JLT

How do marketers do it?
For some marketing is another function in the organization which has budgets, has deadlines, sometimes fails and is probably one of the biggest cost centers. For the cynical, it is also a team of so called creative people who just sit around throwing ideas but come up with nothing productive. But marketing is also the only function which ultimately seduces the customers into buying a product or service.
It is a very interesting albeit complex set of activities which involves an in-depth knowledge of not only the offering but also the buying behavior of its target segment in other words understanding why people buy what they buy. It is like understanding how the human brain works which is why it won’t be wrong to say it requires understanding of social science, psychology, mathematics, anthropology, neuroscience and what not. So a marketer more often than not dons multiple hats at the same time. Most of the times every single customer is a case study in himself with his unique characteristics. So the challenge often is to make sure that we talk the same language to each and every person and still mean different things to different people.
A product essentially is seen as means to satisfy some need or the other for the customer but it is marketing which gives it a personality, one which the consumer identifies with. Which is why a Bajaj Pulsar is not just a two wheel drive, it is “definitely male” and a Tata Safari range other than ferrying people around lets you “reclaim your life”. One of my favorite examples is a movie called ‘The blair witch project’ which was made with a budget of USD 750000 and grossed more than 248 MUSD worldwide. The movie went on to become a smashing hit and is a case study on Viral Marketing as well. The team consciously created a mystery around the movie and its actors which was one of the biggest reasons why people actually came to see that movie.
In the past marketing was restricted to advertising, distribution and selling but today it is all that and much more. It has enabled organizations to reach out to the remotest places and do the unimaginable. For example some years ago I met the tribal kids living in Dhoda sector in Kashmir and surprisingly they did not know what a train looked like but they knew what Pepsi is.
Marketers are always struggling with trying to find newer channels to get their offerings across. Mediums with maximum impact and not so much of cost involved and they have succeeded more often than not. In the past few years a new tribe as emerged: the social networking addicts. It is a tribe which wants to be heard, wants to stand out and yet be a part of the crowd. They are the compulsive orkutters, facebookers, linkedIn freaks who want to be in touch with everyone all the time and they want the world to know what their pets eat, why they chose a certain subject and how they love their new notebook. This has given organizations all over the globe an opportunity to influence people and judging by the sheer volume of such communities it seems they have found a gold mine.
Today there is no end to the choices that we have for proliferating our brands and our success stories, across different sections of consumers. By exploiting all these channels marketing has enabled the organizations to achieve maximum visibility and a larger customer base.