Out with the Ps and in with the Ms

Malaysia – The alphabet most influential in marketing has shifted from the four Ps to five Ms, preached former Procter & Gamble chief marketing officer Jim Stengel at the Global Brand Forum.

Stengel convinced the 800-strong audience that brand ideals set the pace for the growth of companies, in his presentation as first guest speaker at GBF which made its debut in Malaysia.

“There are five new fundamental marketing principles. The first is making brand ideals your foundation,” he said, explaining that these defined what the brand represented and getting to improve the lives of its consumers.

Google and Nike were Stengel’s picks for example where ideas led and steered the company’s direction. Google, for its mission to organise the world’s information and making it universally useful and Nike’s foundation of ‘If you have a body, you’re an athlete’.

“Brands such as these will be missed by the people because they exist to make lives better by lifting peoples’ spirits.

“Then you have to master inclusive marketing which first begins with your workforce who brings the brand to the market and then to customers who live with the brands. So the question of how leaders enable broader and deeper customer intimacy, are one of the important questions to ask yourselves,” Stengel said.

The third M principle was to manage people and not objectives, which is difficult to execute, he admitted.

Emphasising the personal touch with partners, business partners and employees, he said it is necessary to choose the correct people.

“Are you also allocating enough time to engage, listen and respond to each segment. The most important thing that a conversation was how Tesco leadership treats its employees the way its customers are treated.

“The fourth is for mission to drive margin in a business and not think of margin outside its appropriate mission.

“It’s about creating the feel of love, joy, empathy and soulfulness with the employees to drive the success,” he added.

Stengel also redefined ROI from return on investments to return on ideas – which is collective and cumulative.

“It is inclusive of all the activities that you do and not what you just buy and pay for but about being able to generate the commitment and the devotion of the consumers and with that, your market share grows multiples higher than the competition,” he said.

To the idealists at the event, he said research has already proven that brands operating in the five Ms outperform the category averages as much as 60%.

Asia has its advantage now, looking at the current adex rates – 29% of the USD162 billion worldwide comes from the Asia Pacific.