Bill Walsh, The Coaching Tree, And Multichannel Marketing

Former San Francisco 49er football coach Bill Walsh passed away today.

I've always been fascinated by his "coaching tree'. He had a group of assistant coaches in San Francisco who went on to become head coaches elsewhere. Many had tremendous success, like Mike Holmgren (being part-owner of the Green Bay Packers, I have a soft spot for Coach Holmgren). Holmgren's tree includes Mike Sherman, Andy Reid, Steve Mariucci, Marty Mornhinweg and Brad Childress.

In multichannel marketing (catalog + online, online + retail, catalog + online + retail), who are the leaders, and who are the disciples who carry multichannel marketing to new levels? Who are the folks who are doing genuinely innovative work, the folks who build upon what innovators have done, and create something new, interesting, successful, profitable?

Tell us about the folks you've worked with who have had an impact on multichannel marketing in the comments section.

I can honestly say that I've borrowed from the strengths of many different folks who I've worked with or followed over the years (and the company I worked with these individuals at):

• Ron Mowers, Garst Seed Company: Patience.
• Lori Liddle, Lands' End: Unparalleled passion for creating a 'perfect' circulation plan.
• Dave Johnson, Lands' End: People skills. I haven't worked with another individual who valued people as much as he did.
• Jim Fulton, Lands' End: His consulting practice is thriving because he figured out how to generate useful information from computer programs, information that shows how the future of a business is likely to evolve. This spurred my interest in what I now call "Multichannel Forensics".
• Bill End, Lands' End: It was great to work with a President/CEO that would take time to teach an arrogant, garden-variety analyst like myself how the world worked.
• Harry Egler, Eddie Bauer: Harry lets you do your job without micromanaging the details.
• Rick Fersch, Eddie Bauer: The President/CEO had one phrase that told you what you needed to do ... "Drive Sales Profitably". In other words, increase sales AND increase profit. The other phrase that proved prophetic was "Grow or Die".
• Brian McAndrews, aQuantive: I only spoke the President/CEO of aQuantive twice. The second time was when I resigned to become VP of Database Marketing at Nordstrom. He only had two questions for me. One was "... but do you still believe in our business model?". He stuck with the company from $78 a share to $1 a share to selling to Microsoft at $65 a share. How many other online leaders "sold out" when the going got tough?
• Blake Nordstrom, Nordstrom: He stayed away from gaudy, confusing, high-flung strategies. Most interesting --- in February 2005, I wanted to apply for the President of Nordstrom Direct position. Blake told me in plain, simple language that I did not have the skills he believed were needed for the position. He wasn't mean. He was simply matter-of-fact about it. The conversation fundamentally changed the direction of my career --- I knew it the moment I the conversation ended. Who knows what might have happened had he danced around the subject, or worse, been dishonest?
• Jim Bromley, Nordstrom: He was the President of Nordstrom Direct, and like Dave Johnson, accomplished a heck of a lot by believing in people over marketing gimmicks or high-flung strategies.
• Frank Buettner, Nordstrom: He cared about the $11/hour call center and distribution center individual. 'Nuff said.
• Brooke White, Nordstrom: The PR Executive who did things opposite of every other PR person I've met. Never heard her name before? There's a reason for that. She would do anything to protect the Nordstrom family, or the Nordstrom culture.
  
• Linda Finn, Nordstrom: The EVP of Marketing rescued me from a lousy situation. She also valued people over marketing gimmicks or technology.
• Don Libey, Guru: How many people would publish two books from an absolute nobody? These books kick-started my new endeavor. Who knows how many other kinds words he's spread about me that have helped me get this thing going?
  

Leaving Lands' End

Today, I stumbled across a Powerpoint presentation I gave at Lands' End, back in the embryonic stages of a thing called the internet.

The 1994 presentation outlined the impact of mailing numerous, small, targeted niche catalogs to customers. From mid-1993 to mid-1994, our list processing experts correctly executed 128 simultaneous, annual holdout tests, impacting ten percent of our housefile. Using experimental design techniques that would make Ph.D. statisticians at Kansas State University proud, we were able to understand how much incremental sales we could generate by mailing an increased number of targeted mailings.

We were able to demonstrate that a customer began to 'tire' after receiving a catalog more frequently than every eighteen days. Each additional catalog we mailed to the customer drove less and less incremental sales. Eventually, we put too pressure on the customer's wallet. Instead of spending more, she began to allocate her dollars, proportionately, across the catalogs we mailed.

At the time, each business unit determined their own catalog contact strategy. There was not a lot of coordination between business units. If a customer recently purchased a turtleneck from our monthly catalog, each business unit immediately mailed the customer a targeted merchandise catalog, because this customer was a 'recent' buyer, a great prospect for their merchandise offering.

Our year-long test "suggested" that a centralized, coordinated circulation effort could generate more profit (though it would result in a decrease in sales) than allowing each business unit to determine their own circulation strategy.

In October and November of 1994, we presented our findings to management. I recall spirited debates, and for good reason. If you were the Vice President responsible for running a business unit, and some dweeb in the circulation department suggests he control your marketing strategy, you might elect to lash out at him!

Late in November 2004, our circulation team was gaining momentum on the opportunity to have centralized control over the catalog marketing strategy. I recall a raucous Christmas party on a Friday evening, where we celebrated our success with a veritable plethora of alcoholic beverages, mixed with a heavy dose of arrogance. All seemed good in the world.

We recovered from our weekend, and arrived to a new work landscape on Monday morning. Within a half hour, we were informed that Bill End, the CEO of the past several years, and in my opinion a friend of our work, was being replaced by a gentleman named Mike Smith, the current President of Bag, Borrow or Steal. Mike was previously the leader of one of the business units that had control over it's own catalog marketing strategy.

No single inflection point in my career impacted me more than this one. Within days, our circulation director was asked to run the Kids division. A person outside of our circulation team, with little or no true circulation experience, was promoted ahead the existing managers in our department. He became our new boss. He was a good, bright person --- but not the person we anticipated would succeed the prior leader.

In my case, I lost all but one of the analysts I had reporting to me, as they were assigned to marketing teams responsible for driving the circulation strategies of their own merchandise divisions. A centralized strategy would not happen in 1995.

Within two weeks, I went from feeling like a hero, to feeling like a zero.

Eleven months later, I would follow a former Lands' End manager to Eddie Bauer. I was leaving Lands' End.

I have yet to work in an environment that was as stimulating as the one at Lands' End during the final six months of 1994. Many of the individuals working in circulation at that time have gone on to do great things. Many more have gone on to be great people.

The best lesson I learned from that experience involves the concept of being "right". As a mid-level manager at a billion dollar company, I strongly believed that I was "right", that I had a strategy that would improve our profitability, that all needed to bow down to the brilliantly conceived strategy of an arrogant twenty-nine year old.

Being "right" means very little. Articulating a strategy that allows everybody to benefit, personally and professionally, means everything. Not many of us are able to pull off the latter.

Within six short months, I learned everything I needed to know about office politics, marketing strategy, autonomy and empowerment, the use of analytics in decision making, and the great impact one single inflection point can have upon a person's career.

Your turn --- is there an event that happened in the course of your career that impacted you, professionally and personally? If you experienced such an event, what did you learn from the experience?