Emotion & the Queen of Pop
Business Week has a fascinating report on the Chief Marketing Officer for Coca-Cola (aka The Queen of Pop), a dynamo named Mary Minnick. Here's a hint of the lady:
“I tend to be quite discontented in general,” she told investors last December. “It will never be fast enough or soon enough or good enough.”
Minnick's story is full of insights into what is required to shake a major enterprise — including a non-profit — out of its marketing doldrums. Advice like … studying successes at organizations outside your category, facing up to the “unspoken” issues, not obsessing on and clinging to revered products and practices that time is passing by, resisting incrementalism when breaking the mold is what's necessary.
“Like Henry Ford said, 'If I'd asked the consumer what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse,”' she told her staff.
MBA 101 stuff? Maybe, as far as management technique goes. But for Minnick, underneath it all