how marketing’s past continues to haunt us now

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“Even damnation is poisoned with rainbows.”

Leonard Cohen

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I sometimes believe that today’s marketing and branding discussions, most of which are bludgeoning the current practices (and lack of principled thinking), ignore some of the dynamics that got us to where we are today. I was part of the dynamics. I am older and it was my generation who put us on this horrible path. Now. I am not making excuses for my generation because for gods sake I have been merciless against my generation for a number of things. We certainly did not get a lot of things right, but let me explain the aspect of how we took marketing/branding off a sane path and onto an insane one.

It is difficult to describe existential business discussions that took place in angst-ridden conference rooms as the long tail of business dynamics inched into the existing business world – and our particular businesses. It did not matter in what direction you looked; you saw threats. I bring that up because what we tend to neglect to discuss are the exponentially asymmetrical dynamics that the long tail applied against the existing relatively symmetrical complex dynamic business world at the time. To be clear. We business folk understood complexity, we recognized the underpinnings of systems thinking – albeit they had not been fleshed out yet – but the competitive environment was relatively symmetrical. All of a sudden, in an asymmetrical multi-pronged fashion, it was like the business was dying the death of a thousand cuts. Personalization, individualization, targeted multiple pieces of content, even attitudinal segmentation (versus demographic segmentation) all were being used to attack what had appeared up to that point to be a robust business. Once again it is difficult to describe the existential discussions of business survival in conference rooms at Procter & Gamble, Kellogg’s, Nestle, Schering-Plough and almost every significantly sized business with multiple business units and brands.

The long tail of niche quasi-businesses meant that real differentiation was being bludgeoned by meaningless claims, which unfortunately created meaningful perceptions, and distinction was being ‘grayed’ through some extremely colorful positionings (with some hollow functional underpinnings). And, yeah, we understood the difference between differentiation and distinction and we found value in both (the combination created a super value marketing position), but now we were being attacked in an asymmetrical guerilla warfare style. In addition, the guerillas were making up their own rules, some smart & some idiotic, but the main difference was they had no intent in winning a war, just a battle.

Once again, this is no excuse for what we did. We chased bad ideas and often embraced some fairly dubious thinking. At the same time, we also saw the potential and opportunities if we could face down what appeared to be existential issues. But. We got a lot of things wrong and, maybe more importantly, drove the entire thinking in the marketing/branding industry down the wrong path, i.e., we lost marketing sanity and started visiting the loony ward under the guise of “new marketing.”

Look. The business world was always volatile, always dynamic, always complex, always somewhat uncertain <I’ll buy that uncertainty has increased exponentially>, but the asymmetrical velocity was a whole new ballgame and, well, scary in some form or fashion. If you weren’t careful, you would either embrace a game of whack-a-mole or embrace the way you had always done things attempting to steamroll everyone. Either was a potential kiss of death. Yeah. Proportional response sounds good in theory, but in practice is a sonuvabitch to implement.

All that said.

I do believe we are getting to a better thinking space. I like what both Ritson and Sharp say <mostly, I imagine, because they reprise the same positioning principles Leo Burnett, David Ogilvy, P&G – their marketing principles were stellar – and what I consider the gold standard of principled thinking, The T-Plan by JWT>, albeit I wish businesses would implement both rather than attempt to choose <circling back to my original point we knew that business/brand differentiation and distinction was the value high ground>. I also believe while I think marketing and branding, in general, is presently in a thinking shithole there is a ladder being constructed to get out of it. That ladder’s rungs, in my eyes, reaches back to basic positioning fundamentals and applies them in direct proportionality to the world in which they have to thrive. I would be remiss if I didn’t say that is a reflection of a luxury of time and learning with which my generation had neither. Anyway. It was Rob Campbell who reminded me we have taken quite the winding path to get back to saying what we need to say:

+ Where are you?
+ Where do you want to be?
+ What’s stopping you from getting there?
+ What is your strategy to achieve that?

I believe we will end up in a good place, I just wanted to share a bit of how we got to the bad place. Just ponder a bit before you start bludgeoning some of the more stupid looking & sounding ideas that get bantered about.