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| Subject: Does Marketing Mean Never Having to Say You're Sorry? | |
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Author: Dennis S. Vogel |
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Date Posted: 00:14:38 04/06/10 Tue I posted a comment in Ad Age (adage.com) about the article below. I'm including a small part of the article. Does Marketing Mean Never Having to Say You're Sorry? Why Admitting Failure Might Be the Path to Success by Jonathan Salem Baskin http://adage.com/cmostrategy/article?article_id=143134 We usually don't stop driving until someone peels our fingers off the steering wheel. I'm not so sure this is good for your brand or your career. There's the fear that finding fault in programs you've approved or sponsored will somehow come back to haunt you, either in reduced budget or the suggestion that you find greener pastures. Nobody likes screwing up, and I don't care if you're a corporate big cheese or trying to build a ship model out of balsa wood in your basement. We Americans are a hopeful bunch, too, and we hate risking appearing negative. There's something just a little odd about never being wrong, and even the most junior staffer knows it, if only instinctively. Are we training a generation of marketers who think anything goes and everything has value? Maybe they'd appreciate it if we helped them make some critical distinctions that supported their careers and helped our brands. According to the conferences and articles I've read so far this year, every CMO is doing a bang-up job and every campaign is firing on one or more cylinders. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Note: The people I addressed by name below - Dorothy & Damien - contributed comments about what Jonathan Salem Baskin wrote. Admitting a mistake is a chance to push a reset button. It means preserving dignity instead of losing all credibility. Warning: This analogy may be interpreted as gross- When there are 2 people in an elevator & 1 passes gas, everybody knows who did it The other person pinches his/her nose, while the guilty gas passer suffers (justifiably so) with the results. When mistakes are obvious enough for others to notice but are still denied by those who made the mistakes, is anybody really fooled? Why should anybody be so stubborn, s/he won't pinch his/her nose? Is there really any dignity in smelling it? 8< ( When the doors open, people (who are waiting for the elevator) will know 1) what happened & 2) who did it. (Tip: To preserve dignity, pinch your nose too & leave the others wondering.) Even The Emperor, who got the innovative (nonexistent) new clothes, eventually put on real clothes. Refusing to admit the foolishness wouldn't have covered anything. I know there are a lot of "bang-up job(s)". Look at all of the dented careers & sales reports. I know I'm stepping on some toes: Clients who want more sales judge failure differently than ad agency people. For clients, failure is a lack of sales increases. For ad agencies, failure is a lack of creativity awards, regardless of sales results. I confirmed the quotes below with brainyquote.com. (Some quotes may be worded differently, but the meaning is similar.) "Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently." - Henry Ford. It seems in the advertising agency world, a failure to increase sales is the opportunity to win creativity awards. (OO! What he said/wrote!) The dents just become deeper & more plentiful. This is the opposite of the wisdom DAMIEN added about learning from mistakes. Too many times when I suggest a different approach, people say, "I/We tried that, it didn’t work." When I ask which parts of it didn't work, the answer is usually "everything" or just silence. Scrapping "everything" & not examining results is a mistake. ("The unexamined life is not worth living." - Socrates) Mistakes are costly, so we might as well learn from them. "The unexamined mistake is not enlightening." - Dennis S. Vogel We want a certain reputation & identity, so we should consider more wisdom from Socrates: "The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear." Dorothy, there's a difference between asking to get praise & asking to learn things. You met somebody who advocates asking to get praise, not asking to learn. "I was really too honest a man to be a politician & live." - Socrates I make the same "mistake", so I don't try to be a politician or diplomat. "I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth & they thought it was hell." - "Give 'Em Hell Harry" S. Truman Dennis S. Vogel marketing consultant independent contractor Two Rivers WI Your business can survive a marketing mistake. But the biggest business mistake is a lack of marketing. To help you, I have free marketing advice & information here - http://www.lakefield.net/~thrivingbusiness/ http://www.voy.com/31049/ [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
| Subject | Author | Date |
| BofA Tries to Remind People of Rosier Era. | Dennis S. Vogel | 22:55:28 04/19/10 Mon |
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