Dogs, barking and what really matters to modern marketers

Dogs, barking and what matters

In Arthur Conan Doyle’s collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, one story stands out: “Silver Blaze”. This short tale - no more than a few pages long - is the origin of the phrase, “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time” (which subsequently inspired Mark Haddon’s novel and play of the same name). In it, the great Sherlock solves a mystery about a missing racehorse and the
murder of its trainer by pointing out the curious incident. But, protests the man from Scotland Yard, the guard dog did nothing. “That” observes Holmes, “was the curious incident”. Not one of the witnesses Holmes interviewed mentioned barking (which is what you might expect to hear if a horse was stolen by a stranger…).

Sometimes people know what’s not being said and just learn to avoid mentioning it because it’s embarrassing or dangerous to do so (probably the best Fawlty Towers episode revolves around this very British phenomena); sometimes people don’t know what’s not being said, but the fact they keep walking around this unspoken thing - like the proverbial elephant in the room - is striking to someone from the outside.

The very best market researchers and students of human behaviour have always understood the importance of what is not being talked about. Sure, there is both an art and a science to getting people to tell you things about themselves, but very often it’s what isn’t said that’s crucial to understanding how people see things, how they do things and what you need to do about it. It is “good to talk” as the old BT campaign had it, but very often it’s important to listen really hard for the unsaid things.

The Marketing Society provides some fantastic platforms for the profession to talk to itself - their 24 hour Global Conversation provides a really fantastic glimpse into some of the stuff that marketers are grappling with today - like leading digital transformation of their organisations and demonstrating the value of marketing to the business. But we wanted to go deeper - to dig around in the stuff that wasn’t being said, for whatever reason. We wanted to talk about the stuff that isn’t being talked about.

So at Advertising Week Europe, we asked four leading marketers to give us their unspoken truth - their elephant in the room - in modern marketing. Dominic Grounsell (Travelex) spoke passionately about the need to reposition marketing to recruit the best and smartest talent at the bottom of the industry; Mark Given (Sainsbury's) challenged all agency partners to stop fighting and play together more nicely and more productively; Patricia Corsi (Unilever) lifted the lid on the data-mania that many of us feel is shackling decision-making and marketing’s ability to create value by doing things (rather than waiting for the perfect dataset or analysis); Keith Moor (Santander) had a good rummage in the box marked digital creativity, in particular criticising the way we port familiar formats (long-TV ads) into digital spaces (where viewers only see a small portion of a piece of content).

But we wanted to take this idea beyond our “provocateurs” on stage. I asked each member of the audience to write down their unspoken and uncomfortable truths about modern marketing. We had a fantastic response - for which, much thanks.

As you’d expect, we had a number of those nearer the bleeding edge of marketing technology moaning about their slower, more conservative colleagues and clients.For example, mobile, while very much the new kid on the block, does seem to experience this kind of chasm between early and later adopters. (For those of you too young to remember, CRM was once just as hot, just as divisive and just as much the thing that separate the true marketing believer from the laggard). There also remains some very strong feelings about remuneration, both for individuals, agencies and their clients and a real cause for concern all round.
 
However, some of the things otherwise unspoken that our audience wrote down included the following:

1. Diversity in marketing - we still struggle with too many white middle class males with similar backgrounds. Not bad in itself (I am one such) but look at the stir caused by groupings such as Token Man or given that the majority of disposable income and wealth lies in the hands of oldies such as myself, how do marketing departments and their agencies’ reflect this?

2. Data, data everywhere and not a drop of insight. This theme seems to build on Patricia Corsi and Keith Moor’s thoughts - we’re so busy collecting and analysing data we’re not really sure what it means. In particular, I have a lot of sympathy for the audience members who complained about the poor practice in digital effectiveness practice - if you haven’t already, please check out the cross industry project led by the Marketing Society’s own Stephen Maher, IPASocialWorks which is attempting to resolve this. From what we see there and in our everyday experience, there’s still not enough really good work done to tie digital marketing activity to business metrics (who cares how many Likes you get…).

3. New New? We marketers are terrible neophytes - we love shiny new things, we love to play with the new technologies and the new approaches. And again and again we like to declare old ways and old things “dead” or “over” (I know, I have actually written a book subtitled, “Bananas, Business and the Death of Marketing”. So I was wrong.) But these things aren’t dead, done or over. While Radio didn’t kill newspapers, TV didn’t kill radio, nor did the internet do for TV - it’s all complementary; a mixed landscape. Maybe there’s a way to call time on the new-for-the-sake-of- new? Suggestions gratefully received.

4. Marketing is not just. Finally, there’s a really big thing we don’t talk about very much (although Mark Ritson has had a go recently). Marketing is not the same thing as advertising or communication. Marketing involves many things (like distribution, pricing etc). If we find ourselves worrying more about the ads than these other things, it’s a sign that things are bad. Perhaps a check in with the new Manifesto for Marketing Leadership at The Marketing Society would be a nice reminder. Print it out and stick it on your wall.

What do you think? What are the things we don’t talk about but should? The things that we as a community are embarrassed or uncomfortable around. Let me know and we’ll keep this ball rolling.

Watch the full session on YouTube here.
 
 

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