I am so confused. No, really. I am more confused now than I've been in 20 years doing marketing. There are so many opinions out there. What is marketing supposed to be these days? I checked the bookshelf for an answer.
I started with the best-practices business bibles: James Collins' Built To Last, Jack Welch's' Jack: Straight From The Gut, and Larry Bossidys' Execution. Guess how much advice was dedicated to marketing? Virtually none. Marketing isn't a core competency for business, apparently.
This worries me.
So I tried A Big Life In Advertising by Mary Wells Lawrence. Well, I'm jealous, but the future ain't what it used to be.
Then I reread The Cluetrain Manifesto and Permission Marketing but they just aren't the same after that whole dot.com implosion. Self-help books Learned Optimism (Martin Seligman) and Primal Leadership (Daniel Goleman) didn't show me the future of marketing, either.
Plan B
So I chatted with a few senior-level clients and non-client friends in high places. We debated Wal-Mart's smiley face “Rollback” TV spots — great advertising? No, but it's effective and captures the Wal-Mart spirit. We dissected DiGiorno Pizza's “Be the DiGiorno Delivery Guy.” Truly brand-centric, right on target. My favorite promotion of last year.
Then we got down to it:
- Is marketing a marathon or a sprint? Supposedly, CEOs are marathon runners and marketers are sprinters. Now that CEOs are sprinters, what is marketing supposed to do?
- Is marketing something you create, or buy (or rent)?
- Is marketing a few big ideas or the accumulation of a lot of smaller ideas?
- Is marketing about the brand or the consumer? This is a tough one.
- Is marketing poetic or mathematic?
- Is marketing about creativity, or flawless execution?
- Should marketing be integrated and optimized holistically, or specialized and measured separately?
“Well, Jim, the answer is easy. It's all about connecting the dots,” said a client friend. Yes, but connect them to what? And, if I connect them, what does the picture look like? It's like “thinking outside the box” — hell, outside the box might be dangerous, or wrong. What's in the box, anyway? Is that any good?
So instead of finding answers we tried to define the problem. There are lots: Wall Street pressure, short-term thinking, shrinking budgets, powerful retailers, lack of talent. But the root problem is that there's just too damn much marketing out there. We're an over-marketed society. The average person gets blasted with about 3,000 ad-type messages a day. But you can't ease up, because then you'd be under-marketing and your competition could gain an edge.
Over-marketing is like over-medicating. After a while, it gets less effective. But it's hard to stop.
Over-marketing puts quantity over quality. Some manufacturers are very successful with this. Take Kraft: It's not known for award-winning ads, but it wins the consumer vote. (Okay, and mine, for DiGiorno.) Kraft should get an award as best mathematical marketer.
Now look at Dell: A back-to-school sweepstakes giving $50,000 a day. How does this help the Dell brand? I like what Steve the Dell dude says about the brand a lot better than this cash-based promotion. Where's the marketing poetry here?
What agency can best help clients avoid over-marketing? The one that acts as brand advocate, with passion. (Clients aren't allowed to be passionate anymore, but someone has to be.) The one that can demonstrate brand benefits in a compelling way and activate purchases. That can turn constituents into consumers and keep them consuming. That writes beautiful poetry and factors quadratic equations. That has big ideas that pay out, break through, turn over-marketing into brilliant marketing that is brand-centered and resonates with consumers.
I'm not so confused now. I'm jazzed by the challenge.
Jim Holbrook drinks his coffee black at Zipatoni. He can be reached at jim@zipatoni.com.
