Is marketing honourable?
January 18, 2012 10:39 AM
Ever wondered what marketing is really all about? When I did my CIM (Chartered Institute of Marketing) Diploma, the first session was dedicated to defining the term. Officially, according to the CIM at the time, marketing was "the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer needs".
Fired up as I was with all the enthusiasm and rebelliousness of youth (I was 27, I think), I took issue with this. Come on. Let's be honest.
That's simply not true.
Marketing is about helping to sell more. It's doing what you need to do in order to make it easier for the sales guys to close the deals. It's greasing the wheels of commerce by creating desire for products, communicating in a certain way that makes more people like your company and your brand.
Isn't it?
Over the following weeks, I was gradually persuaded that I was wrong. In its purest form, marketing is about meeting needs, they told me. To an extent, I understood and came round, albeit reluctantly, to their way of thinking. After all, a market only exists where there is a need on one side and a product/service that meets that need on the other. The process of marketing brings the two together. I can live with that.
But this purist definition still annoys me because we don't live in a perfect world, and such clean definitions don't really work in practice. And I was reminded of this when I visited Starbucks this morning.
We all know that Starbucks is held up as a shining example of the "customer comes first" ethos. If your coffee is slightly imperfect or late, they swiftly give you a voucher for a free cup next time, no questions asked. They allow you to stay in their nice warm store for as long as you want. They give you free wi-fi. They smile and generally look after the customer. They're nice people.
But dig a little deeper and look at the marketing machine behind the smiling barristas, and there is a more brutal commercialism at work.
Free drinks - and benefits galore!
A large sign greeted me on entry at my local Starbucks in Teddington. "Free drinks and benefits galore" it says. Now I already had a Starbucks card, because it meant I got a few perks. A free drink when I bought coffee beans. Free whipped cream. All the important stuff.
So I was keen to find out how my experience of Starbucks was going to improve. But it soon appeared the new scheme put me back to Square One in terms of accumulated loyalty benefits. Not only did I have to buy a million coffees before reaching 'Gold' status, but even then I couldn't get the same benefits. Sorry Sir, we're not doing those any more.
Now I don't have a problem with this. Of course, Starbucks has to turn a profit. And if tweaking the loyalty scheme is the tool they use to improve the success of their business they can and should do it. Reduce the cost by giving less away, boost revenue by making people pay for the whipped cream instead of giving it away as a perk.
But does this count as marketing?
Thinking back to my CIM lecturers, I can't help wondering what they would say. Did Starbucks identify, anticipate and satisfy my need? Or did they take a long hard look at what they needed to do to keep me satisfied enough to keep buying coffee?
Let's not be naïve. Marketing is about meeting needs. But that's only part of the story: it's also about the planning, the comms, the technology and all the other tricks that we can put in place to make the customer comfortable with the idea that your brand is meeting their needs more effectively than the competition. And if this involves a bit of smoke and mirrors in order to create the impression that you're giving something when you're really taking it away, that's OK.
Or is it? Part of me wants to be honourable, ethical and transparent at all times. But part of me wants my role as a marketer to have a real impact, which means not being afraid of commercial realities.
Or maybe the CIM just did a great marketing job on me ...
What do you think? As a marketer, do you represent the customer's interests? Or the brand's? Or do you cheerily start each working day, confident that you are doing both? I'd love to know.
10 Comments
Gifford Morley-Fletcher
Great post JB and great question! At about the same time you were doing your CIM course, I was embarking on a CAM course. Their definition of marketing was slightly different: 'Creating profitable exchange'. It comes to the same thing - I have a need, you have a product that can fulfil that need, so when I buy it I'm happy and you've got some money.
Now to answer your question: in the days BSM (no, not some bizarre sexual practice, but Before Social Media) I think that marketers could always be about the 'next big thing' without worrying about the effect it might have on the previous 'next big thing'. Some may have been disgruntled like you in Starbucks today, but there was no real way of getting all the disgruntled people together to complain. Write a letter, waste a stamp, that was it. Nowadays, however, I think marketers have to bear both the brand's and the customer's interests in mind. Ignore the customer at your peril because he/she now has the power of social media, the ability to voice opinion publically and find others who think the same. I wonder, for instance, if you're the only one to have mentioned this change online? I doubt it, and maybe it's the start of something. If Starbucks are as good as they claim to be about customer service, they will be listening. Let's see.
John Bottom
Hmmm. I wonder if someone from Starbucks might pop by and comment. Although as you point out, this is a wider issue.
Agreed, it is easier to make public one's disappointment when brands do things that you don't like. But I wonder if the marketers responsible would say that they are being true to the idea of "meeting customer needs" in this case. They certainly didn't meet mine, but they came close enough for me not to change coffeeshops...
Suddenly Jamie
John - What an interesting question!
In my perfect world, the customer's interests and the brand's intersect and marketing lives at that point of intersection. The kind of marketing I like to do is built on a mutually beneficial relationship between the customer who needs something and the brand that can provide it. Marketing becomes a conduit through which they can connect, learn more about each other, and - eventually - take things to the next level (sales).
Where the waters get murky for me is in identifying the "need." After all, lots of things (Starbucks coffee, for instance - though many may disagree with me) are not a "need," they are a "want." Often marketing can transform a want into a need in the mind of a consumer. It can also create a need where formerly there wasn't even a want. In that case, marketing's master is obviously the brand.
Personally, when I start each work day I try to find a balance between these two worlds. I have some projects I work on that make me feel like a big-time do-gooder - connecting people to brands and brands to people in a way that makes everyone happy. I have some other projects that leave me feeling like my main stock in trade is smoke and mirrors. Those are not fun for me.
Ultimately, the "honor" of marketing is less about the marketing and more about the person and brand behind it. After all, it's not like marketing has a mind of its own.
Riaz Kanani
Great post - illustrative of real world vs academic thinking I think.
You could argue academically that the additions you talked about fit inside CIM's definition.. of course I'd always prefer something more transparent (and easily understood!) so I tend to agree with your extension.
All that said, using the CIM definition, the aim is still to satisfy - Starbucks it seems failed on that front with you. Were you one of many or one of few - I think we can assume Starbucks thinks the former.
There was an opportunity there, whilst still tweaking for newbies to make you even more loyal to them. They missed it.
John Bottom
Great comments guys. @Jamie You are such a good person that I can hardly believe you too resort to smoke and mirrors, but I guess the bills need paying :-) Like you, I would rather do the work that makes me feel good - and happily much of the time that is possible. Many of the clients who work with us are conscious of both sides of the argument – commercial but ethical – which allows us to keep a reasonable balance.
@Riaz Satisfaction is the main goal, agreed. But I suppose the point is how much do you satisfy the customer? It isn't black and white. People are not either completely satisfied or completely unsatisfied. So marketers can only satisfy as many people as their budget will allow.
This means that a positive way of viewing the marketing role is that we maximise the number of people satisfied and the degree of satisfaction for a given budget. The negative description is that 'satisfaction' is a cover story and of little interest as long as the products keep shifting in the right volume.
Thanks both for adding your thoughts!
Mark Schaefer
This post sets off so many ideas in my head but it ties into a post I am working on about marketing and war.
Presumably if you meet consumer needs the best, you will turn a profit and be successful. And yes new Internet marketers, you must turn a profit.
There are many tactics we can learn from military strategy to help us do that. Intelligence, speed of execution, the element of surprise, maybe even a "secret weapon." These are not terms commonly associated with "meeting the customer needs."
I agree John that an element of execution (all the facets you name above) are part of the mix, part of the definition of what we do.
Yes that is honorable, just as serving in a battle is honorable. But it is not necessarily transparent.
Heather Rubesch
My favorite loyalty programs and the companies I tend to do lots of business with because of their loyalty programs allow customers to "choose" from an option list of benefits that best suit them. I roundly applaud Hilton Hotels for this. They have also routinely given me "extra"
incentives because of my years of loyalty. Keeps me sticky to the brand even when my individual hotel experiences have been marginal at times. As much as I travel I am bound to have the occasionaly marginal moment but they have always responded to this with some kind of action. Another brand that does this is The Limited. A women's clothing company in the US that I am not sure you have in the UK. They offer substantial and flexible benefits to their credit card holders. I am not normally a person who wants to have a bunch of different store cards but they offered my first credit card to buy some suits many years ago right after university graduation and they have been my go to career wear shopping spot ever since. Good marketing ploy to grab us while we are young and keep us loyal with good benefits!
Over time both these brands have tweeked or changed their loyalty programs but I have never felt "cheated" because I am still able to define my options in a way that allows me to maximize my personal experience. Much better than one size fits all!
John Bottom
@Mark Thanks for stopping by. The warlike terminology we use underlines to me that I was right to reject the simplistic idea that marketing is not just about meeting needs (unless, somehow, an army needs confrontation to justify itself?) OK, there is an underlying principle that meeting needs should be a starting point, just as honourable principles are often upheld in war (and are indeed often the causes of war). But once you get past the idea of 'fighting the good fight', no holds are barred and you do what you must to achieve your aim, whether your customer 'needs' it or not.
@Heather Excellent point about the flexibility of benefits. But then the cynic might say that this is the illusion of choice - they would only offer combinations of benefits that suit their commercial context. However, I imagine that the marketers who devised the scheme can honestly say they aim to give the customer what they want, rather than to corral them in a certain direction. Great to see you on the Beyond blog!
Heather Rubesch
I get what you are saying about the "illusion" of choice but since I respect the fact that they realize what might really excite one customer is not at all attractive to another. I feel less like part of a herd and more like they care about my individual wants and needs.
Realistically and rationally as a marketer I know I am not at all special to this corporation but because in both instances I have a fair amount of direct contact with their individual employees it also give them talking points with me. For example I am trying on pants with the Personal Shopper at The Limited and she can say "I see your a loyal customer and because you have our Couture card you get free hemming service on any pair of pants you buy today"
Sorry I don't comment more on your blog. I am a frequent reader but typically on my iPad so harder to comment. I know as a fellow blogger that is no excuse but I find I read probably 20 blogs for every 1 I comment on! I need to be better about it. A new years resolution!
John Bottom
Heather - delighted to see you here and agree firmly with your point on personal service
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