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Surely, like most Americans you fear public speaking. Sorry to disappoint, but this particular post won’t offer any constructive advice on how to overcome nervousness, trembling hands, or itchy skin....
I have, however, taken the liberty of producing working titles and summaries for the top 10 worst marketing speeches that you can deliver to your direct report or CEO. Let’s kick off the list with number 10.
10. Database, Schmetabase. This speech discusses marketing’s love for compiling and de-duping customer lists and manually tracking marketing touches via spreadsheet instead of investing in marketing automation.
9. Three is a Bigger Number than One. Your company, like most, probably struggles with master data—too many lists of customers, suppliers, accounts which are inconsistent, incomplete and uncontrolled. This talk details how sending three of the same direct mail piece to a customer is surely better received than just sending one.
8. Customer Service is for Sissies. Customers should be happy they get any support, much less stellar customer support, right? This speech details top 10 ways to avoid full lifecycle support and the associated service costs. Your brand will thank you.
7. Hot off the Presses. The purpose of this speech is to reinforce the proper investment in heavy print advertising. Taking out full glossy advertisements in the CEO’s favorite business publication is highly encouraged, since all marketers know creating general awareness makes the phone ring and drives sales.
6. The Right Hand Doesn’t Care What the Left Hand is Doing. This speech highlights how a single view of the customer across company divisions is highly overrated. How better to improve customer satisfaction than by cross selling and up-selling products and services to customers that they already own or use? Plus, there is comedic value in watching customer service agents pitch irrelevant offers to your most valuable and profitable customers.
5. Hum This Tune; “Don’t Know Much about Strategy”. This speech details how a marketer’s time is best spent divining the right marketing tactics (direct mail pieces, advertisements, tradeshows etc), instead of putting together a complete, integrated, multi-channel program aimed at a target audience that actually gets results. Disparate marketing investments that have no correlation to each other are much more sensible and memorable.
4. Yesterday’s Gone, Yesterday’s Gone. Taking a note from the Fleetwood Mac, this speech highlights the need to keep only the last ninety days of customer transactions and purchase history in the company data warehouse. It’s really best to store historical data on CD or tape drive, preferably offsite so it’s inaccessible. After all, data warehouse storage costs money, and it’s unnecessary to understand context when building marketing campaigns or generating sales offers.
3. Life in a Bubble. One of the most popular speeches, this talk describes a very limited need for a robust and continuous competitive intelligence function because competitor moves, acquisitions, and sales strategies are irrelevant. The audience of this speech will come away understanding it is important to spend as little as possible on competitive intelligence and analysis, so there’s more money available for national print advertising.
2. Upgrade the ERP but Hold Off on that “CRM Thing”… This speech details how precious IT dollars should be spent on the latest ERP upgrade with all the new bells and whistles, while the CRM software licenses sit on the shelf and collect dust. Sales, marketing and service never mattered much anyway.
1. We Work Better in Isolation. Forget about attempting to bridge the divide between sales and marketing. Sales people are the enemy. This speech describes how to isolate the marketing function from sales so that the best advertisements, collateral, and assets can be created independent of the needs of the sales force. Added bonus; this speech discusses the common fallacy that sales people are responsible for a marketers paycheck.
These are my top ten worst marketing speeches. Can you think of others I’ve missed?
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Comments
How could you overlook the new paradigm speech also known as the old rules and disciplines are the crutches of the backward thinking speech.
Posted by: John Dodds | 10.02.06
Hi Paul,
Excellent post. Every bit of this is, unfortunately, practiced in the real world. How about adding this one: Cut Price. When competition gets too intense, forget implementing a strong, differentiating marketing strategy and fulfilling the brand promise. Cut price and continue to promote cut price. Forget about everything else.
Posted by: Claire Ratushny | 10.02.06
I agree that any speech that mentions the magic words, "new paradigm shift" should instantly be elevated on the list.
Sometimes when sales show a slight dip management gets scared and immediately jumps to price cuts, when a little patience might be in order. However, with most large companies managing by the quarter, I can hardly blame them...we all have numbers to meet.
Posted by: Paul Barsch | 10.02.06
I agree, Paul. Also any speech that references working "smarter, not harder" or describes any operation as "lean and mean."
Anyone who uses that language deserves a mug that says: "Shift my paradigm before my morning coffee and I'll core your competencies!"
Posted by: Ann Handley | 10.02.06
Any speech is pathetic when the speaker is relying on PowerPoint...the most pain filled death anyone attending a meeting can face is death by PowerPoint.
Posted by: Mark Hunter | 10.02.06
Thank you for this great post, Paul! It struck a nerve but also made me laugh.
Here are some of my favorite worst marketing speeches:
“Value Propositions Are For Sissies.” Someone who’s never written a line of copy in their lives explains how any copywriter worth their salt should be able to write a headline that has customers rushing out to buy up ill-conceived, over-priced, commoditized products for which they have absolutely no use. Any writer who can’t do this just doesn’t have the right stuff.
“Declining Sales? Don’t Just Stand There, Raise the Price!” This speech explains how to take advantage of an obscure strategy whereby companies can maintain, even grow sales, simply by raising prices when traffic and/or transactions decline. It’s so easy it’s a wonder everyone isn’t doing it.
Posted by: anne simons | 10.03.06