Marketers Lament "I get no respect I tell ya"

I think one of the biggest problems an internal marketing department has in managing a brand is the word “brand.” It is one of those overused marketing jargon terms that most people don’t really understand, even though they think they are supposed to. What do people do who don’t know something but think they should? They avoid, avert and run away. To them a new brand strategy is like a nit distracting them from there already busy, busy, busy jobs. It just doesn’t make sense to them… who cares why bother, I have way too much to do. “Those marketing guys and their high and mighty ideas about a new brand strategy, ugh.” That is a mountainous behavioral and attitudinal challenge to overcome. Where does a poor marketing person get the respect they deserve, how do they get the message across to senior management about the successful launch of sound brand strategies and the thousands programs that have changed companies from last place to huge brand leaders?

To start why don’t we stop shoving the word “brand” down peoples throats and take a page out of our own recommendations and reference a program by its benefits. That guy tied to his desk doing busy work is not going to support it unless coerced and threatened. While not impossible it is difficult and expensive to create an internal brand culture through “management by objectives” or by using incentives. In most cases these are the tried and true methods. However, the opportunity is there to use our own marketing principles and show internal constituents the benefits, how it will personally change their lives. By using benefits statements to name and describe the program as a business building program, there will more buy-in and more success.

What does that mean? Ok, I am the Senior VP of Product Management, my product is sound, and it seems to be humming along just fine. Why do we need all this brand “window dressing.” Well instead let’s not even call it branding. Let’s instead talk about the sales cycle and how a switch in the consumer conversation can help that consumer to decide faster, accelerating the speed of the sales cycle. That is something a product manager is going to be interested in. It is the same branding strategy but is now positioned as a business strategy. If marketing departments were the purveyors of business strategies not brand or marketing strategies there would be less effort getting many senior managers on board. This is not to say that we can’t all be proud marketers and brand creators, but just like we have to know our customers, we have to know our senior management audiences, and know that “marketing” and “branding” are not the first words to use to create buy-in.

I don’t know how many conversations I have had with fellow marketing execs; “they don’t get us.” “Marketing is always the first budget to get cut… can you believe how ridiculous they are?” “Those dumb a@@ execs just can’t get their heads out of a spreadsheet long enough to blah, blah, blah.” We all know that in many organizations marketing gets short shrift; this is a clear perception problem. So why don’t we change our own language to our internal constituents and start getting off our own “high brand horse?” When I started describing programs with “why we were doing them” in the same sentence, it received more respect. For example, “increasing revenues through media awareness” was our PR program, and “word-of mouth lead generation programs,” were how we talked about our feet on the street/street teams branding programs, with these descriptions people were at least listening to me. Start from the beginning of a project to name the business benefits and leave the marketing jargon behind.