In 2010 Roland T. Rust, Christine Moorman, and Gaurav Bhalla published an article in the Harvard Business Review title Rethinking Marketing. For us this served as a focal point for everything that was wrong with the way so many big (and small) companies went about marketing. We knew that the time was right to help small businesses in regional centres like Bunbury, Busselton, Donnybrook, Margaret River and Manjimup, grow and prosper using the latest innovations in the marketing arena.
Have a read of the article yourself, and see if it resonates as strongly with you as it did me…
Rethinking Marketing
Imagine a brand manager sitting in his office developing a marketing strategy for his company’s new sports drink. He identifies which broad market segments to target, sets prices and promotions, and plans mass media communications. The brand’s performance will be measured by aggregate sales and profitability, and his pay and future prospects will hinge on those numbers.
What’s wrong with this picture? This firm—like too many—is still managed as if it were stuck in the 1960s, an era of mass markets, mass media, and impersonal transactions. Yet never before have companies had such powerful technologies for interacting directly with customers, collecting and mining information about them, and tailoring their offerings accordingly. And never before have customers expected to interact so deeply with companies, and each other, to shape the products and services they use….Read more
