How often are you legitimately excited about the work you and your organization are doing? I don’t mean simply being satisfied with your job, I mean going home at night with a deep sense of fulfillment about whatever has been accomplished. I recall first being introduced to the concept of “WOW projects” while at P&G reading work from Tom Peters. Tom states “It was not the nature of the projects. It was the attitude of the whole team and its desire to create something special. All of my wow projects have been team efforts where we were determined to do something out of the ordinary.”1 I’ve had that experience before so when I look around now, I realize we are truly helping our clients deliver WOW projects. Read on to see how applicable some of this great work may be to your own business objectives.
Is This Big Enough to Make Me Care?
If you are like me, you get excited about tackling the really big challenges. I’ve been reflecting on other occasions when I felt like I was working on WOW projects. I thought of my role at P&G around 2010, give or take a year. We’d just made the leap into “interactive marketing” and all brands now had rapidly expanding website, CRM, and digital media strategies in place. But the looming challenge was eCommerce! Even then we knew it was both a threat and an opportunity. There was no question online would continue to grow as a legitimate sales channel for not just books, music and the like, but eventually for CPG products as well. And we weren’t ready. No major CPG was, but therein laid the opportunity.
I got assigned to a “swat” team brought together to make predictions five years into the future. We forecasted the direction of consumer and technological trends in order to play out the implications for P&G brands across a number of scenarios. Along with partners at Amazon, I co-lead early research into what it would take for consumers to feel comfortable buying laundry detergent, diapers and toothpaste online. On a daily basis I was working with industry experts from Forrester, Institute for the Future, Facebook, Google and Microsoft. And all of this resulted in new tools, capabilities and ways of working being implemented across P&G brands. The whole company saw these as true WOW projects. Not only were we recognized internally with various awards, I certainly went home each night feeling very fulfilled!
Yeah, These are Definitely Big Enough
Today, getting eCommerce right is still a challenge, but just one of many facing the marketers, technologists and brand leaders with whom we work. See if any of these opportunities sound familiar to you and your organization:
These are not just huge challenges, they are extremely valuable problems to solve. According to Forrester global spending on MarTech was $131 billion in 2023, with an expected compound annual growth rate of 13.3% through 20272. For that kind of investment you can bet CEOs and CFOs expect outsized returns.
This is the WOW Stuff
All this leads back to my excitement. Our clients are currently engaged in incredibly impressive work. I’m seeing decades (even centuries) old brands transform the way they think about marketing to consumers through data and technology.
One brand has completely reimagined what the consumer experience can be leading to a much improved approach to data acquisition. We are building more sophisticated models for scoring the potential value of every lead generated, thereby optimizing spend towards highest performing tactics. We are helping clients design new approaches to measurement, bringing together traditional methods like market mix modeling with newer incrementality testing solutions.
Perhaps most impressive, and fulfilling, has been partnering with smart, driven leaders to make the case for change. It requires a very specific skill set and storytelling ability to:
- Envision a future state enabled by data and technology
- Understand the nuances of what’s possible in Marketing today
- Craft a compelling and valid business case for investment
- Drive change across an enterprise level organization
But the above is exactly what our clients are doing. And some of them are going to share what has enabled them to be successful in these efforts. May 20-22 in Orlando, FL, the ANA is hosting their first national conference centered around MarTech, the Marketing Technology for Marketers Conference. Transparent Partners is thrilled to be a part of the agenda in multiple ways along with clients like Kellanova and Heineken.
My hope and desire is to make every project a WOW project. Fortunately, most days I find myself saying “wow” when I see the work we and our clients are doing. If you want your organization to have the same reaction, join us in Orlando or give us a call anytime!
