Why companies can’t reach the right people at the right time, in the right way

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by Michael Kristofka

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It's all about alignment. Photo courtesy of US Navy

What prevents companies’ digital strategies from reaching the right people, at the right time, in the right ways?  We know that digital has the ability to transform business models and customer experiences with enabling technology.  Our experience shows that a digital strategy brings many executional challenges because clients often don’t have the right leadership, with the right incentives, doing the right things.

The Right Leadership
We find that to execute effectively on a digital strategy, the CEO needs to be accountable for the transformation.  The C-suite needs to make the right investment and align incentives to get their organization to start DO-ing.  Executing on a digital strategy requires a different way to invest, a different way to organize, and a different way to work.  Digital impacts all 4Ps (pricing, promotion, product, and place), it crosses geographical regions, it touches many customer segments, and it empowers the company with more customer data while simultaneously empowering customers with more information than ever before.  Only CEOs have the authority to make this happen. Without support from the top, too many digital strategies end up on dusty shelves as soon as they encounter these fundamental issues.  It’s not about updating corporate websites and developing banner ads anymore – just ask Borders and Blockbusters.  Underestimating the impact of a digital strategy will be at their peril, like Janet Robinson, former New York Times CEO, recently learned the hard way.

With the Right Incentives
There isn’t a best practice for companies to show them how to organize and execute to keep pace with technology becoming more powerful, faster, and reachable.  One size does not fit all however, we know that to execute digital strategies successfully, companies need to create incentives that support a “test and learn” environment.  These incentives should focus the company on a core set of digital KPIs and support an agile way to release features and functionality that is useful and achieves business goals.  The more agile a company is when it’s developing its digital capabilities, the better it will be at keeping pace with technology and its key target segments.  Forrester often talks about this by highlighting the importance of adaptive marketing organizations.  However, a testing and learning culture will require a close collaboration between not only marketing but also with business operating units, sales, finance, HR and technology departments.  Failing and revising quickly will become the norm as companies mature their digital capabilities.  Razorfish helps clients transform their culture with its Agile+ approach by partnering with the right leadership.  This cultural transformation only happens with the right leadership accountable to a digital strategy.

Doing the Right Things 
The transformative nature of a digital strategy requires companies to prioritize and execute on the right things.  Many companies believe they are doing the right things by merely refreshing a corporate website or posting earnings announcements on their corporate Facebook pages. However, the right things are delivering features and functionality that have intended digital, customer experience, and business goals.  Digital right things offer companies opportunities to engage with their customers.  Right things get customers to DO something with them, for them, or on their behalf.  Often, clients ask us for a best practice or a unique digital framework or roadmap to implement these right things.  We believe, the best digital roadmaps are the ones that can be easily integrated into existing processes companies use to implement and prioritize projects.  Digital projects should be evaluated with the same rigor as those strategic projects that receive funding on an annual basis.  What becomes challenging is that digital requires collaborative teams to learn new terms like HTML 5, APIs, Earned Media Value, Gamification, SoLoMo, etc. (go ahead and Google the terms to find out what they mean), and there seems to be no end in sight.

Establishing a common language only gets more difficult as we add “smart” business jargon like value-add, quick wins, leverage our synergies, guiding principles, etc. that mean different things to different people.  Dan Pallotta, President for Advertising for Humanity, wrote an HBR Blog article entitled, “I Don’t Understand What Anyone is Saying Anymore” that addressed this problem.  The blog resonated with many people as it broke an all-time record for comments on a single HBR Blog post.  To execute on the right digital things, people need to be comfortable asking, “What does that mean?” more often, in order to refine, revise, and release new features and functionality.  What digital requires is less clutter, less jargon, and more focus on its intended goals, executed in an agile way.  Albert Einstein once said, “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”  Removing abstract or “clever” jargon and clutter is a step in the right direction to prioritizing and getting the right Sh*t done.

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If a digital strategy is what you want, then we’ll want to talk to the CEO.  We’ll want to partner with you through your transformation, because we believe Digital can reach the right people, at the right time, in the right way.