McCombs Alumni Network News

From McCombs Today

Ben Bentzin, marketing lecturer at McCombs and a former Dell executive, spoke with McCombs Communications Director David Wenger about changes in marketing approaches, Dell’s new focus on innovation to draw in customers and why he thinks you shouldn’t outsource your social media efforts.

David posted the full interview, along with audio clips, on his ID University blog. Check out a few highlights from Bentzin’s answers below:

On frequent reinvention of your marketing strategy:
A strategy is something a company can do better than their competitors sustainably over a long period of time. And so if the strategy changes every 6 months, it isn’t really a strategy it’s a tactic. And in some businesses these tactics are a process of exploration, finding out what works and what doesn’t work, which can be a very effective way of strategy development. To a certain extent the best market research you could possibly do is to put an offer in front of consumers and identify what consumers respond to. Once you’ve defined your strategy, if it’s a successful strategy, it will carry you for a very long period of time.

On how Dell has responded to changing market conditions:
Dell, with the Latitude Z and with other products, is starting that process of exploration, to identify how to compete in the world where competition is defined less on the basis of configurability and supply chain, and more on the basis of integrated whole products delivered with relatively little configuration. Dell’s development model historically had been the very fast follower, not necessarily innovating in all the new product categories, but being the first to market to deliver the new technology in the configuration that consumers found attractive.

Now we’re finding that Dell is exploring this possibility of more native product innovation, competing directly on the basis of product innovation as opposed to following the trends of where consumers were headed.

On having an authentic social media voice:
I find that social media and that kind of communication is very difficult for to sound authentic coming from a contractor or somebody who’s outside of the company. Sitting outside the company and trying to be the personality of the brand is very, very difficult. It’s typically going to be most successful from someone who is in the heat of the battle in direct contact with the information flow of what consumers are saying, and what is the product offering, and the company’s strategy in terms of the product they’re offering. That will ring true as authentic because it is authentic.

Tito’s [Vodka] has a very strong brand profile, and all of Tito’s social media comes from one brand of manager who’s been with the company for a very long period of time and feels passionately about the product, feels passionately about Tito’s, and does an outstanding job of representing the brand because she really represents the personification of the brand.