The Difficult Task of Focusing

I recently conducted a marketing training session.  Things went smoothly until we began the discussion of target selection.  There were different company stakeholders in the room and it seemed that each lobbied for a different marketing target that they wanted to add to the plan.

The problem, of course, is that by spreading yourself too thin ... well, you spread yourself too thin.  You risk taking limited resources and making the budgets even less effective.  I recall that when I was doing the marketing for Hawaii Pizza Hut, there were always store managers who wanted to spend money to attract sports teams ... or youth groups ... or other targets.  Don't get me wrong: these people eat pizza.  But, by adding them to the target list, we would have diminished the budget for our primary target: families with young children.

You can lose focus, too, by trying to promote too much of your product line.  I once had a contract with the Hawaii State Department of Agriculture.  They had a large budget - about $1 million - to promote the flower industry.  I suggested that we concentrate on one or two primary products which were well connected with Hawaii ... or promote the general idea of "flowers from Hawaii."  Instead, the department responded to pressure from the different grower groups.  They budgeted a little for anthuriums ... a little for protea ... a little for ginger ... a little for tropical foliage ... a little for ... well, you get the picture.  They took what was a meaningful budget and spread it way too thin.  Each of the stakeholders was happy because each got a little piece of the pie; but, the impact of the whole program was minimal.

Focus is one of those incredibly powerful ideas in business.  

   

Carpet Bombing as a Marketing Strategy

The 2012 election season is almost over - and you will hear a sigh of relief across the country on Wednesday November 7 when the pain of constant, negative messaging is finally over.

Because of changes in the regulations surrounding political advertising (particularly the "Citizens United" case), this year has been particularly obnoxious when it comes to political marketing.  By some accounts, the various groups supporting the presidential candidates will spend about a billion dollars on this election.  And that doesn't count the money spent on congressional and local races.

Carpet bombing destroys everything in its path

, sometimes even the target

Unfortunately, this flood of dollars has resulted in marketing that has adopted a "carpet bombing" strategy.  The advertising is reactive, disjointed, and anything-but-strategic.  The logic of carpet bombing is that if you throw enough explosives in the vicinity of the target, you might just get the target.  The problem is that there is tremendous waste and a lot of collateral damage.

The damage from this year's political carpet bombing is likely to be a loss of consumer interest in advertising messages.  The advertising for candidates could have been so much more effective - and palatable - if the campaign managers had followed the proven and effective tenets of marketing: develop a cohesive strategy that builds over time and presents the consumer with a clear and understandable benefit.

I believe good marketing could have provided the candidates with twice the impact for half the cost.

There's just not a lot of "bang for the buck" when it comes to carpet bombing.