Our first blog… better make it a bit controversial then I suppose!

Marketing backwards is gnitekram! Utterly meaningless, and that’s what marketing is to an awful lot of people, real business people! To my mind, this is a shame but it’s something that the ‘marketing community’ can only blame itself for. Academic marketing too often sounds like some weird hybrid of physics, chemistry, maths, psychology all rolled into one illegitimate b**tard son of the mad professor in Back to the Future. The funniest thing of all is that marketing people are always telling clients they should communicate to their audience in clear plain English… hmmmm.

For major global organisations, investment in the ‘brand’ is absolutely essential, and yes, every marketing principle should be applied. Their ‘brand’ has a very real cash value. Should it be any different for the other 99.9% of companies? Yes, of course it should. The basic principles of brand building and strategic marketing are the same but why can’t we explain it in clear plain English?

Marketing is about business development. We are supposed to help business people develop their businesses. To increase their sales. To raise their profile. To improve their bottom line. To achieve their business goals. Sure, we can drag out the Pareto Principle but do we have to bore them half to death with it? Do we have to ram marketingspeak down their throats? Not really. What we could do is listen to what they want, work with them to develop strategies to create that success and then measure it.

Of course, if we do talk proper gnitekram, maybe they will get so confused that we won’t have to answer that dreaded question – what’s my return on the investment? Surely that can’t be why the Marketing world went terminology mad…

Times are a changing; the ‘world’ will never be the same again – and good riddance! Commercial reality, plain talking, results based success – what’s so wrong with that?