Another Over-Sensationalized Headline

It is not unusual to see someone claiming the death of some aspect of marketing. There is an entire industry within the business world devoted to buzz words and bandwagons. Claiming the old is dead is a great way to inspire a sense of urgency for the new and it certainly gets our attention. I guess that is the point of a headline. More often than not the “old” is not really dead we just add new tools to the marketing tool box – but that’s another topic.

It was a little surprising to see Bill Lee’s claim on Harvard Business Review Blog that “Marketing Is Dead.” Not direct mail, not television advertising but all of marketing. Wow! That’s quite a claim. But on further inspection you find that it really is just an over-sensationalized headline.

Nowhere in his article does he address the first three of the four P’s – Product, Price and Place. Whew! At least three quarters of marketing is still alive. But what about Promotion? It seems to us there will always be a place for effectively communicating what you offer to your customers. That is the heart of promotion. Manipulation and propaganda have always been difficult and expensive strategies. They are even more difficult in the digital/social age where information is so readily accessible. In that respect Mr. Lee has a point. But propaganda is not the only kind of promotion or the only aspect of marketing.

Let’s take the oft maligned area of “branding” to further illustrate. It is portrayed in the article as out of favor with CEO’s in the stat drawn from the Fournaise Marketing Group study saying “77% [of CEO’s] have had it with all the talk about brand equity that can’t be linked to actual firm equity or any other recognized financial metric.” Anyone paying any attention will realize there is no shortage of experts advocating the need for a strong brand. Even individuals are encouraged to have a personal brand in the social space. It seems that the fatigue with branding comes from a narrow understanding of it.

Branding is more than getting people to recognize your logo. Branding is about clearly articulating to your customers, through everything your do, the unique value that you provide to them. If you parse that statement carefully we think you’ll find that branding is and will continue to be very much alive.