But the discussion got most interesting when the journalists bantered about my take on the higher-order ideals for the 50 brands I studied in the research for my book.

They did not totally buy it.

Isn’t the ideal of Johnnie Walker just to make great whisky?  It’s not to celebrate journeys of progress and success.

Isn’t the ideal of Starbucks just to make a good cup of coffee?   It’s not to create connections for self-discovery and inspiration.

I admit at first blush this notion of higher-order brand ideals feels pretty conceptual, and a bit idealistic.  Perhaps even a tad “American.”  Sir Martin Sorrel, in writing his comments to me about the book, said “When you start reading Grow, you may well feel a little skeptical about the ideal and its bottom-line value.  But you’ll soon become intrigued—and then utterly convinced.”

I am glad the Monocle journalists challenged me.  They are right that Johnnie Walker must make great whisky, and that Starbucks must make a great cup of coffee.  And Apple must make great devices, Pampers must make great “nappies,” Red Bull must make drinks that supercharge your energy, Petrobras must distribute high-quality energy, and IBM must deliver competitive data services.  But if that is their only aspiration, they will not attract talent and innovate in ways that make life better for the people they serve.  Without an ideal to guide an organization, people lose their passion to create and do meaningful work.

One of my favorite stories in my book is the development of Apple stores, arguably the most successful retail initiative of all time.  Their ideal was not just to open cool stores for Apple to sell more devices and services; their ideal was to create relationships with people to help them be more creative, happier, and fulfilled.  That is what they recruited for, and what they measured.  And the result was rapid growth and the most productive sales per square foot than any retailer ever.

Is your brand ideal too idealistic?  My bet is that it is not.  I have found quite the opposite: most companies and brands aim too low, with a functional, unemotional brand ideal.  And that just won’t drive growth.

I shared my thoughts that the concept of brand will get more important, marketing will be more about behavior than communication, and that marketing will get more integrated with other disciplines.  Here are the rest of my thoughts about the future of marketing.

Empathy and artistry will get more important.   Empathy is at the heart of marketing because it is the ability to see and feel through someone else’s perspective.  Artistry is the intuition and creativity to invent something that offers something new and important for a customer—also at the heart of marketing.   Brands like Edmunds.com get this, as they work with companies like design firm IDEO to make the car buying experience more delightful, a huge area of potential innovation.

Big data and advanced analytics will profoundly impact how well we understand our business.  There will be no excuse not to fully understand the interrelationships in your marketing activities and spending.   Look at the work marketing analytics firm MarketShare has done with Ticketmaster to better understand behavior and pricing (full disclosure:  I serve on the advisory board of MarketShare).  And this is only the beginning.

Business model innovation will separate the great brands and great marketers from the ordinary ones.  Because those who think about upending the business model are usually closest to potential customers, and who build highly differentiated brands.  Red Bull, Apple, Amazon, Groupon, Google, Starbucks, and Vente Privee are a few examples of wildly successful brands that changed the business model in their categories or invented a new business model.

Mobile will increasingly be the gateway to brands.   The trend to mobile is dramatic in how people access entertainment, shopping information, news, and just about everything important to them.   Eric Schmidt of Google says the future will be social, local and mobile.   The smart marketers like Coke are already preparing for this by experimenting, and leading media/content companies are designing experiences starting with mobile devices and tablets versus computer or TV screens.

Are some of these trends and patterns obvious—yes.  Are you acting on them now to prepare your organization and capabilities for the future?  That is the real question.

He is smart to be asking those profound questions.  And while I cannot precisely know where it is all going, there are certainly some undeniable patterns and trends.

Here is some of what I shared with them regarding the future of marketing.

The concept of “brand” will get more and more important.   Thirty years ago practically none of the market capitalization of the S&P 500 was attributed to brand equity; today it is above 30%.   So marketing has gotten more important, and will only be more vital to a company’s future.  That is a huge responsibility for tomorrow’s marketing leaders.

Thanks in part to social media, marketing will be more and more about the behavior of the people behind the brand, not what the brand says.   Zappos shared with me that when they tried advertising their products and services versus communication about their people and culture, customers asked them to go back to talking about their culture.   IBM’s highly successful current company strategy is about how their people are behaving to help our planet become smarter.

Marketing as a discipline will integrate and synthesize with other disciplines.  The old functional lines of sales, marketing, public relations, design, market research, and digital media are blurring, to say the least.  The work today to grow a brand involves all these disciplines and more, and the great companies have leaders who do synthesize these disciplines.  One example:  P&G has broadened the scope of its global head of marketing to include design, public relations and market research.  Innovation like ecommerce and social media have triggered these necessary changes, and this will only get more important.

Stay tuned, I will share more about the future of marketing in a few days…

C.K. was a featured speaker at the recently held Luxottica International Marketing Meeting in Milan, along with Jing Zhang of the South China Morning Post,  Karin Heijink of MTV, John Auerbach of Gilt.com, Robert Klingensmith of Publicis, and the amazing sprinter Oscar Pistorius from South Africa.  I also participated in the meeting, and it was inspirational on many levels.

C.K told the story of building the Tanishq retail jewelry brand, a runaway success.  Its brand ideal, in my words, is to uplift and transform the lives of each consumer they touch.  You get a great feeling for this in one of their wonderful ads.

What I want to share with you are the principles that underlie their sincere and intense customer focus:  it is a great example of activating their brand ideal across their business.

First, they believe if you really touch a customer’s heart, she is your customer for life.  And the way they bring this to life is all-consuming:  they invite customers (mostly women) to their factory for visits (2,000 a year), they invite women to their stores to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries, complete with a party, and they encourage them to visit whenever they want with no pressure to buy.   Tanishq’s sales people are on fixed pay so the focus in on building relationships.

Second, Tanishq creates an ambiance in the store that encourages browsing and socializing.   They use the metaphor of a “home”; they want their customers to feel as comfortable as if they were at home.  Some customers even throw parties in the store:  Tanishq encourages that.  They periodically introduce special collections to make the store new and exciting, to encourage repeat visits to simply browse and enjoy.

Third, C.K. and his team are fanatical on measuring customer satisfaction.  C.K. shared with me that they currently have an overall customer satisfaction rating for the in-store experience of 8 out of 10,  and they are very unhappy about that.  Nothing short of 10 is what they expect.

For C.K. and his team at Tanishq, creating fans for life is their single-minded goal.  They believe when that happens, they will succeed financially.  Everything they do is coherent with that goal.   Next time in Bangalore, I will definitely check out Tanishq in person—you should too.

The issue we face today is that too few of us are actually moving up and to the right.  In fact, most of us are growing earnings much faster than we’re growing the top line.  I’d like to change that. I want to change the trajectory of your top line – and I’m betting you do, too.

That’s why I’m inviting everyone to watch my presentation, and others, at the 2011 SAVO Executive Summit, taking place October 11^th and 12^th in Chicago.  The summit is hosted by SAVO, an industry leader in sales enablement that is bringing together business leaders and “next practice” innovators to explore new ways to close the “growth gap” between corporate growth strategies and sales execution.  That’s why it’s the perfect venue for me to share a sneak peak at the new book I’m publishing with Crown in December 2011, called Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World’s Greatest Companies.

The book represents the largest collaboration of my life – based on a 10-year study of global businesses that have grown faster than their competition. The reason I wrote this book is I believe we need a new narrative for business – it’s clear that the old one is not working.

Look at the companies around us – far too many are simply stagnant.  I’ll be using my presentation at the summit to unveil a new framework for growth.  It begins with an ideal at the core of your business and how to activate your entire business around it.   And Mark O’Connell, SAVO’s CEO, will be presenting their point of view on how companies can “close the growth gap” between corporate growth strategies across the entire organization and through execution in the field to increase revenue performance.

There are a lot of synergies between what I’ll be discussing and how SAVO enables their customers’ objectives, so I’m looking forward to a rich, interactive dialogue that will help you feel better about how you’re going to get your business up and to the right.

I encourage all of you to register for virtual attendance as SAVO will broadcast live coverage of the event.  Mark will discuss the growth gap at 8:45AM CDT Tuesday, October 13^th. My presentation on ideal-driven growth will be broadcast on Wednesday, October 13^th at 8:45AM CDT.  Upon registration a link will be provided to watch the two live keynotes, both of which will also be recorded and posted for convenient viewing.

To register, please visit: http://getupright.com/UpRight2011_reg_live.html

Thanks everyone!

I talk to Geoff periodically.  He featured me in September of 2007 in a series he was doing called “C-Suite Strategies:  The Colvin Interview”, and we touch base now and then.  I thought the call might be about Aol or Motorola Mobility, where I serve on the board of directors.   Or perhaps the Cannes International Festival of Creativity, where I had just run a week-long Academy for Young Marketers.

It was none of the above.  Geoff was calling to tell me I was going to be named to their Executive Dream Team of corporate all-stars, to be revealed August 22, and then celebrated at an event in New York City in September.   He said I would be their Dream Chief Marketing Officer, and that I would be in great company.  He also said he could not reveal the complete Dream Team at the time.  I pushed him, and like the great journalist he is, he did not budge.  I thanked him, told him I was surprised, honored, and very touched, and said I would eagerly await the “reveal” of the balance of the Dream Team.

Well today the Fortune Dream Team was announced and I am even more touched and honored than the day Geoff called me.  The Dream Team, with Ken Chenault as CEO, Jim Skinner as COO, Aditya Mittal as CFO, Anne Mulcahy as Nonexecutive Chair, Jonathan Ive as Design Chief, Rob Carter as CIO, Susan Chambers as Chief People Officer, and Carlos Brito as Designated Hitter, is a simply remarkable group of people.   It is a fantasy to think about working side-by-side with this talented team — I guess it won’t happen, everyone on this “team” is a little busy, but it is fun to think about.

It was also interesting to me that a few of the companies that these leaders represent are profiled in my upcoming book Grow.  My book offers leaders a new framework for accelerated growth, based on a ten-year study of high-growth businesses, with colorful stories to bring the framework to life.  So which of these great companies are featured in my book?

Just as Geoff held me in suspense, I will not yet reveal the companies … but you are welcome to guess!

Smile More:  How My Week Spent at The Cannes Academy For Young Marketers Changed My Life

Last night I made one last walk down to Le Palais, the convention center which hosted the 58th Annual International Festival for Creativity in Cannes, France. I had spent a week making the 20 minute walk to and from my hotel to Le Palais, and tonight I was doing it one last time. I still hadn’t figured out how to avoid sweating through my dress shirt.

I greeted my fellow colleagues from the Academy of Young Marketers, 29 other brand, account, and project managers from around the world from companies such as Kraft, P&G, Unilever, and SAB Miller. We had been invited to participate in the first of its kind program, participating in specialized speaker sessions, discussions, and debates in an intensive program throughout the week. At this point, we felt like family, and after chatting briefly we filed into the VIP entrance elevator to the auditorium to take our seats in the balcony for the final and most prestigious awards ceremony of the week. I took my seat next to Susan, a Brand Director for Unilever from China and greeted her with a smile. Susan had struck me as an interesting and insightful person during our week spent together, and I thought to myself that I wished I would have had the time to have gotten to know her a little better. Susan smiled back at me and asked,

“Can I ask you a question?”

A little caught off guard I shrugged smiling and said, “Sure, shoot.”

From my experience when someone starts a conversation like that something serious is coming so I didn’t quite know what to expect.

“Were you born smiling?” Susan asked. I gave her a confused eyebrow raise and an “I have no idea what you’re talking about” smile back to her. She quickly elaborated.

“Every time I have seen you this week you have always been smiling. When you are walking down the Croisette, talking to people, or even just listening to speakers you are always smiling. Have you been conditioned to do this professionally or are you always just happy?”

I suddenly became conscious that a feigned smile of disbelief had been plastered across my face as she explained this to me. I shrugged again, and explained that no, I had never read a book called “Smile Your Way to Success,” and that I was generally just a happy person who had a habit of wearing my emotions on my sleeve. Susan continued to explain that she tended to be more serious, and we both talked about how we had known these things about ourselves based on comments from friends and even feedback evaluations from managers at work. We agreed that one demeanor wasn’t necessarily superior to the other, and proceeded to enjoy the ceremony and award winning ads from brands such as Google, Puma, Old Spice, and my personal favorite, Nike for ‘Write the Future.’

That was last night. Right now I’m a few hours, and more than a few coffees into my flight back to San Francisco, and I’ve got my laptop open. I’m not letting myself watch the new Vince Vaughan movie or even start sorting through my pile of work e-mail because I want to write. I want to reflect and really try to understand what last week meant to me. I’m exhausted. The lady next to me is snoring. I’m not smiling.

During the seven days that I was a part of the Academy for Young Marketers in Cannes, I gathered more life-changing experiences more rapidly than I have during any other time in my life. My first Monday morning ‘commute’ consisted of a stroll along the French Riviera, and a French girl in a bikini even smiled at me as she walked up from the beach. A small victory, but a victory none-the-less.

That same day, within a span of less than ten hours, I was able to ask Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL, his views on the future of how consumers will consume and engage with content online, and shared a drink and a chat on a rooftop pool deck overlooking the Mediterranean with Digital thought leader John Battelle. Monday was the first time I had ever even seen the Mediterranean Ocean.

The next day I spent nearly two hours learning about “best in class briefing,” from Laurie Coots, CMO of TBWA. Without elaborating any further this would be an impressive opportunity any young marketer would like to have. But I happen to work with TBWA every day developing consumer marketing campaigns for Visa’s sponsorship of the National Football League. Not only was I getting access to world class thought leaders, beach parties, and young creative minds, I was getting down and dirty actionable advice that I will now take back to help me do my job better. Did I mention I also had time to view the best advertising from around the world? TV ads, digital integrations, print, OOH, radio, the list goes on and on. Fair warning to our agency creative teams; bring your ‘A’ game. I’ve seen the best.

By the middle of the week, I found myself digging my feet into the sand at the Google Beach Lounge, discussing everything from the creative process and working in advertising in Europe, to the evolution of the human eye and the benefits of mixing caffeine and alcohol with a 27 year old creative from Y&R London. The later parts of the conversation were fueled by mixing caffeine and alcohol.

As a part of the Academy, I was given access to and a dialogue with dozens of thought leaders, creative visionaries, and marketing professionals from around the globe. Light bulbs, ideas, and inspirations exploded for me, and I spent the week scribbling as many of them as I could into my pocket size notebook.

Page 4 from Malcom Gladwell reads: “Jobs and Zuckerberg are not inventors. They’re tweakers who leveraged the benefits of hindsight to make something better.”

Page 7 from Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL: “I always tell my teams to start by thinking mobile first, web second. The limitations force you to be simple and elegant, focusing on what is core to what the consumer wants.” Also, on page 4, as an underlined note to self, “ look into investing in AOL stock.”

Page 8 from Jim Stengel, former CMO of P&G and Academy Leader: “In order to be truly successful and achieve viable longevity, a brand must stand for a higher order ideal. It is not enough to be the best performing or highest earning. This is a business model, it’s not about the customer, and the only way to create viable business models over the long term is when a business and its customers have a shared agenda.”

Page 11 from Rob Malcolm, former CMO of Diageo: “If you ask for safe, ass-covering work that’s what you’ll get. Take calculated risks and demand great work from your agencies.” On this page I had bolded an action plan for myself: Be brave, advocate this.

Page 16 from Sir Ken Robinson: “Life is energy. If you are doing something you love you get energy from it. Do what makes you feel authentic by living as close as possible to the stream at which your life flows.” No wonder he was knighted.

To put it simply, Cannes changed me. It changed me as a marketer, as a thinker, as a professional, and ultimately it changed me as a human being. As I realize this, my conversation with Susan at last night’s ceremony starts to take on a slightly deeper meaning. Of course I was smiling, laughing, and sometimes maybe even grinning stupidly over the course of last week (with French DJs spinning while you watch fireworks explode over the beach it’s kind of hard not to). I even remember having a smile on my face on a few of the nights as I fell asleep at night in my hotel. How could I not smile? Cannes changed me, and it changed me for the better.

Aaron Hoffman, Associate Marketing Analyst at Visa Inc.

“Can Creativity be Taught?” was the question Fast Company posed in Teressa Iezzi’s story about the first-ever Cannes Creative Academy for Young Marketers.   I am not sure if creativity can be taught, but I know for sure that we can teach brand leaders how to inspire others, and to radically improve the creative output of their teams.

I just returned from the 58^th annual Cannes International Festival of Creativity,  the largest gathering of brand, marketing, and creativity thought leaders in the world.  It was my eighth visit to the Festival, and the first one as Dean of the new Academy for Young Marketers.   Thirty young marketers were chosen from companies around the world:  they represented the best young talent in our business.   They came from companies like SAB/Miller, Visa, HSBC, P&G, Kraft, Dell, Unilever, Beiersdorf, Yum!, MTS Telecomm, Emap and Azerfon.

The goal of our Academy was to help the young leaders acquire skills, tools and inspiration to get Cannes “Grand Prix” level creative work (i.e., advertising, design, public relations) on their brands.  (A Grand Prix award in Cannes is the highest distinction for creative work on a business or for a non-profit.)   We know from lots of data that the higher the creative level of the work, the higher the probability it will accelerate growth on a business.   A new book, “The Case for Creativity,” by James Hurman makes a fresh case for creativity as the key element to drive business.

The format of our week-long Academy was highly interactive, a mixture of small group discussions with industry thought leaders like Tim Armstrong, large group sessions at the Festival with speakers like Malcolm Gladwell, John Hegarty and Arianna Huffington, and workshops to apply their learning.   The feedback from the 30 leaders was overwhelming — several saying it was life-changing.   So I think we at the Academy met our learning goal with them, what I did not expect was what I learned from them.

I learned, or re-learned, the power of caring.  These 30 young leaders deeply want to care about their brands, their companies, their communities, each other.  When this is encouraged, activated, they will do amazing things.  I saw it in the workshops, I heard it at breaks, yes I even heard it over the end-of-day glass of rosé that is a ritual at Cannes.   Imagine the power of this when they go back to their brands this week! Our role as senior leaders is to unleash the “caring,” and I think the most fundamental thing we can do is to discover and activate the higher ideal, or purpose, behind each brand.  That provides the inspiration and framework for people like these young leaders to do amazing things.

Jean-Marie Dru, Chairman of TBWA Worldwide, closed our Academy last Saturday with his 10 principles to become better leaders of brands and the creative process.  His first principle: Stand for Something Big.  He encouraged the “students” to think about how they can change the world with their brands, to not be shy, to think bold.   It was the perfect closure to the perfect week.

“I have found that great businesses begin with a higher ideal that inspires employees and customers.  I have gradually discovered this over the course of my career, and through my extensive research.

A higher ideal, or purpose, is the higher-order benefit a business, or brand, gives to the world.  It must actively improve life.  It must be steeped in the business’s heritage.  And, the entire business system – from product or service innovation to human resources to measurement – must emanate from the ideal.

I knew this implicitly when I was in my various jobs during high school, college, and just after college.   I now explicitly practice an ideals-based approach to business, and I help others practice it.   I have found this rapidly accelerates growth.  Think Apple, Louis Vuitton, Pampers, Visa, Natura, Red Bull, Chipotle, Discovery Channel.  Amazing businesses, amazing growth rates, amazing higher ideals.

There is one catch – this takes leaders who are ideals-based, who inspire people, who are emotionally intelligent, who are whole brained, who are courageous and decisive.   We need more leaders like this.  I work every day to be a better leader, learning from others, trying to continually improve.   That is what makes business endlessly fascinating and challenging.”

It was like coming home for me.  I grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, about 30 miles from Hershey.  This company, its brands, and its town played a rather large role in my childhood.  The annual spring outing at my primary school was to the Hershey’s factory (back then you could tour the actual factory), then the amusement park.  My father grew up very close to Hershey and we always had Hershey’s Kisses in our home.  On Saturday afternoons my dad would make fudge from Hershey’s cocoa, filling the house with an intense chocolate aroma.

Hershey Park, Hotel Hershey, Hershey Arena (now Giant Center), Hershey Stadium, these are all images and places where I have memories.   And even to this day, the Hershey’s company has relevance to me … my brother was treated for leukemia for nine years at The Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center.  Today his son is a medical student there.

The point I am making is this company has personal relevance for me because of their behavior through the years — through their brands, through their corporate parent.  Through their choices.  Yes I love their brands, because of their great taste, quality, fun, but the feeling I have about them is deeper because they have lived their beliefs and values over time.

And I am not alone in this feeling.  Certainly the employees feel that way — the energy in the meeting last week was palpable.  Many of their consumers feel that way — Hershey’s just finished perhaps their strongest year ever, growing sales faster than competition, while increasing earnings and investments in their brands.   And from the stock price — hitting a 52-week high last week — it seems their investors feel that way.

In my workshop with Hershey’s I tried to help them see the possibilities of even higher growth, higher engagement from all stakeholders, building on this marvelous history, these marvelous values.  I shared why I feel so strongly about them, and I shared some lessons from my career and experiences that I believed could help them be even better.  Their response:  a standing ovation and a five-pound chocolate bar from their terrific Chief Marketing Officer Michele Buck.  I was deeply touched.

Hershey’s continues to be for me, and I suspect for many of you, one of those companies that shows the very positive and powerful impact business and brands can make.   Now I am going to look for some Hershey’s Kisses in my briefcase …