Comments on: What Happens When You Put the CUSTOMER In Charge of Your Marketing? http://www.marketingrevisited.com/what-happens-when-you-put-the-customer-in-charge-of-your-marketing/ Fri, 21 Nov 2008 06:30:01 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.5 by: Martin Calle http://www.marketingrevisited.com/what-happens-when-you-put-the-customer-in-charge-of-your-marketing/#comment-1646 Sat, 03 Nov 2007 07:41:52 +0000 http://www.marketingrevisited.com/what-happens-when-you-put-the-customer-in-charge-of-your-marketing/#comment-1646 We pioneered and trademarked the concept and practice of Consumer Creativity to collaborate with consumer audiences in the creation of new product concepts, product positioning strategies and revolutionary product design, packaging and delivery systems in 1954, based-on pre-computer US government code breaking practices solicited by the United States and later utilized with great success by companies as large as Procter & Gamble and General Motors, the world's largest advertisers, and as small as E.E. Dickenson Witch Hazel Company in Essex, CT. With true consumer creativity, stimulating the consumer minds with structured product-based dimensions that caused them to say and think things they'd never otherwise say or think or perceive about a product or brand's "POTENTIALS" we consistently hit more home runs than any other breakthrough idea manufacturing process around - anywhere. With the growth of "new media" came new choices to chase consumer ears and eyeballs and young marketers started stepping off a different rung on the ladder than first finding a highly different and consumer desired product-based selling solution. Once thus set adrift they were unable to work their way back to shore so to speak, breeding generations of marketers who now practice what they've "learned" as CMOs with life expectancies under 24 months. Would it not be better to speak with someone who can extend that life expectancy to years? In part, being set adrift, marketers (no, decision makers) succumb to what is called Search Satisfaction. They stop looking for better answers once they find solutions they like. That's how Crispin Porter + Bogusky lost ConAgra and Orville Redenbacker's $34 million account in less than a year. It wasn't because consumers didn't set market prices. In fact that's pretty much their agency's MO - they do no consumer homework. Oh, they might ask questions or do market research but question based marketing is full of pitfalls and poor traditions. By the time you get an answer to a question the answer has already happened. By default you are a pound short and a day behind the consumer. Atticus Finch said in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, "You can't ask a question you don't already know the answer to." Which is why research and qualitative work generally only reconfirms the things you already know. Which is why ranch resources are so small. I found, in speaking to well over a quarter million consumers in almost every SIC category that whenever you ask consumers questions, you do not get the voice of the consumer, you get the voice of the inquirer through the question being asked - a form of bias that will lead you astray. So if you ask consumers no questions they can tell you no lies - and that's how we built companies such as P&G through 10 generations of Chairmen, or invented brands such as Tylenol Gelcaps to restore the 92% of capsule segment sales lost to cyanide tampering. What else is wrong with Search Satisfaction? It afflicts physicians who stop diagnosing patients once they find answers they feel fit the symptoms patients present. The only problem is that doctors misdiagnose patients a far higher percentage of the time than anyone wants to admit. So who really is letting the consumer drive their business? Almost no one. McKinsey, Bain, Booz Allen all report that revenues in the US $2 trillion CPG industry are flat and key executives wonder where the growth is going to come from. I like your points but are you, on the surface, suggesting Tide or Crest set "market pricing?" With the tail (Costco) already wagging the the dog (P&G) (P&G lost control for the first time in history under Al Lafely's leadership) setting terms and pricing it will be a long time before that happens. Like Jean Luc Picard said in Star Trek, "In the 24th Century we no longer use money. We spend all of our time bettering ourselves." Better yourself with my Multi-Dimensional Creativity. It remains the only available Consumer-Creation process that lets the consumer do 100% of the product creation process, from concept inception to end-user consumption. Whew! That was a random stream of consciousness (or unconsciousness)late at night. Thanks for the workout. We pioneered and trademarked the concept and practice of Consumer Creativity to collaborate with consumer audiences in the creation of new product concepts, product positioning strategies and revolutionary product design, packaging and delivery systems in 1954, based-on pre-computer US government code breaking practices solicited by the United States and later utilized with great success by companies as large as Procter & Gamble and General Motors, the world’s largest advertisers, and as small as E.E. Dickenson Witch Hazel Company in Essex, CT. With true consumer creativity, stimulating the consumer minds with structured product-based dimensions that caused them to say and think things they’d never otherwise say or think or perceive about a product or brand’s “POTENTIALS” we consistently hit more home runs than any other breakthrough idea manufacturing process around - anywhere. With the growth of “new media” came new choices to chase consumer ears and eyeballs and young marketers started stepping off a different rung on the ladder than first finding a highly different and consumer desired product-based selling solution. Once thus set adrift they were unable to work their way back to shore so to speak, breeding generations of marketers who now practice what they’ve “learned” as CMOs with life expectancies under 24 months. Would it not be better to speak with someone who can extend that life expectancy to years? In part, being set adrift, marketers (no, decision makers) succumb to what is called Search Satisfaction. They stop looking for better answers once they find solutions they like. That’s how Crispin Porter + Bogusky lost ConAgra and Orville Redenbacker’s $34 million account in less than a year. It wasn’t because consumers didn’t set market prices. In fact that’s pretty much their agency’s MO - they do no consumer homework. Oh, they might ask questions or do market research but question based marketing is full of pitfalls and poor traditions. By the time you get an answer to a question the answer has already happened. By default you are a pound short and a day behind the consumer. Atticus Finch said in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, “You can’t ask a question you don’t already know the answer to.” Which is why research and qualitative work generally only reconfirms the things you already know. Which is why ranch resources are so small. I found, in speaking to well over a quarter million consumers in almost every SIC category that whenever you ask consumers questions, you do not get the voice of the consumer, you get the voice of the inquirer through the question being asked - a form of bias that will lead you astray. So if you ask consumers no questions they can tell you no lies - and that’s how we built companies such as P&G through 10 generations of Chairmen, or invented brands such as Tylenol Gelcaps to restore the 92% of capsule segment sales lost to cyanide tampering. What else is wrong with Search Satisfaction? It afflicts physicians who stop diagnosing patients once they find answers they feel fit the symptoms patients present. The only problem is that doctors misdiagnose patients a far higher percentage of the time than anyone wants to admit.

So who really is letting the consumer drive their business? Almost no one. McKinsey, Bain, Booz Allen all report that revenues in the US $2 trillion CPG industry are flat and key executives wonder where the growth is going to come from.

I like your points but are you, on the surface, suggesting Tide or Crest set “market pricing?” With the tail (Costco) already wagging the the dog (P&G) (P&G lost control for the first time in history under Al Lafely’s leadership) setting terms and pricing it will be a long time before that happens. Like Jean Luc Picard said in Star Trek, “In the 24th Century we no longer use money. We spend all of our time bettering ourselves.” Better yourself with my Multi-Dimensional Creativity. It remains the only available Consumer-Creation process that lets the consumer do 100% of the product creation process, from concept inception to end-user consumption.

Whew! That was a random stream of consciousness (or unconsciousness)late at night. Thanks for the workout.

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