Why It's Time to Do Away With the Brand Manager†

P&G, Unilever Among Those Embracing New Roles in Social Media Age

Advertising Age, October 12, 2009 — Managing a brand has always been a slightly odd concept, given that consumers are the real arbiters of brand meaning, and it's become increasingly outmoded in today's two-way world. That's why a new report is going to recommend changing the name "brand manager" to "brand advocate," and fundamentally changing marketer organizations in response to the onset of the digital age.

H-P Plans to Fuse Printer, PC Units†

Move Would Mark Reversal of Fortune as Once-Laggard PC Division Now Is the Company's Rising Star

Wall Street Journal, September 30, 2009 — Hewlett-Packard Co. Chief Executive Mark Hurd, in what would be one of his biggest moves yet to overhaul H-P's inner workings, is finalizing a plan to combine H-P's printer and personal-computer businesses into one unit under current PC chief Todd Bradley, said people familiar with the situation.

ANA Survey Finds Most Struggle With 'Parochial Structures'

MediaPost Publications, May 30, 2008 — A survey of members of the Association of National Advertisers fielded by CoActive Marketing Group shows that 74% of marketers employ integrated marketing campaigns for most, if not all, of their brands. But only one quarter of marketers give their firm's integrated-marketing efforts a "very good" or "excellent" rating.

ANA Confab Seeks To Define, Illuminate Integration

MediaPost Publications, June 15, 2007 — BREAKING DOWN SILOS WITHIN AN agency's communications disciplines means nothing if marketers don't understand that "consumers are driving the bus, and none of us anticipated how fast it has changed," Bill Gray, co-CEO of Ogilvy, told a roomful of them Thursday. "You have to think like friend and foe," Gray said at the ANA's Masters of Integrated Marketing event in New York. "It's 5D tic tac toe with the lights out."

Bright Ideas†

Brandweek, May 16, 2007 — The findings of a new study reinforce what many in the marketing world have been suspecting—or, in some cases, already experiencing firsthand—for several years: The traditional, static model of a single ad agency or a fixed roster of agencies working on a brand is being supplanted by an open-source model. The report, titled Deeper Consumer Resonance: Architecting an Open-Source Agency Partnership Model, was released last month by the Marketing Communications Roundtable of the Washington-based Corporate Executive Board, a professional network that counts 3,700 executives from the country's leading corporations as its members.

Finance Chiefs on the March Into Ad Sales†

TREND WATCH: Yahoo, NBC, Other Media Bigs Bring in the CFO-Types

Advertising Age, December 11, 2006 — Here come the number crunchers. Sue Decker's ascension last week to run Yahoo's ad-sales operation is the latest sign of a major shift in the way media companies are reacting to fierce market pressures.

L'Oreal Like Oil and Water

Marketing Week, March 23, 2006 — L'Oreal is acquiring The Body Shop for about #650m

Wal-Mart Beefs Up Its Ranks In Marketing to Energize Sales†

Wall Street Journal, February 21, 2006 — Wal-Mart Stores Inc., known for its lean managerial ranks, is beefing up its marketing department as it seeks to jump-start sluggish sales by appealing to a broader customer base

Ultimate bug fix

CMO Magazine, June 1, 2005 — To sustain its dominance in the digital era, Microsoft needed to work out the kinks in its marketing machine. Its approach might surprise you

House Training: Now, Employees Get Brand Boost†

Wall Street Journal, January 18, 2005 — While the effort is mainly intended to dazzle consumers, a chunk of the budget has been earmarked for an internal campaign to turn Masterfoods' 35,000 employees into better ambassadors for the brand, which the company says generates about $3 billion in annual global retail sales.