The advertising sector, and the marketing industry in general, has had an ego problem. Normally, they have felt higher, than people who worked on a day-to-day basis, creating the real experience of a brand or product / service. Who says higher, can say, different, that they were not in the same.
Marketing people have come to believe that they have the tools to work on the perception of a brand or product. And it is more, they have come to internalize that it was through advertising, and the management let’s say of the brand in terms of tangible elements, where it was carried out and won that battle, but all without crossing too much the field field of the daily experience, the local marketing that I say.
They have even come to think that all those people who worked “on the spot” did not know anything about marketing, and moreover, they were the ones who “spoiled” their work many times, who then had them again to amend with another campaign of communication or similar. They worked a product, and armed with the 4 P’s, they looked for the best combination of all that. Yes, then 5 was added, of people, but, …
Who can tell me that, on a regular basis, when they start working in a company, they will explain something about strategy and positioning? And they encouraged him or made him see his contribution to all this. Normally they gave you a description of your job, an organizational chart (where I never saw the client on top of everything), internal rules, … With all this, the bunkers that were created were being reaffirmed.
How different it would have been, if one had been given a map of the experience that the client was going through, they would have explained to him that one was a kind of living brand, which was responsible for creating value through interaction with the client, and that he should try to create that emotional connection, that ESE and not another, was his job.
Well, in general terms, there was little talk from clients, at a strategic level, they talked about sales, margins, profits, budgets … And that was the way for that type company, compartmentalized, full of stereotypes and prejudices, prey to itself. This is how it has gone for us, by underestimating the people in charge of making direct contact with the client, I have great respect and affection for all these people, and I also tell them, that they do not despise themselves, that their role is strategic , even though few managers take this into account.
We value much more, at all levels, their work and effort, there are no base positions, neither entry levels (both terms seem inadequate to me). This real experience, day by day, has to be the natural terrain, where perception is generated, and it is through it, how our brand is created, not otherwise. We must act then, on this experience, as a method of transmitting values, identity, emotions, … always through intermediation of people.
Let’s go down from the pedestal to our marketing department (advertising included) and let’s go down, too, to the entire management team, and let’s let them feel and live that experience. Surely interesting things begin to happen.