Marketing a ‘stimulus-response’ activity?

I’ve just read a very interesting series of blog posts by Allen Mitchell, where he talks about how marketers have made a BIG error – a misperception – that pervades everything marketers do. And OMG he doesn’t hold back on marketing’s traditional belief systems.

But, what is this whopping great big marketing error?

Image from Ralph Buckley

Well, it’s our industry’s belief that marketing is a ‘stimulus-response’ activity where marketers send out various types of stimuli to consumers, whose attitudes and behaviours are then changed, to elicit certain desired responses. I think I have to agree.

Because on this, Allen thinks marketing is suffering from a bad case of schizophrenia.

Allen says “On the one hand, marketers say their job is to identify and meet peoples’ needs. This is all about aligning what the company does to what the customer wants.”

“On the other hand, marketers also believe their job is persuasion, to change consumer attitudes and behaviours in their brand’s favour. Here, the marketer is trying to align what consumers do to what the company wants.”

Allen puts this bad case of schizophrenia squarely down to marketing’s current marketing metrics impasse.

Have a read of his posts, but please don’t just read one, read them all.