A Prescription For Marketers

View presentation on slideshare

Update
I've made some changes based on feedback—I think it's better, a little less "marketing speak".  See updated deck and comments:

Next Wednesday I find myself on a social media related panel at Promo 2007.  Why am I going?  Event Marketing is a little out of my range, but Herb Sawer from Carmichael Lych put together an interesting line-up including Noah Brier from Naked Communications and Rohit Bhargava of Olgilvy PR.

I'm going to be surrounded by marketers.  Wait a minute—am I a marketer?  Marketing is a broad term and it encapsulates a lot of things.  Much of what I do falls under that category.  In fact, many of you who read this blog probably deal with budgets that fall under either Marketing or IT departments.

So, what am I gonna talk about?  Well, I thought a good place would be what I believe in.  I believe that marketers—especially the "professionals" that call themselves marketers have a fundamental issue we need to confront.

B.S.O.S.
(Bright And Shiny Object Syndrome)

It affects all of us.  You're kidding yourself if you think it doesn't.  There's so much pressure to stay up to speed, things change so quickly—that we've become obsessed with the new, newer, latest, greatest, shiny, sparkly, dangling thing.  But don't be fooled—It's just as bad to dismiss a trend that we may know very little about just because we're sick and tired of hearing about it.

You don't get brighter or shinier than "2.0".  There are so many possibilities—so many opportunities that it's intoxicating.  Hence the addiction to it.  So what do we do?  Do we ignore how advances in technology are changing the face of marketing?  Do we embrace every new trend with unbridled enthusiasm?  Do we sit on the sidelines, skeptical and wary?  Do we experiment?  I'm proposing a "prescription" for the ailment—it comes in 3 4 parts:

1. Quantitative Research (3rd party research, reports etc.)

2. Qualitative Research (Ethnography, Interviews etc,)

3. Personal Experience (Experimentation, usage, adoption)

1. Doing our homework (3rd party research, reports etc.)

2. Talking and walking with people (ethnography, observation etc.)

3. Learning by doing (experimentation, usage, adoption etc.)

4. Sharing what we know (connectivity, shared experiences + knowledge)

I believe a combination of all three will result in Empathy, Understanding and maybe even a little Experience more openness (or what marketers like to call transparency).  These three four things will help provide an informed perspective so we can pursue the best strategies and experiment in productive ways.   This will help us as we work with clients and/or partners—and it will make for better marketers, marketing and less B.S.O.S. all around.

What else would you add?  I've only got a little over 10 minutes, but if something good comes out of a comment—I'll try to add it to the deck.

Comments

[Jeroen]

I like 2. and 3. but I have seen quantitative research (1.) kill a lot of good concepts.

You do not get a good answer if you ask a multitude of users whether they like change - they never do. Nevertheless change happens, and if you want to be innovative you need to not listen to them.

Heck, I know a of national telecoms provider that did qualitative research in the early 90's on whether mobile phones could eventually become a mass-market consumer product. Guess what the audience said. That's right, 93% stated they were not interested in owning a mobile phone. That's how great quantative research works.

I propose to change element 1. to state that you can use others' quantative research as a baseline (cautiously), but you should never initiate it for your own product development...

[DA]

Jeroen, True that quantitative research is probably the most common research that marketers depend on. On the panel I will stress that we need more of 2 and 3. But not convinced that we ditch quantitative research all together.

Just need to do more of the others.

[mindblob]

Hi David,
I was thinking about :

"4. Shared Experiences (applied Conversations)"

Observing and sharing experiences, thoughts and ideas with trusted peers and social networks. This helps the natural "selection" of relevant/useful/smart items vs irrelevant/fake/wrong. In other words, maybe, linking "Renaissance men"?

[Tim Brunelle]

David,

That Herb Sawyer is awesome. It was a pleasure working with him at CL. Your outline is great. Love the images -- especially the "field-o-2.0-logos." Good god! What's interesting there is, How many of those logos do you recognize and use daily? Says something about the viability of all those 2.0 brands, don't it?

Totally agree with empathy as key RX. Sean Scott, Valeria Maltoni and others are keen on that assessment, too. But I wonder if the hype is so strong now, and that's what's turning off so many marketers from participation? Have we out-geeked ourselves? With so many logos on the screen, where do you start? How do you get your feet wet without embarrassing yourself, and actually learning?

A thought: Maybe the first step towards Empathy is Friendship. As in, "If all this seems to daunting to just jump in, at the very least, make a point of making friends with someone who's in it already. Shadow them at their laptop for five minutes." Maybe it's too much to ask for full-blown membership asap.

Perhaps an "assignment" for your Promo audience isn't to join Twitter and start blogging, but to identify someone they know who is, and spend some quality time together.

Good luck. If Herb takes you out afterwards, you'll need it.

- Tim

[caroline]

Hey David,

This is Caroline from SocialRank.

I am trying to get in touch with you but couldn't find your email address.

We're launching a new Web 2.0 site dedicated to Marketing and we have started indexing your blog posts as part of our

content filter.

I'd like to send you an invite to a beta preview. Can you get back to me with your email address.

Mine is caroline@tomorrowbrands.com

Kind regards,

Caroline

www.SocialRank.com

[John Dodds]

I agree with Jeroen - if you mean predictive quantitative research, I'd run a mile from it because of how its used and misused and because of the increasing neurological doubts about its methodology. If you don't intend to ditch it, I think you need to justify what it actually achieves.

[DA]

Ok, I'm chewing on the qualitative quantitative parts. What I really want to stress is balance between third party research like Forrester, and actually walking and talking with customers.

Maybe I'll ditch the marketing speak all together and just say what I really mean.

Thanks for getting me to think about that some more

[Lewis Green]

David,

Great post and one that makes me think--those are the best kind.

I would add visionary thinking, meaning asking questions such as what do we want to look like in one year, five years, 10 years and 25 years? What do we want the headline in the Wall Street Journal to say?

[vaspers aka steven e. streight]

Marketing of products is simply bringing the solution to those who need it.

Marketing is 80% education, only 20% sales.

Marketing is communications between customers and solution providers. Marketing is the company getting to understand and comply with customer needs and complaints, while teaching the customer about the problem and how their product solves it.

Marketing now is a mere subset of the Peer to Peer Recommendation System of the Trust Web Blogosphere.

This is accomplished by luring them to the superior product via providing free samples, free advice, free trials, special discounts, special value early adaptor versions, good information on how to use and peronalize the product, education about the field in general, product selection advice, and examples of applications proven successful for others.

[vaspers aka steven e. streight]

What I mean by "marketing is mere subset" is that people are buying things based on peer recommendations, unincentivized, non-compensated, uncoached opinions from one user to a potential customer.

Sales is now based on genuine word of mouth, via blogosphere, Twitterville, etc.

Marketing communications must fit in with that scene, as just another voice in the multilingual conversation.

Marketing must learn how to be a humble, modest, reserved, truthful, honest, transparent participant in the conversations about needs and their fulfillment.

[vaspers aka steven e. streight]

Research is the main point of this post, so let me say that focus groups, surveys, field experiments, face to face meetings, one on one depth analysis, A/B split tests, and user observation tests are all good.

Research the needs of people, then their perceptions of current solution options, the competitor behaviors, and watch how people try to solve their problem on their own or with competitive products.

Research should tell you what people need, want, bitch about, and dream of.

Research into how your customers really try to use your product, and what makes them disloyal, moving to a competitor is vital.

[vaspers aka steven e. streight]

Predictive research is the most difficult perhaps, and most likely to be in error due to unexpected quantum leaps in technology or customer needs.

But you must have some idea of where customer needs will be in the next 6 months to 10 years to remain dominant.

[mindblob]

David,
In phase with the update. Love the "Doing our homework" part. ; )

[Jared M. Spool]

Looks great. Maybe, instead of "Doing our homework", you might want to talk about "Building a foundation".

I see quantitative market data as foundational knowledge to start looking for missing opportunities and under-served needs.

Market research alone wouldn't have produced the iPod or Netflix. It predicted the mini-van would fail and New Coke would be welcomed by the market.

(Remember that Forrester completely missed the dot com crash in *every* prediction they made.)

But, as a foundation, it can inform our explorations for your steps 2-4. And we have to be ready to dismiss it when those steps tell us something novel and innovative.

Hope that helps,

Jared

[Valeria Maltoni]

Tsk, tsk, Luc -- Renaissance people.

My brief take is that we always shared what we know with each other. The tools have changed, and so has the awareness.

And so that you know, I am syndicating you at Conversation Agent among the essential blogs ;-)

[lolly]

David,

Re-doing our homework part - yes we can do our homework but the main issue is finding out whether the secondary data truly answers your objectives. Validity and when the data was collected can also be an issue.

Re-qual: as a qual researcher I totally agree - bring on creativity and let's ditch the groups!