Dancing, Again, Breaks Out
They call it flashmobbing.
I mostly inhabit the strange netherworld between marketing and advertising.
Marketing is the idea, the strategy, and the look and feel, the Brand. It works hand-in-hand with product development and positioning.
Advertising is the come-on. It's the slave to the marketing. It dresses up in the clothes that marketing designed and makes the pitch. It drives the sales.
So, Marketing creates your profile. Advertising posts it with your picture on the internet.
Marketing decides you need to work out more and figures out which colors you look best in; it assesses where you fit in and decides where you'd really rather look like you fit in. It studies the competition and how to beat them. It creates the wardrobe. It crafts the personality and develops the brand.
Advertising shows up at the party wearing the little black dress. It buys someone a drink and dances with them. It puts the offer on the table. Or the billboard or the 30-second spot.
So, Great Cheese Comes From Happy Cows, right? Marketing is the process of deciding to distinguish California Cheese from the rest, to create the look and feel of the packaging and how to display it at the store, and to develop the whole idea that California Cheese rocks.
Advertising airs commercials with cows talking like surfers and hanging out on spectacular sunny California hillsides. It tries to make you go buy the happy cheese instead of the uptight cheese.
In the last 12 months, marketing took place against a backdrop of events
that shook the world, from the tsunami disaster to Hurricane Katrina to fears of
avian bird flu and momentous change in Iraq. It’s worth reminding ourselves
that, at its best or worst, marketing can only accomplish so much.