Marketing amid Turmoil

Faced with security turmoil, marketing in Lebanon has always been a question of controversy. As I tried to enter the marketing field in this part of the globe, the Middle East, I realized that very few research had been targeted on marketing under hostile conditions. Thus, I took the subject at heart.

First aiming to investigate the "accountability" in marketing; I seeked to read more on marketing measures. Finding it a very subjective case; I thought a practical case might be more interesting... I mean, for learning purposes!

Therefore, after specializing in a master of science in marketing, I decided my dissertation topic will be on the impact of security turmoil on marketing response. My work was to be based on a case study approach based on the Lebanese market.

Throughout my research I noticed the capacity of the Lebanese economy to stand and improve amid the recent global economic turmoil; noting a certain parallelism between security and economic turmoil. There was no question, Lebanon managed to stand undefied because of the precautions it used to face eminent risks. Could this parallelism apply on marketing response?

I'd say yes... *to be continued*

The Paradigm of Marketing

What is marketing? Definitions abound. I will not go into the details of the interpretations and the different schools and references. However, I can tell you what marketing is not; and that is Advertising. Not to say that advertising is not part of marketing but marketing, contrary to popular belief, is not restricted to advertising.

Why am I making this point? Simple.

My knowledge in marketing gave me insights into entrepreneurship. I truly believe that every entrepreneur should take marketing courses before venturing into risks beyond his capability. Again, you may ask, why? Here's the scoop.

Be it a service or a product, marketing teaches us the art of introducing, implementing and raising our offerings, of knowing the market, creating needs and satisfying them. Marketing is all about understanding the customer and the theories revolving around the market. Thus, to me, marketing is entrepreneurship at a micro scale. What applies to a product can definitely apply to a set of products, not collectively, but individually.

Everything else in organizations can be mathematically calculated, but marketing takes intuition, it takes comprehension of the global view. One should not fall into the bulk of information available at his grasp, he should know where to look and what to seek, what lens to create and how to get the customer to see through it.

This is the art of marketing, the way I know it. Whoever thinks that marketing is narrow, fails to see the big picture. At the risk of sounding too general, I dare to state that business is all about marketing, and everything corporate , beyond operational, revolves around it.

The Old School

Marketing strives on evolution:
psychological and technological, but mostly, on communication.

Experience matters in the business world. However, it feels that young fresh new comers are a step ahead in understanding the predominance of novelties and effects of the new implicit regulations that dictate the market. The old school of marketing has a bunch of attributions that in today's world are almost extinct!

The obvious change - the one that even the most conventional do not fail to identify - The Medium
In the book Mavericks at Work the authors discuss whether Google and WPP cooperate or compete, they conclude that they do both at once, quoting WPP's own CEO they are "frenemies". Yes, marketing has shifted, as new modes of communications are being adopted, from targeted sms, to digital marketing, the new technologies are offering various ways to deliver the brand.

Other changes come subsequently - The Delivery
New possibilities open new doors. What was once a one-way delivery is transformed today into an open dialogue. What was entitled "delivery" became, finally, what marketing is all about, "communication". Thus we entered the world of interactive marketing.

What the old school still does not understand, is that with the changes stated beforehand, the most important change took place - The Message
The brand is no longer communicated in emotional statements, as the audience now has the power to retort. Today, marketing is about content, and no longer about fluff. It is about being informative and no longer descriptive. The client seeks, and the marketeer's job is to supply. The line between B2C (business to consumer) and B2B (business to business) marketing is becoming very thin, as the end consumer now almost requires (as the rules in B2B marketing dictate) a rational value added proposition to purchase a product.

Finally, the receiver has evolved - The Audience
The audience has become bombarded with information, with brand names, with slogans, it has finally gained an immunity to the traditional advertising brainwashing. The message can be fatal. The audience has grown to become aware and conscious. It can discern truth from lies and does not like to be taken for a fool. Information is broadly available and word-of-mouth spreads fast.

...So innovation took place in terms of medium, delivery, message and audience. Where do the marketers stand on keeping up?

Advertising in Lebanon

Advertising is getting kind of hard to avoid in Lebanon. Here's a list of some Advertising in Lebanon posts:

Politics Advertising in Lebanon
Advertising in Lebanon Trends Spring 2010
Outdoor Advertising Trends in Lebanon
Creative Works Effect on Advertising
Advertising in Lebanon Rules of Seven
Lebanon: The Old School of Advertising
Variations in Advertising Media Sensitivity

Sales, Academics and Literature

...So I am reading 5 books at once.
In fact, I am more inclined to start a new book than finish one these days.
I was told I would get lost, but I thought I could pull it out.
It turned out I can't.

I am writing this down to share my concern for the similarities between the two marketing books "The New Rules of Marketing and PR" by David Meerman Scott and "Guerilla PR 2.0" by Michael Levine. I honestly cannot remember what part i read in which of the two books!! Well, I am further ahead in the reading of Guerilla PR 2.0, but only because I started it first.

Online public relations and digital marketing are incontestably the stars today in the marketing world. It's new, it's trendy, it's cheap, and given the crisis, it's sales material.

It triggers my concern on the trendiness of certain topics. One day there's the elections and all the books are suddenly revolving around it, the next there's a financial crisis, and hey, take a look at the books published. Now, seriously, ever read a good book under those conditions?

It is sad but true. We cannot resist to purchase a book with a trendy topic. Yet, they're never worth it. It just never fails.