In my six months of unemployment, I have had one question posed to me more than any other, “what do you do?” For most people this is pretty easy, “I’m in I.T.” or “I’m an accountant.” All pretty straight-forward and you get a clear picture of what it is that person does for a living. Then you come ask me and I say, “I’m a marketer.” Next question is “what kind?”, and that is when I know we are not in Kansas anymore, Toto.
Marketing is not like ice cream. It does not come in 31 flavors and cannot be segmented into specifics like tax accounting or cardiac surgeon. I realize the marketing world in the last decade or so has split off time and again. I never realized how much until I started looking at job boards and even the American Marketing Association’s job board. I have to make choices between marketing and advertising, marketing communications, branding, product management, etc., and my answer is all the above. I’m not sure when or why it became so splintered. It used to be that you were either in research or you were the implementer of the research results. From using the research data, you came up with a strategy and in that strategy were tactics for implementation.
Marketing is a skill; a process; a toolbox, if you will. It requires science and guts. Many out there would argue that it’s simply common sense. Well folks, if it were that easy, everyone would be doing it well. Case in point: in my Twitter timeline this week was a post from @brandcoach. It was a blog post written by Derrick Daye and Brad VanAuken of Brand Strategy Insider, a site that is now in my daily RSS feed because these two brilliant minds get it. Their August 19th blog, GM Appointment Shows No Respect for Marketing, was spot on accurate about one of the biggest misconceptions of marketing: Marketing is not advertising. (Lather. Rinse. Repeat after me.) If I may add to this, your brand is not your logo or your tagline, but so many people think that if you just show the world your pretty picture, they’ll buy your product and become your loyal customer. Hey, thanks for playing! Now go home. Wrong answer.
The worst kind of marketing is what I call inside-out marketing. GM is a prime example of that with the selection to pull Bob Lutz out of product development and near retirement, to “image czar” of GM’s advertising, communications and public relations. In an interview with USA Today, Mr. Lutz said he was “irked” by a few of GM’s recent ad campaigns and has a plan to fix them.
“I think you will very quickly see a drastic change in the tone and content of our advertising. And if you don’t, it will mean that I have failed.”
I will take this opportunity to agree with Messrs. Daye and VanAuken when they said, “Advertising at GM is not broken. Marketing is.” I don’t care how many great ads GM puts out in the next year, it will not compel me to buy one of their cars. They think their cars are great; I have no affinity for them. Even people who drive them are having a hard time believing in them, like Michael Moore, who was born, raised and still lives in Flint, Michigan.
If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, it’s a duck. No shiny, flashy TV commercial (remember those?) or full-color print ad in the newspaper (remember that?) is going to sway me. So, let me be one in a long line to say, you have already failed, Mr. Lutz. Can I get you another glass of that kool-aid you’ve been drinking since 1963?
The really sad part is that he’s also part of long line of folks who don’t understand that marketing is strategy. It is born out of branding that takes an honest, 37,000 foot view of whatever the company’s “one thing” is and finds its unique place to make a difference to its customers. And because sales people are put into marketing roles, and product development chairmen are made image czars, marketing is relegated to the tagline/logo/pretty picture ad space, and never seen as critical or earns its rightful place at the table. We are the first to go (yours truly), and if we do get to the top job in our world of Chief Marketing Officer, we’re the ones with the shortest tenures (average 22 months).
Marketing is not a mystery, but done right, it is powerful and will move the needle for you, whatever that is. It is both science and art (not the pretty picture kind) and deserves a prominent spot in every company.
I’m a marketer. What do you do?
© Copyright 2009 Theresa Moretti. All rights reserved.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Theresa, this is brilliant. As a fellow marketer this so resonates with me. The definition of marketing as the synthesis of skills, process and toolbox makes the concept accessible to even total lay people.
You should turn this into a You Tube video to get the long overdue exposure this topic and our contribution deserve.
Thank you!