The Art and Science of Marketing
Our firm decided to organize a team building exercise for our next full-team meeting. We’ve been divided up into groups each tasked with developing a three course meal around a select ingredient, which it turns out is lemons.
The task at hand got me thinking about marketing; in particular how it’s frequently viewed as both an art and a science. Cooking and baking are very much the same way. Baking is about precision. You have to measure ingredients with care and follow the recipe closely or else you may wind up eating goo or concrete instead of a moist cake. Cooking on the other hand allows for more creativity. You have much greater flexility to add or subtract ingredients and alter the amounts of each, but again it takes an experienced hand to know how to blend the right elements together.
As marketers we know this is very analogous to marketing. It’s about knowing how to balance the art and science of marketing. There are moments when a disciplined approach is more appropriate. The current environment is one that has put the science of marketing at the forefront of Chief Marketing Officers’ agendas. It’s become critical to prove that marketing can deliver value that drives business growth. But you can’t overdo it and boil marketing down to a science. Your marketing will become bland, stale, and downright unappealing.
We can’t forget that great marketing engages customers on an emotional level, and unforgettable campaigns draw upon creative ideas that are nothing short of genius. As customers become more accustomed to the same marketing dishes, it’s our job as marketers to refresh our recipes in order to create demand. This is even more important now as customers have greater access to the set of ingredients (the 4Ps) that marketers once had exclusively at their disposal.
As you begin to hone your marketing strategy and develop future campaigns think about if you’ve got the right balance of art and science. I particularly like how Seth Godin thought about this issue in a blog posting from earlier this year. You don’t want to end up with someone returning the plate but rather asking for seconds. Bon Appetit.
