Marketing as a juggling act

Marketing in this new age is fast. With so many avenues to reach out to consumers, one needs to act fast to stay relevant. Feels true for most tech marketing firms but traditional consume goods firms are not behind. Social media analysis is driving decisions on what flavors and variants is tending and what needs to be launched and fast. It seems success means speed.

But question is - Is it really? Specially for consumer goods marketing firms?

Consider that some metrics remain stable, like 90%+ innovations fail, innovation contributions to overall sales remains 10% over a historical period. Despite in these new digital age, number of innovations launch is probably doubled or tripled. It means failure rate has increased if number of successful innovations remain same.

Most learning comes from failures and we are failing spectacularly in this digital age; but in this panic for next, we are losing perspective of what actually constitutes success.

Most organizations talks about building bigger things, big rocks and build back better; investing in our core brands - but then why this faster frequency to reinvent around core again and again?

We are just moving from one thing to another. If one thing failed, no need to analyze it as another new one is just awaiting in corner to focus on. Urgent is the destroyer of important.

One key marketing leader observed it seems we are Dory of Finding Nemo, keep doing the same mistake again and again.

However we are not failing at same things, we are failing in so any different things as we are doing so many different things and this it's not easy to identify key reason of failure.         

A few common errors mostly stems from not being consumer centric and failure for proper sales support as sales also likes to focus on to the next innovation.

It appears marketing is losing its strategic bend of mind and becoming more tactical. I have a sense that insights function is becoming more strategic, as being consumer centric seems to be getting more important as consumers are getting more dispersed. An imminent danger of losing intellectual capital with looking for a short term success? Perils of outsourcing? Sounds familiar with fall of Dell computers?

However insights is mostly treated as support function for marketing, and there is a pressure for insights team to move fast and help marketing gets a ‘see-i-told-you’ validation from consumer for most likely soon to be another dud launch.

There are bigger forces around us which makes us believe we are doing right thing by following what makes consumers tick.

As per one research when Twitter launched, a viral trend used to stay for 17 hours, for next decade it came out to 11 hours. My recent web results gave me scary 11 min life for trends.         

One key reason identified for taller but shorter viral trend is information overload. Imagine if viral trends are toads, a few toads can take time to jump higher and make space for themselves for next higher jump; however so many toads would make it impossible to make time and space for proper jump and there will be many shorter and frequent jump to move forward.

One reason marketing continue to ride this fast paced ride is - it makes one believe you are in control if you are juggling and doing so many things. Sounds contrary right. Common sense is not so common as the saying goes.

Each innovation sounds like a Japanese balloon jumping game with muddy pit at bottom; only way to succeed it seems running faster. But eventually most fall to muddy pit, but there is another one ready to hop on to even faster pace.

Unfortunately we are playing a wrong game. If marketing is not a marathon any more, it is surely not a sprint. It seems more like treasure hunt, where speed is not a reason for success but able to solve a complex problem and find your treasure.