It’s not a secret that Marketing is one of the most misunderstood, harangued and tortured career selections around.

The average tenure of a Chief Marketing Officer is less than 3 years.  I have long said that a key reason for this is because companies think Marketing is magic – that branding is magic (!!) – and when everyone discovers that the CMO is no sorcerer… Well, let’s just say that CMOs have something in common with PCs these days: it’s just easier to throw out the old one and buy a new one. 

And if the budget has to be cut? Take it from Marketing – no one knows what they do anyway.  In an average corporation, I’d be willing to bet that, as a functional expertise, marketing departments house a higher percentage of people entirely untrained in marketing than - well, it’s got to be pretty high on the list.

So the last thing a marketer wants to do is sound like what others think marketers sound like.  I cringe when I hear someone say something that only a Buzzword Bingo player could love.

Here’s a recent quote from the CEO of one of the biggest advertisers in the world:

“I would argue social networks and digital media are scale at play.  One of the things that came out of Cannes for [us] was the scale impact of social media.  The Cannes idea is a bit outdated… The way I see it, the awards now should all be Titaniums – you start with the idea now before you ever think about a medium and you take the idea, which is rooted in consumer insight, and only then do you figure out how to use the media, and you use every medium.  And then what the marketer needs to be able to is to be about to let go… Another was the ubiquity of social media and how an idea can take off and you don’t have to pay for it. What I worry about is that it democratizes scale.  It allows the little guy to get scale almost instantaneously. And we’ve got to make sure we don’t give up that opportunity.  That’s why we’re talking about transforming the company through digitization, visualization, virtualization.”

WTF? Or perhaps I should say, BINGO!

People, people, people: speak English.  Remember to use language that everyone (i.e. your boss and the finance guy) can understand. And – for Pete’s sake – unless you make video games, please try to avoid using the words digitization, visualization and virtualization in one sentence.

Normal people everywhere will thank you.

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Check out my other blog, Marketing Mojo, at www.stephaniefierman.com.

There was a recent article in the Wall Street Journal titled “Firms Hold Fast to Snail Mail Marketing.”  It seemed to be about small businesses who gave up their direct mail efforts in favor of email to either save money and/or because it seemed like the hip thing to do.

The particular companies profiled in this article told personal stories about how email didn’t generate the same positive results. In some cases, the owners actually heard from long-time customers asking what had happened to the letters/reminders/postcards they had received in the past.

This is because email is beside the point.  Establishing a connection with a prospect or customer is and always has been what’s most important.  Think first about your history and what type of communications have worked in the past. What kind of outreach prospects or clients appreciate. What makes them feel special. What generates orders, referrals and repeat business.  One of the owners profiled in the article discontinued his art-based postcard mailings, only to discover the cards permanently displayed in his clients’ offices.  His customers started calling him asking whether they’d been taken off the company’s mailing list.

What we have right there, friends, is some serious brand love.

Testing is fine.  It would be foolish not to test new technologies, which are usually cheaper and more easily wielded than the old ones.  And compromises must sometimes be made in order to preserve cash.  But – putting dollars aside – the beginning of the value chain is the relationship with the customer, and at the distant far end is the tactics you choose to reinforce and grow that relationship.  Too many executives (particularly those in small companies, who either can’t afford good marketing help or get less-than-great advice) are putting social media at the forefront of their thinking because they’re reading about whatever the heck it is everywhere they go. 

I tell these folks that they were right the first time when their gut was to do something special – something that showed they cared.  If you can replicate this more cheaply, by all means do it:  but don’t let any new whiz-bang communications vehicle get in the way.