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Consultant opinion
Marketing for marketing |
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"Marketing creates more economic value for business than any other activity, yet it is too often seen as a marginal activity, a support function and a tactical cost line. Marketing has an unmatchable power base from which to drive the business – understanding the market, championing the customer, leading innovation, building the brand, driving profitable growth."
Peter Fisk, Marketing Genius, Capstone, 2006 - former CEO of Chartered Marketer Institute.
Strangely enough the words above belong to someone who has worked for companies that nobody could ever imagine that might fail to understand the role of marketing outside and inside their businesses. Still, there is so much passion and eagerness in Peter Fisk′s book about marketing genius, that it really made me think twice about how truly and deeply involved with marketing our businesses are - apart from what books and experts recommend as reasonable in this area.
If we look at some Romanian companies, we can definitely understand why some say that marketing is still perceived and approached as a support function meant to help businesses perform their strategy but holding no intrinsic connection with it. It is not rare to see that in some people′s minds marketing, at its best, equals advertising or sells, and, at its worst, a funnily painted collection of paper standing for a presentation.
Under these circumstances, there is no more use in getting angry when you see how much money people in charge are willing to spend on marketing. As long as you see it as pure business hygiene, it is quite natural that marketing should be under-valued and, implicitly, under-bugeted. Like it or not, money can sometimes be a good indicator of importance and relevance. And in business, it is always so.
At the same time, it is true that marketing is not the only activity who lives with the feeling of being underpriviledged in comparison with other support or core-business functions. More and more often, the HR departments accuse the same peripheral status and the same complex of the unloved child; and it is not rare at all to hear the IT or the finance and accounting people complain about the same things. Here, comparisons and a logic of superior versus inferior type cannot but lead to serious management mistakes. On a market that is growing more competitive and complex than ever, everything counts: at the same time, one has to attract the best talent, to equip it with the best IT tools, to have an impeccable financial management system, a most dynamic sales team, and an exquisitely tailored brand.
This is why, before trying to dismiss others′ misperceptions, maybe we should look at our own miscommunications. Marketing people are the ones who can make this business activity a most valued one or a Cinderella. A basic rule of buying behavior (also applicable in selling) is that people only buy what they know, what they understand and what they think they can use. Depending on the business model, in many companies you can have several hundreds of technical staff, a dozen of administrative staffers, some accountants, ITs, HRs and managers who do not care, do not know or are too busy to wonder about marketing.
And who takes on the role of telling all of them why marketing people are there and what they can do for the business? Usually – Mr. Nobody takes care of it.
The result can be seen in what these people imagine marketing should be: pure blahblah-blah, meant to deceive people, make them believe things that are not real, a dream-factory designed to persuade customers into buying things they don′t need and employers into loving companies they can′t stand.
Marketing people who do not believe in the brands they manage will end up ruining them, outside the company, inside, or both. After all, marketing is largely and mostly about relationships – between customers and products/services, between people and their company, between the company and the world at large.
Even if rules usually only help us make more mistakes, it might be useful to think about the following:
1. First of all, a marketer should have a healthy relationship with his/her brand; that is one that should be built on trust, objectivity, transparence, fair-play, enthusiasm and strong belief.
2. Secondly, he or she should be able to transfer that belief and generate passion in customers, suppliers, partners, managers and colleagues. Marketing is definitely not a single player game, and a brand cannot come into being single parented. People who believe in the same values are the only ones who can generate brands.
3. Thirdly, a marketer should never lie. Truth is the best cure for all brand diseases on the long term. In branding, to be = to be true.
4. A brand is the sum of people who believe in it. Witout people, brands are but names and labels. This is why the people in your own company are the best resources to build a brand – not the budget, the advertising agency, nor the brochures and flyers supplier.
5. And last but not least marketing should also be made for marketing itself in order to win trust from colleagues, build a significant relationship with clients and persuade other stakeholders that corporate literature is closer in gendre to realistic prose than to romantic poetry.
When brands are truly breathed in and out by their marketers and the company as a whole this usually has also a powerful say on the balance sheet. Most global brands take pride on their passion, whilst one might think that business is by definition pragmatic. The practice, still, goes against theory and proves that in the end passion can generate good reputation and money as well.
Andreea Enache
Ensight PR&Communication Executive
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