Have you read the news? [Fill in the blank] said it plans to cut back on marketing spending for the rest of the year to lower costs. What precisely does that mean? Does it mean that they're going to reduce their investment in making their products and outlets more desirable to customers? Does it mean that their investment in the online experience is being cut? Does it mean that they're cutting back on their investment in sales and customer service systems and training? Hell no.
You know what it means. It means that they're going to cut back on "little m" marketing: marcom. How in the world has "marketing" become shorthand for advertising, pr, and promotion? Why are marketers allowing their profession to be downplayed, where they're viewed as nothing more than hawkers and persuaders? If marketers aren't responsible for the customer experience, for the brand, then who is any way?
Those are not rhetorical questions. I really want to know.
Posted July 10, 2008
Email this post
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341c684b53ef00e553af6bec8834
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Are you a "little m" marketer?:
The comments to this entry are closed.
(Rest assured, we will never provide your email address to anyone. Period.)
RSS feed
Tom on Twitter
@tomasacker
Tom is timely, thought provoking and all about the new brand vision packaged as a Seinfeld stand up. I went to school on his ideas.
Jeff Taylor, Founder, Monster.com and CEO, Eons.
When Tom Asacker writes, I read. Opportunity Screams is the right message for the right time.
Tom Peters
I think the key to your question is that most "marcom" folks really aren't marketers in the way you mean to use the term. The emphasis is always on the "com" part of that term - communications.
When "marketing" as a broad business concept began to take shape, it was intended to be a far reaching, strategic discipline, guiding all other activities in the firm. In many consumer package goods companies (where it really originated) this is more or less how it functions. But in the vast majority of other companies, the marcom discipline became synonymous with marketing, because product development and distribution were handled by engineering or other pre-existing functions.
This situation leads to a lot of career frustration for "little m marketers" because they want to have input farther up the decision chain, but they unknowingly signed up to sit at the little kids' table.
When then leads us to the question of "who's responsible for customer experience anyway?" Shouldn't the answer be "everyone"? Isn't everyone at some level a marketer and responsible for some aspect of customer experience? When you shuffle it off into one department, particularly a department that so often has as little organizational cred as "marketing", then it's easy to think you've checked the bok and don't have to think about it anymore.
Posted by: Todd W. | July 14, 2008 at 01:21 PM
Great insights Todd! Thank you. And I'm glad that you answered the "trick" question. :) Of course, everyone is responsible for the customer experience. But where do you think the oversight, influence and training should reside within the organization? With the CEO? Steve Jobs seems to think so.
Posted by: Tom Asacker | July 14, 2008 at 02:12 PM