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Forrester: Adaptive Branding and the New Four P’s of Marketing
Forrester is about to release a new report on “Adaptive Brand Marketing: Rethinking Your Approach to Branding in the Digital Age,” in which it proposes replacing “brand managers” with “brand advocates.” Advertising Age provides a sneak peek at the ‘new 4 Ps of Marketing’ presented in the report: permission, proximity, perception, and participation. Other core elements include: “embracing an expanded role for consumer intelligence, focusing on strategic brand platforms, and empowering a federated organization."
A fervent advocate of marketing as a cross-organizational catalyst for change myself, I wholeheartedly agree with BBH Labs which believes the Forrester report points to a potentially larger opportunity for the discipline: “It’s not just the marketing organization that needs to reorient itself given the now normal digital age, but the company itself should consider how it reorients itself around its marketing organization. In most progressive companies, it is the marketing function that has most quickly and deeply engaged with the new interactive toolkit.”
This view is really becoming a groundswell, and you will be hard pressed to find anyone these days who would deny the profound change social media presents for all customer relations; the new need for openness, agility, and hyper-sociality; as well as the call for “networked” (or “federated,” as Forrester calls it) organizations. David Armano from the Dachis Group (“Social Business Design”), Francois Gossieaux (Beeline Labs), or Charlene Li and her Altimeter Group are just some of the pundits who have very succinctly articulated these themes.
Further reading:
HSM Interview with Amazon’s former Chief Scientist Andreas Weigend on the four P’s of marketing
Ogilvy and Acision white paper on advertising in 2020
Jones and Bonevac: "Should We Be In the Advertising Industry?"
Dave Evans: "Social Business: the New Black"
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Say it ain't so
Andrei Timoshenko - November 2, 2009
As a consumer, rather than a marketer or a pundit, I dream of the day when most marketers will stop patronizing me, even if they do it unwittingly. Surely, marketing should be something that is done *for* the consumer rather than *at* or *to* the consumer?
The formula seems quite simple. Making your marketing either useful (I learn some interesting new thing as a result) or entertaining will make it get the thumbs up from me (and if you manage to make it both, so much the better - in either case my permission becomes moot). If you want to get the thumbs up from your employer too, make sure that this marketing is relevant enough to me to encourage me to spend some money.
In my ideal world a product's marketing would be an extension or feature of its product. It would be a service rendered to me by the company in good will, before I even give the company any money. In this context, "brand manager" and "brand advocate" may sound good to their employers. But to their potential customers??? For my part, I guess that being 'advocated to' is a step up from being 'managed', but a pretty small one. In both cases, I am the patsy.
Following the basics of good product design the marketing will also not be jarring and inconsistent with the thing that it markets, and whose feature it is. Participation around a new movie could be made entertaining. Participation around a new generation of toilet cleaning liquid, not so much. Give me rights, in other words, not obligations. Most people do not want to participate in most things, most of the time.
Making marketing a product feature also makes dealing with customer dissatisfaction pretty straightforward. Two easy steps. Step one: admit it. Step two: fix it. No need to be hyper-social. I have my friends to be my friends, I just want to eat your hamburger. I do not expect everything I buy to be perfect. I do expect not having to re-prove that the Earth is round before anything is done about the problem I find, or before I am allowed to make the product I bought from you better.
On a side note, what is up with "the new 4Ps"? Will marketers ignore all new and important concepts without alliterative mnemonics? That there was one a collection of four important marketing themes all starting with the letter P is cute. That there is now an identical number of important themes all starting with the same letter is cutesy. Why market an allegedly innovative approach to marketing with such an incongruously derivative name for the concept?
Thanks..... And Thanks...
Rob Rose - November 7, 2009
Tim,
Thanks for the link at the bottom of your post there - you certainly picked one of my favorites. I couldn't agree with you more - and I love your idea of the "Chief Meaning Officer"...
And thanks (by way of linking) of introducing me to your blog... I'm now a fan and a subscriber.
Best,
~rr
company overview
john cass - November 8, 2009
The report sounds good, however without reading it I think I can take issue with the change from the existing four p's. Those p's ground the marketer in where they should apply the skills and focus. Because promotion is one of four rather than the focus, the other three remind the marketer that marketing process is not solely focused on promotion. I don't the forrester's new four p's do that.