els for the entire car-buying market. When Ronald Zarrella was hired as vice
president for marketing of GM’s North American group in 1994, his mission
was to reestablish the five brand images of the five divisions. Under his lead-
ership, each brand is headed by a brand manager and a vehicle line execu-
tive. The brand manager’s responsibility is to know the brand’s market and
to ensure that the entire marketing effort—product engineering and design,
advertising, merchandising, and pricing—is directed toward that target. The
vehicle line executive oversees the development of a line of automobiles that
meets the target customer’s needs. Models that don’t support a division’s im-
age, such as the Buick Skylark and Roadmaster and Chevrolet Caprice, are
discontinued.^7■ Kraft Kraft has changed from a classic brand-management structure, in
which each brand competed for organizational resources and market share,
to a category-based structure in which category business directors (or “prod-
uct integrators”) lead cross-functional teams composed of representatives
from marketing, R&D, consumer promotion, and finance. The category busi-
ness directors have both broad responsibility and bottom-line accountability.
No longer viewed solely as marketers, they are as responsible for identifying
opportunities to improve the efficiency of the supply chain as they are for
developing the next advertisement. Kraft’s category teams work in conjunc-
tion with process teams dedicated to each product category and with cus-
tomer teams dedicated to each major customer (Figure 6-9).^8
Category management is not a panacea. It is still a product-driven system. Col-
gate recently moved from brand management (Colgate toothpaste) to category man-
agement (toothpaste category) to a new stage called “customer-need management”
(mouth care). This last step finally focuses the organization on a basic customer need.^9
Market-Management Organization
Many companies sell their products to a diverse set of markets. Canon sells its fax
machines to consumer, business, and government markets. U.S. Steel sells its steel to
the railroad, construction, and public-utility industries. When customers fall into dif-
ferent user groups with distinct buying preferences and practices, a market manage-
ment organization is desirable. A markets managersupervises several market managers
(also called market-development managers,market specialists, or industry specialists). The
market managers draw upon functional services as needed. Market managers of im-
portant markets might even have functional specialists reporting to them.
Market managers are staff (not line) people, with duties similar to those of prod-
uct managers. Market managers develop long-range and annual plans for their
chapter 22
Managing the
Total Marketing
Effort^687Process teams
(dedicated to each
product category)Category teams
(dedicated to each
product category)Customer teams
(dedicated to each
major customer)Customer
business
managerSales
information
specialistSupply
chain
specialistRetail sales
managerSpace
management
specialistCustomer
category
managers
Category
plannerPlant
managerOperations
finance EngineeringMaterials
managerQualityBrand
managerMarketing
informationFinance ConsumerpromotionR&DProcess
team
leaderCategory
business
directorCategory
sales
directorFIGURE 6-9Managing Through Teams
at Kraft
Source:Michael George, Anthony Freeling, and David
Court, “Reinventing the Marketing Organization,”The
McKinsey Quarterlyno. 4, (1994): 43–62.