Prologue. Recent Conversation with CEO B: Me: I saw your ad at the airport the other day. I have a sense for your challenges and Marketing objectives. I’m sorry, but that ad was heartbreaking. I sense it is trying to be too clever. And, it demands an immense amount of attention to understand, who in their right mind would give you that? You know I love Creative Pre-Testing (CpT). You should test the ad for effectiveness, before you spend money. CEO B: First: You are right. After a few months of the campaign, we have seen no impact. Second: Avinash,…
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Today, a simple lesson that so many of us miss at great peril. In fact in your role, at this very moment, your company is making a mistake in terms of how it values your impact on the business. The lesson is about the limitation of optimizing for a local maxima, usually in a silo. We are going to internalize this lesson by learning from Microsoft. It is a company I love (am typing this on my beloved ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 5, using Windows Live Writer blogging software!). I bumped into the lesson thanks to their NFL sponsorship. If…