Friday, January 4, 2008

Re: Marketing Relevance

Reference: Gilmore, James H., and Pine II, B. Joseph. “Keeping Marketing’s Promises”. Strategy+business. November 26, 2007. Http://www.strategy-business.com/li/leadingideas/li00051?tid=230&pg=all.

It is getting more difficult to manage and rationalize marketing operations across the board in organizations of all sizes and dimensions. The channels are changing dramatically. The demographics are changing constantly. Staying relevant, cool, on message, and in the conversation is perhaps more challenging than it has ever been. Marketing now includes the eclectic aspects of electronic marketing, search engine optimization, buzz marketing, and experiential marketing. Most companies have not been able to expand their marketing departments enough to add talent in these specific areas. Also, marketing budgets, already creaking under the pressure of preferred listings, Google placements, ad rates, and media time are struggling to manage even more campaigns, sweepstakes, and surveys. Marketing executives were already under siege for getting better returns on invested capital, driving sales, and maintaining brand equity before these new challenges arose. Now they also need to drive authentic advertising and maintain continuity between what the ads promise and the products actually deliver. In the referenced article, the commentators make it clear that these are challenging times and many marketing professionals are not being successful. “[A]dvertising no longer works as well as it once did. Companies in consumer and business markets now pay more and more to reach fewer and fewer households and executive decision makers”. They advocate a solution in which companies are forced to be what they say that they are. By using a concept adapted from architecture called placemaking-companies can create a place so engaging that customers and potential customers have no choice but to notice a product or service and to buy it as a result. The beauty of this approach is that it can be virtual, free, or bricks and mortar. The key is to get people experiencing the validity of the product. For private companies the pathway out of this marketing morass may lie in the smart use of technology (virtualization), web site innovations, and novel promotion campaigns. Using creative pilots to improve concepts and to build internal capacity is a good way to get this done. I also like to add consulting support where requirements can be well defined and the expertise is too expensive to learn on the job. Judging by the commentators the key is to be consistent between what you promise and what your product or service actually delivers. I concur in this sentiment and would like to learn how others are handling this challenge as well.

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