Prevailing questions include: How do companies select the right CSR partners to work with? What criteria form the basis of the determination? Who leads CSR and what role do employees play? With an obvious commitment to ‘greening’ in today’s business environment, CSR is a means to showcase an organization’s environmental practices. Moreover, CSR can provide the basis for an organization to engage in social programs that help it define the social fabric of its business and true commitment to the local communities in which it operates, while meaningfully engaging employees.

Below, DL Leslie, Director of Branding and Media Relations for Siemens Canada, responds to a series of questions from his colleagues on CMA’s Branding and Strategic Planning Council about what CSR means to Siemens.

How do you define (CSR) Corporate Social Responsibility?
At Siemens we define CSR as a company’s commitment to doing business in an ethical and sustainable manner and enhancing and extending the lives (and the planet) of a current generation without compromising the ability of future generations to do the same. CSR involves philanthropy, community investment and ‘walking the talk’ when it comes to our three company values; responsible, excellent, innovative. We believe in helping others to help themselves - providing a hand up and a hand out. We also view CSR as a major contributor to our brand value and awareness.

How is CSR integrated with your business, brand, and/or culture?
Our aim is to make CSR a part of our company culture and a part of how Siemens does business in a sustainable way. We support humanitarian and environmental causes both at home and internationally through disaster relief efforts, because it’s the right thing to do - and because we believe it can be as good for business as it is for employee morale and for the communities in which we operate.

In regards to being good for business, to quote our CEO, “Pushing sustainability to the forefront within a company is to make sure that sustainability is not a trade-off to growth or profit or other expectations. It’s really what drives profitable growth. We do this as part of our corporate social responsibility, but also because it’s what drives a profitable business.”

Do you have dedicated/annual resources (people and budgets) to execute programs?
Yes, Siemens has an annual dedicated CSR budget and a full-time head within the Communications & Strategy team responsible for developing, executing and growing our Caring Hands [internal brand] program, along with the Caring Hands Employee Committee (CHEC), a group of volunteer employees across Canada. The goal is to increase the budget year over year, incorporating estimates of investments to execute new initiatives. In addition to the dedicated CSR budget, Siemens also contributes financial support, via matching programs, such as employee donations, for both planned initiatives and unplanned events, such as disaster relief.

Do you use CSR as a tool to engage your employees?
Absolutely. Our Caring Hands CSR programs are led by the CHEC members and really driven by employees, as they are the ones who support the 50/50 draws, volunteer for Earth Day clean-ups and donate hundreds of toys and non-perishable food items throughout the year. We find small incentive prizes are a great way to increase participation and encourage friendly competition. My experience has definitely been that CSR activities have a positive impact on employee morale and make them proud to work for Siemens. The other most effective way to engage employees is to simply recognize them for their great efforts. On a corporate level we also design and distribute ‘tool kits’ (posters, banners, literature, etc.) to help our CHEC members in their local offices run the programs. In doing this we find that the events are not only consistent from location to location, but participation is higher, because there is less work to be done by individuals. The tool kits have been very well received.

How do you determine (evaluate/criteria) the right organization (cause) to partner with?
We look at a number of factors – first we examine their standards of business (compliance), reputation, and donation efficiency (e.g. overhead costs, investment in research to extend or enhance life, etc.). We also look at where our investment can make the biggest difference to a cause that doesn’t receive large share of the limelight. Another key element in helping us determine if we will support/work with an organization is to look at their vision and values and see if we share similar goals and language – it is important to us to realize alignment. Our current charity of record is Cystic Fibrosis Canada and we’re very proud of the 15 year partnership we have with them – it’s a long term relationship that’s build on a shared vision of extending and enhancing life in Canada. But we also work with a number of local charities in various locations, because it makes sense for regional purposes. The key is to be consistent via alignment with shared vision and values.

How do you evaluate the impact of your programs/activities?
We look at both quantitative measures (e.g. # of locations/employees participating, funds raised) and qualitative ones (verbal feedback, social media buzz, etc.) and always aim to exceed previous year’s results. We include the topic of CSR in our annual employee communication survey and compare results year-over-year. Consistent measurement for CSR is difficult, so it’s something we are constantly looking at improving and finding new ways of doing. This includes social media properties, not only as communication tools, but as measurement tools too.

We’re extremely lucky to have an engaged executive team that believes in and sees the value of CSR. Our CEO, CFO and VPs actively participate in everything from fundraisers to park clean-ups and have even made breakfast for the entire corporate headquarters as part of a holiday giving campaign. Our CEO ‘gets’ CSR and the value it brings to the local community, our employees, the bottom line and especially the brand.

What tools do you use to communicate your CSR activities (both internal and external)?
Internally, we use intranet, an e-newsletter and in-house magazine (Dialogue), as well as professionally designed posters, internal meetings and presentations. Externally, we use press releases, Facebook, Twitter, speaking engagements, corporate collateral materials, etc.

Do you have policies and procedures in place that support employee volunteering programs as part of your CSR strategy?
Yes, we have a policy and procedure in place, along with sponsorships, and donations. We use an on-line tool called ‘SpoDom’ to enter every program/opportunity in for approval. This also allows for easy tracking and recording (measurement year-over-year). We are now establishing new guidelines for volunteering - specific to the number of hours, time off, etc.

We’re currently running a contest called the Greatest Community Supporter contest to recognize employees who volunteer or fundraise in their spare time outside of work - we’re offering three top prizes of a $10,000 donation. The winners will be announced at our annual business conference in December 2011. Our winners will be in attendance and they’ll receive the “Presidents Award” (plus the $10K to the registered charity of choice). One of our priorities for this coming year is to implement employee volunteering during work hours and building relationships with various organizations to support this type of program.

Can you share any examples of what you would describe as best-case practices in terms of your CSR programs and strategy?
A good example is Hope for Holidays 2010 - a fundraising and toy drive campaign to assist local communities in the holiday timeframe. Twenty-three Siemens Canada locations from six provinces took part in this hugely successful program that raised $12,000 in cash, 1,350 toys, 40 boxes of food and 484 hats and pairs of mittens to assist 10 Salvation Army chapters and 17 additional independent humanitarian organizations across the country. With regards to disaster relief, as an example, our employees (with corporate matching) raised just shy of a quarter of a million for Haiti, Pakistan and Japan.

When I go grocery shopping, I try to get in and out as quickly as possible. I plan a route through the store to minimize the time required, and if I can’t find something I need I would rather leave without it then ask the 17-year old clerk where I could find the pumpkin puree and be forced to retrace my steps.

Does this sound similar to the way that you shop? Probably NOT.

It turns out that most people will have their own way of shopping, which will often vary depending on the product category. This presents a great challenge to retail brands. Shops want to make their in-store experience as pleasant as possible, but what is pleasant for one customer could be misery for another.

How can brands deal with this conundrum? Here are some ideas that you could try.

• Provide multiple paths of discovering products while shopping: Amazon provides a great example. Amongst the home page merchandising, category browsing, keyword searches, recommended products and listmania, there is a way to find new books that will suit the needs of most shoppers. The increasing role of mobile in retail will give brands even more opportunities to cater to different needs.
• Create personas: Developing multiple groups of different personas based on similar attributes is a technique pioneered in politics but can easily be applied to retail brands. Be sure to go beyond simple demographic data and include emotional and interest-based attributes to create these personas. When you have key groups for your brand, make sure that you are meeting their needs.
• Determine the most valuable customer groups: Brands can’t be all things to all people, but luckily not all customers are created equal. Don’t lose sleep if you sacrifice the needs of low value customers as long as you are hitting the mark for the most important ones.
• Train staff for flexibility: Even with extensive planning and careful design of your in-store experience, you must remain flexible to meet the diverse needs of your customers. While you can’t change the physical layout of your store every day, you can train your staff to recognize and adapt to different types of shopping behavior.
• Do one thing really well: Some retail brands have done a great job creating a very clear expectation of the experience you will have in their store. When I go to Walmart, will the staff adapt and respond to my unique needs? No. Do I expect them to? Definitely not. A clearly defined retail brand will convey clear expectations to customers. Just be sure that you can deliver on those expectations.

This list is not exhaustive and not all suggestions should be tried together. What works for Amazon won’t work for Walmart and vice versa. The most important thing you can do is to keep your retail experience true to your brand.

Ben Wise

This had never occurred to me until I had a conversation with a friend who is one of the top sales reps at his company. We were discussing his company’s brand and I asked what they did to track the satisfaction of their customers. Although the company was religious in sending out csat surveys, I was shocked to discover that my friend had never seen the results.

While marketers are often responsible for developing the brand strategy, this is an unfortunate example of ignoring the rest of the business system in the development and execution of that strategy.

A few ways that this customer data could be used outside of marketing:
• Sales reps could learn about the biggest pain points so they could proactively address them on sales calls
• Operations could learn about – and fix! - an aspect of product delivery that customers don’t like
• Design could adjust the product delivery to make it more intuitive for their customers

But if market research data isn’t shared by marketing then your business will be prevented from reaching their full potential. With first access to market research data comes great responsibility. In addition to promoting the brand externally, marketing must promote customers internally so that the rest of the people in the business system can help build the company’s brand as well.

Here are some simple ways to improve sharing:
• Hold cross-functional meetings to review research results when they are available, and better yet, include these groups in the survey development process
• Create a wiki for different groups to share and collaborate based on research
• Post research result presentations on the corporate intranet

Sharing shouldn’t be that difficult. A shame that it doesn’t happen more often.

Ben Wise

Once Upon A Time

Once upon a time there was advertising. ‘Advertising’ agencies created television ads, ads for newspapers and magazines and ads to run on the radio. Structured advertising agencies had different departments producing these advertisements, presenting them to a client and ‘putting them on the air’.

Around twenty years ago came the internet and hence ‘the digital space’. It lingered in its formative stage, mainly driving the emergence of e-commerce, for about a decade. Only about ten years ago, ‘advertising’ agencies decided that the internet could be a canvas for advertising. So advertising agencies started developing web sites and digital banner ads. They’d build these websites and banner ads and then ‘put them up’.

Maybe around five years ago, social media came to be. Suddenly all kinds of conversations were being had in the ‘digital space’; shared information was circulating among people without advertising agencies or their clients having anything to do with it.

And then mobile devices came to be which sped up all this communicating and commerce-related activity in the digital space to a lightning fast pace.

A Reality Check

Today, people everywhere - colleagues and friends, moms and dads, students, artists, technology gurus, teachers, policemen, investment bankers and academics – ‘live’ the internet. They access Google dozens of time every day and get their daily news updates online. Photos are shared and commented on via Facebook, Flickr or Instagram. Vacations are researched, planned and paid for online. Moms right now are circulating blog postings about some new organic pasta on the market. Grandparents are Skyping with their grandkids from continent to continent every day. Youtube is an entertainment channel for just about every single person I know, including my 67 year old father. New bands are born every day on MySpace. My mom lives by her iPhone as does my Dad; my niece and my daughter both carry their Nintendo DSi in one hand and their iPads in the other. This is not a minority report tech future; this is today, everyday, for more and more people as part of daily life.

When we step away from the language in communication circles about ‘the digital space’, ‘the social space’, ‘the mobile space’, this is the reality.

And so, The Inflection Point:

For all the decades past, we communication agencies and clients have considered traditional media to be king and digital media to be secondary, not even at queen status, but more so a court jester. I could go on separately about why: it’s cheaper to produce digital media so it doesn’t get as much attention as traditional media which is incredibly expensive still. And we don’t have good impact metrics yet around digital media to PROVE how much it is contributing to communications and brand health in the minds of our audiences.

But this has changed. Now, today, traditional media and digital media sit at the same table. They have rapidly come to be equals. And we communications agencies and clients are waking up to that reality. Brands are being built exclusively in the digital space in many cases. And among the new generation of consumers, traditional media may indeed be falling by the wayside.

Insert panic here.

If you accept that the above is true, because it is - now, today, traditional media and digital media sit at the same table - then what? Communications that happen in the digital, social and mobile space do not function like traditional media. You do not ‘put them on the air’ or ‘put them up’. They are ongoing, immediate and dynamic by their very nature. And this simple reality radically impacts everything.

We have to think about communications today as an eco-system: interconnected, always-on, living, and constantly evolving.

Impact 1: We can no longer think of communications development as projects that follow a straight path, each one in a separate lane, being developed in parallel. We need new ways of working: fluid, connected, nurturing. We need to ‘carry’ communications, constantly. This has radical implications for the mindset and consequently the processes of developing communications, evaluating communications, and maintaining communications.

Impact 2: This acknowledgement that communications is now an eco-system, requires by definition that the people charged with managing those communications understand ‘systems’ and this is not a common capability. Understanding systems means having an incredible ability to see the big picture – how everything is working together – productively, seamlessly, responsively. And yet it also means having an ability to go deep into any singular ‘node’ within the system to maximize its individual role in the system. This is complex thinking.

Impact 3: Communications producers – writers, art directors, technologists, etc… – need to truly work together to create. Which means they need to understand each other’s craft, in order to truly be able to integrate and build off of each other. This is not a skillset that has been nurtured or taught either through the education system or inside agencies historically.

Journey through the Inflection Point:

There is a mountain to climb to be able to really traverse this inflection point. It may seem straightforward, but it is anything but. It requires:

a) The acceptance that the digital space is seated at the table right next to the traditional media space and that the need to adjust to it is urgent.
b) The acknowledgement that communications today are not about ‘putting it on the air’ or ‘putting it up’; communications today are about creating and managing eco-systems of activity.
c) A change in communications agency processes and client review, ‘purchase’ and maintain processes.
d) An upgrading of communication producers skill sets – to foster a better cross-discipline understanding.

Insert easy button.

I, for one, believe that if brands want to continue to have a place in people’s lives in the future, traversing this inflection point is a must-do. Adjust or be left behind seems to me to be the harsh reality. But more optimistically, this required shift in communications could get us to a much better place on so many levels. This shift will get us communications that matter to people; by default that means brands that are engaging in ways that matter to people. And ladder that further to a place where communications (and brands) can be positive contributing forces in the world. This is free market dynamics at work. Best to acknowledge and understand what people want, and deliver it, because it’s those who will survive.

Heidi McCulloch

AC Nielsen has published some very intriguing data on how mining the differences between the generation gaps can provide specific insight that can be applied to everything from ad planning to promotional assortment: This could be the next generation (no pun intended) of shopper marketing.

How a 60 year old and a 20 year old prepare for -and execute- their retail shopping trip is quite different, however they still may buy the exact same soda, soup, and sandwich bread once they get to the store. Their interactions with the brands to get there may be different, but the end goal of the individual marketing activity remains the same: to help people make better purchase decisions along the way.

The brands that people love, the shoppers that buy them, and the retailers that provide the environment (either physical or virtual) to sell them are all beginning to embrace the opportunities that generational analytics can provide.

Brands
With the growing focus many brands have on activating the path to purchase, there has been an enormous amount of consideration put on the common traits shared by their target shoppers. We are seeing a tremendous amount of innovation in things like packaging in this respect. Some products targeting the 55+ set are changing theirs to specifically address vision impairment, so their products show up more easily on shelf. Other products are putting QR codes or augmented reality markers on their products in order to allow a completely different level of interaction and engagement with the brand at retail. Some brand media plans are being reconstructed to better align with shopping habits, with focus moving from TV to retailer web, from outdoor to on-shelf communication, going where the generational target can have their purchase consideration most affected.

Shoppers
The faster marketers can adapt to the shopping habits of their targets, the better they will be able to optimize the messaging that will generate awareness and purchase intent. It is curious to note that even though shoppers of the “greatest generation” are the ones who most rate shopping as a ‘chore’, they are also the most likely to spend time walking the entire store – leaving them open to incremental signage and opportunities for impulse purchase. On the flip side, Millennials – who shop the least of any segment- actually love shopping, but research first so as not to spend as much time on the actual store floor. They key with them is pre-shop activities via SEO, social, WOM, and electronic couponing. The fundamental truth to engaging shoppers is the understanding that the act of shopping is not just a behavior, but also a generational mindset.

Retailers
You can read articles over and over regarding the impending arrival of US mega retailer Target and what they will do to the general merchandise landscape in Canada. The Nielsen article rightfully describes how Target has created a niche by catering to the Gen X and Millennial segments through trippy advertising, with fully designed shopper marketing executions and promotion of “now” celeb tie-ins like Todd Oldham and Giada De Laurentiis. Those of you who have made the trip past our southern border to pay them a visit may find the advertising and shopper executions around Loblaws new Everyday Essentials lineup rings a little familiar. Loblaw however, has done some fantastic work merging their segmentation research and shopper marketing executions on the grocery side, parlaying it into four massively supported Insiders Report executions around their core generational constituencies (Back to School, Summer BBQ, Holiday Entertaining, and Health and Wellness). Both the retailer and manufacturer communities are taking notice. It’s also notable that retailers like Shoppers Drug Mart are adopting a generational shopper approach for their promotional planning, where diverse tactics like social media, solution-set orientation, loyalty programming, and seniors days are being employed (and integrated) to cater to the interests of their shopper continuum from 18-68 years and beyond.

The Nielson article reference is for US data… Feel free to share any great examples of generational marketing delivering innovative shopper experiences in Canada!

Jason Dubroy

I love to golf. In fact, some have said that I am obsessed with the game. And, I’m a woman. While there are lots of women who play the game, reality is, it is still hugely dominated by men.

Golf is a prime example of a “product” where different demographic groups share a common interest. But marketers are still selling based solely on demographics. And they spend little to no effort to attract or retain women golfers. Why should they you ask? Consider the following (all data from recent studies):

• Women account for about half the workforce and are the single most powerful consumer group
• Women have always played golf. The LPGA Tour is older that the currently constituted PGA
• Women who play golf spend just as much on golf equipment and apparel as men do
• In 2006, almost two-thirds of all new golfers were women

But, even with all of this apparent interest, the percentage of women playing the game has barely budged since the 1980s, growing by only 1% from 21% to 22%.

Is this a neglected market? I say yes! Marketing golf to women is a prime example of an opportunity to use interest-based marketing rather than demographic-based marketing. Currently all golf marketing speaks to men. I had to search high and low to find messaging that speaks directly to women. And even then, it appeared as an after-thought. The Callaway website has a fairly robust section for women – even with a video! All TaylorMade does is provide a page for “women’s clubs” and I couldn’t help but notice that their newly introduced R11 driver is not available in a women’s shaft, nor is there any mention of when that might be available. In a Golf Digest for Women magazine, the Nike ad is completely focused at men. Hellooooo … we buy the same equipment and spend just as much money as men … talk to us too!

Marketing to us doesn’t have to be completely different. I would suggest that the inherent tone needs to become more gender neutral and a simple mention of equipment availability for multiple markets would help. I’ll bet the equipment advertisers will begin overtly mentioning senior styles soon with the changing demographic – would it be so difficult to also mention availability of women’s equipment?

And for those men reading this post that still think GOLF stands for “gentlemen only ladies forbidden”, let’s play a round. But first, we need to establish that a ‘mulligan’ actually means three off the tee. And of course, you’ll wait, like me, to relieve yourself if and when we ever find facilities on the course.

Seriously though, my point is that marketing to golfers is currently completely based on a demographic group vs. multiple groups who share the same interest and I think that is a huge opportunity lost.

Dawn Marchand, Chair, CMA Integrated Marketing & Customer Experience Council

In our first post we began the conversation about interest-based marketing vs. demographic marketing. But we are having a hard time finding companies that are doing this in a meaningful way. But check out Google …..

In mid-2009, Google introduced ‘interest-based’ advertising on their partner sites and on YouTube. Basically, they consider a person’s web browsing history and cookies and with that information, select advertisements related to what you most commonly search. In addition, the web user can also identify the kinds of ads they would like to see using this Google service.

I wasn’t aware of this kind of ad targeting until I started seeing ads on Facebook that said “if you’re between the ages of 45 – 49, then this offer is for you.” As a marketer, I wondered why a company would take the chance at being so specific with their ad and wow, how lucky were they that I was actually in this age range. Duhhh! Also, on MSN, I noticed car rental and flight ads specifically providing me information about rates in cities where I had recently been (booked online) or had searched.

Google has stated that at no time throughout the process do they identify me as a person. They simply recognize a number stored in my browser and show ads related to the interest and/or demographic categories associated with my cookies.

I’ve read blogs from people that both love this service and hate it. As a marketer, I think it is great. As a consumer, I admit to being a bit nerved at the fact that my likes and searches are fed back to me but in the end, I believe that I will see more relevant ads based on my interests and that my ‘click through’ rate on ads will increase.

What do you think? Invasion or awesome?

Dawn Marchand, Chair, CMA Integrated Marketing & Customer Experience Council

Lots of research/insights exist when it comes to demographic- or generation-based marketing – how to use different media and messaging to reach and attract boomers or Gen Y's or Gen X's. There is less information however, about psychographic marketing – messaging and media that speak to groups based on attitudes and interests. Would marketers be more successful marketing to groups of people interested in the same product or service rather than trying to reach one demographic group? Consider cell phones for example – almost every demographic group needs or owns one. So how do marketers provide relevant messaging to them?

Can the same message speak to two distinct demographic groups who share a common passion or interest? What integrated marketing tactics work to transcend generational divides? In the world of social media, how can marketers benefit from conversations with people who have the same interests targeted by interest rather than age? How do we create rich brand experiences that appeal to a broad set of groups and still be relevant to our key target audiences?

Do marketers care and are we even trying?

Lots of questions but few answers! This is one of the areas that the Integrated Marketing and Customer Experience Council is focusing on in 2011, beginning with our first in a series of posts, below. Feel free to provide your thoughts and examples - let's start the conversation.

Generation E

We (CMA's Integrated Marketing & Customer Experience Council) propose that marketers forget about Gen Y, Gen X and Boomers and start speaking to Generation E – where ‘E’ stands for “EVERYONE”!

We are suggesting that brands that speak to and, more importantly, connect with people who share a common interest – regardless of their demographic or generation – will be the most successful. Sustaining a brand is much more about engaging consumers and connecting emotionally and less about straight-up advertising. We have found a few examples of companies trying to do this but not very many.

Consider Nike. It may market different styles of shoes to different demographic groups but Nike takes it further by setting up online communities of people who love to run. They encourage conversations between “everyone” who shares an interest in running. This means that if you and I are having a conversation based on our mutual interest of running, there is a good chance that I might even do Nike’s job and market my favourite product to you. That’s effective marketing!

Disney speaks to the kid inside us all. McDonald’s markets consistency of experience – whether that be a fun experience for a child or a positive experience for a parent and their children.

Marketers who are speaking cross-generation-borders are focusing on the experience. Hey, maybe Generation E stands for “Experience”!

What do you think? Should marketers be more focused on experiences vs. perceived needs of generational groups? Or does good ‘ol demographic segmentation marketing work just fine?

Dawn Marchand, Chair, CMA Integrated Marketing & Customer Experience Council

That critical trend: leaders' definition of marketing has once again evolved, or more accurately, extended into more areas within business including, Operations, Finance and Human Resources.

This isn't completely unexpected. After all, over the last few years, marketers have been stretched into taking on different roles and responsibilities. For instance, many of the nation's fastest-moving and most innovative companies call upon their marketers to be grouped within or tightly aligned with sales departments. In response to this re-framing, successful B2B marketers have modified their programs and campaigns to incorporate sales metrics targets, technologies and functions.

Now, with the tail of the recession still hanging on, leaders are increasingly demanding their B2B marketers be more closely aligned with the demands of their business' core operations. The result: B2B marketers are on the hot seat to bring new value to their companies by taking actions that identify operational efficiencies. This compels B2B marketers to demonstrate a real impact on the bottom line. One method for achieving this goal is for B2B marketers to gather (and make sense of) customer and prospect feedback -- from online and offline sources -- and identify opportunities for process improvement.

At the same time, B2B marketers are being increasingly expected to develop campaigns that accommodate the financial ebbs and flows of their companies. For example, B2B marketers must speak to issues that directly impact the income statement (e.g. when cash is realized) and issues that shape the balance sheet (e.g. whether investments in marketing technologies are better allocated as fixed or variable costs).

Finally, B2B marketers are now expected to be knowledgeable about aspects of human resources. For example, it is increasingly common for B2B marketers to have a hand in shaping and measuring recruiting methods since widely used recruitment tools (e.g. LinkedIn, websites, Facebook, etc.) and core messages are associated with marketing.

Over the last several years, B2B marketers have made great strides in being included at the Executive table. With leaders expecting B2B marketers to have a vastly expanded range of business expertise, now is the time for B2B marketers to demonstrate that they do indeed bring value at the most strategic level.

Andrew Brown

Today when I think of innovation I think about companies such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook and others. Yes, it just happens to be coincidence they are all on the Fast Company Top 50 Innovation list also.

But I wondered why many other large scale companies don't have such an emphasis on innovation anymore. You hear about lots of companies that "value innovation" and want to "be innovative". I can't recall how many times my friends told me the CEOs of their companies boldly proclaim to their staff "We need to be like Apple" during employee meetings.

Recently at an alumni reception from my alma matter, I chatted with a venture capitalist and it was her view that companies no longer invest in innovation because of cost. Plain and simple. Due to short-term financial pressure, organizations focus on quarterly results, therefore they can no longer "afford the luxury of internal innovation". She further stated "It would be naive to think shareholders would not freak out if guys in white lab coats were allowed to run around concocting ideas that didn't generate immediate ROI". It was her view that larger corporations perceived acquiring start-ups (and the innovations they bring) much more cost-effective than to build them in-house.

She pointed to the example of Google despite its own roots as a start-up as they now have acquired many firms over the years.

But what about here in Canada? Last time I checked Google was based in Mountain View. Indeed it appears large corporations in Canada are also acquiring smaller companies from a strategic perspective and have been doing so for quite some time. Whether it be Torstar or Transcontinental. So the trend certainly doesn't appear to be declining. However one could argue that some corporations are looking further towards the long term such as the case of Rogers Ventures which specializes in investing in technology start-ups right here in Canada.

So what does this all have to do with marketers? In Business Week a few years ago it was proposed that marketers bear some responsibility for this trend of lack of successful innovation in companies. Marketers you ask? Yes. The premise is based on three criteria.

(1) Successful innovations need more than a great idea. Indeed great ideas are a dime a dozen but execution is what really matters. Too many marketers only view their job as coming up with the idea. The execution rests with someone else be it in production, IT, distribution and/or sales. The biggest reason for this? Plausible deniability. If the concept fails marketers can point the finger at someone else.

(2) A lack of talent. Some people are great at generating ideas. Others are great at the execution of them. Very rarely are there enough people within large corporations that are talented at both. Or they are not being brought together at the right time to achieve a common goal.

(3) Fatalism. Marketers go into new initiatives (half-heartedly) expecting it to fail. So when they do there is no major surprise. Then the finger gets pointed at the executive suite for lack of support, resources or other departments for creating roadblocks or fighting over turf.

I'm not sure I totally agree entirely with all of these criteria but it certainly gives one pause as a marketer. In my experience the challenge for marketers/innovators is that it's harder in a larger corporate environment than a start-up one to be innovative - unless there is a specific culture that fosters and embraces innovation. One where employees are encouraged to contribute new ideas but are also recognized for them via both extrinsic and intrinsic motivators.

Lastly, it becomes important that an over-emphasis on short-term performance is not at the expense of long-term success. Perhaps then we just might see more colleagues at large companies wearing white lab coats again.

Sulemaan Ahmed