The Needle And The Damage Done

It’s sacrilegious to say this in the context of a marketing blog, but I’m 99 percent sure we marketers spend way too much time reading about marketing and way too little time actually marketing.

With that said, I can’t say what is the right amount of time to spend marketing. Some of the marketers I’ve known were actually better off when the reading-about-marketing /marketing mix was 90/10. And their clients were way ahead.

Still, the lure of the next great marketing article draws us in ever deeper, and what are we rewarded with? Another excursion into the lands of Morpheus disguised as an examination of pay-per-click metrics. A series of jolly anecdotes on how the Old Spice Man is transforming modern marketing, on the back of a horse. An interview with the developer of the Preparation H mobile app. The back of Seth Godin’s head. And a little story I ran across on how marketers are confusing marketing via social media with Social-Media Marketing.

Well, of course they are. I haven’t met a marketer who doesn’t sometimes mistake the sandbox for the sand castle. Before there were social media, people were mistaking selling on the Web with Web Marketing. Before that it was selling through the mail versus Direct-Mail Marketing. Selling using TV versus TV Advertising. And the grandpappy of them all, selling versus Advertising.

As God is my witness, I love the Jordan Playboy ad. “Somewhere west of Laramie” et cetera, like to send a chill down my spine. But do you know how long the Jordan Playboy lasted after that ad appeared? Two years. Fewer than 100 Playboys were sold.

The greatest ad of all time, and it couldn’t sell 100 units of anything. Because it wasn’t written to sell.

Say you get it. Please say you get it. It’s the difference between the tool and the job, the accordion and the polka, the needle and the damage done, and today’s marketers have more glittering needles than ever at their disposal. Anyone who’s surprised at the unprecedentedly high level of infatuation with the type font at the expense of the letter has not been paying attention to history or the here-and-now.

The article cited Snakes on a Plane as proof, but I can think of a score of others. Skittles’ abortive abandonment of its Web site for Twitter and Facebook. The Old Spice Guy. The “pants on the ground” dude. More embarrassing branded Facebook pages than there are Republicans in Utah. More embarrassing branded Facebook pages than there are embarrassing Republicans in Utah. And yes, even the Subservient Chicken.

Great ideas, for the most part. Brilliant execution, except for that picture of the pelican on the dental-insurance Facebook page. Additional products sold: not many.

Maybe it’s time to rock this place back to the studs and remember why we market. We market to sell. Marketing is successful when someone buys what we want them to buy. Whether it’s a product or a message, they buy.

Marketing itsownself I’ve defined many times as the targeted application of common sense … in service of a purchase. What makes the most sense if we want Tibetians to buy iced coffee? If we want Gen Y to buy burial vaults? The question may not always be logical but the answer has to be if the marketing is going to be successful.

If we answer the first question, “Drop 10,000 Espresso Shots from an airplane,” we are not using common sense, unless we are with the Chinese government. On the other hand, if we answer it, “Fill every begging bowl from here to Lhasa with iced coffee,” we’re getting somewhere.

Short of equipping coffins with USB ins and guaranteeing cell reception, I can’t think of an answer to the second question.

The role of social media in this process is to serve as word-of-mouth on steroids, to take our common sense and throw it around. Social media works best in marketing when it’s used to spread the simple message from friend to friend, “This product is good. You should buy it.” The most successful social-media campaigns have been among the least publicized. The greatest contribution social media has made to marketing is the citizen review. The most overrated is the viral video. If the dudes making the trick basketball shots wore Skechers T-shirts, would Skechers sell more shoes? A couple of pairs maybe – yet that’s the sort of stuff that’s being passed off as Social-Media Marketing.

Which it is. It’s using social media to come up with new ways for marketers to justify their worth without actually selling anything, which marketers have been doing as long as there’s been marketing.

Tawdry as it is sometimes, we are salespeople all. We start the morning unemployed, and we make our wage and save our job through the course of the day. Of all the things we can’t lose sight of in marketing, that might be No. 1 with a bullet.