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).

Reclaiming the essence of Marketing

A blog dedicated to helping aspiring marketers understand the nuances, must begin its first post on defining marketing. I could have chosen the title of this post as simply 'Marketing Definition', but I feel that that over the years marketing has been diluted both by specialization driven by the business schools and organizational structures, and relegated many a times to a secondary role within companies. This is especially true in companies that primarily sell to other businesses (B2B), as against individual consumers.

So what is marketing in its essence, you ask?
Marketing is an integrative thought process that animates the organization from creation to delivery of products and/or services, and determines how best to capture their value from consumers who accept them as meeting their needs over that of competing offerings.
I hope I haven't scared you away :) Let me explain the rationale for the choice of the elements in the definition.

• Integrative thought process: First and foremost, it is essential that we put 'thinking' back into marketing. Because that is what it is - thinking through the process of value creation - concept to delivery. Secondly, marketing by its very nature integrates all that the company needs to do or does (irrespective of function) into a promise that the consumer responds to favorably with his wallet.
• Animates from creation to delivery: Just as life animates our body, marketing brings purpose and life to every facet of the organization through active collaboration. For example, with engineering on product design; with manufacturing on cost, quantity and quality; with finance on pricing, profitability and absolute profit; with sales on customer needs and new product introduction.
• accept them as meeting their needs: Too many marketers lose sight of the qualifier - as accepted by the consumer. The most sophisticated market research and psychographics would make no headway, if the consumer is unwilling to accept it as fulfilling his need.
• Over competing offerings: You would be surprised how often businesses forget this very important part - you just have to be better than those competitors (including the 'status quo', the greatest competitor).

Over the life of this blog, this practioner hopes to go deeper into the practice of marketing as embodied in this definition. And in that journey, he hopes to rediscover some of the joys that first drew him to this profession.

And that concludes the first lesson in my new avatar as a marketing educator. Till next time...ciao.