The Art Of Modern Marketing

Hey There!! Hope you've managed to keep yourself safe from the Wuhan dragon..Err...I mean Virus. Let me share a thought with you. I've been a loner and I hated commuting and with this inadvertent lockdown situation, I've made the best of it by reading, writing, coding and cooking extensively. But then that's not what you wanted to hear-right. You came here because you wanted to find out more about marketing albeit modern marketing. Well then if that's the case then let me not subject you to further atrocities and cut right to the chase. But before I do that, I'd urge you to keep an open mind. There will be a lot of stuff that would appear borderline strange to you and for people who have had careers in marketing for over 2 decades, this might sound blasphemous so apologies in advance if it tends to hurt your sensibilities. This is less about marketing and more about humans.

Well it's been a while since homosapiens evolved and captured the planet. The rest as we know is history including the thousands of extinct species. Now I know most of you would have consumed and spoken extensively about Yuval Noah Harari's 'Sapiens'. It's one heck of a book. I mean I'd read it anyday over origin of species which is seemingly boring. Darwin didn't realise homosapiens are fond of entertainment when he was writing the most important scientific book ever to be written. Christopher Columbus could have done it long back but he was busy butchering native Americans. But we aren't writing an essay on anthropolgy-right so let's stick to the point. One remarkable feat that emerged from Yuval's book is that homosapiens were extremely successful in their endeavours because of a singular trait called 'gossip'. We did it better than Homo erectus, Homo habilis,Homo habilis and many other human species that vanquished or we quashed them in a bid to reign over the planet. What's interesting is that gossip was used time and again to unite people. It was used to alter perceptions, push propoganda and create worldviews from time to time.

Let's now talk about the last 300 years of human civilization when the first corporation was formed by Armand Peugeot in 1896. From then till now, the wheel of capitalism has fueled the global growth engine that has led us to this stage of evolution. At an evolutionary scale we are doing alright even though we could not create flying cars. Although what's more important is that we invented the biggest tool in the process. I know what you're thinking. You believe its the internet but that's where you go wrong. The internet in all its glory is merely a tool to propogate information but I had something entirely different in mind. Let me introduce you to the protagonist of this essay-say hi to Mr Marketing. Now most of you would be thinking-this guy's crazy af. I know what marketing is. For fuck's sake ,if he thinks he can outsmart us by empty rhetoric, he is so insanely wrong. I agree. I can't but I can definitely redefine marketing for you. But for that to happen let's first define what 'marketing' is. That's AMA(American Marketing Association's) definition:-

Definition of Marketing

Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. (Approved 2017)

But that's so lame and so boring. I mean this is like slow death to an ardent Seth Godin follower like me. How about this one?

Gosh!! That was funny. Although it did paint marketing in somewhat negative light but what the heck. If Seth Godin could write an entire book called 'All Marketers are Liars' then Scott Adams is definitely allowed some creative liberty.

But seriously- what exactly is marketing and let me be real honest with you. I've been a parasite dwelling on the technology sector for close to 2 decades and from what I've heard or seen or done- I believe marketing is merely the language of the corporation used to articulate almost anything about the corporation. In Peter Thiel's modern world we associate it with products. Let's go a bit more specific and talk in the context of the tech industry. Marketing articulates the product vision to the external world. It tells the world how a product can help solve all their problems. It shows people, how a micro computer can break the tyranny of a maglomaniac corporation with mal intentions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I

It tries to strike a chord with the collective consciousness of the diaspora to arrive at a realisation that there is indeed a need for them to buy a product that will solve their need. It endorses consumerism and shows the human side of the corporation. It rationalizes our decision to buy products by connecting them to free will. It helps the user understand, how his life will change forever after buying a product or a service. In other words marketing helps the corporation communicate the effectiveness and efficacy of it's products to its customers or users(since technology companies have more users and less customers).But is that all that's marketing. I guess not.

I mean Philip Kotler gave us 4Ps as the God of Israel gave the Egyptians 10 plagues. Kotler is a revered figure in the world of marketing and I absolutely adore his theories but it seems the world has moved faster than most of his theories could adapt. Today we are looking at a technology driven world where virality is being hounded by using any psychological hack remotely available. Remember this ad from The Economist where they created this illusion using a simple marketing decoy that surprisingly worked

But hacks can be pricey and could create a deception since human nature is irretrivably volatile. As Martin Lindstrom points out in his bestseller 'Buy-ology' that most anti smoking campaigns actually prompted smokers to have more cigarettes. But wait! why are we talking about all this-aren't we supposed to unravel what marketing is? Isn't it becoming more and more of an enigma.You are right. It is and let me use this opportunity to clear out the pre-existing misconceptions around marketing. Marketing as I have come to understand it , in all its glory, isn't about marketing your products or singing songs about your services. Marketing is about finding people with a specific worldview who might need your product. Contrary to popular logic, marketing is actually telling a story that reflects how a human being with a certain problem that's causing him unimaginable discomfort can now use a product or service to solve his problems. It's about creating an emotional connect with the audience. It's about listening to what people say. But before that, it's about understanding who people are?

Now that's a tough one. If human nature or behaviour could be understood by some multivariate equation, things would have been easy but its just the fuzzy states that create unparalled chaos, difficult to comprehend. The point where Seth Godin is surprisingly right is where he says that one does not need a large number of people as customers. One just needs the MVC(Minimum Viable Crowd) or a set of loyalists with a worldview that's aligned to the interests of the company. That's a far cry from what we've heard till date-isn't it? Didn't Jeoffrey Moore talk about moving from one customer segment to another in his cult book 'Crossing the Chasm'

Remember this technology adoption lifecycle with a chasm

It shows the various categories of customers we need to tap, to to become sustainable. Turns out , it doesn't really work anymore. Now that's pretty rude to reject a theory that's held water for quite a few decades but its time to come up with an alternate theory. The reason is so obvious and was always looking at us in the face, but we just didn't notice it because we were busy focusing on hyper growth. Look what it did to us. So the bottomline is that - most products are for people with a certain worldview , who have a specific need. They are looking everywhere for that product that can help solve their problems. Marketing is about finding that right set of people and telling them you exist. Remember what Theodre Levitt famously remarked in his seminal essay 'Marketing Myopia'

"People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!"

But it doesn't just stop there. Remember the horrible ads by Flipkart.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zBH7rgMPQA

Now check this amazing ad by Google

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHGDN9-oFJE

Do you see the difference?

Whilst the former is just shoving products down your throat, the latter is using a beautiful story about two friends who got separated at partition and how their grand children find each other out on Google search and then eventually the reunion happens, It's a wonderful saga which might bring a tear or two to your eyes. Google isn't screaming and telling everyone to use their search. Its just woven a beautiful story and its articulating it with all the emotions one can imagine. The customers get the message. They instantly strike a chord with them. They can relate to a friend from their childhood who is far off in a different place and who they really miss.

What most marketers forget about in this mad race to tap numbers is that they would be selling their products to human beings who are sentient in nature. There are 27 different types of emotions that play a pivotal role in our decision making process. In fact, its not really a hypothesis anymore. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky have proved in their research that all human beings use their fast thinking to make most of their decisions. Fast thinking is largely affected by emotions and culture. So a large part of why people make decisions is a resultant of various types of emotions. Remember this famous quote from Gordon Gekko in Wallstreet,"Greed, for lack of a better word is good"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bbzwJ0Sx48

Michael Douglas really sticks it in with this jaw dropping performance in Wallstreet. What's noteworthy however is that he explains how an emotion like greed can actually help the capitalistic system transform the world. Michael Moore and Naomi Klein might wanna disagree but we aren't talking about the eternal crusade between socialists and capitalists. We are trying to show how a marketing capsule can help a company sell products. If Peter Thiel is to be believed, after a certain threshold every product faces merely a distribution problem. I wouldn't have bought it that easily until I read Sean Ellis talking about the same in his seminal book 'Hacking Growth' or when Brian Balfour talked about it in his blog

Marketing is the only way a product reaches maximum distribution. Do keep in mind that when I say distribution, I don't intend to talk about appealing to the sensibilities of every person on plane Earth. Remember not everything is Facebook where Zuckerberg can make money from 7.5 billion people on the planet.

But now that we are clear with marketing and story telling and how human emotions play a pivotal role in all that , it's important to understand how to do that. Isn't that the million dollar question that marketing textbooks haven't been able to explain till date? Isn't that what's keeping founders up at night to rework their go-to-market strategy? Isn't that what every B-School student is trying very hard to figure out through study groups or incessant rounds to the library? I wish it were that simple.

I recently finished reading Piyush Pandey's biography 'Pandeymonium'. It is perhaps, one of the best books I have ever read on marketing. The reason it's great is because, it never talks about marketing and advertising from the industry or the academic's perspective. Piyush talks about it from the customer's perspective. He talks about his life experiences which helped him shape some of the most iconic ads on Indian television. He talks about how his family have greatly influenced his worldview. He talks about how his love for cricket and travel, have added so many rich experiences in his kitty. Today if one sees Piyush's ads , they are funny and tell an effective story laced with a social message. One has to be intelligent enough to see the different layers of the ad. Piyush Pandey is not selling products. Piyush Pandey is telling a story that might have a product. Unlike subliminal marketing which is deceptive in nature and exploits the subconscious to sell products, story telling appeals to the conscious mind. It resonates with an existing worldview. Unlike a politician who tries to push propoganda laced with lies to further his political ambitions to subvert the minds of individuals, to create his own loyalist brigade out of a set of ignorant people in dire need of a shephard, a marketer tells an honest story. But the challenge is weaving the story. One can't do it sitting inside an air conditioned office. One has to travel extensively, read extensively and talk to a wide variety of people to understand a specific culture. As Samuel.P.Huntington talks about how the next world war would be between civilizations in his classic 'Clash of the civilizations and the remaking of world order', it's imperative to know that culture sits at the crux of every civilization. And when we have a country like India with such colossal diversity where culture changes every 100 Kms, it's almost borderline impossible to create a story without having access to anecdotal wisdom about the sublime culture that exists in a specific part of the country.

If positioning is all about context, then marketing is all about empathy. If we don't know the ethnographic, psychographic and demographic variables of the target customer segment. If we don't understand the cultural data points of the intended audience. If we don't know what emotions would be called into play while creating a story. If we don't have back and forth feedback mechanisms and possible sounding boards to trash most iterations of the story, then you are left with a set of clueless individuals reading some obscure passage from Davig Ogilvy's 'Ogilvy on advertising in the digital age' or watching some random episode from 'Mad Men' to get their daily quota of inspiration. Sad yet true. An irrevocable tragedy of epic proportions. Wondering what gnawed at the profits from the last 3 quarters-there you go. A creativity deficit so large to fill in that it might cost a company a few quarters and several thousand customers. Wondering how it could be fixed. Well that is where people like me come handy. People who have been deeply involved in just one type of business in their entire God damn lives- the business of understanding people. You can't come up with a digital workaround to boost your sales because its not a product or a tech problem. Its myopic vision. One can't ignore the billions of dollars companies waste on creating marketing messaging that sucks or are so tone deaf that they start facing the wrath of people. Remember this Pepsi ad featuring Kendall Jenner that made people so angry that Pepsi sales went down by a whopping 10 percent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwvAgDCOdU4

So the next time you are having an armchair conversation with your colleagues on marketing, do mention how marketing is about people and only people. It's never about products, it's never about a certain company and its definitely never about sales. These are by products of effective marketing. One that is humane. One that has empathy hardcoded in it. One that cares. Eventually the one that changes the world. So what are you waiting for-Go change the World.