Marketing Technology Letter
When companies really focus
on customers they have to
change the way they organise
marketing. Old-style marketing
is disappearing to leave room to
multidisciplinary teams integrat-
ing multiple functions and the
MD or CEO becomes the mar-
keting VP.
Change is inevitable,
except from a vending
machine
Go to www.cluetrain.com
for a provocative look
at the corporate world.
Like the Cheshire cat,
marketing will disappear
with a smile
CONTACT US : IC3 Limited
March 2002 – NO.
Marketing Changes
Marketing is quite difficult to define. So, few people understand what it is. Ask ten
people what marketing means and you’ll get ten different answers with a bias to-
wards the highly visible aspects of consumer marketing. Their answer depends on
their point of view on a very vast domain spanning from high-level objectives in a
corporate strategy to minute details of implementation tactics. Introducing new
breeds of high-technology products in an embryonic market is quite different from
promoting consumer commodities in a mature category. Explaining the benefits of a
revolutionary technology has little to do with designing a new package for grocery
items. Determining the right price for a service is far away from organising a hot line
for customer service.
Many companies also have problems understanding and organising marketing. We all
know by now that change is a ‘constant thing’ in business. Yet, in the last thirty
years, the organisation of the marketing function hasn’t changed very much in many
corporations. This is quite paradoxical given that a key change is the U-turn from
product focus to customer focus.
It is surprising to see how few marketers really understand that marketing is, above
all, about communicating with people. In the past it was mainly communicating to
people. Now, through the Internet, it is increasingly interacting with people. This is
perfectly expressed by the first two theses of The Cluetrain Manifesto :
1. Markets are conversations.
2. Markets consists of human beings, not demographic sectors.
Ask ten marketers how they feel about their job and they’ll describe:
− Frustrations resulting from the persisting ‘silo’ effect. Marketing functions are still
confined to one or two departments (e.g. product marketing and ’marcom’) paral-
lel to sales, distribution, customer service and so on.
− Problems to overcome their colleagues’ resistance to change and internal politics
when trying to implement new marketing technologies and programmes.
− Difficulties to combine mastering information technology with creative talent.
− Stress from requests to deliver sales leads, generate ROI, increase customer life-
time value and reach other corporate metrics.
− Tensions caused by a mix of objective goals and subjective factors.
The quest for customer attention and loyalty, the pursuit of quality in products and
services, and the need to use information technology with proper judgement all re-
quire marketing to change. If a company is really serious about customer ’centricity’
it has to raze the silos, integrate marketing with other functions when appropriate
and make it pervasive. Old-style marketing has to disappear to leave room for teams
of professionals mastering multiple disciplines and turning their mindset away from
corporate politics towards the customer.
At strategic level, the customer orientation imposes upon top management the inte-
gration of marketing as a central part of the corporate strategy. Marketing has to
come out of its ‘ghetto’ and become an enterprise-wide responsibility. The MD or the
CEO becomes the marketing VP.
Several studies show that companies focusing on quality of service to customers are
more profitable than others. In many domains, quality can be objectively measured
through multiple parameters. In marketing, subjectivity is as important if not more
so. Many aspects of human communication cannot be precisely measured. Emotions
cannot be put into equations. So, the leap into pervasive marketing is an act of faith
for companies that swear only by hard numbers. However, statistics will continue to
prove it is the right bet. Marketing can’t stay the same in a world that keeps chang-
ing, can it?
www.IC3marketing.com tel : +44 (0) 20 8339 0709 e-mail : Henri@IC3marketing.com
Copyright  IC3 Limited 2002 – All rights reserved