Download “Eish. When did Marketing become Advertising?”

by howard fox, Marketing Director, GIBS
“Eish. When did Marketing
become Advertising?”
R
emember your first marketing lecture? Remember the
four ‘Ps’? Marketing was about Product, Place, Price
and Promotion. (Note to reader: this was the mideighties, era of Boy George (1.0) and Banana Rama; before
the 4P’s middle-age waistline spread, Elvis- like, to become
seven Ps.)
Promotion was, of course, the sexiest, with advertising leading
the pack of PR, sales promotion and publicity. But it was clear.
Marketing was a strategic pursuit rooted in the very heart of the
business. It wasn’t just ‘lipstick on the bulldog’ – the glamour
and glitz sometimes associated with the communication end of
the business. This used to be referred to despairingly (particularly
by the late Dr. May) as ‘T and A’. Younger marketers should ask
a ‘grey-hair’ if they are unfamiliar with the term, but suffice to say it
was a less gender-correct era.
Somewhere between the disco, eighties and today, we seem
to have changed the definition of marketing. Even this august
journal, which I always thought was called The Journal of Marketing
has surreptitiously changed its masthead to Journal of Marketing
| Advertising | Media | Broadcasting. Andy Rice, South African
doyen of strategic marketing-consulting admits to claiming to be in
‘Advertising’ to impress the pretty girls. Shouldn’t the pretty girls /
boys be impressed that we drive strategic decisions on the Board,
rather than make ads? Well, perhaps not. But it is inherent upon us
as marketing professionals to ensure we represent the true strategic
importance of what we do. Look, Mad Men hasn’t helped the cause,
but our own Journal (I will take the last edition as an example) should
reflect the level of what we do. But it doesn’t. It’s all about media choice
(mostly social media), communication (mostly advertising campaigns)
with a sprinkling of brand and personalities from creative agencies.
Where is ‘price’, for example? Even through the price-fixing scandals –
ranging from commodity chemicals, through bread to bicycles, I didn’t
see journalists hunting down senior marketers to get their opinion on
the effect price (illegally fixed or otherwise) has on corporate profits. Well
that’s because we seem to have largely given up responsibility for price
to our Chartered Accountant colleagues. Sure, we have input. We create
scenarios and talk confidently about price points, competitor pricing
(strictly legally of course) and ‘important physiological barriers’ but in most
organisations it’s really the FD who has final say on this ‘p’.
It’s time to take back our full accountability. The battle is on two fronts.
First, are we including the full range of professional accountabilities in our
marketing strategies? Or have we let ourselves get whittled down to just
preparing communications strategies with a few strategic considerations
tacked on? Have we succumbed to the siren call of the creative side
of our jobs? ‘Distribution’ is far more concrete than ‘creative media
strategies’. It’s more difficult to make strategic change here and, frankly,
the risks are usually higher. But the corporate rewards for optimising
distribution business-models are a far more powerful lever with which to
change our company’s profitability. Coca-Cola is classically thought of as
a marketing success, less because it invented Santa Claus and ‘taught
the world to sing in perfect harmony’ and more because consumers
(as directed by former chairman Robert Woodruff) are always being
within an arm’s reach of an ice-cold Coke. (See case study: http://www.
thetimes100.co.uk/case-study-with--an-arma-reach-of-desire--3-72-1.
php#ixzz1GVLBQLnA)
The second front is the stage of public opinion. When it next comes
to flirting with the pretty girls / pretty boys of which Mr. Rice speaks,
let’s flirt with ‘ROI’ and ‘product innovation’. With sweet nothings about
‘competitive intelligence’ and semantic mapping. Let’s try not to slip into
the familiar ‘have you ever thought of being a model? I’m in advertising!’
If they glaze-over at all the strategic talk, they would make a boring date
anyway.
J
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