Sustainability has crept into the corporate parlance quietly over the last decade. And it's mutated from something that seemed a bit like a PR attempt to appease the activitist tree huggers; into something strategic, real, and core. Of course, by usage "Sustainability" has come to apply primarily to environmental issues, but in the broadest sense, it is the "capacity to endure," and implicitly the term recognizes that resources are limited and must be utilized judiciously or literally imperil survival.
So as we see the corporation promoting sustainability as part of its social responsibility obligation (whether it be for PR purposes or a true belief in the underlying value); we are seeing more and more messaging around the term. And, in general, it is the marketing department that is responsible for creating this Sustainability messaging. In order for Marketing to avoid being deemed hypocritical, and in order for it maintain its own "capacity to endure," Extraprise espouses an objective we call "Sustainable Marketing," over the next few weeks, Extraprise EVP Bill Blundon will build a case for "Sustainable Marketing" over Traditional Marketing.
In these current turbulent times where marketing budgets are being sheared; customer expectations and demands are increasing; marketing technology is becoming more complex; social media is burgeoning while traditional media seems to be going the way of the dodo bird; and the C-level suite is looking at marketing with ever increaseing scrutiny; Bill lays out in report format an approach that will indeed foster marketing's "capacity to endure."
INTRODUCTION
Many discussions about business are politicized and, as a result, easily become polarized. Somewhere between “Workers of the World Unite” and the “The Business of America is Business” common ground can sometimes be found. One such area involves reducing the volatility of the business cycle, or failing that, limiting its impact. Whether it is John Maynard Keynes or Joseph Alois Schumpeter, economists may differ fundamentally on means but they often overlap on ends: Growth is good; sustainable growth is better.
Anyone who has been a marketer for just a decade has lived through the inflation of an Internet bubble, the bursting of same, a post-9/11 crash, a gradual recovery, a major global advance, and an international economic meltdown. Marketing strategies, budgets, tactics, and measurements changed in response to these events, but at an even more rapid rate.
Investments in marketing are often cyclical depending on the season, the economic climate, competitive forces, and new product launches. During periods of economic stress, marketing investments are viewed as (in that terrifying phrase) “discretionary spending.” Marketing organizations are expected to make cuts and they often make them reflexively – “cut ten percent across the board!” More sophisticated organizations borrow from finance and IT and take a portfolio management approach to their cost-cutting. They consider the impact of specific disinvestments in terms of business objectives, revenue, margin, market share, and other imperatives.
Still, too many marketers lurch from peak to valley without a long-range plan.
As the definition of marketing has evolved over the years and begun to value left brain over right brain thinking, analytical skills are more highly prized. Too often, however, these skills are applied only to tactical issues like customer segmentation, list selection, and media placement. Those who take an analytical approach to marketing strategy are a rare breed.
Amid currency fluctuations and bailouts, one concept has remained highly valued: It’s the customer, stupid! Increasingly, the product-focused Four P’s of Marketing (product, price, promote, place) are evolving to the more customer-focused SIVA (solution, information, value, access). This new trend, or ancient verity, depending on your point of view, is part of a more general approach to creating a sustainable notion of marketing.
This report considers some of the changes required to focus marketing not just on today, this quarter, and this fiscal year. To find its way out of the boom/bust cycle of investments, marketing must find a more sustainable way of operations.
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