A new definition of marketing

Oh dear God. A new definition of marketing.

Its taken 30 years, and folks are up in arms. The UK Chartered Institute of Marketing’s (CIM) new (draft) definition of marketing definitely swaps brevity for verbosity; and I am not convinced.

Old: ‘The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably.’

New: ‘The strategic business function that creates value by stimulating, facilitating and fulfilling customer demand. It does this by building brands, nurturing innovation, developing relationships, creating good customer service and communicating benefits. By operating customer-centrically, marketing brings positive return on investment, satisfies shareholders and stake-holders from business and the community, and contributes to positive behavioural change and a sustainable business future.’

Hmmmmm. Not sure either? Tell you what, wanna read the 3000 treaty that is supporting (justifying) the change. Thought not.

Its called ‘Tomorrow’s Word: Re-evaluating the Role of Marketing’. Apparently (according to the treaty) whilst marketing has become more sophisticated, ‘its status with the customer and the rest of the business has never been lower’. Rubbish.

The reason why marketing gets a bad name is because ‘professors’ and bodies like the CIM insist in over complicating the discipline, being verbose, and circling the basics. Here’s my primary problem. Just count how many ideas are in the new definition alone. There’s at least a dozen. And does the wording deal with marketing as a function or a process, or both?

If you want to go deep – write a manifesto. If you want to write a definition (does the world really need a definition, is it possible that one size doesn’t fit all?) – keep it sweet.

Here is the US Marketing Society’s definition, ‘The creation of customer demand, which is the only sustainable form of growth in business.’

The definition from the American Marketing Association (AMA), the US equivalent to the CIM, reads: ‘Marketing is an organisational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organisation and its stakeholders.’

That’s seems better.

OMG! as the CIM plans its tour of the UK to canvass opinion on the proposed change among its membership, I can safely say “that’s a tour bus I’m glad I’m not on.”

And while a definition is sought like some kind of holy grail, I’ll just try and keep doing what I think is right – with my own personal definition of marketing:

• Making products and services remarkable
• Thinking about marketing as not about the art of tricking people into buying stuff they don’t need, but about spreading ideas that people love
• Always trying to do stuff that is anticipated, personal and relevant

And most importantly, remembering that even if I think I’m in charge, I’m not. The customer makes up the rules (and definitions) and can change them when she wants, as quickly as she wants.

Anytime you give somebody less, you are sending them a message

It’s my birthday today, so no lengthy, thoughtful post :-)

But I wanted to point out my birthday falls on the same day (different year) that Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs in straight sets before 30,492 spectators at the Astrodome in Houston, Texas in an internationally televised tennis match dubbed the “The Battle of the Sexes.”

Here is a great quote from Jean King;

Anytime you give somebody less, you are sending them a message, you are telling them they are being discounted. They are worth less.

A great sporting quote, with business implications.

Bob Garfield: On The Death Of Traditional Advertising

“I think it’s dead. I don’t think you can survive unless you completely reconstruct the way you are compensated – and unless you re-envision what you do for a living.“ Bob Garfield

Update 20/09/07:  Max Kalehoff and Pete Blackshaw have performed some data mining to find the words most closely associated with the term “advertising” from across the internet in chatrooms, blogs, etc. The terms “false”, “deceptive” and “misleading” turn out to be highly associated with advertising.

Web 2.0 – Why we got here and whats next

Alexander van Elsas points us to a Marketingfacts post highlighting a brilliant presentation by Rolf Skyberg, the disruptive innovator at eBay.

Skyberg discusses the evolution of the Internet by placing it into a historical context; the result a unique perspective.

At 477 slides you could be inclined to give this a miss.

Don’t.

You’ll fly through this.

And no doubt this will capture attention in the same way that The Machine is Us/ing Us has.

How Apple creates loyal customers

Inside CRM editors have listed 12 effective strategies that Apple uses to create loyal customers.

In essence ‘complete solutions’, ‘familiar formats’ and the ‘cool factor’, keep customers coming back – but the full list is worth reading.

Deception

Mark Frauenfelder over at boingboing has pointed out a sneaky flower dealer near Sunset and Vermont in Los Angeles that has a sign on the sidewalk that tricks drivers into thinking it sells roses for $4 a dozen.

As he rightly points out, if you get down on your hands and knees and use a magnifying glass, you can see a tiny ’1/2′ in front of the large ‘DOZ’, and an equally miniature ’99′ above the dot after the ‘$4′.

I can’t imagine many drivers will stop twice, or buy two-dozen. A pity….buying flowers can become a habit.

Second Chance Tuesday – Learn from Last.fm

This afternoon I was invited to join Second Chance Tuesday for a rare opportunity to hear first hand, the inspiring story of how three swashbuckling entrepreneurs developed their ground-breaking social music experience, raised angel and venture capital from some of Europe’s most respected investors, guided their user growth to over 20 million active users in 240 countries, and sold to CBS as one of the biggest European Web 2.0 exits to date.

Sound interesting to you? Go register

The BBC‘s technology correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones, will be unearthing the secrets of their success, debating the future of online communities and digital content, and posing some more lighthearted questions including whether they still sleep in tents on the roof of their office, and what they plan to do with their share of the $280m. Spend it?

Who’s Who?

Felix Miller is CEO of Last.fm. He came to London from Germany to study in 1997. He met Martin Stiksel at a gig through a mutual friend. He was in a punk band at the time.

Martin Stikselis the co-founder and CCO of Last.fm. Martin came to London in 1995, where he created a sound design company (working on commissions for the likes of MTV and the BBC), before meeting Felix Miller at a gig in the late ’90s. The two of them set up an online record label, before launching Last.fm in 2002.

What is last.fm?

Founded in 2002 in London, Last.fm is the online, social music revolution that connects people with music and artists with listeners. By joining the Last.fm community, music fans can choose to share their music preferences by linking their media player to the Last.fm database. This database is populated continually with over 500 million monthly track submissions from Last.fm music fans. As a result, Last.fm can intelligently recommend songs, artists, local concerts and even other members based on their musical tastes.

Thanks to partnerships with EMI, Warner Music Group, Sony BMG, independent aggregators The Orchard and IODA, and more than 100,000 independent musicians and 20,000 labels that upload music directly to the site, Last.fm can draw recommendations from one of the most extensive online music catalogues.

Second Chance Tuesday is an event for anyone who believes in the power of the internet to change everything, from the way we communicate to the way we entertain ourselves.

Interested in mingling with London’s leading entrepreneurs and investors (as well as some older and wiser faces from the ’99 dot.com boom) who are helping create the world-changing ideas of tomorrow?

be cool

Apple does ‘remarkable’ in 449 words

To all iPhone customers:

I have received hundreds of emails from iPhone customers who are upset about Apple dropping the price of iPhone by $200 two months after it went on sale. After reading every one of these emails, I have some observations and conclusions.

First, I am sure that we are making the correct decision to lower the price of the 8GB iPhone from $599 to $399, and that now is the right time to do it. iPhone is a breakthrough product, and we have the chance to ‘go for it’ this holiday season. iPhone is so far ahead of the competition, and now it will be affordable by even more customers. It benefits both Apple and every iPhone user to get as many new customers as possible in the iPhone ‘tent’. We strongly believe the $399 price will help us do just that this holiday season.

Second, being in technology for 30+ years I can attest to the fact that the technology road is bumpy. There is always change and improvement, and there is always someone who bought a product before a particular cutoff date and misses the new price or the new operating system or the new whatever. This is life in the technology lane. If you always wait for the next price cut or to buy the new improved model, you’ll never buy any technology product because there is always something better and less expensive on the horizon. The good news is that if you buy products from companies that support them well, like Apple tries to do, you will receive years of useful and satisfying service from them even as newer models are introduced.

Third, even though we are making the right decision to lower the price of iPhone, and even though the technology road is bumpy, we need to do a better job taking care of our early iPhone customers as we aggressively go after new ones with a lower price. Our early customers trusted us, and we must live up to that trust with our actions in moments like these.

Therefore, we have decided to offer every iPhone customer who purchased an iPhone from either Apple or AT&T, and who is not receiving a rebate or any other consideration, a $100 store credit towards the purchase of any product at an Apple Retail Store or the Apple Online Store. Details are still being worked out and will be posted on Apple’s website next week. Stay tuned.

We want to do the right thing for our valued iPhone customers. We apologize for disappointing some of you, and we are doing our best to live up to your high expectations of Apple.

Steve Jobs
Apple CEO

Predict the appreciation of a color-combination

Igor Asselbergs (who writes at http://www.livelygrey.com) has written a super guest post at COLOURLovers.

In it he highlights Aemelius Müller, professor at the academy of Winterthur, Switzerland, who devised a formula to predict the appreciation of a color-combination. Or put another way: “Müller was able to predict which combination of colors most people would probably like.”

Here is a preview taken from the article:

The Muller Formula - Taken from a post at COLOURLovers

Read on to see how to better predict ‘common taste’. The COLOURLovers blog homepage is here, and gets a hearty recommendation from me.