Know when to shut the door on a customer
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Directors of sales and marketing. There are thousands of you out there with that title. And not one of you has the faintest clue what marketing actually means. Because if you did, you would realise that your title makes no sense.
The concept of managing both “sales and marketing” in one position is certainly stupid and probably oxymoronic. That’s because linking marketing and sales in the same position is like creating a gear stick for a car that goes into both 5th and reverse whenever you push it forward. Marketing - when you understand it properly - is as much about repelling sales as it is about generating them. So how can you be in charge of both at the same time?
It’s unlikely that a lowly associate professor like me will be able to convince you that your entire existence is anathema to marketing, so let me rely on two of my most esteemed colleagues - Professors Abercrombie and Fitch - to make the point for me.
You may have read last week that Abercrombie has offered to pay Michael ’The Situation’ Sorrentino (from bawdy MTV reality show Jersey Shore) not to wear its clothes any more. In a carefully worded statement, the company noted that the association with Sorrentino was “contrary to the aspirational nature of our brand, and may be distressing to many of our fans”. Most commentators last week branded the strategy as “outlandish” or a “PR stunt”. Nothing could be further from reality.
I am a long-time admirer of Abercrombie & Fitch. Not its products, which I cannot get into with a blowtorch, but the way it has assiduously applied the fundamentals of marketing to everything it has done. Abercrombie knows who it wants - hot, under 25-year-olds with hard bodies and a winning attitude. It also knows who it doesn’t want - pretty much everybody else. And that includes dodgy 29-year-old reality TV stars from New Jersey with the IQ of a toilet brush and the sex appeal of a four-day-old beer.
As Abercrombie ably demonstrated last week, targeting means two things: which sales you want and which ones you don’t, because in the long run the sales you don’t want will cost you more money than they will generate. Yes you can make $69 by selling The Situation a figure-hugging T-shirt. But you will subsequently lose $7m as an army of teens watches in disgust as he whips that shirt off to admire his abs in the mirror.
If marketers have a favourite word it is “exclusively”. Yet most don’t know what it means. It means: I exclude you
Repeat after me - some sales are bad for business. In fact most sales are - when you actually understand your consumers and the long-term implications of brand building.
I’ve met an army of sales and marketing directors who think they understand segmentation and targeting. They think it means to generate as many sales as possible from as many consumers as possible. Only rarely do I encounter a true marketer with a real understanding of segmentation and a targeting strategy in which they spend as much time repelling non-target consumers as encouraging their targets.
In Abercrombie’s case, its current strategy with The Situation is merely the latest in a long line of exemplary attempts to switch off non-targeted consumers from the brand. That’s why its boutiques are lit with the dimmest wattage possible - so that the feeble eyes of 30-somethings have them stumbling and groaning around in the darkness like zombies in a bad sci-fi movie. That’s why Abercrombie plays music so outrageously loud that only the young and hip can endure it. That’s why six-packed models stand as sentries at its doors - to ward off the plump, the ancient and the unattractive.
And that’s why when Abercrombie founder Mike Jeffries was interviewed a few years ago about his strategy, he was openly dismissive
of “vanilla” brands that try to target everyone and went on to note that “not everybody belongs in our clothes and they can’t [belong] for long”. “Are we exclusionary?” he asked his interviewer. “Absolutely,” he replied to his own question.
If marketers have a favourite word in their lexicon it is probably “exclusive”. Every product, service and event these days is marketed as being exclusive. And yet most marketers have forgotten what the word actually means. It means: I exclude you. It means: fuck off, I don’t want you wearing my clothes. It means: I will PAY you to fuck off and never wear my clothes again.
Abercrombie is not the outlandish one here. You are. The sales and marketing director who just doesn’t get it. You are the moron that thinks marketing is the same as sales. You’re the one with no segmentation or targeting of any kind.
The job of a marketer is to make choices. Who you want. Who you do not want. And to realise that to get the former, you will probably have to block the latter. When was the last time you worked hard to use marketing to stop the wrong consumers from buying your brand?
It’s not a rhetorical question. I mean it. Give me examples.
Because if you can’t, you aren’t really a marketer at all and I exclude you from my discipline.
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Readers' comments (21)
Tony | Wed, 24 Aug 2011 1:24 pm
I enjoyed this article nearly as much as last time, when, if memory serves, it was about Apple.
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Shaun Smith | Wed, 24 Aug 2011 1:45 pm
For me it is a terrific example of a bold brand in that Abercrombie and Fitch are very clear about what their brand stands for (aspirational lifestyle) and who it is targeted at (preppy teenagers). I think it's innovative offer is a real win/win for the brand because if the cast of The Jersey Shore accept the money NOT to wear its clothes it removes the potential for negative brand associations and if the cast do not accept the money and continue to wear A&F product it then becomes a continuing reminder that these people are not A&F target customers. In either case it draws attention to the brand and what it stands for. The trouble with most brands is that they are unwilling too make these strategic choices and want to be all things to all people and offend nobody.
This is probably the first example of 'negative product placement'. i.e.. we will pay you NOT to show our product- it opens up all kinds of possibilities!
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Chris Glennie | Wed, 24 Aug 2011 4:17 pm
Is this the same as saying "Sales chase revenue, Marketing chase margin"?
Vanity vs Sanity all over again. You would have to have a split personality to do a job with such internal conflict!
But, of course, many companies just see 'Marketing' as 'Sales Support' or, at best, 'Marketing Communications'.
I did my MBA nearly 15 years ago and am still gobsmacked that this is still so poorly understood.
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rosie baker | Wed, 24 Aug 2011 5:18 pm
I disagree with Mark's point here about combined marketing and sales director roles being "stupid and probably oxymoronic".
It’s not at all like putting a car into 5th and reverse at the same time.
Yes they are different but they are also interlinked and having a marketing director without an understanding of sales or vice versa is far more stupid than having someone with an understanding of both leading your business growth.
Some of the major problems brands and businesses face are that the sales and marketing teams haven't a clue what the other is doing or why.
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Pascale | Thu, 25 Aug 2011 12:02 pm
I am so pleased Mark has expressed (so well) the irreconcilable dichotomy between Sales and Marketing, as I have been barking around to deaf ears my disapproval of those mixed strategies engendering mostly mediocrity, I am afraid.
I hear what Rosie says in her comments – Yes, there is a lack of awareness between the Marketing & the Sales activities and it is important to coordinate and define strategies together. However, the gap is deeper I believe. Sales are after selling at any cost, they are meant to close as many deals as possible, get the biggest possible deal and collect the fattest possible commission. This is their drive, their engine; when on the Marketing side, we are building an image, creating dreams and desires about a product, a service for a specific crowd. Our drive is stimulating the right segment of market, wrapping up sometimes the most unglamorous technical product, such as a dental prosthesis with furthers and glitters so that it gets the target excited to buy, believing they will look like Jennifer Aniston if they wear it. A fine art that doesn’t do into any industrial methods.
From my experience, I have never met a Sales & Marketing Director that was good at his job and able to deliver a relevant and efficient strategy on both fronts. No offense to those who try, I am sure they do their best, but I can only support Mark’s bias toward this mutant species: it is not natural and I am afraid counterproductive.
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Adam Banfield | Thu, 25 Aug 2011 12:36 pm
Hallelujah, after trawling through all the dribble this article and it's responding posts contained I'm finally reassured the world is not full of myopic twits pandering to "Mighty Mark" - Rosie you're spot on! It's the shear arrogance that Mr Ritson exudes (which yes for the most part we usually love him for) re the marketing discipline that causes so much wasted time and energy for many companies. Heaven forbid you should actually produce some "Frankenstein" as you would see it who knows first how and who to target, and then direct the sales team to efficiently chase those, and those only! Rest assured this person does exist Mark, after all you helped make me!
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Francesco Raganelli | Thu, 25 Aug 2011 2:16 pm
I fully agree!
If you want to' create a strong, distintive and long lasting Brand you need to make and discard some Sales that will have negative effect on the image of the Brand.
In a certain way it is obvious, because the image of the Brand is built through the persons who buy the Brand.
I repeat, fully agree.
Ciao
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Anonymous | Thu, 25 Aug 2011 2:34 pm
Absolute rubbish and hear hear Rosie. It's this kind of thinking (which implies marketing is somehow intellectually superior to the grubby world of making money) that explains why marketers are under represented at Board level.
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Rob Grant | Thu, 25 Aug 2011 2:41 pm
I have to disagree. If we took branding from an internal perspective the Sales team would be equally as focussed and directed as to what a brand is about, who its target audience is and the objectives it is set to sell and achieve brand targets.
These come from marketing and sales have the same belief and value system and this works best when working together and not apart - I know this from experience. Marketing setting aspirational brand values, creating demand for sales to thrive upon.
What you will always get is sales that fall outside of your target market - do you say no? Well of course not. What you do do is exactly what Abercrombie and Fitch have done is manage your brand reputation and state that you do not want to be associated with negative brand associations and thereby claiming back your brand and controlling the perception. But you also make balanced decisions on how to manage the sales. Do you think that anyone coming into a A&F store will not be refused if they have the cash, whether they have a washboard stomach or not? Now lets consider Burberry. Same Same but different. Protect the brand and accept the secondary income.
The trick would then be to measure your sales effort not on total sales but on total sales in the right target audience - living and breathing those brand values and once again demonstrating that Sales and Marketing should be together.
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Anonymous | Thu, 25 Aug 2011 2:55 pm
Jeez, what a bunch of pretentious twaddle in the responses! (Except Rosie and Adam), I mean take this example:
"when on the Marketing side, we are building an image, creating dreams and desires about a product, a service for a specific crowd"
Sounds more like a made for TV movie!
Bald facts are that some organisations in B2B markets need a sales and marketing director in one function - I doubt you do much classic brand building for a shipyard for example, or nuclear reactors...
What you would have is one person who would be able to see the overall strategy required to position and sell his product in a niche market. Not everybody has the luxury of working on a big consumer brand.
I doubt A&F has a sales and marketing director in it's structure chart - tons of branding, comms and PR people no doubt.
I think that you also have to remember that in certain organisations sales is a revenue generator and marketing is a cost centre...
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