Jochen C. Wolter, Head of Business Management for Western Europe
Sony Ericsson

Jochen C. Wolter is the Head of Business Management for Western Europe at Sony Ericsson. He is a IT and telecommunications industry veteran with over 18 years of experience in various roles including consulting, sales, product marketing, marketing communications and channel marketing.

Tell us about your background and the path to your current position within Sony Ericsson.

I'm currently based in the European headquarters of Sony Ericsson, heading up a function called marketing business management, which basically covers all the 4P of the marketing mix besides creative development. My focus is on two key elements, product lifecycle management and marketing budget management.

My background is in telecommunications and IT with over 18 years experience in these fields. Before joining Sony Ericsson, I worked for Nortel as their Central Europe Marketing Director. Prior to that, I was working with Deloitte as a management consultant in the field of sales and marketing. And before that, I worked with Siemens in various roles and in various countries - so to sum it up I have always been in the IT and telecommunication industry.

As a marketer based in Western Europe, where have you seen opportunities for business growth and market development within this market?

Obviously, along with the rest of the globe, we had a turbulent year in 2009, with no market growth and significant decline in some of the European markets, specifically in southern Europe. For example, Spain was, and is, still struggling to rebuild their performance in many industries.

On the other hand, due to the turbulent situation, we have seen some opportunities present themselves because the market structure is changing quite a bit. Particularly in the telecommunication industry, the mobile Internet market is taking off, thanks to the iPhone. So it's not only been a strong growth of very low-end mobile phones and prepaid contracts, but also some good development in the high end of the market.

Here at Sony Ericsson we are working to take advantage of this development with our higher end entertainment portfolio. For me as a marketer this obviously means adjusting marketing strategy, plans and also our execution approach accordingly.

Are there any particular regional areas that you foresee growth in during 2010?

Most of the European markets have come through the economic crisis quite well, and we will see the start of a slow growth in the industry overall during 2010. There are some exceptions, like Ireland and Greece, but overall it's a fairly stable situation right now. We don't expect excessive growth, but we expect stabilization and for the industry to pick itself back up.

What are the primary in-region resources for gathering external customer insights and data?

In terms of external resources, we are working with several market tracking companies who are providing us with competitor information as well as general market information like market size, volumes, and sell-through channels. Due to the very fast pace of the mobile industry, we also have a strong internal customer insight department that looks at competitor movements from a business model, technology and handset point of view. We research internet rumors, customer rumors and try to map out competitor movements, then adjust our strategy and next steps accordingly.

There is a mix of external research, which is obviously available to everyone, including our competitors, but also strong internal competitive intelligence.

What are the most critical communication channels used in the European regions - do you see more of a reliance on online and social media tactics?

Obviously, we differentiate our communication channels depending on who we are targeting, from a marketing point of view. And we still believe that the very mainstream audiences rely heavily on the mainstream or traditional communication channels like TV. But, we see that especially with our youth target groups the importance of online and social media is growing dramatically - more and more people take advantage of social networks for information gathering and decision making.

So looking into our strategy, we're taking that into consideration and significantly increasing our investment in online marketing and social media marketing.

Can you talk a little bit about your sponsorship of the upcoming FIFA World Cup and how it plays into your marketing strategy?

As a mobile phone vendor, we have decided to take a nontraditional approach to sponsorship of such a massive property. We have opted not to focus on banner advertising and stadium signage, because we feel that it's too distant for the football fan base.

Instead, we have decided to take a very fan-centric approach to our advertising and deliver propositions that have a direct value-add for the fans. So we're offering services and applications on the phones, and ways to connect with other fans using their phones and through social networks under the umbrella of Sony Ericsson. It's a very non-traditional and online-oriented approach to marketing.

What do you feel are some of the key indicators and performance metrics in evaluating this marketing venture?

Obviously it's a brand exercise, in general, so we will be using metrics like online traffic - we'll look at people who are registering and people who are using, sharing or creating content through the platforms we are providing.

But for us, this initiative is extremely important as a sales driver as well. On the back of this engagement, we have in-store promotions in every country with World Cup-branded handsets containing FIFA content. With an in-store promotion, we can actually measure our results in sales and see what the overall campaign delivers. So this campaign looks at both dimensions. Obviously in our current environment, the sales dimension is very important, but we can also look at the brand experience.

What are your top marketing priorities for 2010?

Overall, we are aiming to follow the changing market trend and also position ourselves as the leader of that market trend.

From a more internal and structural point of view we are working on better integration our approach across online, traditional and social media so that we can more easily measure the contribution that a product or product line delivers to the business against the marketing spend we were designating.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

By Laura Patterson for VisionEdge Marketing

The role of the CMO has evolved since some of the first CMOs, such as Mark Mears of Blimpie International and Phil Gospels-Strumpette of Coca-Cola came on the scene in early 1990s. The CMO role- which initially tended to emphasize advertising, brand management, and market research-continued to evolve over the past fifteen years as a result of the emergence of new media, the growing number of sales and service touch points, more complex distribution models, and the fragmentation of customer segments.

The CMO has moved from focusing primarily on brands and clever advertising to a larger, more strategic role designed to enable a company to meet the ever-changing needs of a diverse and global customer base. Anthony Palmer, Chief Marketing Officer at Kimberly-Clark, says that "the role of a CMO is really pretty simple. You can't ever lose sight of the fact that your role is to sell more stuff to more people for more money more often. That has to be the ultimate goal. You also have to inspire the organization to take calculated risks, and inspire the organization to love winning more than they are afraid of losing."

When the first CMO's came on the scene, customers approached identifying and researching products much differently than they do today. Now, with the Internet, blogs, social media, and independent sites becoming more influential, companies will need to be able to leverage a variety of communication channels to engage customers and to anticipate and adjust quickly to different segments and changing preferences.

Is the CMO on the verge of extinction? The study, "Define & Align the CMO", conducted by MarketBridge, based on nearly 1,500 segmented interviews with CMOs, CEOs, search consultants, board members and other marketing executives found that "the credibility of CMOs is increasingly challenged by the position's vague definition and a failure on the part of corporate America to align qualifications with business goals."
A Nath and Hahjan study concluded that when present, the CMO is "expected to reduce the complexity and uncertainty that the top management team faces in the marketing domain or in critical decision making areas affected by the marketing domain." The role of the CMO needs to change to remain a viable part of the leadership team.

Advice for Surviving and Thriving
To survive and thrive, CMOs of the future need to see themselves as champions and drivers of growth who can anticipate customers, develop their organizations' marketing capabilities, and figure out how to measure marketing's impact on the business in terms that matter to their CEOs, CFOs, and the rest of their leadership teams. This will require CMOs with a bent more towards the analytical end of the marketing spectrum as opposed to the creative end.. Successful CMOs will need to exercise analytical muscle and have a deep understanding of the business landscape in order to predict and recommend which markets, products, and/or services will deliver the most profitable revenue growth.

Six Survival Tips
According to board members surveyed for the MarketBridge study, CMO failure was seen as resulting from their having "no real authority or clout in the organization" (59 percent) and "a lack of credibility and respect among key stakeholders" (54 percent). The study suggests that being able to prove that marketing is working and making a difference for the company is a key factor of success. The MarketBridge study also suggests that CMOs with greater quantitative focus and measurement emphasis have a 20 percent longer tenure.

Surviving CMOs will need to exhibit at least these six skills:

• Move business-focused responsibilities from the back burner to the front and center.
• Talk in the language of business. To survive, CMOs will need to be able to read balance sheets, understand business models and key drivers of business value, and identify key growth opportunities.
• Leverage emerging marketing channels to build strong brand loyalty, reach targeted audiences, and gain insight into customer needs.
• Understand which metrics are valuable for demonstrating the impact of marketing on the business.
• Build collaborative teams committed to adding and demonstrating value to the business.
• Prove that the investments they are making on behalf of the company are working.

Four Ingredients for Thriving
While surviving CMOs will focus on lead generation, pipeline management, branding and customer acquisition, thriving CMOs will think beyond these variables and increase their stake in growing customer lifetime value and in focusing on developing long-term customer profitability. Four other essentials for the thriving CMO include:

• Embracing analytics and metrics and leading the way for marketing performance management initiatives.
• Closing the gap between marketing and the customer, leading the charge for a customer-centric business strategy, and serving as the "voice of the customer".
• Leveraging data to analyze market and customer trends and strengthening their knowledge of ethnography, lead-user analysis, and online customer communities to create customer-driven products.
• Taking the helm in helping the company anticipate and respond to rapidly changing market and customer needs, creating new business models, and leading the charge in establishing new marketing capabilities.

CMOs who want to survive and thrive must actively align every brand under the corporate umbrella with the core values of the corporate entity and reconcile the brands with one another. They must initiate collaboration with other functions within the business to develop, deliver and communicate a value proposition that will resonate with customers. Only by building tight relationships between marketing and the rest of the organization and developing relationships outside the business will CMOs be able to tap into customer information that enables the business to extend into emerging markets and bring innovative products to market.

Creatively-oriented CMOs will need to use their creativity to develop new ways to gain a deeper insight into the needs of customers and understand the trade-offs that will be required to design innovative products that meet customers' buying criteria. The global market is growing in complexity. Those CMOs who can leverage data-management tools and processes to help companies maintain a consistent brand while optimizing pricing, placement, and promotion within specific markets and connecting marketing to the business, will be left standing.

Laura Patterson is the President of Vision Edge Marketing, a data-driven and metrics-focused marketing firm that specializes in marketing performance management and measurement, marketing and sales alignment, product and strategic marketing, and professional development.