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December 11, 2008
All Things To All People.
I spent a lot of time today working on a great sales opportunity. I kept challenging the account team to articulate what the "objective" was. They kept changing target markets, marketing metrics, campaign goals. After a while, it was apparent that we were trying to figure out how to address multiple markets and opportunities with the same basic concept. In short, we were falling into the trap of "all things to all people."
Back in 2003, I was preparing to attend a venture fair and came across a VC quote: "If you engineer to be all things to all people, you risk being nothing to everyone." It was an age-old adage, but I pinned it up on the bulletin board alongside my desk as a reminder...because that annoying tendency seems to be a part of human nature.
This is not an just an entrepreneurial problem. With the auto bailout now apparently collapsed (something I am not too sad about), it is a lesson GM should have learned. If it had narrowed its portfolio and spent more money/effort burnishing the market identity of a smaller set of nameplates, perhaps they would not be in this situation. Or think about Blackberry. The Storm was RIM's answer to the iPhone, but it left behind the one thing the Blackberry was noted for..the keyboard...and replaced it with a clunky, apparently ill-conceived touchscreen.
In marketing, understanding the brand promise is one of the first things you are taught in school. So, what is the brand promise for Burger King? We guarantee to creep you out with our surreal, voyeuristic brand icons? Or, NBC? In the "good 'ol days," NBC carved up viewership with 2 main competitors and everyone was guaranteed sustainable share. Now, all three major broadcast channels wallow in undifferentiated misery. Beyond product strategy is the miserable marketing job that the major networks have done in defining their role in the new media universe. We know what the Food Network stands for, or HGTV and AMC and ESPN. Is there still a space for an undifferentiated generalist?
Changing markets are no longer just a matter of technology advancement. The deepening recession is about to reshape markets in ways few of us could have imagined just 12 months ago. Knowing what you are, what you stand for and who you want to reach now is not just a marketing basic, it is critical to survival.
Posted by jcioban at December 11, 2008 12:10 AM
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