One of the most entertaining parts of going to the Cannes Advertising festival for the first time recently was eavesdropping on so much marketing chatter in one place.
It was surreal to walk the cobblestone streets past cafe tables and hear, not French, but snippets of conversation with language like “brand salience” and “mental availability.”
It reminded me how easy it is for marketers to slip into a bubble of talking to ourselves.
Johnny Corbett wrote a MarketingWeek column on this topic a couple months ago and relayed a funny story of a marketing pitch to Diageo CEO, Paul Walsh. At the end of the buzzword-heavy presentation, Paul responded:
“This is all great. But what has any of it got to do with selling bottles?”
I had a similar experience early in my marketing career. As an associate marketing manager for a yogurt brand, I was charged with giving a brand update to one of the yogurt factories in rural Michigan. I stood in front of the staff during a production line shift change and went through our marketing plan.
It was soon clear to me that I was speaking a different language. The way we talked about marketing and brands to other marketers at headquarters just didn’t translate as well to the factory. The audience in the room was primarily interested how we were going to ramp up sales to keep more production lines and more shifts running in the factory. My buzzword-heavy brand plans didn’t cut it.
It was a good lesson for me to get out of the marketing ivory tower more often and not take ourselves too seriously. And try not to lose sight of the big picture of what we do.
Here are a few related cartoons I’ve drawn over the years:
