The top 12 sins of Marketing Gurus (and their books)
By Uri Baruchin
I thought I'd help Guy round up his Lies series,by writing about my top 12
favorite sins of marketing gurus and their books.
1. Anecdotal evidence: Guru's are always telling nice (even great)
stories, giving lots of examples and anecdotes. Those can be a lot of fun
and quite educational, but most are too specific to work for you, and when
you want a more thorough justification it's not necessarily there, thanks to
the invention of best practices...
2. Best practices: best practices are a result of reverse-engineering,
so it's like trying to figure out a cake recipe by using a lab analysis of
its ingredients. Most are either too generalized to be helpful with specific
problems, or too atomized to be restructured practically.
"Best Practices" actually means: building on experience in a world of
disruption and fluid rules ; Building on gut feelings on subjects that are
built on complex, contradictory or just messy theoretical disciplines ;
Using imitation in a world where very few players actually know what they're
doing and even they use a lot of trial and error.
And when best practices are not powerful enough you can make them into
rules...
3. Sweeping generalizations: Gurus love rules! The golden rule of this,
the immutable laws of that. And on the other hand...
4. Sweeping negatives: Which doesn't change the fact that we're told
that "X is dead" and "Y does not work anymore", while "Z is just not enough"
and besides - all the rules have changed, rules are meant to be broken
etc... (see cliches)
5. 100% evangelism (or "I'm converted, let me go"): Many guru ideas are
explained in the first dozen pages of their book, and can be quite powerful.
While you look forward to their development, it tends not to happen, and the
rest of the book is mostly reiteration and preaching to the choir (with
frequent use of anecdotes, which are fortified by calling them "case
studies").
Heck, maybe they are just saving the good stuff for the next time.
6. More bulk for your buck: this is about over beefing books, reports
and presentations. Why are so many marketing books so thick when the first
30 page (and if to be honest - sometimes less) will suffice? If what you
have to say can be summarised in a post - write a post, don't sell me a
whole book. (BTW - the best way to beef up a book? Yup - Anecdotal evidence)
7. New marketing is old marketing and vice versa: This is a cycle that
has been spinning so fast, that it seems both new marketing and
old/retro-marketing live together in perfect harmony side by side on the
best seller list. Surprise! while some things change, some stay the same.
It's tempting.
And you can always make the old look new and the new newer by creative use
of rebranding...
8. Rebranding of jargon: take an old concept and wrap it up in a new
metaphor. My current favs (=peeves) are "total branding", "quantum
branding", and Lovemarks(TM!) - All different levels of rebranding branding,
a problematic product to begin with.
If that's not enough - go extreme...
9. Fundamentalism: Many guru arguments are built as all powerful, all
engulfing doctrines. It's that "All you need is X" rhetoric (X being CRM,
Branding, Positioning, Buzz Marketing, etc.).
That's just not true.
10. Evoking the geeks: Want your ideas to be more viral? Compare them to
star wars (e.g. light side/dark side analogies), talk about blogs, and don't
forget there are other strong geek groups, like the spiritual geeks - have
you sold your Ferrari today?
11. Cliches: In the new business environment of our rapidly changing
landscape, complexity is increasing, uncertainty is the only certainty and
consumers are fickle...
12. Round numbers: Gurus just love to make up lists. This list should
have ended at either 10 or 12 points according to guru rules. Thus I've
sinned myself, but since I was at 11 I had to either make it 12 or (good
grief!) go all the way to 15 or 20.
The more artistic version of list-making is letter-alignment - making
acronyms out of words like SMART, or the 3 S's and 7 P's and the n N's. Just
by thinking about this phenomena I realise this list is getting way too
silly, and must stop.
source;
www.marketingbabylon.com/2006/05/15/marketing/the-top-12-sins-of-mark
eting-gurus-and-their-books/