Marketing’s Main Mission Revisited

Bang, bang, bang!!! – so appreciate it when someone you respect just knocks you in the head with a useful wake up call. A few in the agency business, PR included, are occasionally corralled by “a half mile wide and three inches deep” form of blinder that flattens the perception of what we’re here to accomplish for clients. This helpful alarm was served in a superb article that – like a coldwater bath – works to shake-up the creative soul in a fog clearing moment about what brand minders should be thinking about.

So much of what we do, or are challenged to do on a daily basis, resides in a sort of tactical soup that is preoccupied with sorting out and managing the bits and bites of communications strategy. Well, its what we do here for a living isn’t it? Yes and NO. Surely it is a main feature of the services we provide, but clients really employ us to deliver measurable outcomes related to sales and market share growth. So one (invest in communications) is supposed to be a means to another (growth). Although we may in our daily nose-down behavior on the tactics of outreach unwittingly miss the forest for the trees.

Tom Asacker, brand consultant and author of an excellent download on brand strategy entitled “A Clear Eye For Branding,” shares his Road to Damascus experience on the core essence of our mission:

“Marketers are obsessed with words. They believe that they are in the communication and persuasion business. They incorrectly compare the marketing of products and services in a supersaturated marketplace to marketing a political candidate or making a legal case, where ambivalent people are forced to choose between only two alternatives. This worldview has them fixated on doing things right ―right message, right medium, right slogan, right tagline, et al. ― blinding them to the most important marketing question: Are we doing the right things? Message to most marketers (I know, quite ironic):

You are not.

Don’t take my word for it: Simply take a clear-eyed look at some of today’s most successful and talked about brands. What are Nintendo and Harley-Davidson’s slogans? Why doesn’t Apple cover their packaging with persuasive copy? Are Stonyfield Farm’s yogurt customers engaged with its advertising, or with its all natural and organic ingredients? Did Toyota owners buy their vehicles because they wanted to “move forward?” Is that what caused the company to surpass GM in worldwide sales? Puh-lease. I own two Toyotas and I had to reach out to Google to discover that banal slogan. And speaking of Google, where the heck is their tagline anyway?”

The Means to An End…

Words, taglines, media, etc. are all vehicles – or vessels if you will. Communications is not an end in itself. And persuasion does not occur because of our words alone. So what is it that we should be focused on to achieve growth and market share? We think it’s about working relentlessly to add value to our target consumer’s lives. The more value we can create, the more relevant the brand/consumer relationship gets. And the more willing the consumer is to engage – because in the end they decide to opt in – or out. And therefore listen to what we have to say.

Asacker describes value this way:

Purpose value
Growth value
Social value
Involvement value
Entertainment value
Aesthetic value
Physical value
Time value
Financial value
Performance value

Are we focused on the right things? What do you think?