Know-How Exchange : Career/Training

What you learned in university was learned in the way that universities can teach. My dad was a professor, and our many discussions usually led to me being frustrated and him not having changed his stance. Universities are all about exactness, and you cannot have exactness without defining it.

The problem with marketing is that, like biology, it is not an exact science. No two butterflies are the same. The university wants to take the Linnaean approach and keep it in a drawer with a pin through it. Only - is it then a butterfly? It looks like a butterfly, you can describe it's outward features. Only it no longer behaves like a butterfly. The university approach needs fixed definitions and as witnessed by statistics, often has problems tying things down.

What you learned at university is correct to a degree. That degree being those elements of marketing that are fixed, tangible and evidence based. The problem for marketers is that marketing is fluid, vague and only leaves footsteps. Marketing is all about who makes those footsteps, and why they made them. In many respects the footsteps are irrelevant - the four Ps attest to this. By the time someone makes a decision at this coarse level, they have already made many decisions - which in the way of things are done so frequently that they are now subconscious.

Like the army scouts they cannot see where they are going. The Indian tracker sees the spoor and knows pretty well what made it, why it made it and where it is now. The scouts are at a loss as to how he does it. The Indian is at a loss as to why they cannot. Which is the marketer's problem. Only a few of them - like me - have the insight to imagine the customer that leaves the trails of data across the spreadsheet. This sort of insight can turn around businesses at corporate level - my problem being that they aren't going to listen to a fifty-something frump whose means of transport is a tatty bicycle!

Those who do are pretty sensible. They are also rich.

If this has spoken to you at all, go and investigate what Perry Marshall calls "Right Angle Marketing" (this is real outside-the-box thinking). Study Howie Jacobson's Avatars (a different approach to the same problem). If you find it sets you on fire, work hard at it, and set up as a consultant.

Now tell me if your colleagues in marketing understand marketing? Let alone those who aren't in your department!

M

For most companies, it comes down to ROI. Promotion is the easiest one to measure. The others Ps require research, and while they may have been analyzed earlier in the development process, they may have simply been "assumed" (since they are obvious, or dictated by the obvious competition). The other Ps can take a basic offering and turn it into a product line or perhaps a number of specific niche offerings that a straight promotion model wouldn't be able to do (alone).

Edmund Jerome McCarthy came up with the 4Ps in 1960.

As well-respected as his opinion is (or has been), it's my contention that, as a concept, the 4Ps approach marketing ... er ... ass backwards: from the point of view of management; from the point of view of the seller and mostly, from the point of view of the WHAT of the thing being marketed, not from the point of view of the WHY behind the need for the product, OR, more to the point, from the point of view of the reasoning behind a buyer's decision making process.

Academically, marketing is presented as a business-based fiscal exchange process in which goods and services are presented in exchange for a financial return. This (albeit rather simplistic model on my part) is STILL anchored to the SAME thinking that gave birth to the Industrial Revolution.

The world has changed. Empires have risen and fallen. Demands, buying habits, and priorities have shifted, and people's perceptions of the power they have as a market shifting force are now a long way indeed from the hill on which the colors of the 4Ps were first raised 53 years ago.

Although McCarthy's model may have had clout in the 1960s and 1970s, and although academics cling to the 4Ps as if they are some kind of intellectual cross between a life jacket and the crown jewels, the effectiveness, relevance, and applicational validity of the 4Ps has less and less of an impact in today's market places and niches.

And when the 4Ps are examined really closely and when they're weighed against chaotic and quantum shifts in desire on the parts of buyers, and in the availability today of choices and solutions to problems, the 4Ps are less and less effective as marketing anchors, and may now very well be the wrong solutions to the wrong questions.

McCarthy's book is in its 17th edition. Why? Why has the model not been challenged or replaced in academic circles? Why are students still being taught about the 4Ps 53 years after the concept was first introduced? Because in academia, you don't rock the boat: you peddle the same old thinking, year in year out, to each new generation of students, all of whom then go out into the world where they in turn, peddle the same message because that's how it's been for all these years.

Education is viral, or at least, it ought to be. Sadly, most academics doing the teaching keep reaching for the same old books, they keep peddling the same old subjects, and they stamp out any notion of original thinking that challenges the norm, or that proposes some new way of looking at the world. In 1992 I heard of two professors who BOASTED that they'd been teaching the same material for 25 years. One of them said he hadn't read a new textbook in TWO DECADES!

And yet, we, as a society, encourage (and even reward!) "schooling" that interferes with the education of our younger generations. As a society, our schools and colleges are making us
lazier, dumber, and mentally flabby. And then we wonder why the United States lags so far
behind in world education rankings (17th place), according to Pearson https://thelearningcurve.pearson.com/

Promotion is not marketing: it's a BS, bland, vanilla, cop-out that trots out name, rank, and serial number sales messages, which is why 99 percent of all television advertising is mind numbing crap that does little to drive sales. Promotion might create awareness, but what it does not do is offer solid benefits to real world problems.

When the obtained value of having one's problem solved and solved well outweighs the cost paid the notion of "price" as a determining factor withers.

With access to world destinations and global providers that will ship to your door "place" has less relevance as a determining factor in the "decision to buy" process than it did in 1960.

People don't buy "products" they buy the solution, quality, or trait that their ownership or use of the product offers, or they buy to obtain the status that the item's ownership places upon them or that it conveys upon them as a perceptional vehicle os social positioning.

People buy diamonds, Rolex watches, and Italian sports cars to impress other people.

When the 4Ps were introduced in 1960 a series of radical shifts were beginning to take place in the world of advertising through the efforts of David Ogilvy and Bill Bernbach, followed in the 1980s by Pat Fallon, Jay Chiat, John Hegarty and others. Over the last 15 years or so advertising has lost its way, the creative work is less and less about presenting smart, relevant, memorable solutions to vexing problems, and now, we're seeing more of a shift towards marketing that speaks to the good of the community over profit.

To answer your questions: Was what you learned at university incorrect? Yes. I believe so because you were being taught (in all likelihood) by professors with little real world market experience, OR by professors who believed (wrongly) that they had all the answers simply by dint of them being professors. Remember, earning a Ph. D is all about learning more and more about less and less! This thinking process isolates people from new thinking and it pits peers against each other so that they can slug it out in the boxing ring of "I'm smarter than you are!"

To answer the second part of your question: do the people in the workplace not understand what marketing involves? No, they don't understand it because they're looking for the wrong answers in the wrong places. Because of this, they're offering the wrong messages to people who, on the whole have their ears cocked for the answer or the story that THEY'RE looking to listen to and to hear, not simply the story that the marketer WANTS them to hear.

The problem with education is that it sometimes sets up models of the way the world WILL be, not as it IS. According to the laws of physics and aeronautics, the bumblebee ought to be incapable
of flight. And yet bumblebees have been merrily bobbing around the skies for millions of years.

According to most university professors of marketing, no doubt it's unthinkable for them that someone with no MBA, no Masters, and no graduate schooling in marketing could become a top contributor on the Internet's leading forum on marketing. And yet here I am.

If you pick and buy the top 10 best selling books on marketing on Amazon.com and if you read them, re-read them, take notes on what you read, and then apply your new found knowledge and thinking to your role as a marketer, it's my contention that within 6 months you will have learned
and will understand more useful, applicable marketing information than most graduate and MBA students entering the workforce in the next 3 years will have absorbed throughout their studies.

Good luck to you.

Thank you, all, for your very interesting views.

My reply is in response to mgoodman's post.

Your marketing experiences in the workplace seem to be no different from your understanding of marketing theory.

Have you not worked in companies where the marketing departments are involved exclusively in promotional work, while other areas of marketing, such as product buying, product pricing, market analysis etc, are performed by other departments?

In my second job, as an example, the marketing team, of which I was a part, was involved in promotional work - developing marketing campaigns (using creative developed by the advertising agency to create TV and radio advertising, mailers, and EDMs). However, the product ordering, issuing of stock to the company's retail stores, product analysis and selection of products to go in mailers were all done by the merchandising team.

Perhaps this just means the two companies in which I have worked a large enough to split these functions into separate departments: Promotion is in the marketing department while Place, Product and Price are in the merchandizing department...

If this is in fact trrue, the two companies in which I have worked are not alone. When I search for 'marketing' on job search websites, most of the listings are promotional/communication orientated.

What should I be searching for to find jobs involved in working with the other 3 Ps?

Thanks

Maybe I've just been lucky. The companies for which I've worked as a marketing manager (director or VP) all viewed marketing from a broad perspective and expected me to take that holistic approach. (And they were all managed at high levels by former P&G execs or folks with similar backgrounds.)

As a consultant, I've been able to pick my clients. When I am approached by a company that obviously doesn't get it, I make sure I'm working for someone high enough in the organization so that they'll understand that there's more to Marketing than promotion or marketing communication. If that doesn't work, I have been known to pass on the assignment ... because I always want to deliver solutions that the client will appreciate, and often that means addressing an issue that goes beyond the limited view of marketing.

On a few occasions, I've spent a considerable amount of time demonstrating to a CEO the value of approaching marketing from a high-level perspective. These occasions were admittedly gambles, but they always worked out OK, so my strategy "worked."

I'm not sure what to suggest to you. Perhaps "Brand Management" will lead you to the kind of job you want. Or maybe you have to start with the limited-scope job, and just demonstrate how you can add value by taking on more than your official responsibility.

And as for Pricing (specifically), I almost always meet with the CFO at a client company and make sure I know how they measure and track success. I even try to enlist the CFO in an assessment of the pricing strategy, so I have built-in support when I present my recommendations (to the Marketing folks). (I do a similar thing when I'm dealing with Product Development; the R&D folks are usually excited to be included in the assessment of consumer attitudes, needs and values.)