Marketing - The Bad Seed
We, as yet, have no evidence that things are changing for the better.
Amoral marketing departments of Corporations will continue to put profits before people. We, as yet, have no voice to challenge those vast Corporations yet their marketing departments continue to demonstrate that they have not learned one thing from the crisis.
Unless marketing thinking can change, dramatically, we will sink slowly beneath the weight of our problems and the impotency of our remedies.
Finally we must recognised the true meaning of the word "communication" and to stop the useless and highly wasteful expenditure on marketing, especially advertising.
It could be said that Interactive Communication is the key method that will kindle a wave of creative destruction and increased wealth that will match the industrial revolution!
It will reduce the stress on our overcrowded media system, it will re-vitalize neglected sections of our marketing infrastructure and it will place key tools in place to amplify and distribute valuable feedback. And, more importantly, it is available right now!
So why do we have to change Marketing?
Even now many deny the magnitude of the problems facing our economy, of which marketing supposedly plays a large role in the development. People are expecting a resumption of growth however the crisis has exposed not only flaws in the prevailing economic model but also flaws in our society. Too many people have taken advantage of others. Almost every day has bought forth stories of bad behaviour by those in the marketing sector.
We should take this opportunity to reflect about what kind of marketing we would like to have. Certainly we can no longer follow a society in which materialism dominates moral commitment, in which rapid growth that we have achieved is not sustainable environmentally or socially. Rugged individualism and market fundamentalism have eroded any sense of community and have led to the rampant exploitation of unwary and unprotected individuals and to an increasing social divide.
Reality bites, the Bad Seed - Advertising - has run smack into reality. Nobody believes any more that you can keep on spending the huge sums of money on advertising without any kind of meaningful accountability.
Worse still advertising expenditures are simply unsustainable, they are associated with clutter and lower growth outcomes! Seldom do countries simply "advertise" their way out of deep debt burdens! Advertising has created a corporate culture in which doubts and criticisms were not allowed. We are surely right to think that advertising, along with its handmaiden, marketing, has become one of the most damaging things in modern business!
The positive thinking about advertising seems to be part of the human condition, there will always be people who will buy into the effectiveness of marketing & advertising. Just consider the ever appealing slogan "Advertising Works"! The problem with the positive thinking about advertising is that it is making inroads into the serious world of academic business thinking. Quite different is interactive communication in that Interactive communications invites the consumer to respond to or comment to your brand and the brand message
It is a very effective means of mass communication. It is not media dependent- can work in press, TV, internet, radio and outdoor. It utilises programmed learning techniques.
What does it do? It changes behaviour
Because of the effectiveness of communication it changes peoples behaviour- for example
they could switch brands, they could buy more, they might change the way they vote.
But above all else it understands the human need for involvement and COMMUNICATION!
