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What do the following marketing approaches have in common?
- The Children's Hospital at Montefiore, Bronx, New York, devised solutions to large-scale problems of health care for disenfranchised children, by combining excellence in pediatric care with cutting-edge design and the latest technology. Its futuristic building was inspired by the worldview of the legendary astronomer Carl Sagan. All this is so children become explorers on a journey to health, discovery, and possibility to live better lives as adults.
- Costa Rica’s government designated a quarter of the country’s most valuable flora-and-fauna-filled land as national parks (the highest percentage of any nation), and encourages the development of tourist facilities around them. Enhanced by its political and economic stability, this Central American nation has distinguishing itself as an extraordinary eco-tourist destination for nature-conscious visitors from around the world.
- Herman Miller Inc., of Zeeland, Michigan, made its Resolve office furniture system innovative in design, colors, materials, angles, and personal touches. Going beyond conventional cubicles, Resolve expresses a commitment to maximize the human potential of knowledge workers – to be connected, open, flexible, sustainable, inspired, and themselves.
- Doc Rock, near Washington, DC, organizes tours of geologically interesting sites worldwide for grandparents and their grandchildren, while publishing children’s books for them. Founder Barbara Frank also leads nature workshops for managers. The unifying theme is helping people to experience the Nature around them so that they can reconnect with the human nature inside themselves and those close to them.
They are practicing variations of visionary marketing. Their approach is driven by and built on a vision of a desirable future state that is infused with enduring societal values – the deep cultural sources of purpose and meaning in people’s lives. This endows their marketing with substance and style, extrinsic and intrinsic worth, inspiration and motivation, community and institutional support, and in many instances customer attraction and competitive advantage.
In the vast array of existing and potential markets in the global economy, a huge number of customer wants and needs exist to be selected, served, and satisfied. From electric plants to accounting services to filtered cigarettes, product/services and their market needs/wants can be related to social values – sometimes directly but more often indirectly. With visionary marketing, organizations link their marketing offerings and actions to the societal values that more directly and significantly advance the highest agenda of a society. Examples of societal values are found in health/healing, nature/ecology, love/belonging, community solidarity, children’s esteem and education, spiritual growth, and competency/empowerment.
Organizations may be large or small, established or entrepreneurial, and actual or virtual. When they are run by and filled at all levels with visionary leaders, they can more assuredly prosper and survive in today’s environment by infusing their corporate vision and marketing strategy with values that are prominent or emerging in the relevant society in which they operate – whether local, national, or global.
While visionary marketing regards societal values as a dominant force in the planning and implementation of marketing, more conventional goals and metrics – such as profitability, market share, and customer satisfaction – remain very important.
Succeeding at visionary marketing takes more than just doing marketing with societal values. To develop, deliver, and sustain visionary marketing, everyone in the organization must be sensitive and responsive to the enduring-societal-values vision. This requires a corporate culture that is rooted and reinforced at all levels, and in all functions, units, and locations. Visionary marketing works only if the corporate strategy, organizational structure, product/service design and operations/production, human resource management/development, and even financial inputs and outputs are seamlessly supporting visionary marketing.
Navigating with visionary marketing enables an organization to sharpen and strengthen the key aspects of its marketing. In the Visionary Marketing Navigation Chart (see Exhibit 1, on p. 3), this approach’s major elements and their relationships are represented. Here is an explanation of the main characteristics of visionary marketing:
- The Visionary Leadership of the Organization connects with and serves the Society (global, regional national, state/provincial/prefecture, and local). From scanning society’s cultural, demographic, economic, political, and environment dimensions, the leadership selects one or more Enduring Societal Values that it wants to commit the organization to and that drives the conduct of marketing.
- The leadership is internally driven by the principles of a worthwhile Vision (direction, values, mission, and goals), quest for Newness (co-creating an new and better future), preference for Closeness (relationships with customers and other stakeholders), and boldness of Action (mobilizing and integrating all resources toward the vision).
- Within the array of available Markets, the leadership either has been serving market segments or finds new market segments with values-sensitive needs (currently felt or as yet unaware). It focuses on one or more Target Markets, with which to engage and nurture a holistic relationship, and finds innovative ways to satisfy fully these needs. In the process, the organization is externally driven by the Relationship Values between it and its customers in the target market. These values include respect, inspiration, empowerment, collaboration, motivation, and authenticity.
- In the market are various forms of Competition – direct competitors, indirect competitors (with substitute offerings), and potential competitors (entrants on the sidelines). Target markets usually compare the organization to some competitors in making decisions regarding products/services, pricing, purchasing, satisfaction, relationships, and the like. The organization discovers ways to create sustained advantages over competitors in serving its target markets, and views the competitors as potential candidates for formal partnerships and informal alliances.
- The organization establishes and operates interactive Learning Links with various markets, the target markets (customers, influencers, and consumers), selected competitors, and partners/alliances. The links include marketing research approaches, Information systems, listening techniques, and knowledge management.
- The organization plans an Innovative Strategy, in which it bonds with its target markets using these activities: Configuring the offering (with product and service components, branding, and support functions), Valuing the offering (price setting, terms of sale, and related costs of use), Connecting with the target market, and active and prospective customers (partnership affiliations, promotional media, Internet/websites, and outreaching/networking), and Relating (distribution, problem solving, maintenance, upgrading, and feedback).
- To navigate effectively and efficiently through the leadership-market-strategy system requires the performance of a supportive set of Management Processes – including objectives, assessment, planning, implementation, monitoring, control, and evaluation – done within the organization and in some cases outsourced. These management processes ground the visionary leaders and organization to perform visionary marketing according to excellent standards and positive resources utilization.
Click Here to download Exhibit 1. Visionary Marketing Navigation Chart |
