The marketing communication industry, generally perceived to be an industry that has young people running the show, because of the creativity and relevance that it demands is actually overridden with old men and women from yesteryear, some are even well past the recommended age for retirement. Before you start making a noise about the vast “experience” that these individuals have, ask yourself…is that experience still relevant today? Many things have changed and continue to change daily from the days when “LSM’s” were seen as a breakthrough in the communication field by segmenting consumers according to their material possessions and salaries that they earned, the days when having a washing machine placed you up there with the Jones’. Today some people are trying to keep up with the Mofokeng’s while the Jones’ fade into obscurity due to their ever declining collective disposable income, but guess what? The old guard present in the marketing communications industry seem oblivious to this fact and many other consumer trends in the country, as they carry on persuading brand custodians to throw large sums of money on campaigns directed at the wrong people at the wrong time using the wrong channels, and getting the wrong results, much to the brand custodians dismay who entrusted the old guard with millions of rands to use his/her experience in generating the desired consumer response, which more than often, is to get the consumer out there and buy something.
The brand custodian is then presented with figures and percentages of the amount of “awareness” that the campaign has generated, however, the brand custodians handlers are not really concerned with “awareness” because that is not the mandate they had given to the custodian, they, in a nutshell had requested higher profit margins, a return on the investment that the custodian had been entrusted with…the poor custodian now has to go to the executive committee or the board of directors and sell them the same story that the old guard has sold him, how people are now more aware of the brand than they were before, how advertising and marketing communication efforts usually take about 6 months (or any other number they think of) to generate the desired result, or how the budget allocated was not enough to penetrate the market effectively etc etc.
The old guard and his team of “experts” will continue to come up with “creative” concepts that are nothing more than pretty pictures really, pictures and words that will not elicit any action from consumers because they are either irrelevant or because the majority of the market that they are targeted at has long been saturated and cannot be milked anymore. The cycle continues on and on because of “experienced” marketing communication practitioners and brand custodians who make foolish decisions that ensure that they never really meet their KPA’s but are retained as custodians of the brand for Lord knows why. The old guard continue to be “experts” in a market that they are experiencing for the first time like everybody else, being exposed to new mediums which they more often than not are resistant towards, because their divine “experience” has taught them about print, radio, tv and outdoor.
Yes experience can help in certain instances within this field, but experience is too overrated in this industry, If we were talking about engineering or financial sciences it would be a different story. What we are essentially talking about here are a group of people who work as a team to get pretty pictures out to the public or businesses usually with the ultimate objective of generating an uptake of something. It doesn’t take 10 years to train a person how to write properly and effectively using different tones and appeals etc for different different mediums including audiovisual productions (at least it shouldn’t), It doesn’t take 20 years for a person to know how to scribble scamps and later transfer their “creativity” onto a computer screen (at least it shouldn’t), It doesn’t take 2 years for an individual to learn how to distribute relevant information to relevant people within a company (at least it shouldn’t) It doesn’t take more than a year for a confident individual to be able to act as a company interface for its clients and subsequently put to paper what the client wants.
Managing a business is probably the hardest part, but depending on the individual, managing finances, relationships, people and expectations shouldn’t take that long either. So, this brings me back to my question, when is it time to call it quits in this industry? When is it time for the old guard to hang up their pencils and “mice” , How do you tell the old guard that they have lost touch with the reality that currently is, and their ideas are stale and fast becoming irrelevant, considering that most crappy campaigns are reviewed by the old guard before they are let out of the system.
The most ironic part in having the old guard who might think that their concepts can still do the job is the fact that, most marketing communication efforts are not targeted at an age group that they can relate to, excepting for products like Viagra, Elvis Presley ring-tones, Golden oldies’ cd’s and the like, so! Considering that marketers just don’t talk to the old guard, wouldn’t it make sense if the old guard relinquished their positions once they cross the rubicon and took up something like writing for columns in advertising and marketing magazines about how things have changed since their heydays when marketing communication was about drugs, alcohol and Ziggy Stardust. These columns will enable the old guard to talk about their expertise in the industry, compliment and criticize other people’s creative executions and tell us about how consumers buy things because of “emotional appeals” (consumers buying dishwashing liquid because they are emotionally drawn to the brand etc etc), these publications will become the domain for old guards when being put out to pasture, at least they will still be able to provide commentary that they deem as invaluable, It’s just a simple question..when is it time to call it quits?
3 comments:
i couldn't have said it better myself. it is the same old people that claim to to "experts" on everything marketing, the very same people that understand every market there is. the very same toppies that will advise Mr Client selling black female fair product to use models wearing fake hair.
I've had the previllege of listening to thier "gold-old days" stories before the Oceannia sunk. if you were to bar them from using the term LSM, you might as well cut thier tongue because other than LSM they don't know nothing. Dare to think unorthodox, they'll dismiss your ideas based on the fact that it's "not quantifiable". Give them a brief, they run to a Telmar machine, if Telmar is not working, boy-oh-boy, you are less likely to see a panic other than perhaps when a rabbit is caught on flood flights.
I often compare these old guard to a rugby player who tried heroics in a field of play and ended up being isolated from the rest, he'll try holding on to the ball knowing damn well that's not allowed.
if you've seen some on the pitch documents in these industry, you'll laugh to death, they talk about 150 years of experience. i mean what nonsense is that? i couldn't agree with you more on the issue of relevance, i mean how does a 50 yr old sell an X-box to a 21 yr old? it's more like being 16 and having a 65 yr old father, you'll ask him to buy Nike Air Force1 worth R1,900, he'll tell you when he was your age sneaker where 10 sheiling which is equivalent to R10 in modern value.
The old guard will hold on as long as they can, i just hope they don't pass down thier poisonous "expertise" to the young blood already in the system
LOL and they dare say that 'age is just a number?' Ist it really? Do the math...
Just as simple as your question is, the answer may be even simpler, The time is NOW!
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