Marketing anecdotes …
When I am invited to give a talk, a conference, a workshop or a marketing session, it is inevitable to share cases and examples from real life, or rather from the experience I have acquired in more than 30 years dedicated to this industry.
For more concepts that are presented, the audience will always find it relevant why a brand decided to take a specific course, why it was successful or it is also very interesting to share the failures and great learnings that are generated when the results do not occur.
I like to follow the great “bosses” of marketing and advertising because you learn from all of them and in marketing there is nothing written. Today we have the great fortune that with a few “clicks” you arrive at very good conferences in this industry that were previously private or inaccessible events and what to say in this phase of Covid that generated greater exposure of great celebrities talking and sharing what they have lived, which generates a great wealth of tangible knowledge.
It is true that these new communication forums also generate greater openness to know what the great “marketers” and advertisers think, although it is very unlikely that they will talk about what has not worked, however, when you talk on a personal level with them they do share those cases or situations that have not gone well.
Precisely when you talk about those situations that are not working, the great issue of talent arises or rather, of the absence of talent that is working on the side of the client or the brands.
In these 30 years of experience, I am fortunate to have been in different environments or positions that allow me to have a broad perspective of what is happening in the world of
marketing. Working for almost 16 years in international companies developing big brands, with the support of robust marketing teams, with important Bahamas Email List budgets and with suppliers such as global advertising agencies, gives you a vision of what it is like to try to do everything with great professionalism and depth; If we can equate it to a sport, it is like having played in the big leagues of marketing and advertising.
After that, having experience in family businesses that are new to the potential that marketing can have for them helps you understand that the perspective of business owners is almost always fearful, incredulous and too subjective when it comes to marketing. and advertising is concerned, but still, they hire people to work on what they call “marketing.”
Being a partner, consultant, marketing advisor but now on the side of a “boutique” advertising agency that works with international and national companies and even with entrepreneurs, gives you that fresh experience of the evolution that marketing has had and how that great Strategic work to build brands has been radically lost.
Today 2021, in my perspective, does not seem like good times for marketing and advertising. It seems that those times, not so distant, where the teams of the brand and the agency, with an important mix of talent and experience, precisely “carried the brand” to generate business results through depth of understanding and decision-making, they seem to have been lost.
I am sure that the budgets of the brands have not been devalued, the agencies that give results remain in force as well as the new generation of experienced publicists who today are heads of their own agencies, is stronger than ever.
But suddenly, the large areas of marketing that were the key link to developing powerful brands and consistent businesses began to radically lower their selection, attraction and measurement criteria; Marketing departments were filled with inexperienced “juniors” positions who want to solve everything with the same depth with which they upload a “cute photo” on Instagram.
These juniors are being sent to try to generate a dialogue with the agencies but they have neither the form nor the training to establish communication. Those inexperienced people today don’t put anything in writing, they don’t develop a brief, they don’t know what a brief is, they don’t understand what strategy is, they don’t establish a problem to solve, they don’t know who their consumer is, they don’t even know what ask for,
Needless to say, when they send a “junior” to carry out or coordinate an agency “pitch”, that is another great story that devalues the wealth of this industry.
The problem is comprehensive, on the side of brands and companies, they should not allow the indifference, superficiality and tepidity of their marketing teams. On the side of the agencies, they should not be light in questioning that the client is not giving them rich raw material to generate tangible results.
The “power” has always been the client who has that “ace up his sleeve” to change agencies easily or to test multiple providers with that fashion of “pitching” but that power ends when the results they are not given. You can blame the agency sometime but if the business results are not given, the marketer leaves, simple as that.
If you come to the challenge of working on the marketing of a brand, no matter how small, do not wear the floats that only allow you to go where the current of trends takes you. Marketing needs to recover those brave bosses who are daring, deep, strategic and who manage to move the indicators.
Marketing should not allow that tribe of indifferent who do not challenge themselves to do something great. We are facing a time of the vindication of the “Marketer” but it will be necessary to fill those large gaps that have been made by just posing for the photo and putting on a title to try to belong to a valuable industry.
Every day brands are more alike, or rather, they are adopting the personality of the if you have already found a product that you want to buy, before adding it to Buy Leads the basket googlo it; You will be able to discover if in another store the price is lower, marketing “junior” who, in combination with the “community manager” in turn, generate “kindergarten” actions for a consumer and a competitive environment that requires master’s degree.
