Some people are born with the qualities of an interim marketing VP. You may consider Cas Walker as an example of it. When I was a kid growing up in Knoxville, TN, there was a gruff, grizzled millionaire grocer named Cas Walker. A former coal miner and pulp mill worker he opened his first Cas Walker’s Cash Store at age 22 with $850 he’d saved doing hard labor.

Brief Background Of The Expert Interim Marketing VP

Born in 1902 into a scrappy dirt farming family, Caswell Orton Walker was one of 12 children. Calling himself “the youngest, the meanest and the prettiest” of the boys, Walker was the original “brand me”. Nobody knew how to draw a crowd like this man, which is the basic necessity of all marketing ideas in order to be successful. Half P.T. Barnum, this hillbilly marketer was a master at engaging and converting audiences, which he accomplished by breaking just about every single rule of southern propriety that existed at the time.

Walker was always his own ‘interim marketing VP’. He understood the power of television before even JFK and he knew public relations better than anyone on Madison Avenue. Branding himself “the old coon hunter” he made himself a television star. He made himself mayor of Knoxville. He launched the career of 12-year-old Dolly Parton. He hired and fired the teenage Everly Brothers. He staged a publicity stunt that landed him on the cover of Life Magazine. He buried a man alive in the parking lot of one of his stores. He created a salve that would cure skin cancer. He created store brands at a time when they were unheard of. He was one of the first cause marketers, in fact the most able interim marketing VP.

Some Flashbacks Of The Famous Interim Marketing VP That Brought Him Under The Limelight

One day in the early 70s some “gypsies” invaded one of his stores and wreaked havoc. Check out Walker’s response in this advertorial:

Is it any wonder Walker’s customers loved him? Early in his career Walker positioned himself and his stores as friends of the working man’s family. He took every opportunity he could to poke fun at the country club set in Knoxville so he could entertain his shoppers. He was highly outspoken about his political views, which favored working people. He inserted himself into the local political scene and fought for the working class.

The Promotional Tricks Applied By The Expert Interim Marketing VP

To promote his chain of stores Cas established a local variety TV show called The Farm And Home Show. It was on this show that a 12-year-old Dolly Parton, from way back up in the hills, made her television debut. Walker also gave the Everly Brothers, students at Knoxville’s West High School, a place on his show and once famously booted them off mid-performance for too much ‘heavy metal’.

When Cas was a member of the Knoxville City Council, he was photographed punching a fellow council member during a city council meeting. The photo landed on the cover of Life Magazine and garnered Knoxville some bad publicity. But you can bet Walker’s customers were howling with laughter all the way to the grocery store. Late in life Walker admitted the whole thing was staged for publicity.

The Last Life Of The Revered Interim Marketing VP

A generous community benefactor, Walker was also a curious study in southern racism for his time. Walker provided assistance for many in Knoxville that needed it but thought nothing of advertising watermelons on billboards and TV showing young black kids eating watermelon while proclaiming “mmmm, mmmm, thumpin’ good” long after the civil rights movement was under way. To Knoxville’s credit, Walker took a lot of heat for these ads and eventually did away with them.

Legend, urban folk hero, original MAD MAN…Cas Walker died in 1998 at the age of 96. Even in death Walker remains a revered pitchman and is alive and well on the internet, which he would have loved. Ad agencies (in San Diego and all over the world) would do well to study Walker’s tactics and consider deploying them…perhaps a tad less crudely.

Walker’s genius was that his positioning was authentic, no matter whose feathers it ruffled. He was a tireless promoter who absolutely, positively knew his products and customers. He embraced new technology and benefited from same. He tried all manner of different tactics and stuck with the ones that worked.

For today’s marketing agencies, even in San Diego or Los Angeles, Walker’s “to hell with the box” positioning and tactics still carry valuable lessons in how to engage an audience…and convert them. Except for the watermelons of course. As Ces Walker was his own interim marketing VP, but people today interested in making a career as an interim marketing VP certainly makes it a point to go through the marketing strategies of Ces Walker.

There’s a revealing article in Advertising Age today that talks about a declining respect for advertising agencies by their clients. Following the article, the comments from some agency executives show pretty clearly that many, many marketers and agencies have simply become dinosaurs For example look at this advice for healing the client/agency relationship: “For marketers this means getting closer to the sales process, becoming partners in the lead generation and win conversion process.”

Huh??? Where has this guy been the last 5 years? We should get familiar with lead gen discussions? Marketing is all about lead gen and has been for years. Is it possible that many agencies haven’t been willing to get their hands dirty with
sales and thus lost the respect of clients?

My marketing career includes working on the client side with agencies that were very hip in their time, such as Fallon McElligott. The agency business prior to Web
2.0 was heavily dependent on convincing the client that the agency had exclusivity on the creativity and big ideas that kept the client’s image innovative.

Today, this model is one for the history books. The cost of high quality marketing is declining rapidly due to the convergence of some amazing new marketing technologies with a highly talented mobile workforce. Creativity is practically free and CEOs/CMOs are telling us that they know it. Clients are recognizing this faster
than some agencies…many of whom appear to be in denial. Perhaps this is a reason for the client’s procurement to step in…they know more about the advertising industry’s economics than many of the agencies.

When an economic sea-change descends on an industry, a successful response
includes a heckuva lot more than adjusting the product line or adding a specialist in a vertical marketing function such as social networking. When prices decline, the successful competitor adjusts the entire business model to recognize and profit from the change. It would seem that a critical adjustment for agencies is to understand that the supply of “big ideas” is soaring and that clients may no longer be willing to pay tens or hundreds of thousands dollars for “Eureka!”. Further,
perhaps those clients have decided to hire only those marketing agencies who are willing to get down in the dirt with them and contribute hugely to the sales and conversion processes.

My guess is that agencies will start to give away the creativity in order to sell the
execution and measurement will do well. Adjust agency overhead sharply  downward and focus every ounce of executive brainpower on creating  profits for the agency by creating new and better value for the client, focused on what the client is telling you it needs…better recognition and use of marketing technology and lower marketing labor costs.

When agencies stop peddling dinosaurs that’s when we’ll see the  client/agency relationship improve.

Harris Consulting LLC - Strategic Marketing Consultants in San Diego understands that marketing today is all about creating relevant and useful content. Michael Harris is leading this new breed of marketing consulting San Diego company in a McKinsey-like way, underpinning the SEO marketing content with an online business conversion process and then proliferating that content across hundreds of marketing channels to create a dialogue with prospects. Mike Harris can function as your interim marketing vice president in San Diego so you don’t have to search any farther for a marketing agency in San Diego. As a marketing consulting specialist in San Diego who deeply understands distributed marketing in the greater San Diego area, Mike Harris has been delivering marketing solutions in San Diego for a long time. As a next level marketing agency in San Diego, Mike realized that the marketing industry is rife with unmanageable and costly complexity because most marketing vendors are highly specialized in single labor-intensive niches such as advertising or ad agencies in San Diego, public relations marketing companies in San Diego, website development companies advertising online in San Diego, SEO and other industry analysis in San Diego. Enter the internet marketing solutions company of the future, Harris Consulting. As a strategic marketing consulting firm in San Diego, we blend data driven market insight, purchase behavior metrics and marketing analytics to reduce marketing costs in San Diego with a “lazy susan” approach to marketing solutions, marketing ideas and social media services, which clients use to create their own customized marketing plan in San Diego with a mix of highly targeted marketing to their particular audience.

Our marketing consulting services significantly boosts a client’s ability to find and convert new customers while reducing overall marketing costs because our model reduces labor costs, complexity, redundancy and waste in the marketing value chain.

We lower a client’s marketing costs by creating efficiencies across multiple marketing channels and solutions that the client simply cannot achieve on their own. In addition our clients enjoy a continuously innovating stream of marketing solutions that ensures their strategic marketing plan will stay current and that their marketing message reaches their target market they way it wants to be reached.

Our marketing consulting model greatly reduces a client’s need to provide routine oversight and continuous updating of multiple marketing vendors. This frees up management time to better understand and focus on effective responses to today’s unrelenting competitive pressures. In addition, we also provide marketing measurements demanded by CEOs in virtually all industries.

Gen X is entering the management ranks and replacing the boomer advertising and marketing execs who were trained during the “golden age of advertising”, when marketing was considered an art, not a science. This generation grew up with technology and valuing it in all aspects of work and life is intuitive. They will make better prospects because they will not require as much basic education as the current crop.

The ongoing economic downturn puts continuous pressure on companies to do more with less. Our solutions fill that requirement nicely. Businesses are starting to spend more on marketing. Prospects understand that social media and internet marketing are here to stay, however most don’t have even a basic understanding of why and where to start.

Smaller ad agencies in vertically rigid categories (PR, advertising, strategy consulting) are folding due to economic downturn. Creates opportunity for multi-solution vendors like us.

Marketing technology is still a mystery to the majority of marketers. Few have time to learn it due to current work demands, which leaves them stuck in a continuous loop of declining value to their organizations because technology and marketing science are moving ahead rapidly. Our solutions offer them a chance to get their companies caught up. Our solutions also offer them a chance to try many different marketing mixes without the time and cost of ramping up internal people or agencies.

Marketing Consulting San Diego expert, Mike Harris today announced that his Marketing Consulting firm in San Diego is introducing a unique new marketing agency model for businesses in and out of San Diego. Harris Consulting LLC (Mike’s Marketing Consulting firm based in San Diego) now offers fixed fee monthly packages that can include fresh monthly content, public relations, , lead generation, social media marketing, search engine optimization, email marketing, website hosting, website updating and Internet marketing solutions to not only businessmen in San Diego but also miles away from San Diego. Introductory prices range from $2,500 to $3,500 per month. All packages include press releases, customer case studies, e-newsletters and email marketing.  

Redefining How Agency Services Are Priced And Delivered 

The new marketing ideas and solutions provided by the emerging marketing consulting San Diego are on the move to redefine the marketing strategies. “There is a place and time when silo services in advertising, public relations, web development, SEO or other vertical marketing services are, perhaps, good solutions,” Harris stated. “The problem is that many of those agencies have high labor costs, can’t collaborate with one another and are not good with existing marketing technologies, let alone the amazing new ones. Many of those business models are better suited for larger companies, complex brands or other situations that need lots of hand-holding”.  

Harris said his company is a new breed of marketing solutions Company operating from San Diego that has fused C-level marketing consulting, new marketing technologies and a highly talented mobile online marketing workforce to give clients more options at much lower costs. 

“If a company is spending $200,000 plus on a TV commercial then, yes, maybe they’re going to want a large ad agency involved,” Harris continued. “Most companies, however, are not national brands and they’re not Fortune companies, yet they want to compete just as hard. They’re not looking for a “Just Do It” campaign…they want market visibility, reputation growth and a constantly growing database of interconnected customers, prospects, relevant media and industry experts.” This marketing consulting firm in San Diego ensures some effective marketing ideas to beat the growing competition. 

Company Is Driving Down High Cost of Marketing Labor 

Harris said his marketing consulting company based in San Diego is driving marketing labor costs down sharply by offering labor saving marketing technologies such as TellCasT™, a social networking accelerator which pushes blogs, videocasts, podcasts, press releases and virtually any content to 350+ social media sites at the same time. 

He said, “Fixed prices for marketing services are uncommon for now. However they make great sense as a bridge between hourly fees and pay-for-performance, which is still nascent. Clients want lower costs and they want to know their monthly marketing investment from the outset without hourly billing surprises. Clients also don’t want a meter to be running every time they pick up the phone.” Harris Consulting, the marketing consulting San Diego is in full charge to make their way on top.