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Friday, October 21, 2005
Talking marketing 
| | I think we can agree that comparatively few companies have made any sort of investment in opening and continuing meaningful dialogue with their customers online. We've got the broadcast model to thank for that. As you know, when you¹re holding a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. When folks are out there praising or panning a product or brand, corporations tend to look at the problem as a mass marketing problem. In reality, most of the panning can be dealt with effectively by empowering somebody to join the conversation, actually listen, and take the feedback to the company for incorporation. Most of the praise can be greatly amplified in the same way. |
| | He then outlines the depatment and details the duties of three executive-level positions. Then he concludes, |
| | ...nothing would make me happier than to see Corporate America start marching down the path toward meaningful participation in distributed conversations. I think the first step has already happened blogs and citizen publishing are already on the radar screens of corporations that engage in mass marketing. Most of them see it as a nail to mass marketing¹s hammer, but that may change with all the work folks are doing in this space to make sure corporations see these emerging media through the lens of the 'markets are conversations' model. |
| | So let¹s hear it, folks. Would it work? If not, what would you do to improve it? If so, who would be the first to adopt this model and move forward with it? |
| | This is a provocative proposition. What Tom's talking about here is going way beyond the rogue Scoble, or even the hundreds (thousands?) inside companies like Microsoft and Sun. We're talking here about changing marketing's function (or a large part of it) from messaging to conversation. |
| | The problem for conversational marketing is largely political. Here's how I put it in this post, back in early 2001: |
| | Many years ago, when I was making a good living as a marketing consultant, my wife and I were talking about the differences between marketing and sales, and the antipathy that often exists within companies between marketing and sales organizations. As a veteran manufacturer and retailer — working both ends of the Value Chain — my wife understood sales, but confessed to mystification about marketing. I explained "strategy" and "positioning" and how marketing is all about "finding" and "influencing" what customers want. After awhile we talked about the difference between sales and marketing roles within companies. Marketing is "strategic," I said, while sales is "tactical." |
| | "Why doesn't Marketing talk directly to customers?" she asked. |
| | "Because that's what Sales does." |
| | "Then I'll tell you what the difference is." |
| | "Sales is real. Marketing is bullshit." |
| | It stung, but she was right. |
| | So was Jakob when he told me Cluetrain's authors had defected from marketing ‹ had crossed over to join markets in their Net-enabled revolt against marketing. |
| | I don't want to slam the ideals of marketing. Theodore Levitt was right on when he said the job of marketing is "to give the customer what he wants, no matter what." The problem is, that's not what marketing is usually paid to do. Marketers are in the influence business. Marketing's customers aren't consumers. They're companies that want to influence consumers. |
| | Those last companies are intermediaries: ad agencies, PR firms, TV and radio stations, magazines... and, of course, online media too. |
| | Marketing doesn't touch the customer directly. That's Sales' job. As I've also said before, there's a reason most Sales & Marketing directors or VPs come from Sales and not Marketing. Sales has more political power in companies. And it's not just because they're where the money comes from. It's because they actually touch the customer. Even if their job is hustling, they are in converstion with the customer. So, when you talk about "conversational marketing", Sales says they're doing that already. Of course, they're not. Most of the market's conversation takes place outside the buy/sell context. But still, the bottom-liners will say, that's where it counts. |
| | What marketing has going for it is intelligence, in the military sense of the word. It's their job to know stuff that Sales doesn't. When you look at the research tools that are available through, say, blog search engines, there's a lot of stuff Marketing can bring to the corner office on the top floor that Sales can't. Or won't, because it's too general, too far from Sales' immediate concerns. |
| | So, back to Tom's questions. What will it take? Research and intelligence, more than engagement alone. The companies, or the marketing departments within companies, that approach online dialog in a fully informed — as well as informative — way, will win the political battles they need to fight, in order to build out the fully conversational marketing department. Or the new Conversation Department. |
Better scene than herd
| | I have no idea why passengers flying over landscapes as dramatic and fabulous as those of the American West (or, say, of Greenland) would rather watch yet another dumb movie with deleted expletives on a bad screen with bad sound through bad headphones, than look out the window at scenery that most generations of ancestors would have given limbs to see. |
| | Well, I do have an idea; but it still disappoints me. |
| | Anyway, my latest photoset on Flickr was shot from a windowseat near the back of a United 757 en route from New York to San Francisco last week. |
| | On the outbound I got better shots of Fall colors heading into Denver a week or so earlier. Can't wait to ski there. Never have skied Colorado. Maybe this Winter. I've seen some pretty good ski areas there already. |
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