Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Out With The P's and In With The E's!

Millennials have an interesting perspective of the world.

Many not only do not adhere to past models, many never even experienced or have knowledge of the past to have bias.

Take our Connectivity link with Jon Chin in Singapore. Jon actually sees the world through a perspective few of my colleagues can lay claim.

How does this Millennial describe himself?

“I am a naturally curious marketer who is in love with social media marketing, content marketing, SEO (search engine optimization), web analytics, and consumer insights.”

From my perspective… that’s one cool dude!

As a Boomer… and perhaps even some GenXers will concur… the college MBA professors appeared to get a charge out of branding our brains with the 4 P’s of marketing… Product, Place, Promotion and Price.

What’s fascinating about the 4 P’s is that they are all passive nouns and voiced from the perspective of the manufacturer.

Here in this great University town of Athens, one of the area consultants writes a Sunday column in the local Athens paper on marketing products and services.

In this past Sunday’s article, he included all 4 P’s in what marketers needed to address. This local consultant was probably born in the same decade as I was… and Michael Jackson!

The local paper here in Athens needs to embrace 2010... but so do about 95% of the other fledgeling rags in the US!

My bet is that Jon Chin has limited knowledge of the 4 P’s of marketing. And that’s cool too!

Today, Jon posted his support on Twitter of what is called the 4 E’s of marketing: Engage, Educate, Excite and Evangelise… can you tell from the spelling that is was authored by a Brit?

Here’s an exercise…

Tonight, count how many ads on the TV set reflect the past 4 P’s and how many actually Engage the audience, get them Excited and furthermore, get them so Engaged and Excited that they go running out there to not just promote the brand name, but to Evangelize it?

Can a brand really do something like this? Is this really possible?

This afternoon, I got tired of typing up a report in the house, so I packed up my MacBook Air and drove over to the nearest Starbucks to finish the report.

While there, I ended up in some great conversation with others that were also working away on their Apple laptops and our dialogue centered around our Macs and iPhone Apps!

Next door to the Starbucks was a Sprint store. These caffeine-charged dudes got so entrenched in the Apple brand that when folks who had been shopping at the Sprint store came in for a Latte, these guys started selling AT&T and the iPhone alternative.

My bet is that Jon Chin works on a Mac. He also likely connects to others on his iPhone – although, he may have found a way to route the iPhone to his own carrier of choice (smile).

Does your brand Engage audience groups? Do your communications and promotions invite audience groups in to be part of the brand experience?

Do you Educate with information of relevance and importance or do you attempt to persuade and re-program the audience mindset?

Does your product get the consumer excited … and this is just as relevant to paper towels as it is to automobiles? Does your brand marry with the culture of the consumer?

And finally, do your customers become your Evangelists? Do they blog, interact and Twitter with friends about what cool things they are doing within your brand experience and as part of your brand culture?

Its been a while back when I could no longer rationalize (no pun intended) the architecture of the MBA benefit-driven USP model.

It was then that I crafted the EIP or Emotional Ignition Point of a Brand Experience and since then have written a couple of chapters for college textbooks about it.

Jon Chin is right on target. And thanks to Twitter we are able to connect, converse and inspire!

Boomers and GenXers… join me in saying “out with the P’s and in with the E’s!”

From Singapore to London and from Boulder to Athens, we are out there rockin’ with consumers in person, online and through mobile text… so put down that MBA textbook and Come, Let’s Journey!

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