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| MYTH SLAYER AT LARGE: Sergio Zyman |
A review of "The End of
Marketing as we know it" Sergio
Zyman would be pleasantly surprised to read a story on the HarperCollins turnaround that
notes "To keep the marketing dollars flowing, Harper keeps squeezing costs".
(Business Week, June 14 1999). In "The End of Marketing as we know it", Zyman
notes how companies often thinking of marketing as an expense rather than an
nvestment, cut back on marketing budgets in the low season, when
they should be really doing the opposite to increase their
market share.
| As a self-proclaimed myth slayer Sergio Zyman's
impeccable credentials (Coca-Cola, Proctor & Gamble, McCann Erickson, and even Pepsi)
vindicate his taunting, irreverent take on conventional marketing thinking. |
Though much ballyhooed for being the man
behind the 'New Coke' fiasco (to his credit, he also masterminded Diet Coke and was behind
the "Always Coca-Cola" campaigns), he makes a good case for marketing being a
results-oriented business. It ought to have just one goal in mind: to push the needle on
the consumption meter. Taking constant swipes at the Ad industry, he puts this argument in
context: Marketing is not about shooting expensive commercials in Bali but about selling.
Not about imperious PowerPoint presentations and award-winning commercials, but about real
consumption. Now who can quarrel with that? Ad Agency people, of course! He takes to task
the Madison Avenue types who perpetrate the notion that image is everything. When he comes
near to overturning the sacred precepts of marketing (he dismisses the famous Ps in the
Marketing Mix as not processes but tools) he prefaces it by asking us to challenge all our
old assumptions. In order to break the 'black-box' of marketing magic that for years has
misled managers, he implores that marketers be results oriented, not task oriented. He
peppers his argument with charming analogies: To illustrate a strategy that he calls
'destination planning', he compares marketing to arriving at an airport to catch a flight.
You know WHERE you are going, and WHY. Unless you're a fugitive, you would never go to a
check in counter without this knowledge. Marketing is no different. To base one's goals on
last year's sales, or the size of some predetermined budget is "like telling the
ticket agent that you want to go a hundred miles farther than your last trip, or you want
any ticket that costs $122."
Once the pessimism and the 'terminator'
persona wears off, it's easy to see Zyman's irreverence and his abrasiveness as the tough
outer husk for an all-too-human marketer urging us defend a business function that is
desperate for respect. Along the way we are given a backstage pass to the ruthless drama
of the carbonated water empire. If Zyman wants to be remembered for something other than
the Edsel of the Cola category, it is still a useful book to read. After all, there's no
telling what boat he may rock next. |
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