A six-hundred-page long plan and no one to read it.

It’s been interesting to watch all the buzz about Obama’s recovery plan and the fact that no one that I have seen be interviewed about it has said to have read every page of it. At first, it made me very uncomfortable, and then I started noticing that this might just be the fate of any plan.

Marketing planning is a crucial piece of a marketing campaign and worth every minute spent on it. But what happens once it’s finished? I almost want to say that no one reads it! Or no one reads the whole thing. However, does it really matter? Probably not. The important part of the marketing plan is its construction. The brainstorming sessions that take place, the time that is taken to think about what needs to be accomplished, how and when. Before these discussions happen, all the ideas about a product are extremely vague, even though we might believe that we know exactly what to do. It’s impressive how everything changes along the way. And this is the purpose of a plan. To allow ourselves and our team to think, take the time and get ready for action. Above all, it allows us to know what actions to take.

The plan then becomes a binder in a book shelf that you go back and open sometimes, look at the graphs and bullet points when you need some refference, and then close it again. What is important is that the key people involved in the project never forget the road map they created and are all on the same page. That they have the key points in slides, side notes, whatever works. That they get the buy-in from everyone they need. And that they know why they are doing what they are doing. One more important thing: keep it simple and short, which is different from obvious and empty!

So you think you can dance.

Every time someone asks me what I do and I say “marketing”, people seem very satisfied by the answer, so much so that they don’t ask me anything else. That always puzzles me because when I see the same interaction happen with professionals from other industries, the reactions are different and the conversations longer.

So, this is my theory. Marketing has sadly become an overused as well as misused word to define any sort of professional aspiration that some self-proclaimed creative people have. Although I do believe that the talent factor surpasses education and knowledge many times, I do think that there is a big, I mean big, difference between believing that you do marketing and really doing it. To be able to do one of the marketing mix’s components well doesn’t really mean being a marketer. No offense, but a lot of talented office managers and event coordinators out there can do that.

People often forget about the importance of tying all these components together , placing each of them in the best place, orchestrating their execution and being creative on the way they are used, and not only in the way they look. There is a significant difference between these two things. These sort of short-sided approaches to marketing explain why the term "marketing" sounds like a straight forward, easy to understand concept to anyone. In a way, this is a great way to market marketing! The more comfortable everyone feels about it, the more likely they are to be open to it. On the other hand, this also explains why so many CEOs and CFOs are skeptical, not to say scared, about marketing. Sometimes, I am too!

I am now finally able to understand – but not accept – why some clients, CEOs or CFOS come up with this reaction: “ Ok, fine. I will approve the budget you are asking for, but if this doesn’t work, it will be the last time”. Yes, I do hate this type of non-committal and set-up to failure buy-in, but when I see a lot of the so called marketing activities out there, I can’t stop but think that had I been in their shoes, I might have done the same. It might have been easier to just say, watch the show “so you think you can dance” and see how some individuals are really dancing and some just aren’t.