Over the past year, I’ve been having a conversation with clients, co-workers, friends and family about “the state of marketing” and the results are in.  Marketing (and its various forms) seems to be dumbing down more and more. And since I’m not wired to accept mediocrity or any real form of laziness, allow me just this one time to channel my best Peter Finch (in the movie Network) and say “I’m as mad as hell and won’t take it anymore!”

Can someone please tell me why this is going on? In what forms does this dumbing down of marketing play itself out? Well, for starters, open up any newspaper, magazine or trade pub. Turn on any TV or radio station. Drive down the street and look at the billboards or bus panels. And even online.  It’s all around us… at home, at work… even on vacation. There’s isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t see some sort of advertising or marketing effort and say “what in the world are they trying to say?” This coming from a guy who, as humbly as I can say this, can put 2 and 2 together pretty darn quick. But the mental gymnastics that I have to do to try and get the point, if I can get there at all, is becoming more and more prevalent. In most cases, the message is convoluted. Other times, the message is beyond generic so much so that any company in that industry (and in many cases, in another industry) could say the same thing. Oh and then let’s not forget about puns or borrowing from successful campaigns (“Got Dog Food?”  “Got Rice?”)  Many times the channel isn’t right for the message and the message is obviously shoe-horned into the event or activity. Whether B2B or B2C environments, it goes on. Please tell me that you’re seeing the same thing. You are, right?

Additionally, I’m gobsmacked (haven’t used that word in a while) at the type of “discussions” on issues that are being pondered within some of the LinkedIn groups of which I’m a member. From the “Is it important that Sales and Marketing be on the same page?” to discussions that people dare not ask of their coworker “How do I go about finding a direct mail printer?”  Not to mention the blogs that deal with the details of details. On top of that, there also seems to be this craze for incorporating each new marketing tool, channel or approach (“the next big thing”) as though it will be the silver bullet to all the company’s marketing problems. And, to make matters worse, there’s a sprint to implement each new specialty, and in doing so, marketing starts heading down the slippery slope of actually getting further away from understanding the real world in which prospects and customers make purchasing choices. I think we can agree that this is neither good for the organization or for business as a whole. Not good at all.

OK, at what point in time was it decided that DIY is as good as what a successful outside marketing firm could provide? My business partner coined a phrase that I really like: “DIY is pervasive but hardly persuasive.”  Yet it seems to be what we’re seeing in the world today. The seemingly fun and economical do-it-yourself route usually leads to less than optimal results. Just because one understands how to use some design software doesn’t mean the outcome will help in achieving the goals set for that individual piece of marketing material.  I think that we might all agree that what separates the best work from the rest of the herd is what one does with the tools and not the tools themselves.

Another way that I see dumbing down happening is but the shear amount of specialization that goes on. This is not to say that being a specialist is a bad thing…it’s not… but as the marketplace continues to evolve and in so doing become more complicated, there are lots of marketers who know more about less and less due to being so specialized. What I mean is that these “specialists” are so focused on what they’re good at, they forget that you can’t solve an equation by concentrating only on parts of it. They can’t see the forest for the trees!

So how did this all come about? Well, as CEOs and CMOs whacked away at their marketing budgets over the last decade, they stopped hiring the most experienced and talented marketing professionals, the guys and gals with real degrees in marketing and gray hair earned on the battlefields of brand-building.  Instead, they hired people with “3-5 years experience” or moved over someone from human resources or finance or even the clerical pool to fulfill the marketing. Or they brought in specialists with social media or website experience and made them responsible for the whole marketing affair. Is it any wonder, then, that we’re seeing the kind of marketing on exhibit every day?

With the marketplace getting more complex and customers becoming more sophisticated than ever, now’s not the time to dumb things down but to think and behave like smart marketers once again.

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Rolf Gutknecht is vice president, director of account services for LA ads. To discuss your thoughts with Rolf on this blog or any marketing matters, email via this link, or visit www.LAadsMarketing.com.  You can also connect with Rolf on LinkedIn.

Fulfillment isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be, especially in business.  Consider a conversation I had today with one of our media reps that revealed why so many B2B ads aren’t just bland but simply bad.  This was in response to why an ad appeared in their publication quite differently from what the advertiser expected.  (We didn’t do this ad, so we’re off the hook!)  When we asked the rep why the ad didn’t fit the space properly, and why the publication didn’t contact the advertiser to discuss the problem, the answer was they’re so used to getting poorly-designed ads, they’ve just come to accept what they’re sent without question.

How shocking this answer was to us!  And yet, it so perfectly identifies the state of things, not just within one specific industry but across many of the industries in which we work.

The real problem is that in the last several decades, the role of marketing has been relegated to fulfilling.  In other words, it seems the task these days is to “get the ad into the pub,” and not worry about whether the ad is great and shifts the attention of the audience.  Advertisements, websites, collateral and all other marketing communications are less effective today it seems because they’re just space-fillers.  The media plan says they have to be there.  So the result is lots of media space or air time taken up with ad messages that aren’t merely forgettable but are also not produced or placed that well.

So it’s time for anyone who is responsible for advertising and marketing to look in the mirror and ask, “Am I a fulfiller or a marketer?  Is marketing a task to be checked off on my list of the day’s activities or do I delight in the prospect of arriving at a plan so smart and unexpected, it makes me giggle?”  Fulfillment is great in the abstract, but a killer in business.

I’ve often said that marketing is a self-fulfilling prophesy:  if you believe it works, you’ll invest yourself and your resources into it fully and – Voilà!- it works; or if you doubt its effectiveness, you’ll put in the minimal efforts (in other words, simply fulfill the order) without great enthusiasm and you’ll also be proven right.

Every piece of communication from your desktop is an opportunity to invigorate sales and renew a conversation with your customer…if you believe it will.

It means, in some cases, looking at the internal team who are engaged in your marketing.  Are they people who majored in advertising and marketing in school, and are they still “students” of it today?  Or did they move across from the HR or accounting department because nobody else wanted the job?  Are they fully invested employing great marketing to grow your operation, or are they also juggling bookkeeping, sales, IT and family services all at the same time?  Are you taking full advantage of outside resources who aren’t just design shops and web programmers but genuine marketing specialists, who will challenge and surprise you and are willing to own up to the results?

In other words, at the bottom line, is marketing a joy…or is it a job?

Think carefully about how you answer this.  Because your company’s success hangs in the balance.

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Rolf Gutknecht is vice president, director of account services for LA ads. To discuss your thoughts with Rolf on this blog or any marketing matters, email via this link, or visit www.LAadsMarketing.com.  You can also connect with Rolf on LinkedIn.