Business experts often advocate bad ideas … some times appallingly bad ideas. When I read a marketing ‘expert’ by the name of Debbie Mayo-Smith waxing dreamily about the advice she received from another marketing expert to ‘Be a better marketer of what you do than a doer of what you do” I realized I was reading a new low. It is hard to imagine worse advice.
The reason lean is universally the best and only business strategy that can succeed is that it drives every aspect of the business to focus on creating more and more value for customers, and cut out everything possible that does not add customer value. There is no other way to go about running a business that can possibly be better. And the simple fact is that marketing is usually non-value adding waste. It typically does not make the product one iota better than the product would be without any marketing at all.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “If a man has good corn or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.” He was absolutely correct. Good products sell themselves.
Ms Mayo-Smith’s advice – to be better at telling people how good your chairs, knives, crucibles or church organs are than you are at making them – is so absurd as to defy all common sense; yet many companies seem to see wisdom in those words.
How else are we to explain companies that treat advertising and brand management as an ‘investment’ that should increase year to year in order to build the business, while manufacturing expenses are costs that should be relentlessly decreased?
How else are we to explain marketing departments that operate off on their own, largely disconnected from the factory floor and the engineering spaces, creating web sites, literature, advertisements and the like intended to create the illusion that your products will make them richer, sexier or more popular, rather than creating information that will help customers make truly more informed decisions?
How else are we to explain senior managers who spend more time in marketing meetings than on plant floors? And how else are we to explain the almost complete lack of involvement from the marketing function in lean transformations, as if it had nothing at all to do with their role?
Within the sales and marketing universe there is widespread opposition to aligning the sales people and marketing people on the same teams, let alone aligning them with the value creation functions. They tend to be functionally a group apart – and far too often a group above – the rest of the business.
There is certainly a role for marketing in a lean organization, but normally a much smaller one. The prism through which marketing should be evaluated is exactly the same one used by lean companies everywhere else in the business: Is this creating value for our customers? Is this use of resources helping customers to understand the product, use it better, and make the best choice among the various versions and types available? If so, then the expense may be well worth making.
Or is this expense merely attempting to persuade customers to buy our stuff, even though it may not be the best choice for the customer? If this is the case, and it is perceived to be a necessary element of the business strategy, the company is in big trouble. If educating the customers as to the choices that serve them best will not result in a “broad, hard-beaten road” to the business, no amount of brand management and advertising can save it.
Original: http://idatix.com/manufacturing-leadership/be-a-better-doer-than-a-marketer/
Kathleen says
Sadly, this is how most people seem to think these days. Worse, they begin to believe they are as good as they claim to be. I can’t go by anything people say anymore, especially as they’ve gotten even better at ginning up their resumes (ex: claiming to be an associate at XYZ when they merely sorted mail or made coffee). I have to see work samples, period. There seems to be a direct correlation too. The more they tell me how great they are, the worse their work is.
TimC says
Bingo! Can you please send this to the Chairmen and candidates of the two major political parties?
David Hallsted says
Oh my word, Bill was being nice to Debbie. Folks you should click on the Debbie Mayo-Smith link to read the article’s comments; “snake oil”, “old tosh”, “drivel”. Thanks for the entertaining piece.
Danie Vermeulen says
Thanks Bill … same old attitude / culture of “organisations serving the marketing department who try to manipulate customers’ value perceptions” instead of “marketing departments serving the customer and helping organisations to understand how to better add value to customers”
Robert Drescher says
Hi Bill
You know there is a lot to be said for your arguement about building good products instead of spending money on advertising. We have all seen the steady growth of companies like Honda, LG, and Samsung, yet do many of us realize that they spend a fraction of the advertising dollars their competitors do. Instead of trying to sell us something slightly poorer they instead offer us something slightly better for the same price.
Building a slightly better product means you can spend less on promoting because word of mouth kicks in,and it is the best ad you can get and it is free.
The proof is in the pudding so to speak the companies with great marketing and mediocre products are the ones going down, while those with great products and marginal advertising are growing. GM always did a great job at marketing, but when they stopped trying to actually produce great products their decline started and has not yet stopped.
Brian Werneke says
Hi Bill. I was only recently introduced to this blog and have thoroughly enjoyed reading and sharing the posts with others. And at one level, I love and agree with this post. On another, I must disagree. I agree that one must be a good “doer”. No doubt a world of skeptics has come to expect high quality product that actually solves a problem. But I also believe marketing a necessary, and even value added function for the customer. How? Awareness. If a customer is not aware that a meaningful solution to their problem exists, they cannot buy it. I might be splitting hairs, because marketing might not change the form, fit, or function of the product – the pure value add litmus tests. But if I have a cure for cancer, and no one knows about it because I eliminated all the “waste” called marketing, well then I am not serving the customer well. I felt you glossed over this with your prism statement. Key point: be honest and truthful about what you can do for the customer – the benefit promise – and the proof about how you do that. And if you understand your potential customer well enough, then you should be seeking to make every single one of them aware of your offering. Then the choice is theirs.
Martin_B says
But how do I KNOW it’s a better product unless some celebrity endorses it?
(This comment is only half sarcastic.)
Chris Coleridge says
A late comment.
Bill, I love your blog and am particularly enjoying it at the moment, since the Obama-bashing appears to be in abeyance, I presume because of the horrible candidate your preferred party has put up. (I’m mentioning this for a reason which I will come back to…)
Marketing (done right) is an essential part of creating value for customers– and it’s also an essential part of retaining some of that value through competitive advantage.
The value a customer achieves from a product is only partly derived from their ‘functional’ use of it. In some cases nearly all of the value, and in almost all cases a significant part of what they value, comes through the marketing of the product. In the fashion and ‘luxury’ industries MOST of the value created for customers comes through the way that the customer feels about the product; the way that the customer thinks peers, social superiors and social inferiors regard them as a user of the product; the experience the customer has in searching for, purchasing, taking delivery of, maintaining, storing and disposing of the product. In every consumer-facing industry, these emotional, experiential, possibly ephemeral factors are essential in generating value. Even for products that are ostensibly ‘no nonsense, what you see is what you get’ products, like say De Walt power tools or your blog, the emotional associations people have with these products are provoked by what marketing folks call the brand.
Brands (built right) emanate messages about credibility and trustworthiness, about the emotional experience the consumer can expect when using the brand, about the relationship (transactional, consultative, intimate) the customer can expect with the brand, about the tribal affiliations the company and the customer share in an affiliative, networked world. Even B2B brands try to convey emotion-laden messages about trust, relationships, and ‘we’re smart guys so watch what we do and support us/follow us for your own good’ (not to mention fear!).
Undoubtedly marketing without good doing is value destroying. All the money a company spends to put out lies about the experience its customers do/will have is wasted. But good marketing allied to good doing can lead to superior value creation compared to underpowered marketing and equally good doing and is therefore part of what we agree is the best possible strategy. Superior value creation will enable superior value capture, including ‘marketing’ type value capture such as locking people into contractual terms they wouldn’t agree with less trusted/respected partners, lowering customer acquisition costs through ‘buzz’ and desirability, and getting people to feel a brand or product or company is ‘part of their world’.
This last point is, I presume, the reason for your mixing politics and business so frequently on this blog– we are supposed to associate the positive values of your politics with you and your business, right? That’s marketing, not simple “education”, surely… and indeed your blog is not only supposed to educate its readers, but induce a certain sense of familiarity, gratitude and trust in us too?
Once again, thanks for the great blog posts.