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Many moons ago, I shared an office with a brilliant corporate video and meeting producer named Gerlinde Puchas. She didn't usually do commercials, but she did one about canned ham for a supermarket chain....
She put it in a top hat and tails, and had it dance. It ran for years. And it sold a lot of canned hams.
Then one day, a man called and said he wanted her to do a commercial about the ham he sold. "You've come to the right place," she said, "I actually did a commercial about ham once before."
"Yeah," he sniffed, "but that was canned ham. I sell fresh ham. Do you have any experience with fresh ham?"
I've giggled over that story for years. I tell it when I am trying to explain that experience and expertise in marketing is what counts, not the marketing of a specific type of ham, or widget (before widgets took on their current cool iteration.)
These days, I often tell clients that story when I introduce ideas about new media marketing. I warn them: "OK, here comes a canned ham idea. I know it doesn't apply exactly to your business. Please think about the concept." It often helps to open their minds to new ways of looking at marketing.
Try it!
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Comments
BL,
Don't you just hate it when a potential client asks, "yes, but do you have any experience with...." I just want to scream, "If you are looking for someone who specializes in canned ham and want your canned ham to look just like everyone else's, I am not your guy!"
Fortunately, I have never done that, swallowed my pride, and tried patiently to describe what marketers bring to the table.
Posted by: Lewis Green | 12.11.06
Patience is not one of my virtues.
Posted by: B.L. Ochman | 12.11.06
Great story, B.L. It's even more frustrating because some competitors are willing to present themselves as specialized experts on everything under the sun to get a job! ("I'm not only a fresh ham expert. I happen to be an expert in North Carolina fresh ham -- just like the ones you're selling!")
Thanks to this story, maybe next time this happens, I won't pull quite so much hair out. What I have left is already getting gray, so as long as I can keep it in my head, I figure I'm holding my own.
Posted by: David Brazeal | 12.11.06
Too funny... but isn't there a little truth to asking if a marketing company has experience in our markets? That is to say that marketing canned hams is a lot different than marketing a B2B enterprise software product... while the same fundamentals exist, the target audience is a lot different... I usually ask about experience in my market because I want to know how much investment I'm going to have to make in educating the marketing agency on my business and audience. (Although, I would assume that if they had sold canned hams, it would be a VERY easy ramp-up to fresh hams...) :-)
Posted by: Jill | 12.11.06
Jill,
Good marketers are excellent researchers and many employ a utilization rate that covers any research we need to do to get up to speed, so the client isn't paying or spending time getting us up to speed.
Frankly, it is not unusual for me to enter a potential client meeting wherein I know at least as much if not more about their markets than the company looking to hire an outside consultant. That is my job.
What makes the most difference in marketing canned hams vs. an enterprise software product is that one is b2c and one is b2b. I suspect most of us specialize in one or the other and seldom cross over. I may be a rare example, because I worked both sides of the aisle in my corporate jobs. Nevertheless, nearly all my clients are b2b.
Posted by: Lewis Green | 12.11.06
Good marketers are quick studies. I have done successful marketing campaigns for clients in fields ranging from food to finance in the course of my career.
Another recent experience with a Fortune 10 company caused the client to exclaim "I never looked at it that way. I am so "in" our way of doing things that I needed a fresh look from someone with perspective."
I think the reason a lot of marketing is so ineffectual is that companies look for narrow experience.
Posted by: B.L. Ochman | 12.11.06
This is so true, but there's an underlying principle here that applies to a much wider audience than just marketing. This kind of experience bias can artificially induce limitations in a lot of different ways, and none of them good.
Excuse the gratuitous self-promotion, BL, but I used your post to springboard to an experience I had while job-seeking. It's the same thing! Now that I'm alterted to it, I'm going to start looking for other examples. (If you like, you can read it at http://middlezonemusings.blogspot.com/2006/12/is-that-canned-or-fresh.html).
Posted by: Robert Hruzek | 12.14.06