MARKETING CAN ONLY DO SO MUCH
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MARKETING CAN ONLY DO SO MUCH
When I was about three years old, I can remember sitting in the front of the grocery cart as my mother did her big produce shopping day. She enjoyed shopping at a local non-chain market for her produce because, well – the produce was just better. This market didn’t really advertise much. They didn’t have a full marketing campaign or even a p.r. plan. They just sold good produce. And locals knew this, shared this with neighbors and friends and the market did very well.
People often wondered what this market’s secret was. Well, there wasn’t one. The people were nice, the service great, the produce was premium and what else can you say?
I distinctly remember in this mom-n-pop shop, ‘mom’ made homemade tortillas. Again – no big marketing push. But you could smell them in the market…and I recall ‘pop’ coming over to my mother’s shopping cart to hand me a warm, soft, aromatic tortilla with a little butter on it. I can still taste this. And obviously – it made an impact. The tortillas did well. And this market isn’t there anymore, as the mom-n-pop shop went into the tortilla making business, and I guess you could say, the rest is history.
I work in the world of public relations and marketing. And stories like that one make me smile. But today, when I watch the news with one disaster after another – businesses, CEOs, plane crashes, celebrity run-ins with the Paparazzi, faux pas and flubs happening with people, protocol, corporate business and standard operating procedure, I have to about everyone’s future marketing.
Years ago, I remember getting a phone call from someone who desperately wanted to be repped, who wanted a marketing and p.r. person to ‘do wonders for them’ and speak on their behalf in a pitch session for some project. They rambled on for minutes, which started to turn into a half-hour full of excuses and conversation that went nowhere. They couldn’t even tell me what it was that they wanted to accomplish. Worse yet, they had ‘secrets’… everything was a ‘secret’ so they couldn’t disclose things. How is someone supposed to be marketed without being real, raw and authentic? I don’t know. I won’t do it. To me this is just a volcano that will soon erupt in its own time. And I don’t believe in people and businesses who hide behind this ‘mask of importance and ego’ who think that marketing can make them wonderful.
Truth is, it can’t. No amount of marketing can make you wonderful. You are who you are. You can’t cover up ignorance and lack of ethics with fancy words or campaigns. Whether you’re an athlete on steroids, a celebrity who was unfaithful, a corporate head who gave undeserved bonuses – no amount of marketing can make what you did ‘go away.’
And in this same breath, no amount of marketing alone can make produce ripen to perfection, nor can it make a warm, soft, buttery tortilla delicious and memorable… reality is, reality.
© Media Monster Communications, Inc.
beevok 2 years ago
Excellent true article. Ultimately you have to deliver a quality product to your customers (well, maybe not always, but why develop junk?). My best wishes.