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The mistaken views on marketing
Bubuwit
confides that there is a high degree of misunderstanding
on what marketing is and what it can do for a company. In
fact, some topnotch marketers place unrealistic
expectations on their chief marketing officers and the
many layers of vice presidents. No wonder, the average
duration of a marketing director may be shortened than one
can imagine.
Many CEOs,
according to Bubuwit, are appalled by their companies’
high failure rate of new products, rising advertising and
selling costs, flat or falling market shares, declining
gross margins and other signs of weak market performance.
They often single out their marketing/sales group as the
culprit.
Bubuwit
gathered that many companies saw their marketing
departments as “ill-focused and overindulged.” Bubuwit
sensed that these marketing departments are
“unimaginative, generating few new ideas, no longer
delivering of new businesses.” Some CEOs ought to be
disappointed in their marketing people. Others, however,
may misunderstand what marketing does or is capable of
doing, or may have developed unreasonable expectations.
Marketers,
on one hand, criticize their senior management for not
seeing marketing expenditures as an investment, not a
cost, and for emphasizing short-term results, not focusing
on the long-term, and also for being too risk-averse.
In highly
competitive markets, all departments must focus on winning
customer preference. One celebrated CEO tells his
employees: “Companies can’t give job security. Only
customers can!” He makes his employees highly aware of
their impact, irrespective of their departments and
positions, on customer satisfaction and retention.
Bubuwit’s implication: “If you are not thinking customer,
you are not thinking.”
The invisible PR
Who is
this notorious PR who invites media in a press conference
and brings home the tokens allotted for the latter when
the forum is done? It was a huge attendance, all right
,with all the trimedia representatives present to cover
the controversial “other side” of a story and get the
latest scoop. This PR was so pleased that the agency’s
media contacts came in full force and the room was filled
up, to the delight of the organizer. But alas, there was
another PR who claimed authority over the press con and
was surprised to see the “impostor” PR hanging around the
hall. When the session was ended, the “invisible” PR was
nowhere to be found! | 
