Wednesday, October 7, 2009

The Five P's of Enfatico and Dell

Dear Enfatico,

It's been lovely. An audacious venture to change a traditional marketing services model and challenge a client culture to embrace marketing over manufacturing and logistics. Still, the brickbats from the blogs missed the point. For certain, 90-days wasn't long enough to build an agency, but it was a running start to the right goal envisioned by Casey and Mark.

The hard work and long hours were never an issue. The people are bright and passionate. I hired the US SMB client team, organized the work, and will challenge anyone to find a more productive and dedicated group of client service professionals. We took on 100% of the business in record time, and delivered far and above any reasonable capacity expectation with near zero defects.

With Dell, marketing is predicated on the traditional measures of price, product, positioning and promotion - and a fifth, process, that trumps quality of work. Balancing "the speed of Dell" with the most impactful and effective ad promotion is the core challenge for year two of the relationship. Dell is well on the way to placing great business products in market, our "Take Your Own Path" campaign is working in key global markets to change perceptions (www.takeyourpath.com) though pricing power -- and profits -- remain elusive. But squeezing the agency on revenue will not be the answer to the client's overall cost structure, ask HP and IBM, and it won't keep good people in place.

For my part, I will submit there is actually a sixth "P" in this equation:

Peace, out. Time for a new challenge.

Wishing you all the best.

1 comment:

Kim said...

Dear Alex,

It certainly has not been easy and you are missed. And we are left wondering what will happen to us and Enfatico.

Only time will tell.