Marketing - Less Is More.

One of the oldest professions in the world is Marketing. It has been around since the dawn of human existence. I can almost hear an early human (lets call her Lucy) somewhere & some-when in the past, marketing the idea that animals can be domesticated for our benefit.

Seriously…!! Behind all the things we take for granted today, there is an unsung hero who had to convince an awful lot of people, just to get them onboard. 

The Marketing profession today, has morphed into something big, something unrecognizable from its older versions. We seem to focus more on the semantics of marketing instead of looking at the bigger picture. If she were alive, poor old Lucy would scratch her head on hearing words like A/B Testing, market penetration, conversion funnel. No doubt, these are important and add value in business, but only when seen in the context of a larger picture. 

The most important aspect of Marketing is also the most overlooked - Storytelling. Stories are constantly shaping the world around us. Storytelling is not to be narrowly looked at as sloganeering with catchy captions and jingles. It goes beyond all of this. It is the way organizations talk about their mission and purpose to their employees, clients, stakeholders and the world at large. It is the way, CEO conducts a meeting. It is what employees discuss in the office elevator on their way home.

There is an interesting anecdote that seems relevant here.

During a visit to the NASA space center in 1962, US President John F. Kennedy noticed a janitor carrying a broom. He interrupted his tour, walked over to the man and said,

"Hi, I'm Jack Kennedy. What are you doing?" 

"Well, Mr. President," the janitor responded,

"I'm helping to put a man on the moon."

NASA’s belief that the feat is achievable, changed the way a janitor looked at his job. That is the power of Storytelling. 

It is easy to gain likes, purchase followers or get celebrities to endorse your product. But you can’t get people to buy your story if they don’t believe in your mission. Under Steve Jobs Apple’s mission statement was,

“To make a contribution to the world by making tools for the mind that advance humankind.”

It wasn’t to build the best software company in the world, or to build world class products. In fact there is no mention of what Apple actually does. And yet we continue to place our trust in the brand, till today. The lesson here is that companies should not equate branding a product with talking about the product. Customer’s buying choices are not determined by what they are told about the product, but by how they perceive it. A marketing professional does not have to do anything extraordinary, she just has to bridge the divide between the “ Brand Message & its Perception”.

Amidst all the hyped up, glitzy marketing words, perhaps it is time to bring back the age-old phrase - Less is More.

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