The Marketer's Handbook: Reassessing Marketing Techniques for Modern Business

THE SOURCE OF MARKETING CONCEPTS

It is noticeable how many of these tools seem to arrive in text books and on marketing courses through fame. The entry under “thought leadership” explores the market for ideas and how, through elite media (like the Harvard Business Review) ideas catch on and become adopted. Concepts like the Ansoff Matrix, AIDA, and the Boston Matrix have clearly gained attention in this way. Contrast these with an idea like the AAR model which is a powerful and well researched little tool or Wroe Alderson’s remarkable insights into the herd behaviour of markets, neither of which has had similar fame or attention but which are just as useful.

More worrying, though, are those concepts which business leaders and practising marketers have used to create wealth for many decades but have been equally neglected. Nearly two centuries ago, for example, Pears soap clearly used “viral marketing” as a technique to kick-start this highly successful, 200-year-old brand. Why then, after at least a hundred years of text books on marketing and its principles, do modern marketers think they are creating this technique with the internet under the term “Buzz”? Another example is thought leadership. This technique has been used for nearly two centuries and, particularly in business-to-business marketing, has had extensive and remarkable influence. There is no doubt that it has created enormous fortunes for accountants, consultants, and technologists. It has yet, though, to make an ...