Gonzo marketing

For me, the most useful articulation of inside out marketing is from the first marketing book I read. The book was called Gonzo Marketing: Winning through worst practices by Christopher Locke and was recommended to me by a friend in advertising. No-one I know has ever read it, but it's the inspiration for this and the next chapter.

Gonzo marketing is adapted from the ethos of gonzo journalism, the most famous proponent of which was Hunter S. Thompson. Thompson's book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is held up as the quintessence of the genre. Gonzo journalism collapses boundaries between the reader, the content and the author. There's no claim of objectivity because the author is part of the story. As Wikipedia describes, ‘It is an energetic first-person participatory writing style in which the author is a protagonist, and it draws its power from a combination of social critique and self-satire.' In gonzo marketing, there is no ‘us' — the marketer — and ‘them' — the consumer. The two are merged. This chapter discusses how to do gonzo marketing, from the inside out, starting with the board.

Corporate governance and me

I'm excited about this heading. Several years ago I didn't know what ‘corporate governance' meant and until recently I would have dismissed it as boring and irrelevant to brand understanding. I now understand the imperative of corporate governance to brand understanding at the heart and the head of the business. (This is a tortured way to describe the board and the CEO.) If gonzo marketing is a clever way of employing inside out marketing, then the most ‘inside' part of an organisation is the board. The board and its governance structure set the framework for the entire company. If a board understands the power of a brand and how to build one, then the company has a good chance of being successful. How many boards understand something as difficult to pin down as ‘brand', emotional connections and creativity?

A 2019 joint study by The Financial Times and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising found that over half of business leaders rate their knowledge of brand building as average to very poor. This is despite 83 per cent of business leaders in the study believing that brands continually deliver the bottom line. Brand building is important, yet many business leaders just don't get it. The title of the report was ‘The Board–Brand Rift: How Business Leaders Have Stopped Building Brands', and it paints a negative picture of corporations and their capacity for strong brand intelligence. That is, the ability to understand and prioritise the brand. It was based on a self-reporting questionnaire sent to business leaders who were readers of The Financial Times across the world. It found the lack of knowledge was most apparent when comparing channels that are thought to be most effective at building brands. Over half the leaders thought social media was one of the most effective channels for brand building. The report claims it's just about the worst for building brands.

The issue isn't just for large organisations with an established board structure. I see the same issue with startup brands and Silicon Valley culture in general. Here, technology reigns supreme along with the skills of the coder and developer. But what's their North Star? What's galvanising different work streams and agile stand-up meetings? To say it's ‘the brand' is almost heresy. However, it's what everyone is trying to create. Without the brand, I don't get what the North Star for these companies could be, which may be why many of them don't succeed.

For years, there was prevailing wisdom that to be influential, the chief marketing officer (CMO) needed to understand the language of the boardroom. Now the opposite is more likely to be the case. Today, boards across the world are hiring prominent marketing people to help them incorporate the magic of marketing. Richard Branson and Indra Nooyi understand marketing. Before they died, Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, and Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA, understood marketing. They understood the importance of brand. Their boards recognised and prioritised brand-led thinking. Until recently, boards didn't know where the real power lay — it's with the people who understand this intangible value.

Today, boards ranging from established publicly listed companies to startups are creating businesses built around brands. They understand that the brand is central. Marketing is not advertising. Marketing is the brand, and the brand is everything. Some of the more engaging conversations I've had are with those who want a board that marries good corporate governance with creativity and innovation. I applaud moves to inject more creative thinking at a board level because if it doesn't happen at the very heart of the organisation, it's less likely to occur in the rest of the company.

Inside out with superannuation

One of my clients is a small but rapidly growing superannuation company. Superannuation helps policyholders build a nest egg for a financially secure retirement. But the industry has had a rocky time of it of late with the Financial Services Royal Commission uncovering some dubious business practices. With this as a backdrop, they had asked us to help with their brand positioning because they wanted a strong and consistent story for their staff, customers and business stakeholders. The project started with a series of interviews with the key people in the business to ascertain their points of difference. Many spoke of their diligence and careful approach to business. This was solidified when we interviewed the chairman of the board, what he said really helped us understand the company and what set it apart.

When the chair started to educate me about superannuation, I admit my eyes began to glaze over. He told me that in Australia, there are two types of superannuation funds. Retail funds are beholden to shareholders and short-term profits, and industry funds are often beholden to unions and vested interests. However, this fund's board has a skills-based matrix for appointments (with brand and media representation), no vested interests and a governance structure that enshrines this requirement. The chair believed their point of difference was its governance and board structure.

With these insights, my agency created a proposition that reflected their sensible and considered place in the market, and their approach to growth. We wanted to capture the advantages of the board structure in the brand positioning because if we got this right, then it would be easier for everyone in the company to understand the brand. We wanted simple, easy to understand language that reflected a fair and diligent approach to corporate governance and superannuation. After creative development and refinement, we developed a platform idea and brand line that has words to the effect of ‘Reassuringly Dull'.  I love this because the proposition emerged from the business's governance structure. It was a truth about the brand. I cannot share with you the fund, nor the final positioning developed — it's just a little early.  However, suffice to say it's diligent, careful and risk-averse nature ensures a fair, reasonable, and relatively predictable return to members — and that's a good thing.

The principles of ‘reassuringly dull' permeate through the company, including its internal communications. The investment team loves it because it communicates their sensible investment decisions. The human resources team loves it because it captures the spirit of the organisation. And the marketing team loves it because they can stretch and play with the truth of the proposition.  The idea has power because it came directly from the governance structure of the board, and the vision of the chair when he established the board. 

Do we need a marketing department?

An investor friend of mine has this rule: never invest in an organisation with a marketing department. He believes a separate marketing department stops those in the rest of the company from taking responsibility for marketing. Everyone, no matter their position, has a role to play in building the company. I think it's an interesting and provocative stance designed not to remove marketing, but ensure everyone in the organisation appreciates that the entire business is marketing. Everything communicates and everything helps to build the overall brand experience.

Unfortunately, if you took a bunch of marketers from the 1990s and asked them to set up a marketing department today, they'd probably do the same thing. It would feature a marketing department hierarchy and areas of specialisation further down the chain. This style of marketing is predicated on other people building, making and managing what we do with the marketing team taking it to market.

I believe this is how many people in startups and technology perceive marketing's role. I've watched tech companies create their product with the view that marketing is something that happens in a separate department. I've read several briefs that suggest ‘we've built this great thing, it looks amazing, and now we need people to buy it, so we'd better do some marketing'. If you have enough money, this can work. As Robert Stephens said, ‘Advertising is the tax you pay for being unremarkable.' If you create an unpopular product, you pay a higher tax. There is an alternative, and that's to include the marketing department in the product's development and ensure it's effectively communicated across every part of the business.

In chapter 4, I mention the Forrester report that argued CX was contributing to the homogenisation of brands. Its advice is to relabel CX as a creative experience. The report suggests:

A key characteristic of this new moniker is the broadening of the channels and executions associated with it. Where customer experience is predominantly associated with owned digital channels, creative experience includes all conceivable brand touchpoints: advertising, content, experiential, digital products, customer service, and more.

This report is in the right zone to be useful.

The historical role of the Chief Marketing Officer was as a head marketer in an organisation, managing the marketing team. In this model, marketing was advertising and promotion or occasionally broadened into product innovation. It was never a company-wide role.

As companies recognise that marketing needs to encompass everything the organisation does, there's an issue of structure. I advocate that the CMO or, even better, Chief Brand Officer, is retained, with marketers deployed throughout the organisation. Their job is to develop brand-led thinking (BXB4CX) no matter where they are within the business. From procurement to new product development, sales or human resources, it is all brand-led thinking.

Do you need a CEO?

Let's take it up a notch. To achieve what I'm suggesting, you may need to sack the CEO. Within an organisation, the CEO runs the show, and the biggest show in town needs to be the value of the brand. At the moment, the CEO is the person that others report to, including the Chief Financial Officer, Chief Technology Officer, Chief Marketing Officer and so on. However, in a model where everyone in the business reports into the brand, then the CEO has to become the Chief Brand Officer. Think of the top brands in the world: the ones that adhere to a central organising thought that is understood across the entire business, and where the brand is the business. There's Virgin, run by Sir Richard Branson; Apple, co-founded by Steve Jobs; IKEA, founded by Ingvar Kamprad. These companies have one thing in common: all are run by ‘marketers': people who understood their brand. I love the photo of Steve Jobs arm-in-arm with Lee Clow, chairman and global director of TBWA Worldwide. Clow was responsible for Apple's ‘Think Different' campaign used from 1997–2002.

It's beautiful because it shows that even though Steve Jobs had other work priorities, the brand and its communication were second to none. Lee and Steve famously caught up once a week to talk about the brand, its current position and how to improve it. I don't know if many other CEOs do this.

Trade secrets

I don't want to get in trouble for the revelations in these next paragraphs. My lawyer has checked them out and assures me it's good to go, but I'm still a little nervous. (In addition to being an excellent way to get your attention, this is the truth.) Here's what happened. I speak at numerous conferences in Australia and around the world. Usually, at the end of the talk, someone will be interested in some aspect of my presentation and want to chat further. A few years ago, I spoke at a human resources conference and talked about content from my first book, The Advertising Effect: How to change behaviour (obnoxious plug). After the talk, a woman approached me saying, ‘Adam, I really enjoyed your presentation, and I'd like you to come to Canberra for a chat'. I said, ‘Sure, where do you work?' She said I'd find out if I came to Canberra. I was intrigued.

And so a colleague and I flew to Canberra for the meeting. When we arrived at the designated address, we entered an elevator and met a man. The man asked us to leave our bags, watches and phones and to proceed through a metal detector and wait in a room. In the room, my colleague and I had a bit of a giggle and waited. We thought we might be meeting with the Australian Federal Police. Then someone walked into the room and asked us to sign a non-disclosure document. Now that the work is in the public domain, I'm not violating the document. We signed it, handed it over and the person left. After about ten minutes, the woman I'd met at the conference walked in with a few other people and explained that we were at the offices of ASIS. I gave a confident nod. She then asked, ‘Do you know what ASIS is?' As my cheeks turned red, I admitted that I didn't.

ASIS is the Australian Secret Intelligence Service. It is Australia's spy network primarily concerned with gathering information of national importance from overseas. ASIS was keen for a rebrand. As you can imagine, this was a lot of information to take in as we sat in a funny little room in a strange big building with three people we'd only just met and whose names we didn't yet know. And so began a relationship that would take many twists and turns over the next few years.

Because it's a secret intelligence service, ASIS was having difficulty recruiting new spies. The recruitment process at the time was generally a tap on the shoulder and an invitation to a meeting. But the agency was keen to diversify its staff. As part of the rebrand, a colleague and I interviewed nearly every intelligence officer that was stationed in Australia, along with the director-general and the second-in-commands. I can still remember the director-general telling me I was the person least like himself that he'd ever met. I love that comment — he was a lovely chap.

Because ASIS is a relatively small organisation, our presence alone shifted the culture and expectations of the agency. Once the central brand proposition was developed, most were on board with the new direction of the agency. I won't disclose what the organisation believed about itself, only that it dialled up its competitive advantage in the marketplace of espionage. The interviews were exceptionally good fun to do.

After the new ASIS brand was embraced internally, we set about developing a recruitment campaign (going from inside out, as gonzo marketing should). We wanted the campaign to be as intelligent as the organisation and allow ASIS to stand apart from ASIO, which many confuse it with. The goal was to reveal the typical experience of an intelligence officer without giving away any trade secrets or compromising anyone's safety. We devised ‘The Most Interesting Job Interview'.

I left the agency responsible for the campaign before it was released, but it was executed beautifully. It came to life as an online experience taking people through a mock interview that was both very interesting and very hard. It gave prospective recruits a top-line assessment before inviting them to apply for ASIS. Potential recruits were guided through a five-minute interview exercise in which they completed tasks that approximated the skills ASIS is looking for. It was a prominent and outward-facing brand refresh for ASIS and included a refreshed website and social media presence.

The campaign was a massive success, with ASIS receiving 12 months' worth of applications in only two weeks. The applicants were more diverse and tapped into a new pool of people. This new recruitment campaign also meant ASIS was talked about extensively in the media in a positive way. It shifted momentum within the organisation and was one of the most rewarding and interesting projects I've ever worked on. This type of work doesn't emerge from a marketing department but is reflective of the entire brand working from the inside out.

Think gonzo

The term ‘gonzo marketing' may not be well known, but it encapsulates this ideal: an organisation that understands its brand from the top down and the bottom up. When this happens the brand can be actioned at every single touch point. In some cases, a restructure will be needed for brand ownership to exist across the organisation. Others will require more drastic measures, such as appointing a new CEO with brand understanding. Whatever it takes, the brand is everyone's responsibility.