Chess Anyone?

My personal experiences of playing chess usually involve copious amounts of alcohol, a chess board of shot glasses, and very little memory of the outcome.  And Kevin winning!  Hence for health reasons, I avoid the accursed game. 

Yet if we think about how many brands develop their marketing plans, it has similarities with my experiences of chess:  start with a plan and good intentions, then watch as the game progresses into chaos. 

Let’s be quite clear: I’m not an expert at chess.  Yet I know that to start a game with a series of programmed moves, without regards to your opponent, is foolhardy at best, and a surefire way to lose the game.  In the case of the marketing team, however, this is exactly how many traditionally work:  take two to three months for ‘planning’, get as much insight as possible during that period, develop the marketing plan, cast it in stone.  When in 12 months time they’ve not achieved checkmate, it’s usually a case of either ‘circumstances beyond our control’, or conveniently forgetting the original plan objectives and moving on to the next year’s plan development cycle.  And on we go, a never ending game.

Part of the problem is in how most marketing departments approach planning – an intensive process, designed to define and justify a budget allocation from the Finance Department.  And as often happens, once the plan and budget are approved, it’s then a race to ensure funds are committed as early as possible, to prevent the inevitable clawback by Finance later in the year to ‘make the numbers’.  Another game played in many corporations, sort of like sacrificing a rook to get a knight.

So how can marketing departments get out of this quagmire and onto a firmer strategic footing?  It starts with recognizing that the two dimensional chess board for marketing planning is actually a multi-dimensional board.  It’s not a game of outperforming the competition and their moves on the board.  It’s also trying to determine your ever changing customers’ attitudes and beliefs.  Gaining insights into how your customers are reshaping their beliefs will help you plot your moves on the board.  There’s also the internal and external factors which need to be managed within the planning – government or industry regulations, unions, employee motivations, and more.  The simple move of taking the bishop has now resulted in a myriad of consequences in our multi-dimensional chess match.

Yet recognizing the challenge does not resolve it.  I believe the days of time specific planning, and a static marketing plan, are numbered.  Marketing planning needs to be a 12 month, on-going activity.  Change is too ever-present for any brand to expect a plan to remain valid without constant review and adjustment.  Plans also need to be far more flexible, catering for different scenarios or opportunities which may arise and then validating or refuting these scenarios as the year progresses.

Marketers who continue to develop static plans will find they’re playing checkers down at the old general store, while their competition is getting better and better at winning multi-dimensional chess. They’ll always lose in the endgame.