Advice for Frustrated and Fearful of the Future (FFF)

MarketingRx for Friday – January 16-08

Last week, in "Should this graduating marketing student fear for his future?" MarketingRx published the letter of a graduating marketing student who, feeling that his four year education will be inadequate for a marketing career, fears for his future.

The same perhaps goes for those who are currently in marketing having been transferred from a different field. We see that all the time. Those in HR, Sales, IT—and even nursing, the arts and engineering are now assigned to a management position (or are running a business) that requires a working knowledge of Marketing.

As for me (the Jr MRx-er), I had no plans to get into Marketing. My initial career path was either law or journalism. Out of college, I started writing about business, entrepreneurship, and health for a monthly lifestyle magazine. Later, I found myself in a management position for the publisher of an international business magazine that tasked me to market books to Asian managers (a new spin-off business of the publisher). I had to learn fast, since the previous manager I had replaced was gone and there was no turnover or formal training. The publisher had faith in me—or rather the fact that I was the son of the Senior MRx-er, THE professor of International Marketing at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM).

I remember doing several things to help me prepare for the position and the responsibility. These three daily "To Dos" also helped me when I started our business.

1. Seek mentors. I picked the brain of the best available resource person on marketing that was available to me—my Dad! The Sr MRxer and I carpooled to work every day. The commute from Paranaque (south of Manila) to our respective offices in Makati became my "University of South Super Highway" with Dr Ned Roberto as my professor. Thankfully, our offices were located within 5 minutes of each other. Since there was no Skyway then, that was about 3 hours of marketing lessons with a teacher to student ratio of 1:1.

First hand, I'd learn about my Dad's clients and the different challenges that they asked the Sr MRxer to help them out with.You may not have the blessing of having a marketing guru as your father, but you can certainly seek out marketing mentors either in the company you work for or as you mentioned, in the various marketing associations and clubs that you have already joined. I also considered my boss, Ashok Nath, the publisher and president of the publishing firm that I worked at, as one of my marketing mentors as well. He was an encouraging influence who allowed his managers to be entrepreneurial. Mr Nath also introduced me to battle scarred marketing veterans who generously shared their expertise.

While you're still in school, offer to be the research assistant of marketing authors and consultants like PMA Agora Awardees, Willie Arcilla and Karen de Asis.

2. Read. The best marketing mentors can be consulted for a few hundred or thousand pesos 24/7 through the books and articles that they have written. Since I marketed books, I had access to the best and latest business books published by Harvard Business Press, McGraw-Hill, Simon & Schuster, John Wiley, etc. Publishers would send me free review copies. Those days are over, but I still invest and budget a princely amount for books every year. I learned much from the classic career autobiographies of advertising legends, Lester Wunderman and David Ogilvy.

When I started my business on a shoe-string budget, I consulted Guerrilla Marketing founder, Jay Levinson through his Guerrilla Marketing series of books starting with "Guerrilla Marketing for the Home-Based Business" co-authored with Seth Godin. (Little did I know that a decade later, I would be hosting Jay Levinson in Manila.) Another book that I used to refer to a lot when I became an entrepreneur was Josiah Go's "The Marketing Plan" book.

Right now, I'm going through "Lovemarks – the future beyond brands" by the Worldwide CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, Kevin Roberts. It's an inspiring, enjoyable read (brilliantly designed also) that details what and how he's knows what he knows in brand marketing since his start in P&G in 1972 and then through his many international corporate posts until his current position in the global office of advertising giant, Saatchi.

3. Go back to "school." Yes, I know that you've just graduated and are probably glad to be out of school. But you need to go back and continually upgrade your knowledge. A management consultant once told me that the knowledge of a graduating IT student becomes obsolete in about 3-6 months after they graduate. Given that the graduating marketing student's knowledge may have more shelf life, you still have to keep on upgrading and updating by attending "school." So attend cutting edge seminars and conferences where the latest ideas and case studies in business and marketing are presented.

Create your own curriculum. Allow me a shameless plug right here: include the Dr. Ned marketing workshops being offered through Josiah Go's Mansmith & Fielders in your "marketing school calendar."

Lastly, don't be quick to dismiss what you've learned at school—at least you've been exposed to the basics and have a good foundation. What's more important, I think, is that you've learned the discipline of hard work (assuming that you are studying and working hard) while still a student.

Once you get into a corporate marketing position fresh from college, the boss wouldn't be careless and throw the weight of running a marketing campaign to a new hire. There will be a process of company inculturation ("this is how things are done here"), orientation, training and mentoring. For some it will be faster rather than slower. You'll have to learn fast on the job. The discipline of hard work that you hopefully learned in school will be your best friend. Hopefully, you also learned how to work with different people and picked up people and leadership skills with all the group projects that were assigned to you in school.

In business and the corporate world, you won't go far if you prefer to work alone. You'll have to learn how to work with different people.

We'll end with a reply from one of our readers who responded to last week's invitation to send their two centavos worth of advice to the FFF student.

"Marketing is one of the most challenging jobs out there - precisely because it is very hard to define. Marketing usually does so many things all at the same time that it really is hard to create a textbook teaching Marketing to students. …What's important is not what's in the textbooks but rather what have you really learned while in school like how to network with other students, how to build an organization, how to learn the importance of teamwork in sports activities, how to court a girl, and how to influence others - this is what's more important and this is what every student can use when they join the corporate world."
- Jay Jaboneta, Customer Business Development, P&G Distributing Philippines

So, FFF, we hope we've answered at least 1 or 2 of the four questions that you asked last week ("what reading materials could you suggest to a newbie like me which could be very helpful?" and "what else should I do that could supplement my education?")

Next week, the Senior MRxer will answer the other two questions raised by FFF ("what am I to do about my situation without offending my professors?" and "could you please give me an idea of how it is to be a professional marketer and what the industry is like?"

To our other readers who replied, thanks for sending your advice to FFF. We'll forward them directly to him. We're sure he'll appreciate it. Keep your questions and comments coming. Text us at 0918-3386412. Or send them to us at MarketingRx@pldtDSL.net or post them at www.marketingrx.org . God bless!

Should this graduating marketing student fear for his future?

MarketingRx for January 9, 2009

Dear Marketing RX,

Hope you could help me out. Iʼm a 4th year student taking up Marketing Management. I have stumbled across your column a few months back and I was really pleased that it was helpful and clarified some questions that I had. So I took a chance and decided to ask for your expert advice on my problem.

Graduation is fast approaching and I canʼt help but feel insecure of my knowledge and skills. Although I study in a reputable university, I am unfortunate to have outdated teachers whom despite having doctorate degrees stick strictly by the books.

They lack in 1st hand experience which I think is highly instructive and crucial for their students. Our typical classroom discussions range from reading out loud the latest copy of Kotler to embarrassing situations like when they are bombarded with questions they cannot answer convincingly. Another thing I find ironic is that they cannot relate what they teach to a Philippine setting. If not for your column, I would never have heard of marketing gurus such as Kumar or the concepts of customer insighting, communitization nor debunking the age-old belief that customer loyalty is the best business model.

Coming across marketing alumni, they have all expressed the same frustration: what we learn in school does not coincide with what is expected by the employers. This discrepancy highly alarms a lot of the marketing students. We have long expressed our observation that our curriculum needs to be streamlined with what is actually happening out there but it seems that these sentiments fall on deaf ears.

My grades are quite good and they have earned me a spot to be part of a team our department sends to compete in such competitions such as PANAʼs IMC and PMAʼs STRATMark. During these times, my team mates and I take it upon ourselves to learn the whole process and figure everything out on our own since our professors are not very helpful. We try to make the best of what is available but we still feel that it is inadequate. In fact as much as possible I try to attend seminars with key speakers and read up on marketing articles and books, but having no one to direct my questions to, I often get confused.

I am now scared that in the future when I am employed I will find myself in situations where I am clueless.

In closing here are some of my questions: ·
what am I to do about my situation without offending my professors?·
could you please give me an idea of how it is to be a professional marketer and what the industry is like?·
what reading materials could you suggest to a newbie like me which could be very helpful?· what else should I do that could supplement my education and make my resume more attractive?

Thank you and I hope that you could help me by answering through your column because I feel that there is a lot of potential among us and if given a chance we could become good marketers. Sincerely, Frustrated and Fearful of the Future (FFF)

+++Next week, we'll start addressing FFF's concerns and questions one by one. But what do you, our dear readers, think? Send us your suggestions for FFF and we'll include it in our column. If you're a marketing student please write to us and share your experience. We're sure that there are professors and schools out there that are exceptions to this future marketer's lament.Send them to us at MarketingRx@pldtDSL.net or post them at www.marketingrx.org .

We can also receive your reactions via text at 0918-3386412. (Pls include your name and co./organization/school.) Our prayers and thoughts are with our editor, Margie Quimpo-Espino who suffered a stroke while on a business trip to India last month. She's still recovering from a hospital in India and everyone who's read this column is encouraged to say a little prayer for her swift recovery. Thanks and God bless!===============

“What’s self-segmentation and is there such a thing?”

MarketingRx for October 31/November 7, 2008:

By Dr Ned Roberto with Ardy Roberto


Q: We heard that you recently gave a talk on market segmentation and self-segmentation. We read your book on market segmentation and we’ve been helped by the segmentation approaches you introduced. But that book didn’t at all talk about self-segmentation.

Our news said that you told your audience that self-segmentation is more useful than market segmentation. What’s the difference between market segmentation and self-segmentation? How exactly is self-segmentation of more practical use?

Is this a new book of yours? If it is, where can we buy it? If not, please give us a brief explanation so we can benefit from it just as we gained better understanding of market segmentation from your book.


A: That recent talk isn’t that recent. It’s been some two months ago. Anyway let’s take up your questions. We’ve been asked those questions before and for quite a number of times.

The most instructive way to be clear about the difference between market segmentation and self-segmentation is to think of segmentation as a behavior. Our traditional practice of market segmentation is the marketer’s segmenting behavior. That’s basically your partitioning as a marketer of your total market into segments.

The partitioning may be by socio-economic classification. This is probably the most used segmenting variable. It’s a conventional practice in the shopping mall, restaurant and hospitality services business. The practice typically yields the Class AB (upper class) segment, Class C (middle class) segment, Class D (borderline poor) segment, and Class E (extreme poor) segment. In another occasion as in the apparel and food supplement categories, you may partition by age to come out with the young adult segment, the mature adult segment, and the post-mature adult segment. Others like to partition by gender (the male segment versus the female segment), or even by geographical residency.

The classic pHCare example
Self-segmentation is the consumer’s segmentation behavior. This was what the pHCare market launching team at Unilab found in the feminine wash market in year 2000. The total population of menstruating women at that time self-segmented themselves into the femwash user segment and the femwash non-user segment. According to AC Nielsen, the user segment made up 12% of the total menstruating population while the non-users were a large 82%.

The 82% non-users self-segmented into 3 sub-segments. There were about 50% out of this 82% who for their feminine hygiene needs used 2 substitutes, namely, soap or water. This 50% divided about equally between soap and water. The remaining 32% out of the 82% were the “true” femwash non-users whose reason for non-use was something like this: “Wala naman akong UTI. So di ko kailangan yan.” (I don’t have UTI. So I don’t need that.) This is the most difficult market segment to go after for converting into femwash usage.

The other 2, the soap-using segment and the water-using segment, are not as difficult a segment for conversion. This is because the first of these 2 is already unhappy with soap as a femwash substitute. Soap users say something like this: “It makes me dry and itchy down there.” So demonstrating that a femwash like pHCare won’t dry and won’t make its user feel itchy will lead to conversion in favor of pHCare. On the other hand, the water-using femwash prospects reason out this way: “Okay na ang tubig. Gastos pa yang feminine wash” (Water is okay. It’s extra expense to use feminine wash.) That’s a resolvable issue of affordable value-for-money pricing.

In population size, each of these 2 non-user segments is somewhat larger than the current18% femwash users. The consumers in the soap-using segment count to 20.5% prospective femwash users (= 25% x 82% non-users). That’s the same population size of consumers in the water-using segment.

Converting the soap users into becoming femwash users doubles (about a little bit more) the current femwash user market. Then bringing in the consumers in the water-using segment will more than triple that current femwash user market! As you can see, this is the argument in favor of taking advantage of consumer self-segmentation for its more practical business-growing benefits. As we often tell our seminar participants, the ultimate source for growing your business is a new user market segment. Find one and your double or even triple your business. Because the period of owning a new market segment has been getting shorter and shorter, you can appreciate why searching and locating a new user market segment has become ever more critical.

The AyalaLand example
Here’s another instructive case that reinforces this practical business-growing advantage of self-segmentation but with a different twist. This is the self-segmenting behaviour of home owners of AyalaLand.

Originally, the market segmentation that AyalaLand adopted was by the socio-eco classification of the upper-upper class, i.e., the Class A market. This real property company partitioned the Class A market into the Class AAA (triple A) segment, the Class AA (double A) segment and the Class A (single A) segment.

Over the years, as these market segments got “saturated,” research on home owners in these segments revealed that home owners here were self-segmenting themselves into a first repeat customers for another house and lot, and even as second repeat customers. At the life cycle stage of “Full Nesters 1” where the couple’s youngest kid is less than 6 years old, this Class A customer has been observed to be at its first peak repeat home buying. This is a potentially double-the-business opportunity.

Then at another life cycle stage of “Empty Nesters 1” where you now have older couples, with or without kids at home, but the household head is still working, a Class A customer in this stage has been recorded to be at its second peak repeat home owning. This time and in most cases, this customer buys for gift giving. One of the children is now getting married and what can be a more welcome wedding gift than a house for the newly wed. That’s potentially another double-the-business opportunity.

Where’s the difference in this case? Notice that the new market at each of the 2 peak repeat home buying opportunities comes from the same original customers. The same customer has segmented himself or herself to participate in 2 new market segments. That’s growing business from your already acquired customers. It’s not new customer acquisition as in the femwash case. That’s the most cost-effective sourcing of business growing.

So there you are. There’s hopefully the clear difference between market segmentation and self-segmentation, and the true practical business-growing advantage to navigating through this fast changing waters and times via customers’ self-segmentation.

Keep your questions coming. Send them to ardy.roberto@gmail.com or visit www.marketingrx.org . God bless!

The book launch

Last night, July 4th, we had an intimate gathering of about a hundred people at the book launch of The Best of MarketingRx.

PowerBooks Greenbelt 4 in Makati was the venue. It was a double celebration: our book launch and my Dad's birthday! Tingting, my Mom, sisters (except Elaine who just sold out her paintings at a recent exhibit in Malaysia) and my godsons were there. Friends, readers and our Salt & Light Ventures staff were all there too.

I was one happy dude, to say the least. Sandy Prieto-Romualdez, our publisher, and Margie Espino, our editor, graced the affair. Sandy, Margie, my Dad (Dr Ned) and I all gave short talks before signing our books for the guests.

I'll share one thing I said about my Dad who had at least two rules in the Roberto household: Think! and Speak up! (i.e. have the balls to go against the flow and speak your mind in truth...don't let anyone's b.s. get in the way of your dreams...).

"My Dad gave us the space and the wings to fly to achieve our dreams and the balls to be able to bounce back from our failures."

It was my father who not only gave us his good name but gave us the guts (the balls) and the freedom to fly and not be afraid to fail.

Thanks Dad and Happy Birthday!!

Introduction to MarketingRx

By Margie Quimpo-Espino
Business Features Editor
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Soldiers are usually told ‘Ready, aim, fire!’

Entrepreneurs do it differently—first they fire, then they aim.

Sounds funny but it’s true. But then again this is the X factor of many successful entrepreneurs: the ability to see a market or a need, without the benefit of research.

Most entrepreneurs rely on gut feel when making business decisions. Their success is often determined by their ‘no fail, can’t fail attitude.’

But entrepreneurs do thirst for more objective guidelines in their decision-making. They may not like school much, but they hunger for knowledge suited and relevant to their needs. They will still decide, of course, based on how they feel and what their instincts tell them, but they do listen to research and what the market says.

It is this thirst for knowledge about the market, this guidance from experts (without paying a consultancy fee!), that has made MarketingRx popular among business and marketing professionals, entrepreneurs, and students.

Few entrepreneurs would spend on consultants, let alone commission a market study. But they will always maximize situations and opportunities where they can get free advice about their business.

This does not mean though that they are not willing to shell out good money to listen to experts. Over the past several years, there has been a proliferation of marketing seminars and always, in the midst of marketing executives, you will find entrepreneurs.

The first time I got to know Dr. Ned was when I was a new business journalist with the Philippine Daily Inquirer. The Asian Institute of Management, where he was a professor then, often held seminars and short courses on economics and finance for business reporters. Dr. Ned was often one of the lecturers and I was lucky enough to have been among his students.

Even back then, Dr. Ned already had that uncanny ability to captivate his audience and make market research very interesting, at a time when few paid heed to what the market wanted. The dictum then was create wants and needs for the market.

I cannot forget that one subject of his research was Jollibee’s tremendous success in one of its first provincial branches (this was in the 1980s). His research discovered that consumers would go to Jollibee not for its burgers but for its Chickenjoy, with many families bringing their own rice and ordering just the chicken.

To this day Chickenjoy is Jollibee’s bestseller.

Dr. Ned’s partner in the column, his son Ardy, I met in 1990, just before I set off for a fellowship at The Washington Post. He was then working for a magazine and had asked me to look up a friend.

While Dr. Ned was building his reputation as a marketing guru in the Philippines and writing books on the side, Ardy began his writing career, eventually graduating from a professional management course for publishing executives in Stanford University.

He has certainly put his course to good use. As Dr. Ned has said, his earlier books were not selling until Ardy looked at them and repackaged them. Then they flew off the shelves.

A few years ago, Ardy realized that his role was to help spread the gospel of Marketing, in particular market research. And he knew even then that his dad was, and is, one of the best preachers for this.

I NEVER THOUGHT I would become the editor of this unique father-son tandem. The MarketingRx column started in the Philippine Daily Inquirer in 2003. Just like the Business Features section which hosts it, it was a pioneering effort of the newspaper: the first marketing advice column.

Unfortunately, I cannot lay claim to getting the Robertos to write for the Inquirer. The original idea was coursed through one of our executives (credit should go to Ardy for broaching the possibility of a marketing column; he saw the market’s thirst for such). Of course, when the idea was pitched to me, I readily agreed.

Marketing Rx is more than just a column. It plays a crucial role in providing advice and guidance to entrepreneurs who do not yet have the capability and money to tap experts, who can help them grow their businesses.

Marketing consultants charge an arm and a leg. With the column, the price of practical advice is just the price of the Inquirer—in other words, it’s practically free.

The prescriptions Marketing Rx provides are never placebos. I don’t think any letter writer has ever felt short-changed with the answer to his question. Indeed, the answers are almost mini-lectures on Marketing.

But it does not stop there. The column provides the impetus for entrepreneurs to learn more about marketing research as a rule and their markets in particular. This book makes it so much easier for entrepreneurs as they now have the answers to particular situations they might encounter in one book.

I would go as far to say that Marketing Rx contributes to economic progress in the Philippines—as entrepreneurs get effective advice, their businesses expand, wealth is created, and employment is generated. As Filipinos become economically empowered, politicians will become irrelevant. Once they are irrelevant, they will start acting like the public servants they are and . . . serve the public.