Far too often, marketers turn out to be their own worst enemies. It seems easy for them to commit the unpardonable sin of business: they start believing their own baloney. Marketing is neither mysterious nor esoteric. It's about real-life issues. In this document, John Graham provides some fundamental marketing guidelines.
With all their limitations, warts, and crazy ideas, marketers can play a critical role in the success of your business. Unfortunately, they're often overruled by management and, more often than not, by the sales department.
For example, is it fair to blame marketers for Proctor & Gamble's ill-fated Dryel? In effect, someone figured out ways to clean P&G's coffers of $400 million in a year or so on the development and introduction of this home clothing care kit.
The only problem: Dryel, which sold for $9.95 and soaked up precious shelf space in the nation's supermarkets and discount stores, didn't clean clothes. It just made them smell better. Now, isn't that exactly what the average consumer wants? Perfumed dirty clothes. What marketing research revealed this enlightening insight?
After a year, P&G evidently smelled something rotten and pulled the plug on Dryel. P&G is a marketing company — a good one by any standard. So, why did this happen?
Unfortunately, P&G doesn't hold the patent on stupidity. The 2001 holiday selling season saw an astounding number of large specialty retailers lining up like lemmings to sell sweaters — all of which looked alike except for different 'designer' logos. Sweaters were the feeding frenzy. And where were the marketers? At the head of the line urging the store buyers on.
In the end, retailers were awash in sweaters. And they were still up to their eyeballs in sweater inventory even after offering up to 70% discounts early in the Christmas selling season.
Is it fair to blame marketers for these horrendous mistakes? Perhaps they advised against introducing Dryel. Perhaps GM's marketers weren't involved in the development of the Pontiac Aztec and the Buick Rendezvous. Let's hope that their loud protests were ignored.
There are other examples, of course, such as the spate of home delivery services a la Webvan, Peapod, and the like. Hundreds of millions of dollars were swallowed up by these outfits that demonstrated an insatiable appetite for capital. Worse yet, venture capitalists stood in line outbidding one another to see who was going to give them the biggest pile of money.
Didn't home delivery die out when women went from being everyday housewives to job holders? Isn't it a little strange that no one asked this question? Isn't it bizarre to think that no one researched the history of home delivery? Is it possible that no one listened to the contrary views?
The head of a large organization called in a marketer to promote a credit card to its members. At a meeting with the president a few weeks later, the marketer laid out reasons why he believed the membership response would be minimal. Before he finished his report, the president was clearly agitated. Standing up, he said to the marketer, 'Do you want to do this or will I have to get someone else?'
Three months after the credit card was introduced, a total of 1% of the membership had responded. Was the marketing at fault? The marketing manager had pointed out in his report that the membership was older and mostly retired, fit the profile of those who didn't use credit cards, and belonged to a socio-economic group that might make it difficult for them to qualify. The results supported his report.
It might be that the marketers' recommendations are ignored or not even sought because they sometimes shoot themselves in the foot by making others feel uninformed and even stupid. This is why marketers need to open their doors far wider than they are today, give up some nonsensical pretensions, and focus on these fundamental guidelines:
BEWARE OF BRANDING BULL
Jargon always confuses, never clarifies. Branding is a prime example. To call branding bull is heresy or worse. Big names have made big bucks touting branding as the solution.
You can't pick up a business publication or attend a seminar without encountering 'branding.' But 'creating the brand,' 'protecting the brand,' 'managing the brand,' and 'branding it,' are nothing more than high level abstractions that might make interesting cocktail party conversation, create a certain level of phony superiority, and even cause a bit of excitement & — but these terms mean nothing!
If you're looking to be profound, figure out what the customer values. Learn what makes the customer's heart go pitter-pat, not what turns you on. Nurturing this value is serious business. Doing everything possible to align with and then stay close to the customer takes talent, commitment, and zeal — not jargon.
BE SKEPTICAL OF MARKETING RESEARCH
Don't be intimidated by anyone who attempts to dazzle you with screen after screen of charts and countless columns of research results. They're rarely meaningful. The problem is that we're often intimidated by nonsense, especially when it's passing in front of us at warp speed.
The biggest con job of all comes from the folks who provide 'focus group' meeting facilities. Of course, the major feature of research palaces is the 'viewing room' where the client, ad agency reps, marketing managers, and assorted other executives can gather to eat, drink, and make meaningless banter while watching people who are being paid to voice their opinions.
All this comes to mind while watching an 89-year-old interviewer talk about his latest book. Studs Terkel has been listening to and recording the views, opinions, and experiences of just plain people for more than half a century. What's the point? He listens and learns. He has well-tuned antennae.
Where did Chrysler get the idea for the fast-selling P.T. Cruiser? Not from a carefully planned and superbly executed marketing concept. It was born from the experience of a man who loves cars and knows the people who buy them — Bob Lutz. To its credit, General Motors finally figured out that all the marketing research money can buy might not be as good as the insight of a Bob Lutz at age 70. He's the Studs Terkel of the auto industry.
Much of current marketing research is a smokescreen, carefully designed to pass the buck if something goes wrong. Far too often, it substitutes for insight, experience, and common sense. It can become little more than a tool for avoiding personal responsibility.
DON'T BUY INTO THE 'LET'S MAKE A BIG SPLASH!' MENTALITY
Far too many marketers get their jollies from what they like to call 'Wow!' They seem to think they're doing something when they spend lots of money to make lots of noise. They love attacking the market with full force. They thrive on making a big splash.
And then 'pfuff!' It's all gone — both the budget and their customers.
P&G spent millions on advertising and promoting Dryel. Once the budget was gone, so were the customers. So was Dryel. All that remained were thousands and thousands of boxes of Dryel on supermarket shelves.
Big splash means fun times for marketers. They get to party and drink, party and drink. This is why would-be marketers light up when you ask them what area they're interested in. 'I want to get into event planning.' That's where the 'wow!' is.
Why is it so easy for marketers to forget what marketing's all about? The legendary Theodore Leavitt of Harvard Business School defined marketing as all the little, seemingly insignificant and often bothersome things that a company does day in and day out to attract and hold customers.
Marketing is about doing one thing right: Marketing is the task of constantly 'pulling customers' closer and closer to your company, product, or service so that they decide that it's in their best interest to do business with you. That means keeping your hand on the rope every minute of every day.
'Wow!'
PUT MARKETING IDEAS, STRATEGIES, AND PLANS TO THE ONLY TEST
There's always the feeling that to justify your existence you need to make the simple look complex and the easy ever so difficult and complicated. Marketing is no exception.
But marketing is too important — too valuable to your business — to permit it to be distorted and misunderstood. Although it takes lots of skill and a creative mind to be a good marketer, it takes just one thing to determine if marketing is on the right track. There's a simple marketing test that's accurate — and infallible — because it places marketing in the context of everyday experience. Here it is:
When faced with making a marketing decision, just ask this question: Does it make sense to you?
Does it square with your experience? Is it easy to understand? Or does it make you wonder if it will work? Does it raise questions or create doubts? If you ask questions, do you get reasonable, common sense answers? If the explanation you get doesn't compute, don't do it. That's it. Nothing more.
Marketing is about what you do every day to get closer to the customer. It's about making sense.