Tewks Blog

Something I struggle with, outside of my weight and propensity for foul language, that most CRM practitioners face is the need to bridge the gap between the somewhat academic concepts of customer-centricity and the execution orientated marketer.

Part of this struggle is certainly driven by the endless generation of new terms and jargon.  Buzz word bingo anyone?  Although it may not sound it, this isn’t meant to be a total indictment.  The way people engage, the way they shop, and the way they buy is changing.  It makes sense, therefore, that we need new creative ideas and languages to frame our responses to the changing environment.

The problem arises, however, when in generating new insights we are constantly reverting to dirt.  There is value in traditional trains of thought; and most importantly a schooled, and practiced way of thinking that establishes a core relevancy across all marketers.  In generating new ideas, or at least in their communication, the effective ideas will be those that incrementally change people’s thinking.

A great example of this is the postulation that the 4P’s (product, price, place, and promotion) are dead.  A lot of very smart people have promoted this with a couple of notables being Idris Mootee of Idea Couture (New 4P’s) and Ginger Colon of 1:1 Media (Are the 4P’s relevant?).  While I’m normally at the front of the line to go storm the castle, I feel this approach is too drastic to achieve results.  Their concepts are sound, but they need to be presented in a relevant framework that enables you to lead people through the change process.

Not just the critic, here are some thoughts on migrating, or enhancing the commonly held definitions of the 4P’s.

Product:  At the core, obviously this one is going nowhere.  As much digital reinvention, viral this, social that, we throw at it people are still going to be eating their Twinkies and drinking their Gatorade (breakfast of champions!).  What can change, though, is the way we engage consumers in the creation of new products.  Organizations have always taken polls, done focus groups, and generally found ways to take the pulse of the crowd.  At the core, this isn’t going to change, its just now a lot easier and less expensive to do.  As this wall comes down, via blogs, community sites, WOM campaigns, etc. the savvy marketer will move more of their product development dollar to the crowd.

Place: Like product, there are still some known truths here: my Miller Lite will be consumed on my couch, on a bar stool, or in the stands.  Okay, maybe not a great example, as groceries remain the final frontier for on-line shopping, but representative of a way of thinking.  From an organization perspective we had better know the places, including digital, especially including digital, where our customers want to engage with us.  Being there of course, being half the battle.

Price:  Two of the most successful retailers in recent years have been WalMart and Nordstroms.  Two things that go together like the Cubs and the World Series (ouch!).  While we could wax the moon in service models and distribution I think the critical take away is that there are people in the world who are going to pay $2.99 for a three pack of t-shirts, and others that are going to pay $29.99 for one.  Its not about lowest price, its about right one.  You have to presume your customers have near perfect price information and strike a pricing strategy that aligns with your service and positioning to drive best value.

Promotions:  Of the P’s, promotion is certainly the one subject to the most change.  In the simplest form, most have embraced the need to project a consistent message across multi-channels.  I’d argue, however, this is basically just the status quo.  Organizations that really get it are the ones who can read the C-change that people are no longer making purchasing decisions in the same way.  Consumers are changing: information is going up, switching costs coming down, captivity being eliminated (e.g., Tivo, etc.), and our places of engagement (e.g., Facebook, streaming, etc.) diversifying.  We still need to promote, but to an evolving, much more sophisticated consumer.

The end story is it’s about evolution, not revolution.  The marketing truths that we’ve held dear are still valuable and relevant.  They just need to be slightly updated to account for societal changes.  Remodel before you revert to dirt.