Which is the sharpest tool in the marketer’s box?

Writing a book is not easy but the one I have just finished was particularly hard. It started out as such a simple idea. Like all marketing people, I have used different ideas, tools and concepts throughout my career.

Yet, during the past 30 years, so much has changed that I wondered how solid many familiar terms (such as ‘product life cycle’ or ‘positioning’) are and where they came from. I wanted to write a series of essays on their relative strengths and weaknesses. It’s been so difficult that I am convinced that it has broken my brain. Yet it’s taught me something quite fascinating, which is that many concepts that are routinely and effectively used by marketers are to be found, neglected, at the back of the toolbox.

Take, for example, viral marketing. During the advent of the internet, many of us were tempted to try out this remarkable technique in the virtual world. Some of us messed up until we learnt to integrate it with other media and to institutionalise the skills that make it work.

Now, many routinely use it with other communication methods to build brands, generate leads or communicate with buyers. Although pundits such as Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell put this new version on the map, it has been around a long time. John Pears was certainly not familiar with the term but he used viral marketing to kickstart a 300-year-old brand by getting 18th-century schoolchildren to run around London with catchphrases.

And, in the same period, Japanese traders (such as Mitsokusi) used it to market high-end goods alongside hand bills. So, why, after a hundred years of so-called marketing science are young professionals just being taught it? It would have helped many of our predecessors to know that successful business people have, intuitively, used this technique so effectively.

Neglected ideas

One of the most worrisome examples of this neglect is ‘thought leadership’. This is common currency in leading global firms such as IBM, Microsoft, Deloitte, Clifford Chance or Accenture. Many see it as their prime method of marketing and have made millions from it over the past decades alone. Serious, smart people have made up concepts like ‘shareholder value’ or ‘CRM’ to sell to their customers.

Moreover, it is another tool that has been used for centuries. People such as Josiah Wedgwood, William Lever and Robert Woodruff used it to persuade their intended customers that they needed a new idea as much as a new product or brand.

It is one of the most useful ways of stimulating demand from latent markets and is responsible for the ubiquity of much that we take for granted today (particularly technology). There is even a credible argument that it has been as effective and influential as advertising. So, why doesn’t ‘thought leadership’ appear in any marketing textbook?

Another term familiar to many is ‘value proposition’. People arrive at these valuable constructs in different ways but they are routinely used to remind marketing and sales people that life is about more than price discounts and fights for market share.

In some major global companies, such as Fujitsu, sales people are not allowed to approach customers with a deal unless they have been through a ‘value-prop workshop’. Agencies and marketers dedicate enormous amounts of time and effort into getting their heads around the right mix of price and features.

Properly executed, value proposition development maintains margins and safeguards profit. Again, this idea is normally at the back of the box.

It is strange that these tools have been virtually ignored by theorists. They are supposed to work out what we all do and condense our successes into concepts or techniques that will help subsequent generations. However, it’s impossible to avoid an impression that they have built a closed world view about accepted marketing thinking. This view holds onto long-standing ideas (like ‘the four Ps’ or ‘Boston matrix’) and more recently ‘relationship’ or ‘services’ marketing, some of which are shockingly suspect.

So, it seems that we are largely on our own. My original sense that, after years of experience, we have to come to our own judgement about the viability of these concepts was right. There really is no canon of marketing knowledge; and we are a long way from having the armoury of professionally verified tools that, say, architects or lawyers have. For me, the best include: value propositions, viral marketing and thought leadership.

Branding is top

The exercise of writing the book has made me an even bigger fan of branding. For a long time, this was also at the back of the box, mixed up with ‘packaging’ or ‘promotion’. Now there is a plethora of insightful publications on it.

This is the tool I most value, the most useful contribution that marketing skills have ever made to businesses. Not only do brands set a firm apart from competitors and create a unique bond with customers, they also create margin and profit. And they are durable.

In researching the book, I found 100s of brands sold today that have been in existence for over 100 years. In an era when many business people believe that it’s difficult to create enduring value, these brands have been commanding attention for many generations.

To a great extent, marketing is branding and, for me, not much else matters. It’s clearly the sharpest tool in the box.

Laurie Young is a writer and consultant.

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‘The Marketer’s Handbook: Reassessing Marketing Techniques for Modern Business.’ Wiley, 2011.

Brands set a firm apart from competitors and create a unique bond with customers; they create margin and profit