Food for thought: The spy who sold out
Forgiving a pretty face
Facebook to agencies: how will people share your story?
Is “The Pitch” an accurate reflection of our industry?
My first job after graduating from university was managing a local branch of Enterprise Rent-A-Car. It was a challenging customer service job. It was good experience. And I don’t miss it a bit.
My boss at the time taught me a lesson that’s as useful today as it was when it was conceived at the dawn of marketing: “Keep it simple, stupid.” Basically, take the most direct route to get to what really matters. At Enterprise, that meant providing great customer service, on time, and for a fair price. And it worked.
Since 1957, Enterprise has grown from a seven-car lease fleet to being the single-largest rental car company in North America. And they got there by focusing on one simple goal: The replacement industry – providing cars through insurance companies while customer cars were in for collision repairs. Enterprise kept it simple and they’re reaping the rewards.
Here’s another example. A piece in last month’s Economist described LVMH’s (Louis Vuitton’s parent company) business model along four lines: Product, Distribution, Communication and Price. By their way of thinking, if they get the first three right, the fourth doesn’t matter.
Hard to argue with one of the most successful premium brands in the world.
Marketers often find themselves trying to accomplish more than one objective in a single campaign.
Tight budgets tempt us into combining our marketing efforts so that each execution speaks to a wide range of targets about a wide range of products, service offerings, promotions and sales. In other words, “If you engage our brand and buy our thing and maybe do this other thing, you’ll get benefits x, y and z, and maybe a, b and c.”
But what would happen if – instead of diluting our message – we concentrated our marketing dollars around one goal, to one specific target, with one single message?
Think Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty”, Obama’s “Hope”, Bell’s “We are all connected.”
The lesson is still simple: when we stay focused on single, achievable objectives, we have a much better chance of actually realizing them.
simonbilling
October 5, 2009 @ 12:42 pm
Hmm – those old 4 ‘P’s: product, presence (distribution), promotion, price. Still the four marketing levers after all these years. Amazing how the basics get forgotten in all the excitement over the new marketing environment (as I wrote here http://www.grumpybrit.com/?p=119)
Ian Mackenzie
October 5, 2009 @ 3:09 pm
Hi Simon,
Of the Four Ps (product, price, promotion, placement), you say:
“These fundamentals are unaffected by the ‘seismic’ fissures in the media landscape, the advent of the ‘conversation’, the freeing of the captive audience, the ouster of persuasion in favour of ‘engagement’, or the rather creepy idea of a ‘relationship’, beyond the purely commercial, with inanimate objects.”
Nicely put. Have you come across any decent counterpoints since writing that?