fast

Fail fast and fix it

Fail fast and fix it

IN AGILE MARKETING Anthony Freeling successfully combines theory and practice and comes up with a neat concept. Agility is something to which any good business person should aspire and the idea that speed of execution is at least as important as relentless rigour is instantly attractive.

One of Dr Freeling’s central tenets is ‘Test, Learn, Commit’ (TLC) in which we are encouraged to ignore the traditional approach of exhaustively exploring consumer needs, working out how to satisfy them and then implementing. Instead, a TLC attitude would encourage experimentation, then selecting the best idea and committing wholeheartedly behind the winning formula. It’s a seductive thought but does depend on the ability to properly measure such pilots. I’m sure I’m not alone in bearing scars from ‘test markets’ or ‘pilots’ that have proved impossible to read because of noisy data. The idea of ‘fast loop marketing’, which implies an organisation with the ability to rapidly learn and move forward is one that passes a common-sense test.

The book is rich with strong examples drawn from thorough interviews and with the forensic analysis you’d expect from a former McKinsey consultant. You would also be right to expect a bias in favour of rigour rather than intuition – Freeling may preach agility but not if it involves shortcuts in analysis, and he is a great believer that organisation and culture are critical to strong marketing. The examples cover a wide range of sectors. The praise for Tesco’s approach – largely built around their well-documented use of Clubcard data – is perhaps a little overdone, especially as the wheels came off the marketing juggernaut in the 2011 pre-Christmas season.

The sections on designing a strong marketing organisation are full of useful advice. The recommendations build on a strong ‘Commercial Operating System’ and demand a hybrid matrix with some clear accountabilities and an ‘integrator’ to ensure that all the disparate roles found in today’s marketing departments are facing in the same direction. Amen to that.

Freeling draws on a strong hinterland to make this book come alive. And the concepts will stay with you long after it’s back on the bookshelf.

Agile Marketing: How to Innovate Faster, Cheaper and with Lower Risk, Goldingtons Press, 2011, £29.99


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