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Career Development: networking for marketing success

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Peter Zarris is CEO of Opic, a Melbourne-based learning and development company. The Opic Group has been providing businesses across Australia with coaching, mentoring, training and career development solutions for over 14 years. The organisation also runs regular seminars on influencing, people development, leadership development and team building. Peter can be contacted on 03 9529 5855. www.opic.com.au

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What makes an influential marketer?

  • they have a good grasp of who their key stakeholders are, inside and outside their organisations
  • they understand the value of broad-based networks and use these networks to achieve collaborative outcomes
  • they have an innate understanding of who they are and what their strengths and weaknesses are
  • they’re very good at listening for content as well as underlying emotions – they have the ability to ‘read’ people and adapt their behaviour accordingly
  • they’re comfortable at engaging with everyone across the business and up and down the hierarchy, and
  • they give credit to those who’ve helped them achieve effective outcomes.

Creating a powerful marketing campaign requires more than just a great idea. It also requires the support and ‘buy-in’ of internal and external stakeholders, says Peter Zarris.

Several years ago an Australian consumer goods company decided to introduce a new fizzy drink, targeting the teenage and young adult market. Determined to meet the needs of this very discerning group, the marketing team conducted lengthy and painstaking research, talking to hundreds of young people between the ages of 13 and 25 in an attempt to gain insight into what they wanted.

The marketing department immediately responded to the challenge and after months of hard work came up with an orange flavoured drink in a funky new bottle with a long slender neck – a total departure from the traditional shorter, stouter bottle.

The team felt it was onto a winner. Not only did the product and bottle appeal to a test group of consumers, but it was very different to anything else out there. While developing and refining the concept, the marketing team worked closely with the operations team and finance. They needed these divisions to be on board in terms of production requirements and the costs associated with launching the new product. The marketers had mentioned the new product in passing to sales, but had never sought their input. They figured it wasn’t necessary and they’d just hold things up.

The big day arrived. The product was to go down the line and be launched internally to sales for the first time. Expectations were high.

The new package was unveiled and instead of the standing ovation the marketing department had anticipated, there was an embarrassing silence, followed by members of the sales team shaking their heads and commenting out loud. They were concerned about the bottle, which was much taller than standard competitor products. After much coercion, however, they reluctantly agreed to introduce the new concept to their customers.

Things went pear-shaped after that. The sales team returned from visiting their customers with the news that they were not interested in stocking the new product. The bottles could not stand upright on their shelves or in their coolers and they had no other way of displaying them. They refused to invest in something they couldn’t display properly. The new product was scrapped.

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