We don’t need marketing – we need customer anthropology

Feb 4
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I wasn’t able to make it to LaunchCamp Boston today, but was still able to virtually participate via the live video and Twitter streams. During a discussion on Twitter with two great marketing folks, Bobbie Carlton and Rachel Levy, I made several remarks:

  1. Seasoned marketing pros should realize that “marketing” is becoming a dirty word (right behind PR) and evolve.
  2. Marketing pros should stop fighting the fact that branding, PR, communications, content creation, “websites”, etc. are no longer being recognized as part of the marketing silo.
  3. Businesses don’t need marketing teams, they need customer listeners/conversationalists who are deeply involved in customer anthropology.

Why is this my opinion?

  1. Much has changed over the last decade with how customers interact with brands. A deeper transparency and conversation are now required to engage customers.
  2. 2. The marketing silo is gone. Branding, listening, and communicating activities have transformed into something that engages the entire company – customer development. Customers define your branding, help you with content and product development, and provide your company with the publicity.
  3. The marketing model of broadcast, analyze, and broadcast again is on its way out. Customers no longer tolerate being talked at – they demand that you listen to them. This new model is a constant loop of indentifying early adopters, developing products with the continuous feedback of the early customers, engaging mainstream customers with the help of those early adopters, and empowering mainstream customers to promote the brand. Rinse and repeat!
  4. CUSTOMER ANTHROPOLOGY is the future. Strategies have changed and it’s no longer effective to have a traditional marketing model of yelling/broadcasting through the biggest proverbial bullhorn a company can afford (expensive launch events, advertising, PR, etc.). It is all about getting into your customers’ psyche, anticipating their reactions, and truly satisfying customers’ real needs. School-taught squeezing of customers into demographics, verticals, etc. is no longer adequate.

That all said, I may get a lot of flack for this article from my old-school marketing friends. Sorry, but a bit of constructive criticism is always good.  Please chime in the comments or send me an email. I want this to be start of the conversation, not just a one-sided article.

Photo credit: Carol Browne

About the author:
Apolinaras “Apollo” Sinkevicius is a business operations leader with 12-year track record of building scalable and capital-efficient operations for technology and professional services companies.
He specializes in business operations, corporate culture, human capital, and technology issues.
To learn more about Apolinaras “Apollo” Sinkevicius please visit his site TheOperationsGuy.com

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  • I don't know if the phrase "customer anthropology" is one you coined, but thank you for bringing it to my attention. It's a great intuition pump and I am going to start using it in my conversations and presentations. Thanks!
  • I am not sure who coined the term, but I have heard it used many years ago.
  • bobbiec1
    I've always defined marketing as a conversation with customers and potential customers. By definition, a conversation is a two-way street. And, while marketing (and PR) may have been tarnished, for the most part people know what you mean when you call something marketing, they just forget that websites, social media conversations, market research, etc. are part of a company's marketing efforts.

    One of my objections to one of the #LaunchCamp panels was that it had the potential to create a mistaken impression in the minds of the entrepreneurs in the audience. There was a lot of talk about bootstrapping start-ups and not spending on outsourced marketing services. However, these same organizations had staff performing marketing activities, had extensive websites and were maintaining highly visible social media identities -- all marketing efforts. While some of the tools (Twitter, facebook, etc.) may be free, staff time isn't. You still have to pay that staff to tweet, blog or FB. That's a marketing expense. Building a website is a marketing expense. Runkeeper's giant iPod costume was a marketing expense (albeit a cost efficient one.)

    I would hate to think that an entrepreneur listened to this panel and decided to rework his budget to cut out or down the amount of resources needed for effective marketing because he didn't understand what belongs in that budget.
  • Thanks for your comment.
    One thing I wanted to stress is one should NEVER outsource something as strategic as core marketing work. If you don't know how to do it yourself, you will do a poor job managing work of a contractor. Yes, some of the bits and pieces can be outsourced, but relying on an outside company to manage the vast majority of your marketing is foolish, to say the least.
  • bobbiec1
    Um, are you really saying that if you don't know how to do it yourself, you should continue to do it because you shouldn't outsource it? Or, are you saying if you don't know how to do it you shouldn't do it at all? Or should marketing only be reserved for companies big enough to have full-time in-house marketing specialists? None of these seem like good options.
  • Yes, I am saying outsourced marketing as a whole makes no sense. Not only it is bad for the company, it is also bad for you, as a consultant. I have mentioned the reasons already in on my of my previous posts about why early companies don't need consultants. But here are some extra points to think about:
    1. Just like kids, inexperienced entrepreneurs need to get burned and make mistakes THEMSELVES! Unless they learn what they don't know, they will not value help of an expert. As a vendor/contractor, why would you want to work with a client who does not fully understand what it takes to do your job and how to value you? I don't know about you, but I prefer to only work with people who value my work.
    2. Marketing people need to live and breathe the brand 24X7. I doubt a vendor will be passionate about every brand they are working with. Never met one. Sorry! You can't fake passion. And in a startup, I need everyone on my team living and breathing the company or they are a waste of my time and resources.

    Though you can't outsource strategy, planning, and management of marketing, you can and SHOULD outsource some of the components. Web design (inclusive of UI/UX), graphic design, some portions of marcomm, and even certain PR should definitely reside outside of your house, unless you are big enough to afford a large team. And lets face it, some of the best professionals in the mentioned fields will no longer do a W2, no matter how much money you got for them.

    And speaking of those real experts, best way a new and inexperienced (at least in marketing) entrepreneur can do is to put together an advisory or coaching arrangement. Even experienced ones should have someone with "heavy scar tissue" on call for coaching and mentoring.
  • bobbiec1
    I think we're getting into a semantics issue -- I consider myself part of an outsourced marketing model. In other words, I AM outsourced marketing. That said, yes, I can no operate in a vacuum and companies need to be intimately online.
  • I think a lot of this, and yesterday's discussion at the event, is semantics. With my brand management background, we define marketing as a hub and spoke model. Basically anything that has to do with the brand is considered marketing. So, marketing research (aka "listening"), branding, advertising, events, PR, etc. Those are all types of marketing. Sure, some of the names have changed, and many of the activities are new, but I still consider it all marketing. I don't consider the term "Marketing" to mean just broadcast or mass media methods.

    So, yesterday when the people said they spent $0 on "Marketing", but answered YES to spending money on websites, and people working on social media, I would consider that $0 to be more than zero. It's just semantics.

    And, for the most part, I agree that "it’s no longer effective to have a traditional marketing model of yelling/broadcasting through the biggest proverbial bullhorn a company can afford", but I think there is a time and a place for everything. Advertising is obviously still affective for some companies, or they wouldn't spend millions of dollars doing it. But, to be stuck in that, and not supplement (or replace some) with newer forms of media wouldn't be smart in this day and age.
  • I agree that, for many companies, customers do define the branding and should feed the marketing strategy and approaches. There does need to be a hand guiding the activity though, with clear leadership on defining what the company is and is not about. It can be all too easy to get pulled in multiple directions at a time; as a company (and as a marketer), you have to be confident enough in selecting a direction and resisting the temptation to wander, to try to be all things to all people. Really knowing who your ideal customer is, and positioning yourself to serve that core customer, will always be the key requirement for successful marketing.
  • Spot on. Companies that use Twitter as a broadcast advertising method quickly discover that's not a tenable methodology.
  • Yes, but I think it goes way beyond just social media tools. It is about the entire attitude of the practitioners and some companies. We used to say "customer is king", now customers really are kings.
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Apolinaras is a business operations leader with 12-year track record of building scalable and capital-efficient operations for technology and professional services companies.
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