Bad Marketing: What Were We thinking?

Best selling author and marketing guru, Seth Godin posted today, More people are doing marketing badly.... and it's very timely given my experience with the highly popular social media twirl and the emerging online video world.

Seth writes:

"More people are doing marketing badly...than any other profession I can imagine. What an opportunity...

If we were building bridges this badly, the safety of our nation would be in doubt.

The local sub shop makes a fine sub, but has a dumb name, a typo in their sign, no attention paid to customer service and on and on. Same for the big hospital down the street and the politician you wish would get a clue.





There are three reasons for this:

1. Everyone is a marketer, so there's a lot more of it being done.

2. Most people who do marketing are actually good at doing something else (like making subs) and they're merely making this up as they go along.

3. There's no standards manual, not easy way to check your work. Without a rule book, it's hard to follow the rules. (For the innovators and creators out there, this is great news, of course.)

The cure? Noticing. Notice what is working in the real world and try to figure out why. Apply it to your work. Repeat.

Learn to see, to discern the difference between good and bad, between useful and merely comfortable.

And after you learn, speak up. Noticing doesn't work if you don't care and if you don't take action."

Amen.

The limiting factor to the opportunity part of his observation lies with logos, naming projects, brochures, marketing campaigns, and even websites having become like sub sandwiches - cheap and and easy.  Nothing original about the next one.

There is little accountability for whether anything is working, whether your guys are winning, donations are increasing, conferences break even or even make a few bucks.

But it's cheap or is it?  Loss revenues, decline in donations, empty seats at conferences, rejection at the polls are, in part, marketing measurements. Which part? How big a part?  It depends.

Or Do It Ourselves?

One thing I have learned over the years is marketing has its limitations. It can't wake the dead nor be successful with poor timing, an ill-formed product, a crappy service, or a company with a bad rep and/or jerks and crooks for leaders, although there have been way too many exceptions lately for all of the above except for two -waking the dead and poor timing.

It's not just about the logo, the snappy name or title, the campaign, the Website - what you see on the outside - but what's on the inside. The timing, due diligence, research, strategy, the message, the THINKING coupled with the product, service, and reputation of the client that drive the creative process. The thinking has names like positioning and branding with tangible "deliverables" such as a unique positioning statement (UPS), messaging platform, mission/vision statements, objectives, competitive analysis, and target market description.

What were they thinking? is a reasonable question to ask when you have a negative reaction to an ad but when you see disappointing results, it's what were we thinking?

Ruth Ann Barrett, Digital Savvy blog post, July 18, 2013.

P.S. One of my favorite songs is Can't Buy Me Love, circa 1964 by the Beatles.  Give a listen. It's not just about being cheap or the results, but partnering and relationships with clients, customers, and citizens - love. 

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