The Act of Marketing

Many of you will hear or might have heard the expression: 'Let's do a marketing act on this' and it could be a piece of collateral or an event or a product launch. I cringe to the depths of my marketing soul, when someone says that after having decided on what is being referred to. The act of marketing is best executed from the beginning and not after the fact. Why do I say that? Planning for the lamest piece of collateral involves thinking about where and when it will be used, who we want to send it to, what will make them read it, and what behavior we want to elicit after they read it - all this before a single word is written. Or at least that is what an act of marketing is for me.

The act of marketing is about infusing value into every organizational activity that is trying to address the needs of the customer. Why the word 'infuse'? The dictionary meaning is: 'to introduce'; 'to instill'; 'cause to penetrate'. And that is what we try to do - introduce and instill value into everything we do. In the absence of value, the customer has no reason to engage with you. This ties back to our earlier definition of marketing of it touching every facet of the organization and animating it from creation to delivery of product or service, and capture of value.

Let me quote one of my favorite examples. In Bombay, near nearly every local train counter which issues ID cards, stands a young entrepreneur with a pair of scissors, a bottle of glue and a two pocket (one for the ID card and the other for the monthly train pass) plastic wallet. And the reason - the space for the photograph on the ID card is smaller than any standard photo size, for which you need a pair of scissors. The Indian Railways does not provide glue and therefore the glue stick. And the young entrepreneur charges you the price of the plastic wallet. What did you just buy? The time and cost value of the additional trip you saved, the money you saved for that day's train ticket or just being frustrated at the thoughtlessness of the railway authorities. And you weren't even thinking of buying a plastic wallet which had its own utility. And that is a marketing act par excellence!!

(It is also an example of business model innovation where the product or service that is being sold is different from what is actually being bought by the customer and we will talk about it in a later post. Some may argue that it is just a product being sold with services wrapped around it, but the more nuanced thinking throws up more market opportunities in general).