Quotebank: Marketing

We will have to become 'perpetual marketers', to learn to be channel and data planners without losing our human insight or creativity; to vastly increase the level of accountability and provide more relevant experiences for customers.

We can't buy fans and we can't schedule our commercials into the consciousness of our fans. Rather, we must speak with clear intent and respect the boundaries of the relationship.

The best drivers of product recommendations are not loyal customers but non-loyal customers – people who have tried your product and may even still use it, but use a rival product most often.

From market-place results that I've both caused and witnessed first-hand, one thing is certain - your failure to act may be your competitor's gain!

Getting paid, owned and earned media to work in tandem, enhancing the effect of each, is the ultimate goal, but it requires a fully integrated marketing structure.

The secret to successful communication is about saying the right thing in the right way in the right place and moment. However, the opportunities to do it right (and wrong) increase dramatically in the more complex and individualistic world.

We are a social species; seeing other people happy elicits happiness in ourselves, and it is therefore vital that all communications, no matter what the message, make the generation of happiness their key aim.

What marketers need to do is realise that the shopper needs to feel that she is making smart choices. It does not help the brand if she feels that she is being taken for a ride.

You don't spend ten years appealing to middle-aged women and then suddenly turn around and start trying to connect with 25-year-old women. You're almost certainly going to alienate the people who have an investment in your brand, and there's no guarantee you're going to be successful with the new group.

While marketers do their best to imbue brands with positive, motivating values and associations, marketers do not decide a brand's ultimate meaning. Consumers do – and sometimes they find relevance, purpose and significance that the brand's creators may not have seen or intended.

Integration in television shows and films acts as one of several marketing tools to showcase the many dimensions of the brand as well as our iconic packaging…The uniqueness of brand integration is its global reach - that is truly international.

Traditionally, gaming has been treated as a silo in media plans, but this is changing. Now, a mobile or search call-to-action can drive activity to other media channels, and content or messaging can unify in-game elements and separate platforms.

Contagion in marketing is all around us and always has been – yet it's tempting to believe that it was born in the age of the internet and social media.

When we look at contagious ideas, what seems obvious is that they generally arise because of the feelings we have about them – the more intensely we feel about them, the more likely we are to share them with others. And, we don't only share the idea, we also seem to share the emotion – which means our emotions are contagious as well as our ideas.

What is the value to a marketer of insight that isn't implemented? Zero.

Marketers rarely talk about fun directly, but in designing digital offerings that promise an "experience," or when focused on building customer relationships, the covert subtext of most advertising should be aimed at creating the feeling of fun.

The laws of the market dictate brand loyalty levels, not the resourcefulness of marketing. Yet largely thanks to many years of ill-informed promotion by management consultants, many millions of pounds have been wasted on the pursuit of loyalty.

With the blurring of age and gender, marketers are putting more and more emphasis on understanding the personal values of their consumers.

In the past, marketers had worried less about the collateral impact that one brand in their portfolio might have on another. Now with the internet, word-of-mouth and other forms of communications, they know that consumers understand the linkage between brands and also their corporate parents.

The single greatest threat facing marketing at the moment is short-termism: the dominant focus on this period's or quarter's sales. Why? Because it leads marketing to abandon the pursuit of those emotional qualities that build long-term preference and profitability for brands.

Measuring engagement and engaging consumers are two sides of the same coin.

Marketers talk a lot about above-the-line and below-the-line but we don't talk so much about behind-the-line. I'm a big advocate of behind-the-line marketing – what I think of as internal marketing.

My belief is that if you grapple with the big changes until you really get them and if you develop an internal compass to steer your marketing and communications, you will be working in a discipline that is more exciting, more intellectually rich, more delightfully complex and ultimately more rewarding than it has ever been.

Emotion – once a largely ignored field of cognitive psychology – has become accepted as a major spring of consumer behaviour. So much so, that many advertisers now view the creation of emotional engagement as their primary objective.

Marketing is too important to be left just to the marketing department.

The traditional model we all grew up with is obsolete.

The case for WOM can be confused with the media on which it’s based. At the end of the day, it’s about getting people to talk about the brand, not the funny video the brand released.

While the term social marketing has become voguish, it is frequently used in actual practice to describe communication campaigns rather than integrated marketing programmes based on a deep understanding of the target consumer populations.

Consumers' desire to be listened to and involved more directly in what a brand does and says means that now, more than ever, there is a great opportunity to market with consumers rather than at them.

We all have to get comfortable with the idea that we have less control. But, at the same time, we need to work harder on our influence skills - some of them outside traditional marketing - to stay in touch with consumers.

Marketers... Can't simply put a more environmentally friendly package on the shelves – and assume that shoppers will recognize and appreciate the change. If the goal is to drive preference or justify a price premium, the environmental benefit needs to be conveyed.

We are not a dying business. But we talk like a dying business.

The heart of marketing is behavior modification, and this will remain our focus.

The Obama campaign is one of the greatest examples of what is possible in the brave new world of 21st Century marketing. They did a masterful job of connecting with minds, personalizing messages, refining old and new media, sending clear messages, and providing the feedback that enabled them to respond to the messages they heard.

Marketers have realized that their solutions are not wrapped up in 30-second commercials. They need a 360-degrees program that takes into consideration all the challenges a brand has today. And that represents more of a service discipline.

We need to become an 'And' industry, not an 'Either/Or' industry. We need to use both direct mail and brand advertising. We need to encourage the intelligent use of data that we can turn into consumer insights that unlock the power of the web.

The big subject is the need for people to simplify their lives in a world of exploding choices and how they go about doing that, and how marketers are focused on the wrong thing. They need to bring value to people not just by creating new options but also by simplifying choices.

Most of what influences what we say and do occurs below the level of awareness. That's why we need new techniques: to get at hidden knowledge-to get at what people don't know they know.

The big thing is that the future of digital will be about marketing. It won't be about advertising.

You don't need to innovate for the sake of innovation. If it's a bad idea, it's not going to help. It might impress your boss, but we evaluate marketing spend not on analysis but on call volume. If the phone's ringing, the creative people have done their job.

The distinctions between advertising and marketing are blurring, requiring new roles and new forms of consumer-centric marketing.

If there is one thing more dishonest than dodgy marketing, it is the pretence that marketing raises no ethical concerns. The truth is that marketing raises enormous ethical questions every day – at least it does if you are doing it right.

More than half the world's population in the 20th century saw the greatest rise in prosperity in history. This was largely due to a combination of liberal democracy with free market (if not unbridled) capitalism. The engine of this was marketing.

The way to spread viral content is to put something in that allows consumers to express themselves with embedded messages as to who they are.

There's no bigger growth engine than marketing, but at the moment it's an under-leveraged asset.

Context matters in marketing. You're going to be judged by the company you keep. We build family-oriented products and brands. If those brands [are advertised] in the wrong context, all that effort is for nothing.

The vocabulary of marketing is largely one of warfare - with the consumer as enemy combatant, on the receiving end of our merciless attacks.

We are an industry that has historically been at the forefront of defining new media environments in ways that benefit consumers and move our entire business model forward. We must ensure that while we are moving quickly, we are also moving smartly.

The mobile strategy needs to be integrated in terms of CRM customer experience strategy. It shouldn’t be a marketing initiative. It’s a fundamental channel for your customers, and therefore needs to be seen as a cross-line of business channel. From a service perspective, from a sales perspective and from a marketing perspective.

Think back 10 years ago. People have changed. Their lives and needs have evolved. But brand marketing really hasn't changed in a fundamental way. It has not linked up to what consumers have become.

Behavioural economics marks a sea change in the way we think about consumers and their relationships with brands and communications. It has the potential to transform marketing and market research.

Neuromarketing can tell us what, but it cannot tell us why - particularly when it comes to emotion.

Marketers are, by nature, optimists. In order to rise in the morning and look forward to going to work, we have to believe that something we will do today will shine through the fog of competitive noise, resonate in the minds of our customers and prospects, and ring the cash register.

With the right budgets, allowing lots of people to see your logo is easy. But driving advocacy, word of mouth, loyalty and genuinely influencing trial and purchase is infinitely more complex, but unarguably more useful.

Fame works – and it makes hard-pressed communications budgets stretch further by getting consumers to do some of the work.

A campaign, like a brand, is not just a number of bits put together—a claim here, a pack shot there, a reason why somewhere else. If we try to produce it by the atomistic approach, we will end up with a sort of Identikit brand. It will be a perfect description of the structure of the brand, as the Identikit can describe the contours of the face. But it won't be the same thing. The brand will never come to life.

Marketing to social media audiences is doomed. A marketing-based social media strategy starts in the wrong place and leads to us doing the wrong things with the wrong people in the wrong context.

While holistic communications planning has been a buzz phrase for about 20 years, generally creating more buzz than action, the dramatic changes in the consumer and media landscape that we have seen in the early years of this new century have brought new urgency to the need to walk the talk of holistic communications.

The acceleration of the marketing process, the concentrating of manufacturing, greater diversification, increased international competition, have in turn speeded up product improvements, product innovations and new product introductions. The stakes are high, the failures costly.

Some commentators imply that any evidence of commercialisation must be replacing love and care in the minds of young people. What we have found is that they co-exist: the commercial world is there, but it is much less important in young people's lives than the more socially-orientated goals.

For all companies, effective marketing accountability requires a mix of art and science: it requires transformation of culture, of process and of the methods used to measure marketing effects, and to act on the insights from those measures.

Marketing is one of the last of the wild frontiers in American business today, a place where "cowboys" with wild ideas can literally create fortunes out of thin air.

The success of any user generated content-related project should be judged in the long term. Try not to use it as a one-off campaign activation idea. Think of it instead as the beginning or continuation of an ongoing dialogue with your consumers.

Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.

Marketing is marketing. It's easy to drape new media in magic but it comes down to whether it's a good business or not.

Life's too short to sell things you don't believe in.

Nike is a marketing-oriented company, and the product is our most important marketing tool

Give them quality. That's the best kind of advertising.

Advertising nourishes the consuming power of men.

Familiarity is the culmination of successful brand building.

It is the sizzle that sells the steak.

It seems to me probable that of all our economic life the element on which we are inclined to place too low an estimate is advertising.

Advertising ministers to the spiritual side of trade.

In good times, people want to advertise; in bad times, they have to.

Marketing is not a function, it is the whole business seen from the customer's point of view.

Marketing takes a day to learn. Unfortunately, it takes a lifetime to master.

Marketing goes wrong when it is perceived by companies as a bolt-on activity.

Marketing strategy is a series of integrated actions leading to a sustainable competitive advantage.

The cold face of the marketing business is about bringing in cash, not just about having big ad campaigns.

Advertising says to people, 'Here's what we've got. Here's what it will do for you. Here's how to get it.'

Advertising is absolutely right to avoid featuring the real world. Advertising's most common function is to bring out the best in things, to make its subjects as attractive as possible.

Towards the end of the 20th century, marketing companies were converted to a belief in integrated communications. And at exactly the same time, the purveyors of those communications disintegrated completely.

Marketing accountability must inform us how well we are building brands and growing businesses.

Marketing people have every reason to be grateful for the existence of reluctant consumers: if it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t have jobs

Sampling is an under-exploited opportunity for most brands. Done right, sampling can convert habitual consumers of rival brands, breaking their habit and turning them into advocates.

Conversations in pubs, at school gates and online are by far the most important medium in the marketer's armoury.

In science, the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs.

A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets

A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one

If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.

Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.

Marketing and advertising are incredibly exciting and creative functions. They are central to the creation of brands and to the creation of sustainable competitive advantage for companies

Next to doing the right thing, the most important thing is to let people know you are doing the right thing.

No great marketing decisions have ever been made on qualitative data

Subliminal advertising does not affect consumer buying behavior, advertising recall, or any other marketplace behavior.

This may seem simple, but you need to give customers what they want, not what you think they want. And, if you do this, people will keep coming back.

You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can not get them across, your ideas will not get you anywhere.