marketing team has to do their work. If a trade, event or digital marketing fails, all previous work done by the above functional groups will be invalidated. Without sales tools, brands and their ambassadors are drowning.
autumn This is where all marketing is delivered to the digital and brick and mortar markets in the form of sales tools. It is the thinnest part of the stick, moves at the fastest speed, and has the most urgency behind it. Designed to attract and attract
popper That’s the intended effect: converting the target consumer! For consumer brands like Nike, it’s the sale of their new shoe line. Sales tools should drive consumers to your product and ultimately win sales to create a major rift in the market. Each successful whipcrack adds value to the brand, making the next whipcrack faster and bigger.
Hearing a whip crack echo (sonic boom) gives you a tremendous amount of data and feedback about what worked and what didn’t. The man with the whip has to learn something new every time he contributes to his next GTM cycle. Otherwise, you are doomed to make the same mistakes over and over again.
After the crack, the brand steward’s hand has to follow through with the move (so as not to get flogged in the face). This means taking post-sale actions on consumer and operational data, issues, and market feedback received from product launches to set the stage for the start of the next cycle.
Image Credit: Jasmine Holmes
RELATED: How Collaboration Turns Every Department into a Revenue Stream
tactical point
one: Make sure the person holding the whip has a holistic understanding of the organization and the ability to align departments to create sustainable growth.
two: Be confident in your brand vision and values. Make sure your brand is at the center of all functional groups so all teams can easily cross-collaborate and go in the same direction.
three: Maintain a balance of skills and expertise across functional groups. Backfill weaker teams with the right talent, education, and tools.
four: Overcome complex logistics and avoid bottlenecks with automated and streamlined pipelines.
Five: Observe, analyze and act on all the insights, feedback and market data you get from Whiplash.
The best structure has clearly organized operational data and defined automated processes that generate a smooth pipeline. The future of marketing clearly begins with systems designed to streamline cross-collaboration, gather optimized insights from embedded metadata, and use purpose-built tools to make decisions in the blink of an eye. I want people to hear the “crack” from miles away. Also, every time you swing the whip, the sound should be louder and travel farther. Crackin!
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