On the UK TV show The Apprentice, Sir Alan Sugar once challenged the teams of would-be apprentices to go to France to sell food on the market in a small town in Normandy. One team did particularly badly: not only did they make less profit than their rival teams, but they actually lost money. The leader and his team were called in to Sir Alan’s boardroom to account for their actions. As I watched I could feel my blood pressure rising. The leader defended himself by saying that it was a failure of marketing and tried to blame his colleague, who was responsible for the advertising banners, leaflets and other promotional materials.
In fact the leader was half right: it was a marketing problem, but not the marketing problem he identified.
By the word ‘marketing’ he meant ‘operational marketing’ and he was trying to blame the person responsible for advertising and promotion. The real failure was a marketing mistake made by the team leader himself – a gross mistake of strategic marketing.
Before going off to France, the leader decided to sell cheese to the French. He went to a wholesaler and bought a large block of factory-produced cheese, wrapped in plastic, to sell on the French market. Generally speaking, the French have little respect for English food. Moreover, the French love food and are discerning about cheese, especially in Normandy. There is no way that the good people of Normandy will buy factory-produced English cheese. Not even if it is presented on cute cocktail sticks. Not even if it were backed up by millions of euros worth of TV advertising. This was the marketing problem – made by the leader himself – which meant that their business was fundamentally flawed. It was not the fault of the person producing the promotional materials. It was nothing to do with operational marketing and everything to do with strategic marketing.
As an epilogue to the story, other teams were relatively successful. They thought about the market and tried to think of the few English food products that the French might actually buy. The more successful teams were those that chose to sell marmalades, pickles, and chutneys.
Many of the biggest problems in business can be ascribed to mistakes in strategic marketing. Don’t blame the operational marketing people if your product doesn’t sell. Instead you may need to look towards the people who make strategic marketing errors (even if they don’t call what they do ‘marketing’).
Strategic marketing means connecting the right products to the right customers.
Key Points
Many failures of business that are blamed on marketing (operational marketing) are actually more fundamental failures of strategic marketing. The people at the top, not the ‘marketing department’, make those strategic marketing errors.
What to do next