Tom Fishburne has done a great job of lampooning the culture of brand management and marketing for a while now. His cartoons are both funny and well thought, like an even more clever version of Dilbert without the passive aggressive anger toward upper management.
A recent cartoon of his impressively illustrates exactly one of my key messages. Marketer’s can’t oversell their products anymore. If it doesn’t deliver, consumers can spread the word as fast as they can make a blog post, or web review. They decide if your product meets their expectations. The marketing message may help shape those expectations, but in the end, they are the ones in control.
The classic 4P’s of marketing have to work in concert to deliver an experience. If the price is to high, or the place is undesirable, the consumer will think less favorably. Now more than ever, to succeed we need to think about far more than how to promote and capture the big picture of marketing fundamentals.