When it comes to drawing up their Marketing budgets, major US brands’
are tending to neglect innovation programs, mainly because they do not
have suitable evaluation tools.
While consumer behavior is in constant flux
due to all the options offered nowadays by digital technologies, US
businesses are struggling to maintain regular and consistent investment
in marketing innovation. According to a just-published report from
technology and market research company Forrester, entitled
Benchmark Your Marketing Innovation Culture,
only 10% of the 45 marketing executives surveyed invest regularly in
innovation and encourage the creation of a dedicated space to foster
strategic improvisation. Paradoxically, these same people recognize the
importance of innovation in brand development and its adaptation in the
face of the new digital consumer behavior.
A short-termist strategic outlook
The main drawback when it comes to financing innovation lies in the
lack of long-term vision in an environment that is primarily geared to
annual reporting. The benefits of innovation are generally being spread
in random fashion between various areas of the Marketing effort, which
means they are likely to have only a gradual impact over the long term.
Given this tension between management’s short-term outlook and the
long-term vision required for effective innovation, only 11% of the
companies surveyed by Forrester have any personnel dedicated
specifically to innovation, while only 9% incorporate an Innovation line
into all their marketing budgets. Ironically, fully 95% of those polled
are aware of the added value that innovation brings and also recognize
that marketing innovation programs can generate high levels of ROI.
Examples of Innovation programs vary. For instance, 11% of the marketers
responding to the survey say their company is currently financing the
rollout of
real-time marketing programs to test out new ideas or
digital innovation centres whose purpose is to develop new digital strategies.
Encouraging an environment that will foster innovation
The two main constraints on financing innovation are a) a lack of
encouragement from senior management; and b) the absence of relevant
indicators. Only 20% of the heads of marketing surveyed believe that
they have the support of their bosses when they action ad hoc Innovation
strategies. In addition, only 36% of the brands polled have long-term
targets and performance indicators in place, while a mere 27% say they
actively track the progress of their Innovation programs. Lastly, the
report points to the
crowdsourcing
approach, which has been widely used by the marketing executives
surveyed: 40% of them reported using customer feedback to help pinpoint
areas for innovation.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire