"I wish
there was someone else I could ask about this new launch"
"It would be really helpful if I could see what worked
with another proposition".
Almost every marketing professional would like
to have a community of marketing peers to draw upon when
taking on new challenges.
BT recognised the benefit of shared
learning in this way and
launched the marketing community in 2003. The community
involves marketing people from right across the company divided
into
marketing practices that cover the key disciplines such
as marketing communications and propositions development.
When
I was asked to head up the BT propositions development
practice, I wanted it to work effectively for the benefit
of all the members. I wanted to:
- Share best practice
- Demonstrate best practice
in action and encourage others to adopt it
- Develop the skills
of members
- Apply learning from different markets
Provide
an opportunity for people to get together and meet other
practitionersTo make this work I set up
a steering team covering all the BT divisions. fresheyemarketing were there
to help me with the aims of the practice and develop
the programmes.
We put in place a programme of events based
on themes that were of interest to the members.
Each event
was held at the BT Tower towards the end of the day so
that participation was not
impacted by the
day job.
Typically, 90 marketers attended each event.
The
format was popular with members and included:
- A visiting,
guest speaker who talked about their experience and offered
a perspective of different markets
or alternative approaches
- BT case studies – practice in
action
- Recognition
for a practice member who had made a significant contribution
over the previous quarter
- A
forum for debate and questions
The feedback was great and we were scoring
on average 9 out of 10.
We found that people used the opportunity
to meet new colleagues, share experiences
and
discuss how
others
had overcome similar
challenges to their own.
Our members also told us that they
got benefit from the personal development
and it provided
the community
of
professionals they had been looking
for.
The key themes
of the propositions practice programme:
Propositions – how
others do it
Build innovation into the proposition
development process
Building propositions teams
Improving the impact of propositions
when you go to market
Propositions
or products – which
is more important
|
The BT propositions practice has been
a success story from the outset and the quality
of the output has been maintained
at a high level.
We achieved
this as a team, a team in which fresheyemarketing
were
an important
part. They
provided new thinking,
hosted events
and helped keep the whole
programme on
track. They worked closely
with all parts of
BT
and we wouldn’t have
achieved as much as we
did without their
involvement.
In speaking
with my colleague Hannah
Grant who is responsible
for all
the practices
across BT
she said "the propositions
practice has achieved more than any other practice." |
