In fairness, Comcast seems to be recognizing these challenges; the company has already appointed new management with a stated goal of focusing on customer experience. And it is making progress. Managing a turnaround will not be easy, but it is possible if the company embraces a new approach to both innovation (new service development) and marketing that is balanced and collaborative. This book is about that new approach and how it aligns product and service development with marketing. This approach is designed to help companies like Comcast understand their customers better, harness their feedback, and design for customers' evolving needs. It's not a new multiyear strategic plan, rather it's an approach that delivers one small victory after another in a battle to stay relevant.
Modern marketing is fundamentally about competing on the basis of the customer experience. Doing so effectively requires new practices and platforms; throughout this book, I map out the path to modernizing marketing. My intention in using this term is to underscore a company's ability to compete on the basis of customer experience.
To get a sense of the direction marketing is taking, consider this hypothetical example, based on a real product and its real issues. You're a successful millennial with a top job at a growing company based in a major metropolitan area. You're in the market for a new car, but you harbor mixed feelings about new cars because they're hard on the environment. So you've decided on an electric car, which reflects your environmentally conscious values. You're hoping you can find one that will also send a message about your accomplishments (not to mention satisfying your ego's need for speed).
This may well be your single biggest purchase to date. As you are inclined to do, you'll start your search by browsing on your mobile device and asking for suggestions on social.
Facebook picks up your intentions and presents an ad for a hybrid Cadillac. You knowingly take the bait and investigate its site. You also download the Cadillac's mobile app before heading out to the dealership to learn more. Sitting in the car, the first thing you notice is the Cadillac User Experience (CUE) display. You can connect your phone but that doesn't add much value to your experience. That's disappointing. You take the test drive, though, and return to the showroom to briefly get some idea about available options and pricing.
Later that day, you get a notification on your phone pointing to an article about Tesla that a friend is sharing with you on Facebook. You've heard that the car was rated “best new car of the year” by a number of automotive publications and reviewers. The article touts new features coming out in 2015 that will make it impossible for the car to run out of range. It's hard not to worry about range with an electric, so this peaks your interest.
You learn that Tesla updates its cars in the same way that your phone gets updated. In this case, the company released a firmware update that directed drivers to one of its SuperCharger stations when their cars were running low on battery. With your phone in hand, you check out Tesla's mobile app and discover that it lets you check the car's charging progress, preheat or cool the car, locate it, and even access it remotely. You jump to Tesla's website, which lets you schedule a test drive.
There's nothing typical about Tesla's showroom. For one thing, it's in a retail location, nestled between a home furnishing store and a clothing boutique. For another, they're expecting you. There's certainly nothing typical about Tesla's approach to making and selling cars. You learn that Tesla does not release cars on an annual basis like Cadillac. Instead, the company is continuously improving and updating the car's hardware and software; the model you're interested in, for example, will add additional self-driving features with future software releases. Teslas are made to order and offer many configuration choices that you'll want to explore. The entire buying experience is different.
You resist the urge to make a rash decision. Of course, these cars are made to order so you couldn't drive away with one right now even if you wanted to. Plus, you can't ignore the fact that the car costs a good bit more than the Cadillac and much more than you ever imagined spending on a vehicle. But this car doesn't feel like something that starts depreciating as soon as you drive out of the dealership. On the contrary, the car seems like it will improve over time.
Now you need to get a better idea of the car's reputation. What do its owners think? Unlike the Cadillac, Tesla has a community of owners who are actively engaged online. So you start poking around.
You discover that Tesla has had some issues, for example with the battery. The car originally lowered itself at high speeds to improve efficiency. Unfortunately, this feature caused battery damage for some drivers when they ran over objects in the road or hit rough pavement. But Tesla addressed this with a software update that disabled the height adjustment as well as with the installation of new bottom-plate hardware. The company also issued a series of communications to owners about the problem and provided release notes for the software update. Most important, users remained satisfied, undeterred, even; they continue to recommend the car.
A negative piece you came across in the New York Times claimed that Tesla's mileage estimates were inaccurate. Elon Musk, Tesla's CEO (and product architect), promptly refuted the story, using data from the car that the journalist drove. He also took the opportunity to point out that Tesla is constantly improving the customer experience based on similar data and input from customers.
Your experience thus far has been great: clear, consistent, and straightforward. Granted, there have been some issues, but that's to be expected from a company that's disrupting an industry. In fact, part of what sets Tesla apart is how it has responded to these issues – which is to say, promptly, factually, and transparently. What you hear on social media aligns with what the company is saying. This is the car you're going to buy.
Tesla develops and manufactures its cars using an adaptive approach that makes it possible to innovate quickly and respond to unexpected circumstances that in another era (or with another company) could have derailed a fledgling business. On Tesla's manufacturing side, the approach is called Lean; on the software side, it's called Agile. Both are adaptive approaches. From a marketer's perspective, what is most impressive is that the automaker's approach to marketing echoes, complements, and enhances its approach to development. It's as if the marketing and the product development are so tightly aligned that they're virtually indistinguishable. With Tesla, this may literally be the case, considering that Elon Musk is as much a product guy as he is a marketer (whether he admits this or not). Marketing and product development can iterate right alongside each other, as they evolve the product and brand ever more closely to the customer's ideal. And, perhaps most importantly, they are in lockstep when it comes to delivering a consistent and great user experience.
In fact, Tesla extended its development approach to marketing, which turns out to be a critical first step on the road to modern marketing. As you'd expect, Tesla established a community early on; it is listening to customers and addressing product concerns in a public way. Such transparency is at the heart of an adaptive approach.
Tesla stands in contrast to Comcast along many dimensions: industry, age, size, and competitive profile. But the most important dimension in which the two companies differ is internal alignment. Comcast is not old in years, but it is in terms of its innovation and marketing practices. Upstart companies with agility – those that can adopt contemporary approaches out of the gate – are driving Comcast's customers to “cut the cord.” To maintain its historic growth rate, it must change more than the way it develops new services; it must develop them in lockstep with marketing.
For the marketing group, modernization has major implications for two areas: (1) marketing practices and (2) the platforms and technology that support those practices. Of course, these implications are intertwined and can't be understood independently. What