Bring Love Back [originally called Bhala Meri Kameez...Kaise?]

I returned to Mumbai in February this year, after a little over two years in Singapore. Taking advantage of the little distance that two years created, I met and spoke to many senior marketing practitioners purposefully in these nine months, to get their perspective on where marketing in India is headed. My learning has been interesting. A lot of what marketing people told me helps keep me excited about marketing as a discipline. Perhaps more importantly, many things I heard, about how companies practice marketing today and how their agencies guide them, makes me very anxious about marketing and communications. So when Brand Equity asked me to write a piece, I thought of sharing some of these anxieties. Disclaimer: I use the phrase marketing practitioner in the broad sense, it includes clients, ad agencies, media companies, research companies, direct marketing agencies, event companies and others.

VICTIMS OF FASHION?

Marketing seems to be suffering from a certain faddishness. Many things appear to be done out of a need to talk about them, rather than to achieve true marketing goals. Marketing people talk about accountability, engagement , digital media, social tools, innovation, ROI with a proficiency rarely seen before; yet brand managers seem not be aware of the difference between a product and a brand. I asked a client servicing manager to explain what she really meant by consumer engagement and I heard the longest pause I have ever heard. One time, I asked a marketing manager what was important to her company and I heard “efficiency, effectiveness and impact.” I am still wondering what she left out.

Another day, I heard a young brand manager talk a lot about her commitment to digital media and how excited she was about its possibilities, and then told me she is investing an amount on digital marketing that worked out to less than a per cent of her budget. Now, I am aware that a percentage allocation is not the only way to measure commitment to digital, but less than a per cent somehow does not fit.

MARKETING OR TACTICS?

In the recent past, many people appear very excited to discuss the ‘media roadblock’ as a marketing strategy. Now, as any smart marketing professional can tell you, a roadblock is as much strategy as giving a spoon free with a bucket is. What I find alarming is what kind of things get discussed as ‘strategy’ . Is ‘clutter breaking’ a strategy ? There is some merit in doing what has never been done before in a category or in the country. But should that be called strategy? What about ‘let’s do some innovation’ ? No wonder media owners are beginning to hate the word ‘innovation’ . One of them told me he has never faced a more abused term in English.

A MISDIRECTED OBSESSION

Don’t get me wrong, ROI is an excellent concept. It’s just that I get worried, when we use it loosely and conveniently. I ask marketing folks to define ‘returns’ and many give half a dozen definitions in the same sentence. So what do they do when it is difficult to define the goal or when there isn’t a dependable measurement system in place or where the relationship between input and outcome is a bit complex? They try to minimize the denominator — the so called investment. Many marketing professionals talk about marketing as an investment, then they try to squeeze the media owner dry when negotiating a deal.

INPUTS FASCINATION

In fact, rarely have I seen brand and marketing people get as excited about deal making, as now. It is indeed true that effective leveraging of media owner assets can help drive the brand’s business goals, so it is not that bad a thing if a brand manager takes an interest in engaging the media owner in a positive conversation . But deal making seems to go beyond that. It seems to be so enjoyable a process, that somehow the brand manager thinks is central to their job. So whose job is it to understand the customer and manage the brand?

BIGGER? SO WHAT?

Impact is a nice word for cocktail conversations. So whether it is relevant to customers or not, doing things bigger and louder seems to appeal to marketing and advertising folks a lot. It’s almost as if customers [in our company, we are reducing using the word ‘consumer’ ] are being presented with share of voice [SOV] reports every month and they decide to buy the highest SOV brands or services. Very few marketing people seem to be aware of the path to purchase their customers follow, real insights into what motivates or stymies customer behavior, the role of peer influence on brand choice or the relative role of a spike-n-stunt marketing plan versus a long tail plan, in influencing behavior. There seems to be a great deal of emphasis on dealing with fragmentation by creating noise, quite a wasteful approach really.

I am beginning to think that the biggest challenge to marketing is that too many people think they have learnt everything there is to learn about it. I feel we need to bring the humility back, follow the consumer calendar, focus on the customer rather than our rivals, and understand consumers as human beings and not as owners of wallets alone.

A client told me the other day how inspired he is by his eleven year old son’s enthusiasm about all things digital, and how that is prodding him to invest serious budgets in digital marketing . That’s good marketing to me, understanding simple human behavior and using that learning in marketing.

BRING BACK THE LOVE

Many of us took to marketing as a career for the romance of it. Today when I visit business schools, I don’t see that marketing has the romantic appeal for tomorrow’s managers.

I feel we need to bring the romance back. Marketing is more than just someone’s ego.

[Published in Brand Equity, The Economic Times on Oct 28/2009]

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