Power to the PEOPLE

Marketing has long been its own worst enemy.

The tactical error was surrendering three of the four P’s. For many now marketing is Promotion.

The big casualty of this is the disconnect with the Product.

It used to be at the heart of everything. Now it arrives on your desk and all it needs is gift-wrapping.

Of course, Product doesn’t just mean the thing your company makes.

It’s the packaging, the attributes, the service design, the context, the tangible and the intangible.

You can sum it up as the experience.

That’s not to say the answer to marketing’s loss of power is a return to product orientation. There’s always been a danger in inside-out thinking. "We’ve made it, we just need you in marketing to get people to buy it."

A product is a solution to a need. Those needs may be explicit or implicit. More of a need or more of a want.

Either way, the source of value for people. Expected reward minus expected pain.

This is market orientation. It means navigating the world of interest like somebody actually in that world. Seeing it through their eyes.

Some argue that’s an impossibility. As the saying goes, you are not the customer.

And subjectivity is our Achilles heel. Look at how rage baiters wade into debates on LinkedIn on new campaigns and logos.

But the optimum state of mind for any marketeer should be Stanislavski’s Magic If.

That’s the ability to step into someone else's reality so completely that you can think and feel not just about them but as them. "If I were this person in these circumstances, what would I do?"

So here’s the catch. You’re not going to get anywhere close to that ideal if you keep your distance. Then your target consumer will forever remain a dot on the horizon.

Of course, you’ll have an ocean of data on their behaviour, hence the danger of drowning.

AI will make the collection and analysis of that ever more efficient and economical.

But at some point, whether it’s at the start of your journey or when it’s too late to turn back, you’re going to need to understand why.

Not just why they enter a category. Every competitor will know those reasons. ChatGPT knows them.

But why one particular brand comes to mind more readily than another, for that person in those circumstances.

Why they’re going to remember you.

And how you can use that memory insight to your advantage.

That’s power to the people.

And it’s why qualitative research is marketing’s best friend.

However you do it. As long as you do it well.