What Replaces Marketing
During the last few
months, I’ve been teaching and advising some students over at Stanford
University on Entrepreneurial marketing (in a class taught by Chuck Eesley).
My key thesis is that Marketing is Dead. In many ways, old news. And, the
more helpful and less theatrical lesson: Marketing in the 21st
century is always about the product and the purpose it serves.
You can no longer expect
to have a so-so or weak product and then marketing your way to winning the
market. For example, a current public situation: RIM/
Blackberry lost its ability to build devices that the perceptive business or
consumer audience wanted, but then spent tons of money on advertising. What
would have worked 10 years ago, doesn’t work anymore.
So today, you have to
start with killer products that serve real needs. Evernote, Fast Company, and General Mills are all companies that make
great products. But they do something else that causes them to be known: they
have a purpose that is bigger than them. Evernote allows their users to obsess
about being informed, information-connected, and productive. Fast Company
engages the hearts and minds of the pioneer. General Mills applied their efforts
to eating
better. Each of those is bigger than what each actually sells in an app, a
magazine, or a cereal, respectively.
So, what replaces
marketing is shared purpose. Through it, you have the basis on which to engage
in a community. You no longer talk at people; you co-create with
people. I’ve already shared why this is a key norm in the social
era.
To make this real, let’s talk about five ways to do that:
- Have a bigger goal. Have
a reason to care that reaches beyond you / your product / your company. The
secret is that it’s something people actually care about outside your
organization – something they are already pursuing, and you happen to also
be pursuing it. You then get to band together to go after common goal. All the
effort is then about participating in a dialogue with fellow travelers.
The better you are at serving the goal, the more the fellow travelers turn to
you when they need to buy something and the more trust they have in your
brand.
- Participate in conventions
already in play. All of us know that colds spread through a
very common convention, the handshake. One sneeze in a room full of 1000 people
can then infect people all-day, and all-week long. (Yeah.) Long before foodspotting, people would take pictures
of their food, thus allowing there to be a site where that becomes publicly
shared, and thus create more meaning to restaurant menus. If friends today
solicit fashion advice via email (private forums), asking them to be public
about that advice might not work. What is the convention or habit of the people
you want to engage with? How can you take become a part of it?
- Focus on pleasure.
People share that which they enjoy. Hence, the funny cat videos that are shared
around the web more so than Economist articles or policy documents. Or using the
virus metaphor, an overwhelming number of viruses are transmitted sexually, or
by taking drugs that increase pleasure. On a practical level, just visit a local
Apple retail store and you see this same push on pleasure. It’s pretty, and
clean, and lets you immediately start playing. All the while, no one focuses on
getting you buy anything. It’s pleasure personified. I can’t go downtown without
my son wanting to go into the Apple store to check out the latest apps. People
aren’t just there to buy products. They come to share their passion and interact
with other enthusiasts. While other retailers struggle, Apple can barely keep up
with the demand. Why? Because it’s fun. Hence
my advice to Best Buy recently – become social thru Pinterest as the new reason for people to come in and check
out home entertainment or fitness equipment because all of a sudden you become a
magnet for what’s hot. You can accomplish your purpose and have
fun. So back to you: What’s the part of your purpose that is entirely about
pleasure? Tap into it.
- Go to the tribe.
Just like viruses need people to spread; to have shared purpose, go to
where the people are. Enclosed spaces such as hotel conference rooms and
airplanes are wonderfully efficient in spreading the flu (The TED conference has something participants affectionately call
the TEDCold.) But so are populations of people who care about what you care
about. That’s why I actually think that tradeshows will continue on, in
interesting formats and conferences matter more so than ever before. In the end,
each of us needs to be infected by new ideas, and to find people in our tribes
that care about we each care about. So, if you are about fashion, you need to
find a way to weave yourself into places people care about fashion, already
shop, and share – so that you become involved (and maybe even central) to the
conversation already going on. Then be infectious with your ideas and purpose,
one person at a time. Never talk mass, talk personal.
- Manifest the purpose
fully. Whatever it is that you decide your shared purpose is, don’t do
it half-heartedly. Whatever it is – complete the picture. One of the companies I
advise is a start-up focusing on telling the story of indie fashion houses, so
I’ve encouraged them to tell the full story. Don’t just have pictures,
have video. Have a person wearing it. Have the designer talking about why they
made it the way they did. Have the curator tell how they might style it on a
person. In other words, complete the story that becomes their promise of “story”
in its full manifestation. One of the reasons that Fast Company is an
amazing brand is that their writers embody this pursuit and passion for
entrepreneurship, and they themselves are the pioneers of what’s next. They
embody it in their events, and who they feature, and even in their advertising
/sponsorship choices. That’s integrity, and in doing so …even the advertising is
part of the purpose of the magazine. What is the manifestationo of your purpose
in its full (not half-hearted) format? Do that.
Purpose. It’s the new marketing.
(And before you all pile
up on me that I’m not reflecting marketing fully… please remember that I started my career in the
analytic side of marketing (research, pricing). I have a deep love and
appreciation of the different roles of product pricing, go-to-market, competitive
differentiation, etc that make up the marketing value chain. I’m not discounting
the strategic parts of making sure there’s a business model, but I’m focusing on
the part that the vast majority of people think of as “marketing”. You and I
might know this is more about promotions than the full range of marketing but
most people don’t recognize this distinction.)
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