Do Better Marketing by Jim Holbrook

here’s the way I see shopper marketing going – most are pretty obvious….
1.Three-way arms race: marketers, retailers, shoppers
2.Shoptimizing: money & time
3.Metering: visibility into and active mgmt of spending
4.Palm power: tech-enabled shoppers
5.More competition: brands, imports, formats, services, private label
6.Transparency: price = value (Progressive)
7.Ethonomics: people know how ‘good’ you are
8.Zappos-ization: service = product
9.The new ‘search’ is ‘find’: [...]

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Do you think there’s a ’standard’ checklist or recipe of the ingredients that are ‘must haves’ to end up with great marketing?  I’ve been keeping a list of what I think constitutes great marketing inputs… see if they make sense, and if you have others!
- true understanding of the target audience, and deep insights about [...]

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The Facts:
- consumers have moved from passive to active (from ignorant to inquisitive)
- retailers have moved from passive to active (from real estate to community service center)
The Current Situation:
- marketing is still mainly about messaging and bribing, not about engaging
The Disconnect:
- consumers (and retailers) don’t want messages or bribes, they want more
The Result:
- ‘marketing’ has [...]

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Plan the Work and Whack the Mole!
“I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable” – Dwight D. Eisenhower
I am flummoxed at how businesses large and small do planning.  I have seen everything from fire, fire, fire to the most rigorous matrixed multi-faceted linked excel workbooks with circles and arrows.
So, what constitutes [...]

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I recently had a wonderful, lengthy, wide-ranging conversation with one of our clients.  I don’t do this nearly enough, and it’s always a top new years’ resolution for me.  Anyway, upon reflection, I think our conversation covered the five universal truths in marketing.  I submit them here for your consideration:
1.  Good ideas come from anywhere.  [...]

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My real interest lies in how to operationalize marketing.  This is a semi-fancy way of how to do marketing better.  (And, full disclosure, I am more of a student at this than a teacher.)
In fact, my pursuit often seems Quixote-esque, as different companies do marketing so differently that it’s hard to draw any meaningful and [...]

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