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I crafted 4 posts where it is defined why and how to organise a marketing off-site. 

These posts are based on several studies and my personal experience.

In brief, a marketing off-site is a moment, usually one or two days, outside the headquarters, that helps the company focus on its brand, and consequently sales, from a strategic and tactical perspective. 

These posts are long and dense with information, so please take your time.

They will be useful for marketing directors, marketing managers and also interns providing an easy to use framework with goals and rules. 

The post that follows is the first of four.

Phase 0 Preparation

What is a marketing off-site?  

There is no standard definition, in this case a marketing off-site consists in taking a small group of key figures of the company and engaging in a series of exercises for deep thinking and challenging the actual brand.

Why are we doing it?

Escaping daily operations and tasks, becoming immersed in a different environment, helps managers think differently and openly about the brand.

Far from distractions it is easier to know what is working, what has worked, what didn’t and planning for the future.

How to prepare? 

Prepare with some successful case studies from other industries and sectors. 

This is really important, looking to other markets to find inspiration like Ingvar Kamprad was inspired by the Guggenheim Museum for designing Ikea.

Where can you find interesting case studies? 

My first idea would be Google Scholar or the Harvard Business Review, but if you are short on time you can ask Bard or ChatGPT (I prefer the old school approach, honestly).

This from ChatGPT and Bard

1. “Dove: Evolution of a Brand” by John Deighton and Jill Avery (Harvard Business School)
   • This case study explores Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign and the strategic decisions made by the brand to challenge traditional beauty standards. It examines the use of social media, viral marketing, and consumer-generated content. (Available on Harvard Business School’s website.)
2. “Red Bull: Building a Brand in Non-traditional Ways” by Gita V. Johar and Michael I. Norton (Harvard Business School)
   • This case study delves into Red Bull’s unique marketing approach, focusing on how the company built its brand through event sponsorships, grassroots marketing, and extreme sports associations. (Available on Harvard Business School’s website.)
3. “Coca-Cola’s New Vending Machine (A): Pricing to Capture Value or Not?” by Michael V. Marn and Robert L. Rosiello (Harvard Business Review)
   • This case study analyses Coca-Cola’s strategic pricing decision for their new vending machine. It examines how pricing strategies can impact customer behaviour and affect the perception of value. (Available on Harvard Business Review’s website.)
4. “Netflix: Leveraging Big Data to Predict Entertainment Hits” by Elie Ofek, Netflix, and Yanchong Zheng (Harvard Business School)
   • This case study explores how Netflix effectively uses big data analytics to make informed content creation and acquisition decisions. It sheds light on their customer-centric approach and the role of data-driven marketing strategies. (Available on Harvard Business School’s website.)
5. “Dollar Shave Club: Marketing to the Millennial Generation” by Kyle Murray, Ken Mark, and Ela Veresiu (Ivey Publishing)
   • This case study examines Dollar Shave Club’s disruptive marketing strategy, focusing on their humorous viral video and subscription-based business model. It provides insights into how the brand successfully targeted millennials. (Available on Ivey Publishing’s website.)
6. How Airbnb Used Social Media to Disrupt the Hotel Industry.
   • This case study examines how Airbnb used social media to disrupt the hotel industry. The company’s marketing strategy focused on creating a community of users who could share their homes with travellers. This strategy helped Airbnb to reach a large audience and to position itself as a more affordable and authentic alternative to hotels.
7. How Warby Parker Disrupted the Eyewear Industry with Direct-to-Consumer Sales 
   • This case study examines how Warby Parker disrupted the eyewear industry with direct-to-consumer sales. The company’s marketing strategy focused on selling high-quality eyewear at a fraction of the cost of traditional retailers. This strategy helped Warby Parker to reach a large audience and to position itself as a more affordable and convenient alternative to traditional eyewear retailers.

It is important for the participants to study in advance and take some notes on the case studies. 

You can also ask them to share interesting case studies they read recently and be inspired by your coworkers in that preparation activity (and if no-one replies maybe you can have an issue to investigate). 

Rules 

There are just a few rules to follow for a successful marketing offsite. 

Most of the following rules are the foundational pillars of brainstorming.

1. “But my category is different” is a forbidden phrase. Instead each manager should push to find a parallel to its own category.
2. Ideas, Strategy and Tactics are not independent instead they are closely related. This is very important for two kinds of people: those who are too conceptual and suffer from a lack of execution, and those who are too pragmatic and lack abstraction and conceptual thinking.
3. “This idea will not work” – “This is wrong” , during the creative phase ideas and thoughts must be free to flow without judgement. There will be a specific phase for evaluating the idea feasibility.
4. A pen. One of the most underrated tools. Try to switch off digital devices and find a person who will be responsible for writing down all the ideas coming from the different workshops and exercises. You can also alternate the role among the other managers. A critical aspect is to review and edit all together the output of each session and to not choose only specific ideas, or the one that initially seems to work best. There will be a specific exercise for skimming off weaker ideas so that later in the off-site it will be possible to focus on the two or three ideas that are the most impactful.

Location

It is not a secret how room design affects our thoughts and work. [How Room Designs Affect Your Work and Mood] [The Influence of Ceiling Height: The Effect of Priming on the Type of Processing That People Use]

Choosing the right location is not a secondary aspect, indeed to facilitate abstract and deep thinking you need a big room. 

How big? 

A rule of thumb would be a room with twice the number of seats as participants. 

Moreover if you choose a conference room or a main hall with a higher ceiling it would be even better to help unconstrained thinking.

Phase 1 Marketing Gro(o)ve

The Intel Exercise

The first exercise is inspired by the famous Intel CEO Andrew Grove who led the company to the big shift from the memory business into the microprocessor. 

An incredible achievement well described in “Only the Paranoids Survive” 

Time: 20-30 min

With fresh new eyes and, again, without judgement because it is a brainstorming session:

• 1 Part
  • Identify what the company should stop doing
  • Identify what the company should start doing 

• 2 Part
  • Define 5 rules which characterise your industry. There is no rigid definition for the term “rules”, from what the consumer expects, on how the distribution and packaging of the product should work or how the business model works. Ideally you should cover:
    • Category definition
    • Target definition 
    • Valuable Advertising equities
• 3 Part
  • Write on a post-it which of these rules also apply to your brand and which don’t, and stick them to the wall in two groups.
  • Now ask the team to find at least one reason why those rules might be obsolete for the entire industry.

Critical Threat

Time: 45 min 

For Sony and its Walkman the major threat was not coming from manufacturers like Aiwa or JVC, it was coming from MP3 players and then from Apple with its famous iPod. 

In this exercise each group should think about the next threat that could shake the industry and wipe out the company.

In preparation for conducting this exercise, you might find it useful to refer to the Gartner Report and or VC Firms reports to discover new trends and emerging technologies. 

Knowing these in advance will help you to assist groups when they are working through the task.

Break the group into sub-groups of 4-5, of the same department, and ask each group to identify issues related to:

1. Future changes in industry and why they might happen
2. Competitors (e.g. Patents, product features)
3. Consumers (e.g. New Generations behaviours and needs)
4. Internal Operations (e.g. digitalization/new technology development that can improve performance or reduce production costs) 

Write these issues on post-its and place them on the wall.

Allow all the people to read these and then mix the group with at least one member from each business unit (1 from sales, 1 from R&D, 1 from marketing, 1 from finance).

Diversity is a super important aspect. It’s the only way to get different points of view and provide a complete picture of the upcoming challenges. 

Give them the opportunity to discuss and write down the top priorities.

Evaluate how between the different groups “the threat leaderboards” differ, then after a 10 min discussion on that take the proper time to create the final one. 

In case you don’t reach consensus, the CEO will have the last word.

Challenging The Status Quo

Time: 15-20 min 

Dyson, the hoover producer, was a great example of how design is an appreciated feature in a low-status and solitary activity. 

You, with your team, define two “truths” about your category and how they are perceived.

Then write down if they are still true or not and more importantly “why”.

Do the same for your brand, what are two truths about your brand? 

They are still true?

Positive Negative

Time: 20-30 min 

This will be a game about contrast.

The goal of this exercise is to understand key differentiations between you and competition.

These elements then can be leveraged in the customer experience and then in the communication strategy. Helping to define why you are different and what your value proposition is.

Game, set, match

The person responsible for taking notes will take a piece of paper and divide it with a line in the middle. 

On the left side you write 10 qualities of the market leader.

I will suggest focusing on measurable qualities like price/distribution/customer service/product range/product performance. 

But it is important also to identify their communication style like how and what they emphasise.

Then on the right side write the opposite. It can be a higher price/lower price, can focus on selected products in a way that is meaningful for the brand and the company, but can also be a different communication style.

Don’t give yourself tight boundaries.

Discuss these two sides with the group. 

The goal is to understand how to be different compared with the market leader in a meaningful way and at the same time understand what defines the market leader.

Communication Style

Just to give you an example here you can see the different communication styles for tampons and sanitary pads.

In one they are saying  “Tena let you be you” in the other “Always platinum rewrite the rules”.

This different claim is important to help and facilitate recall during the purchase event moving the needle to one brand instead of the other (if there are no big technical differences involved like tampon vs sanitary pad). 

Last Step

Once the discussion is finished, take again a piece of paper, divide it and rewrite on the left the 10 qualities of the market leader. 

With the team, discuss where you need to be good as the market leader and where you need to be way better than the competition.

What does it mean? 

Imagine you are a smartphone producer, maybe there is no need to improve the screen resolution but the market is eager for a long lasting battery or a more performant camera.

Remember the goal of this exercise is to think how to be different from competitors, how to be remarkable and where to innovate by investing money and energy for your future survival.

What is my neighbour doing?

Time: 10-20 min

Another interesting brainstorming activity is to understand what other challenger brands are doing in other industries or categories. 

Divide the participants into groups of 3, each group with an assigned person for taking notes. 

Ask each group to find 4 challengers in other markets:

1. How do they reach their customers? 
2. How do they boost mental availability by enhancing their community? (Google Developer events or AWS summit)
3. What are the key factors that drive challenger brand customers to choose the Challenger and not the Market Leader? 
4. How did they break through in the market? 
5. What can be “stolen” and “applied” to our category? 
6. Looking at other industries, how the marketing directors of challenger brands would operate if they were in our category? 

This exercise will push the team to learn different strategies and best practices to copy from. 

You will be aware of how similar issues were overcome in different industries.