“Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too.”
— Blaise Pascal
A Clear Eye.
On marketplace success
by Tom Asacker
“Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too.”
— Blaise Pascal
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"If a man have a strong faith he can indulge in the luxury of skepticism."
I have strong faith in marketing, but I've been doing a lot of soul-searching regarding the value of "little m" marketing (aka marketing tactics) in today's highly fragmented and very skeptical marketplace of products, services, entertainment and ideas. There's certainly no lack of opinion on the subject (expert and otherwise). Today's query on Amazon for "marketing books" returned 199,641 results and Google gave me 1.63 billion hits for the word "marketing." What's a marketer to do?
We all know that the "best" of anything is a highly subjective assessment, right? And that "little m" marketing plays a role in building an expectation and a connection with prospects and customers? Of course it does. So how does one define "little m" marketing value? I know what you're thinking: what's wrong with Return On Investment or Return On Customer? Okay. But that defines value from the organization's perspective. What about our audience's perspective?
Here's the present definition of marketing (from the AMA website):
Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.
My guess is that most people think of "little m" marketing as the part that simply communicates value. But perhaps "little m" marketing should be strategically designed to create and deliver value as well. Listen, I'm not simply playing with words here. I'm being quite sincere. Perhaps the paradigm shift we've all been waiting for is a new appreciation of "little m" marketing as a tool to create and deliver value to ones audience?
Instead of thinking of "little m" marketing as a means to an end (engaging and persuading - or brainwashing - someone to do something, like visit a website, call a company, purchase an item, etc.), perhaps we should think of it as an end in and of itself? Perhaps we should be asking this question: how can I provide value to my audience through my marketing tactics such that they can engage and persuade themselves?
Is this a radical idea? Not really. But it certainly appears to be. If you studied "little m" marketing execution (like I do), you'd be scratching your head in wonder (like I am):
I'm not going to attempt to deconstruct those, or any other, marketing tactics. If that's your cup of tea, please go visit my friends at AdPulp.com. They do a much better job than I ever could. But here's what I do humbly suggest. The next time you're even considering spending money on a new marketing tactic (advertisement, direct mail piece, event, viral, etc.), take some time to run it through a quick customer value analysis:
If you can't honestly answer "yes" to all three questions, then go back to the drawing board. Face it. The marketplace bar has been raised to a nose-bleed level. If you hope to clear it, you'd better figure out how to get your entire organization strategically into the jump. Yes . . . that includes you, little m!
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Is media creating a market for sex amongst elders like the oil producers collaborating to keep oil prices to their advantage? There is plenty of data available on marketing from the big M to the little m.
What do you make of it? [Read More]
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My partner and I were driving back from a client meeting today, talking about what we perceive to be good marketing and advertising.
What we agreed on in the end was that good advertising touches people. That's all there is to it. If you create an emotion then you create a reaction. Everything else is gravy.
Of course, if your product sucks, your staff is rude or your goods arrive in pieces no amount of advertising can save you.
PS: Nobody outside your organization gives a monkey's whether the logo is light or dark green. Get the product right, get the service right, the brand will build itself.
Posted by: Andreas Duess | January 24, 2006 at 05:26 PM
Tom,
Great post. You quoted the AMA definition of marketing: "Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.
Companies don't "manage" customer relationships. That's Peppers and Rogers bullshit.
One of the greatest marketing sins 9of the last decade and a half since P & R wrote the One to One Future is that 1:1 marketing in their conception is customer centric.
To P & R, customers are prey to be targeted through high tech methods for greater accuracy.
P & R, like most marketers today, are still saddled with the 20th century marketing paradigm that was dominated by an ethos of hucksterism: getting as deep into customers pockets and pulling out as much money as possible.
The 21st century marketing paradigm is about healing, not hucksterism -- about helping consumers solve the problems in their lives --even if it means for Macy's to send customers down the street to Gimbles because they are better equipped to solve a particular problem than Macy's.
Hope your post rouses many marketers from their sleep. It's a new world with new rules and those tethered by 20th century thinking are headed toward the same fate that removed dinosaur life from our planet.
David
Posted by: David Wolfe | January 24, 2006 at 06:16 PM
Tom
Excellent post. Yes, folks are ad and marketing weary. If it's not corporate messages, it's politicians. And people don't believe the messages.
Let's try authenticity.
Tell folks what you CAN'T do or deliver, and then, in plain language, tell them what you can, with passion. Passion is authentic and outdoes slickness every day.
Posted by: Brian Ward | January 24, 2006 at 10:36 PM
Wow. The comments are as good as the post!
Just a rumination at this point, but if 'little m' isn't advertising, could it now fall under the auspices of what we like to call PR 2.0?
Posted by: olivier blanchard | January 24, 2006 at 11:18 PM
Hi Tom. I´ve never worked as a marketer but in my consulting experience I´ve arrived to some clear conclusions about marketing.
1. What we call "High value added experiences" are possible for some companies with their most direct activity. Their "product" to say it in traditional terms.
2. There are other companies that are not actually able to enhance customers experience via product, say because their innovation capacity is low, they don´t risk or their size impedes any initiative in this field.
3. The companies that cannot provide a high value experience to their customers by their interaction through the product, try to compensate it with other ways of entertaining customers, via bold advertising or sponsoring.These techniques, looked through the glass of the companies identity, sometimes have nothing to do with the company´s brand itself. This last point makes it quite difficult to keep the accountability of these tactics.
These are usually very expensive tactics but I am afraid most of these companies are not able to change some of their structures in order to do it other way.
Posted by: Felix Gerena | January 25, 2006 at 12:45 PM
This one struck a nerve with me so it's going to be a long post.
I think we're mixing up the tactic i.e. a print ad, with the execution of that tactic i.e. what the print ad says.
The tactic should, of course, be driven by a marketing strategy that takes into consideration your product, the competitive landscape, your target audience, their media consumption habits, cost, and your goals. Sometimes your marketing goal is to create awareness of the product, in which case TV might be the best channel and a :30 might be your best tactic. If your goal is to generate sales, maybe direct mail is the right tactic. In either case, you should be making your decisions based on your strategy.
Once you pick the right tactic, then how it's executed plays a major role in whether or not it's successful, but even a great execution of the wrong tactic isn't going to work.
Done right the tactics can create, communicate and deliver value.
Here's a great example: the introduction of the Mini Cooper.
Here's a car that is designed to appeal to the young, urban, hip, cost- and status-conscious consumer. They don't watch as much TV as the gen pop, and when they do, they're more likely to ignore the ads. So, what does Mini do?
They never run a single TV spot.
Instead, they use very innovative marketing tactics like out of home placements in subway stations (where young, urban, hip, cost- and status-conscious consumers can be found), product placement in movies that young, urban, hip, cost- and status-conscious consumers watch, interactive print ads in pubs that are read by young, urban, hip, cost- and status-conscious consumers, and they build a very cool web site where those same consumers can learn more about the car, build their own and find out where to buy it.
All in? $15 million.
Result? Overreached sales goals by 22% in year one, despite being the first new car intro in history that didn't use the TV spot tactic at all.
I agree with Felix that some product categories don't lend themselves to tactic-as-value either because the product is too pedestrian (think paper clips) or because the cost of innovation isn't worth the return.
I disagree with Andreas (who must work for a general advertising agency) on any number of levels. First and foremost, simply creating an emotion isn't even close to enough to convince me to shell out my hard earned dollars and actually buy your product. You have got to give me reasons to believe that your product is valuable to me.
I think it was Tom Asacker who observed that while a certain credit card company's TV spots were indeed engaging on an emotional level, they didn't actually make him believe the message was true. Do you think Tom is likely to get a card from that company just because their ads struck an emotion?
Finally, I think the best place for marketing tactics to create, communicate and deliver value is on the inbound side of things like in the store, through the VRU, online, etc.
Going back to the Mini, the outbound marketing did a great job of creating, communicating and delivering value, but once consumers got to the dealership and actually drove the car the deal was sealed. It really is a great car for young, urban, hip, cost-and status-conscious consumers.
(Note: I had nothing to do with the Mini launch, nor do I drive one.)
Posted by: Chris Costello | January 25, 2006 at 04:54 PM
I keep picturing today's marketers using wearing ear muffs and using megaphones to try to talk to lots of people at once--when they should be using walkie talkies. Walkie-talkies force you to listen to the person at the other end before you can talk - and do not allow you to talk over each other, and you usually know the person at the other end too.
Posted by: Nellie Lide | January 26, 2006 at 10:46 AM
I'm not sure that "m" marketing can directly deliver value in and of itself (at least not for the customer). I do, however, believe that if it is implemented in alignment with a broader, well thought out business strategy, that it can communicate and demonstrate value.
I find it hard to look at "m" marketing in isolation unless there is no broader value strategy that it is supporting. And when there is no strategy "m" is just throwing money away while neither communicating nor delivering value.
Posted by: Andrew Hayden | January 26, 2006 at 04:37 PM
Tom, great post, it made me wonder whether ads dont have to earn their way by amusing, entertaining, illuminating. It's as if the ad has to carry an ad. We won't buy the ad (pay attention to the attempt at persuasion) unless it earns our interest with this added value. It is kind of like the relationship between the TV program and the ad turned inside out. (TV programs carry ads, and ads are carried by their added value...or something.) I am at the end of a conference and the delirium effect is strong. Anyhow, provocative post! Grant
Posted by: Grant | January 28, 2006 at 06:55 PM