Jennifer Layne Brands, LLC

08/18/2023

Let's make sure we

Syrian officials were willing to share proof of life information as recently as 2020, reporting indicates.

11/21/2022

And this is why Working on your brand is not simply a creative exercise, it is bottom line business. If you are serious about growing your business, ensuring your brand is doing the heavy lifting it is capable of is a critical first step. As always, thanks to Brand Finance

Despite a brand’s intangibility, it’s hard to deny just how effective a strong one can be at boosting a company’s bottom line.

11/16/2022

As a marketer, most of our work, the heavy lifting, is done behind the scenes. Rarely will any image capture the real work that was done. The end customer may see a final creative ex*****on, but that's just the cherry on the top in terms of imagery. However, I recently had a client project where a photo of the work gives a tiny bit of insight on the project management side of the work marketers do.

11/16/2022

We love brands.....and something we think about every day is , it's the essence of brand building. But it's also the essence of human relations - Trust dominates our minds during the November election cycles so we wanted to circle back and take a look at what McKinsey had to say about Digital Trust and Consumers recently.

Want to increase your top and bottom lines? 📈

Digital trust could be the answer.

A recent McKinsey & Company research study indicates that companies who do this well are more likely to see annual growth rates of at least 10% on their top AND bottom lines.


Digital trust means that your consumers believe that you’re being responsible with their information through cybersecurity, data privacy, and AI.

Four (4) Realities About Digital Trust

1 – There’s a big discrepancy between confidence and reality - While nearly 90% of companies believe that they are at least somewhat effective at mitigating digital risks, less than 25% actually are - in the areas of AI models, data retention and quality, and lack of talent diversity.

2 – We have more trust in AI than humans - Frequent online shoppers report MORE trust in AI run products/services than human-reliant products/services

3 – A data or AI breach can lead to financial loss - 57% of executives report that their organizations suffered at least (1) data breach in the past (3) years, many of which resulted in financial loss (42% of the time), customer attrition (38%), or other consequences.

4 – It matters nearly as much as price, quality & convenience – 87% to 92% respectively, which is shockingly high.

Four (4) Ways Digital-Trust Leaders Achieve Growth

1 – Goal Setting: They set TWICE as many goals for trust building – for both digital risk management and risk mitigation.

2 – Types of Goals: Specifically, their goals focus on value-driving goals that center around strengthening existing customer relationships and acquiring new customers by building trust and developing competitive advantage.


3 – Variety + Regularity: They are TWICE as likely to regularly mitigate a variety of digital risks, not just a few – and more often!

4 – Promotion, Distribution + Transparency of Best Practices: They add specific best practices in cybersecurity, data protection, and the provision of trustworthy AI into policies and mission statements.

Do you consumers have digital trust in you?

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See reference article in the comments.

11/14/2022

one word

TV Optimizations are Possible to Increase ROI


Despite its long-term decline, it’s not going anywhere quite yet.


In a survey of CMOs, optimizing their broadcast TV spend didn’t even make their top 10 list of priorities.


Instead, they set their strategy on autopilot, let agencies make decisions/collect data, insist there’s no room for optimization, and spend a tremendous amount effort, time and money creating ads, but notably less time focusing on how best to deliver them.


If you’re a CMO or Brand Leader, you could be missing a significant opportunity for growth.

Broadcast TV is still:

- The single biggest advertising vehicle across all countries and industries.

- Where the majority of consumers spend the most time.

Here’s how to boost your TV spending efficiency (without sacrificing customer impact):

1. Smarter spending

Rigorously re-evaluate when, where, and how your linear TV ads appear - and do it often, align teams on rapid optimization processes and criteria and continue to reduce inefficiencies and drive increased performance.

By doing this, we’ve seen leading advertisers with decades-long experience in TV save up to 30% of their TV ad budget (in both the U.S. and Europe)

2. Getting the most out of your agency partnership

Best-in-class, multi-round, competitive agency media tenders consistently deliver ad rate improvements for nonbiddable media from 10-30% (without any impact on the quality of media inventory purchased).

Media tenders also provide an opportunity to increase the level of transparency and collaboration between client and agency.


In brief, by operating much closer to real time and demanding best-in-class rates from media agencies, all TV advertisers can produce significant savings and reach a new level of sophistication.


Are you getting the most out of your broadcast TV spend?


See reference articles in the comments.

11/10/2022

It's interesting, I get asked this all the time by clients, no one seems to have a good handle on it. But something that is consistent, most are well underspent.

What % of my sales should my media budget be?

This is a common question we get from CEOs.

Unfortunately, many CEO’s Board members, sales teams and colleagues often come from different industries and have differing opinions, so they don’t know whose advice to take.

Here are a few recommendations:

1. Understand your specific industry’s average (see graphic example below) as a benchmark--there are significantly different averages across industries and channels

2. Know your current and target cost per customer/client--blended and across channels

3. Conduct a deep dive into the current state of your brand, media, market, product and creative to understand what’s right for your brand and goals specifically

4. Determine the right media frequency needed at the customer level to breakthrough on performance

5. Doing a deeper analysis upfront will help you get a much more precise answer and better results later.

Also, with both recovery from COVID and economic uncertainty persisting…recent research shows industries are increasing their marketing spending in 2022.

Marketing Spending Stats:

- Digital marketing spending increased 16.2%

- Traditional advertising rose +2.9%

- Marketing budgets (as a % of overall budgets) increased approx. 12%


What % of sales is your media budget?

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See full articles in the comments.


Lina Calia Lisa Bratkovich Shayne De la Force Ani Matson Nozi Hamidi

11/09/2022

Sharing some thoughts by the CMO Syndicate In many of our clients organizations, Pricing seems to be a tabu conversation, especially by the Marketing team. But if Marketing isn't leading the discussion, based on market data, audience data and customer insights, then who is?

Even though pricing is the most important driver of profitability, it’s the most overlooked growth lever.

Surprisingly, most executives view pricing as so sacred that often it’s the very last instead of first lever pulled.

After analyzing the pricing strategies and polling executives from over 100 Global Fortune 500 companies, researchers found that they often lack adequate pricing leadership and understanding of effective pricing strategies. Very few have a Chief Commercial Officer, let alone a Chief Pricing Officer (CPO).

Often, because so many teams in an organization touch pricing (e.g. sales, marketing, product management, account management), nobody actually runs it.

Additionally, executives often cling to outdated and inaccurate ideas about pricing that are based on misconceptions...this leads to a self-defeating mindset rather than a growth mindset.

6 Pricing Myths that Kill Profits (and the Truths):

1. Myth: Costs are the basis for pricing. Truth: Pricing is based on customer value.

2. Myth: Small price changes have little impact. Truth: They have a significant effect on profitability.

3. Myth: Customers are highly price sensitive. Truth: They’re more sensitive to ownership costs than price.

4. Myth: Products are difficult to differentiate. Truth: Even commodities can be differentiated.

5. Myth: High market share equals high profits. Truth: Market share and profitability are not correlated.

6. Myth: Managing prices means changing prices. Truth: Managing price includes improving systems, processes, skills, and the ability of the salesforce to communicate customer value. In many cases, this can be done without changing prices.

Have you fallen victim to any of these pricing myths?

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See the full article in the comments.

10/17/2022

We can't say enough about Purpose - it's the foundation for Brand building.

Are you spending money on marketing, but it’s not making a difference?

In a post-pandemic and record-setting inflationary economy, companies need to reinvent themselves in order to continue to outperform the market - by rethinking their approaches and replacing traditional goals and bureaucratic structures with new priorities like creativity, speed, and accountability.

If you’re a C-level executive, here are 9 levers you can pull to help improve your future performance:

1. Take a stance on purpose
People want to know your company’s “why”, not just your “what”.

2. Sharpen your value agenda
While all companies have a strategy for how they create value, few can show precisely how the organization will achieve it.

3. Use culture as your ‘secret sauce’
Companies with strong cultures achieve up to 3x higher total returns to shareholders than companies without them, so define what yours is and how you can enact it.

4. Radically flatten structure
Structure your company in ways that make it fitter, flatter, faster, and far better at unlocking value.

5. Turbocharge decision making
Organizations that make decisions quickly are 2x more likely than slow decision makers to make high-quality decisions.

6. Treat talent as scarcer than capital
Research has shown a substantial amount of value is linked to as few as 25-50 roles, so ensure you’re putting your a-list talent there. Additionally, make sure you’re diverse. Companies with gender and racial/ethnic diversity at the executive level are 25-36% more likely to have above-average profitability.

7. Adopt an ecosystem view
Embrace high-value partnerships that can serve as extensions of your company, rather than focus on how you can dominate or control businesses.

8. Build data rich platforms
Take data seriously and understand that the insights that come from analysis of your data can continually empower your decisions and increase value. Netflix, for example, achieved growth by leveraging its user data and created a recommendation engine that consumers spend 80% of their time streaming.

9. Accelerate learning as an organization
Instill a growth mindset, curiosity and an openness to experimentation in your employees.

Is your business pulling these performance levers to be future-ready?
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See the full article link in the comments.

10/17/2022

If you don't know what fractional CMOs do, check this out.

The Fractional CMO role is growing in popularity but, what is it?

In short, a fractional CMO provides the same knowledge, expertise and strategic skillset of a full-time Chief Marketing Officer without the full-time commitment.

The fractional CMO role is becoming more popular and better understood due to a variety of factors:

1. Increased complexity of the Chief Marketing Officer role.
The skills needed for today’s CMO role have expanded. For example, digital marketing is becoming increasingly complicated and global expansion is now often table stakes. Both require specialists to grow successfully. A fractional CMO can easily fill in the gaps and help Marketing teams get to the next level.

2. An increased need in mid-sized companies.
Hiring a full-time Chief Marketing Officer is often the next step in a company’s growth. However, mid-size companies typically cannot afford one which has led to the increased popularity of the fractional CMO role. Now, even smaller companies can have access to top-level CMO talent on an interim or part-time basis.

3. COVID-19 and the Great Resignation.
COVID-19 presented companies with new challenges and accelerated the need for a fluid workforce and increased digital marketing skills. Due to the Great Resignation, many employees left full-time positions seeking contractual and/or remote work. Companies need help and are now having a harder time finding top full-time marketing talent, need executive expertise or cannot afford filling critical roles.

4. Inflation causing layoffs (and leaner budgets).
Many companies and employees have been affected by inflation, which makes it more cost-effective (and often necessary) to hire a fractional CMO to accelerate growth, especially in these uncertain times.

If your company would benefit from accelerated growth, have you considered hiring a fractional or interim CMO?
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See full article in the comments.

09/13/2022

We're here!!! Live from in Miami. So happy to be with my tribe The CMO Club