A group of marketing executives recently met to tackle this question and came up with these general observations about Big M small m marketing:
1. Big M is the vision that is bigger than the year or the quarter. It’s 3-5 years out. What do I want my story to look like in 2012?
2. Little m is the tactics, executing on the longer-term plan and leading in the areas that result in customer intimacy, such as product definition, generating leads, product messaging and more.
3. Big M is the starting point for everything, and the little m follows. Big M goals always end up translating to a tactical measurement.
4. Big M takes on increased importance when you are undergoing market shifts and when you have to ask yourself if you are heading in the right direction.
5. Big M is the brand, the promise to your customers and the decisions made on a strategic level to deliver on that promise.
6. Big M tends to lead when sales are good. Little m takes on enhanced importance when sales are bad and when the economy is down.
7. Big M is the brand, product and service strategy that make up the integrated marketing programs. Big M leads when those programs are integrated and weave a brand story – they work together seamlessly.
So, which one is more important? Big M or small m?
Perhaps the question is mistaken to begin with. Consider this statement:
Brilliant strategy, poorly executed, won’t win.
Mediocre strategy, brilliantly executed has a chance.
The reality for us at this moment in time when most organizations are experiencing more than usual stress and there are many complex issues, is that we gravitate toward the whiteboard and it’s all about acting quickly and the small m. In todays’ economy it’s much more about tactics. When life is good organizations gravitate toward the big M. On the other hand, in a down economy, we really do have a unique opportunity to be very strategic, stay the course, revisit assumptions, and re-prioritize tactics. Your competitors may even disappear…some companies are taking advantage of this opportunity.
There are in fact many reasons our question cannot be answered with a universal truth. A variety of factors play in. For example: size and maturity of the company (smaller companies can be more nimble, execute more easily and tend to focus more on tactics), type of industry, organizational drivers (sales research, product, operation), public/private, culture, age and role of the brand, and what the most pressing and critical business issues are.
Why does the question even matter to you? For one, if you don’t know with certainty what the answer is for your company, how do you know that your own style, passion and competence is aligned? How aligned are your drivers with the drivers of your business? What is your tap root? What is the tap root of your CEO? If you want to live in the Big M space, are you better off if your CEO does not know anything about marketing? Is there a mismatch? Have you surrounded yourself with people that have different tap roots? If not, you may not be growing, since everyone is sucking the same nutrients out of the soil.
As a marketing executive managing your career, you need to pay attention to all of these questions. You need to know who you are and where you are. Can you be both types of leaders? Know what you are asking your team to be. Find out what their tap root is. Is it partially because we do not do a good job of aligning our own drivers with those of our companies that the turnover of marketing executives is so high? If you know that you love the day-to-day battle, getting the work done, closing the deal, with the attention span of a pre-schooler, do you decline the job that requires a “big plan” marketer. Do HR professionals have a good understanding of what makes a god Big M versus a good small m marketing executive and do they hire against the best leadership profile for the company at any given point in time.