Marketing saw its impressive affirmation between the eighties and nineties and is now the discipline that is best able to drive the business. The difficulty of defining the winning marketing strategy has increased considerably due to the exponential increase in the complexity of consumption and sales logics. Porter has written indisputably significant pages for marketing (Competitive strategies): the approach to the market sees three strategic approaches – cost leadership, product differentiation and market segmentation – which are still valid todayi and define il positioning and marketing mix ofbrand.
Basic marketing lesson aside, today these three approaches strongly intersect in a holistic way and the original purism is difficult to recognize precisely. With the evolution of knowledge, a new component has been introduced which heavily influences the business model and marketing strategy. I mean to the technology that has now assumed a primacy of domain that has entered every company by force.
Today all product sectors, whether b2c or b2b, must address this component and insert it into primary and secondary cycles and processes. Not having understood this step or having underestimated it can cost a chronic obsolescence that is difficult to recover given that the speed of implementation has increased considerably compared to ten years ago.
The risk for marketing is to become a technology support function. To avoid this risk marketing must take the burden of understanding the technology and adapting it to the strategic approach and not the other way around.
If marketing has always been also the function of sensitivity, avant-garde and approach to the market, today more than ever, it must return to preside over it fusing the strategic approach with the tech. Successful companies today have figured out how to shape technology to their strategy and are gaining important positions.
I like to remember that marketing has certainly changed its approach compared to when it was strongly inspired by military strategies, but it always remains a "battle for your mind” as Trout and Ries taught us back in 1980 (Positioning).
The conclusion to reason about is easy enough to accept. The basic principles have not changed and what is significantly mutated is the potential contribution that technologycan give to marketing. In addition, technology can provide marketers with an amount of data that was previously not possible and this is a sure strategic advantage.
All of this has also revolutionized the role of the marketing manager who, in addition to being a person of great sensitivity, must also master the virtues of technology. I suggest to the new recruits to appropriate the original theses that founded marketing and to adapt them to the new technological frontiers: doing the opposite could be a danger, as it would create a potentially replicable and homologable marketing and little incisive to drive the business.
“The only sustainable competitive advantage is the ability to learn and change faster than others.” Philip Kotler
All the Best!
Cover art by Roy Lichtenstein
