Marketing Talk

I’ve just had the very pleasant experience of seeing my eldest son married to the girl of his dreams. We all had a lovely day – beautiful late October sunshine, a glorious nuptial mass, and an immensely enjoyable party afterwards.

Alongside my natural pride and delight at gaining a splendid new daughter, I have to say it’s great being father of the groom. You don’t actually have to do anything – no speeches, no rings to remember, no giving away of the bride (though I’m told in America both sets of parents ‘give away’ their respective children, which is a nice idea). You just need to exude a general air of patriarchal satisfaction at the proceedings – not difficult to do in the circumstances.

Gazing at the revellers it struck me what an amazing set of networks surround any couple as they get married – friends from work, university, even school; family members both familiar and remote; different generations; different lives. And I was only looking at the people who made it on to the final guest list, survivors of lengthy deliberations which inevitably excluded members of important networks of friends and relatives. If you’ve ever organised a wedding you’ll know the story.

Here’s how American writer, academic and family guru Stephanie Coontz explains in a recent presentation that marriage is indeed all about networks. Our contemporary focus on the romantic love of the happy couple is a relatively recent understanding of marriage, dating from the eighteenth century. Much more ancient is the notion of individual marriages as nodes in a wider network of social, economic and political entanglements.

Ms Coontz’ argument reminds me of the insights offered by relationship marketing theory – a perspective on marketing which goes beyond the individual transactions of our daily lives as customers and suppliers. It emphasises, instead, that what counts in marketing is not so much this week’s sales, but the way in which such transactions embed themselves within intricate networks of valuable relationships extending over the long term. Ms Coontz’ suggests that the key to the long-term success of a marriage lies in the small details of interaction. Successful marketers pay obsessive attention to what may appear to be relatively trivial aspects of product or service quality in order to keep their customers coming back. At the same time, successful marketers understand the importance of nurturing the network of relationships which provides the context for their business.

So, Marketing Talk’s advice to the newly weds (and indeed any other weds that might be reading) for a high-quality long term relationship is (a) remember the importance of detail, and (b) be nice to the in-laws…

The leaves are turning, the nights drawing in. The air is mistily chill. The nations’s seats of higher learning (other than the Open University that is) are about to be submerged in a sea of UCAS forms… Yes, it’s Personal Statement time – as university applicants sweat to condense their various achievements and enthusiasms into a small space to impress admissions tutors that they are worthy of a course place for some coveted degree or other.

For many this will be the first time they have ever had to think about marketing themselves – an essential life skill in today’s fast moving world. In fact, learning how to market themselves properly may well be a more useful lesson than anything they will learn on the courses for which they are applying. Subject-based knowledge in areas like History, Business Studies or Engineering may change and go out of date. But the skill of finding out what a target audience wants (be it an admissions tutor or a prospective employer), and matching your skills and attributes to those needs, will continue to be relevant long after you’ve forgotten everything you learned at university. Every job application, every interview, even every social encounter, can benefit from the same kind of ‘personal marketing’ approach that goes into writing a killer Personal Statement.

There’s no shortage of available advice about writing Personal Statements, especially now we have the internet. I’ve even come across a web-based service that will check yours for £24 (wish I had thought of that!).

But here on Marketing Talk, valuable advice comes free. Personal Statements lore holds nuggets of golden wisdom for life-long personal marketers. Here are three top tips that strike me having watched a DVD from Birmingham University which my youngest son has just brought back from school:

1. Be enthusiastic. This seems very popular with admissions tutors. They like applicants who glow with passion for their subject. So, be enthusiastic about yourself. Feel good about what you have to offer the world and the world may well find your enthusiasm infectious.
2. Be authentic. Don’t just say it, show it. In a Personal Statement this comes across as evidence – e.g. if you say you are good with people, point to things you’ve done which bear this out. For self marketers, this means walking the talk and looking the part. Don’t just take my word for it. Research reported in the September 2010 edition of the Harvard Business Review reveals that “simply holding one’s body in expansive, “high-power” poses for as little as two minutes stimulates higher levels of testosterone (the hormone linked to power and dominance in the animal and human worlds) and lower levels of cortisol (the “stress” hormone that can, over time, cause impaired immune functioning, hypertension, and memory loss).”   Try it sometime.
3. Be interesting. How can you surprise and delight your customer? University admissions tutors seem to like applicants to cite readings that are off the A level syllabus. So what can you bring to a career or personal situation which is a bit different and makes you stand out in a useful way? We often worry that our experience and skills aren’t ‘relevant’ to a particular situation – but actually sometimes a fresh slant is precisely what your customer is looking for.

Marketing – it’s all around us. Whether you think it’s the best thing since sliced bread, or one of the most insidious inventions of modern times, there is no escaping it. At the Open University Business School I teach and research into marketing. In former lives I have marketed things as various as chocolate bars and Chekov, and, as a member of the Institute of Social Marketing at the Open University, I’ve just completed a project marketing the concept of green working practices. So whether your business is confectionery, culture or carbon reduction – marketing is key to finding out what people want, and making sure you supply it in a way they value. This is the first time I’ve blogged regularly about marketing, but I’m sure I’ll have no shortage of subjects to talk about as this blog progresses. Ingenious new products, cunning pricing ploys, mind-boggling promotional campaigns and deft distribution strategies – the sheer inventiveness of the marketing machine is a wonder to behold, as organisations compete for your attention, money and loyalty.  I find marketing intriguing, sometimes irritating, and, occasionally, inspiring — and I hope you will too as I blog about it two or three times a month on this website. Like any good marketer I hope that you’ll come back for more, and join in the marketing talk by posting comments.