Why isn’t marketing loved? By David Wethey

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This month David Wethey, founder AAI, discusses why marketing isn’t loved.

You would think that a profession dedicated to creating affection for inanimate objects like brands would know a thing or two about making itself loved, and its leading lights adored.

But marketing isn’t up there in the popularity charts with the stars of entertainment and sports. It isn’t admired in the same way as pioneers and explorers. Outside its own world, it doesn’t even earn many marks for cleverness and ingenuity.

Where did marketing go wrong?  And should it matter to us that marketers are not heroes?

I came into the orbit of marketing when I left university in 1965. Three years as a Nielsen presenter gave me a taste for being more than a semi-empowered weather forecaster. I came to London and joined a fantastic creative agency with the prosaic name of Pritchard Wood & Partners. Fleetwood Pritchard and Sinclair Wood were long gone, but Stanley Pollitt had just invented planning. Creative legends like John Webster and the enigmatic Gabe Massimi were turning the insights it yielded into amazing campaigns, which were sold to clients by account men like Martin Boase and the departing Frank Lowe (whose shoes I was optimistically hired to fill). We didn’t wait for client briefs. We took the initiative all the time.

I was proud to be part of an agency which gave the world the Smash Martians, the Range Rover (the very first Chelsea Tractor), and the Laughing Man, luxuriating in having the National Provincial Bank pay all his bills in painless instalments.

Behind these brands and many others I was to work on during a 20 year agency career in the UK, Europe and Asia, there were Marketing Directors – shrewd business men and women, who combined commercial nous with creative judgement. Marketing was the magic potion that turned innovation into sales, and advertising ideas into brand value. The young stars in marketing departments were like traders or venture capitalists today – the very brightest brains with style as well as stamina.

For some reason, and I don’t know why, marketing seems to have progressively lost its corps d’elite status as the 70’s gave way to the 80’s and so on till the present day. It is particularly puzzling when you consider all the tools that modern marketers have at their finger tips.

To fast forward to December 2011, Mhairi McEwan of Brand Learning (a consulting firm dedicated to helping companies improve their marketing) has just written a letter to Marketing Week, in the following terms: “The challenge for marketers is to generate and apply breakthrough insight as the inspiration for innovative consumer propositions and to engage and align the rest of the organisation in delivering these.” She was responding to Sir Martin’s Sorrell’s statement that marketers are uniquely positioned to help companies cope with tough time ahead.

No one can argue with Mhairi’s analysis of what marketers have to do. I also believe Sir Martin is completely right about the contribution marketers can make. In my last blog post I argued that marketing’s ability to identify problems and solve them is a crucial skill that is needed now, more than ever.

But none of this of itself is going to make marketing loved or give marketers hero status. That is going to need not just technology and rational benefits, but also the common touch:

  • We admire success, but also modesty
  • We appreciate good communications, but also the readiness to listen
  • We are swayed by glamour, but also by niceness
  • We want innovation, but also to know that it will work
  • We expect commercialism from a company, but also look to it to have a social conscience
  • Cleverness is great, but so much better if it makes our lives easier

Marketing, like so many specialist disciplines, has adopted a jargon of its own. It is half way between its military roots (objectives, strategies, campaigns), and popular psychology (consumers, engagement, benefits). To be loved and understood it has to discard the jargon. Good doctors and health workers know this. Conditions and symptoms have to be explained in everyday language.

We use the term ‘marketing communications’ as an aggregator for advertising, digital, promotions, direct, PR etc. I think we need to recognise that marketing needs to develop a method of communication, specifically designed to handle the spectrum of human needs. In this era of consumer conversations, marketing has to learn to adopt a more winning tone of voice. The priorities must be:

  • To listen
  • To apologise when it is needed
  • To promise to do better
  • To claim credit in a good way
  • To be friendly
  • To be helpful
  • To explain

Marketing is not just another word for selling. It is about finding out what people want, and then offering it to them. I believe that is the route to being liked. Who knows? A few years of that, and the liking could turn to love.

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Posted: December 20th, 2011 | Author: Leah.Latimer | Filed under: Makes You Think | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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