Marketing is in trouble and has become its own worst enemy. Over the past few decades, the discipline has evolved into a trade, rather than a profession, focusing on managing and executing marketing communications. This trend is demeaning.
The industry is in love with the increasing number of communication channel opportunities, such as social media, entertainment, events, online, and so on. However, communications channel management is distinct from marketing management.
Marketing is about managing the business. Managing the business is bigger than managing messages and media. Peter Drucker, the father of modern business management, once said, “The purpose of business is to create a customer.”
Phil Kotler, whose marketing management textbooks continue to be the bibles for MBAs, once said, “Marketing is profitably satisfying a customer need.”
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When the revolution over the “evolution” at Cracker Barrel began, Bloomberg BusinessWeek wrote this about marketing,
“Not all of the outrage bait that influencers try works, of course, but it’s telling that marketing ploys and ad campaigns so often prove effective at stirring up their audiences. It’s not a coincidence: Consumer businesses have spent decades worming their way into more and more parts of American life, encouraging people to use their products and logos to express almost every aspect of their identity. As more Americans have lost faith in the country’s institutions, those expressions of consumer agency have seemingly become even more important to people, thus raising the emotional stakes of how those brands present themselves to the public. It also makes us all more attuned to the idea that marketing is a product in and of itself, which businesses produce for consumption in its own right.”
It is the last sentence that should make the hairs stand up on the necks of everyone even remotely associated with marketing. If this is the perception of marketing that the business press and other observers have of marketing, then marketing needs a reboot. This reboot needs to happen at universities where “marketing” is taught. No wonder so many marketing efforts fall flat or backfire.
There are critical, evergreen marketing principles that must be learned. The choice of a Chief Marketing Officer must include knowledge of marketing and its principles. Knowing how to manage communications is insignificant relative to having the informed judgment to make major brand decisions. Running a brand is the same as running a business. Brand management and business management are the same. The goal is the same: enduring profitable growth. Marketing is serious business. Marketing as we know it will continue to decline unless we reform and transform marketing from a marketing communications role to a brand-business leadership role.
Perhaps this is the reason that CMOs struggle to move into the CEO role. Perhaps this is the reason CMOs who become CEOS struggle. Running a brand is running a business. CMOs are often perceived as managers of media and messaging, rather than of serious businesses.
Although BusinessWeek makes the connection, it is impossible to foresee how marketing changes can turn into cultural miasmas. No one can be certain about the future. The changes at Cracker Barrel were announced two years ago in 2023. A that time, The Wall Street Journal wrote about the conundrum in which Cracker Barrel was embroiled.
Putting all the emotions aside for the moment: What happened at Cracker Barrel? Was there brand marketing mismanagement? Without knowing about the background to making the Cracker Barrel marketing decisions, it does appear that some of the core principles of marketing were possibly not factored into the decisions that were made.
First, it is possible to target more than one audience without alienating others. This is marketing 101.
During the 2004 McDonald’s turnaround, McDonald’s adopted multi-segment, multi-dimensional marketing, identifying three targets with different needs:
· Great tasting food and fun for kids
· Healthful eating for young adult moms
· Satisfying food for young adult males
The beer brand Modelo uses multi-segment marketing. In reporting from The Wall Street Journal, Modelo focuses on its Hispanic core base and a non-Hispanic audience.
“The brand strives to ensure its marketing appeals to both its core Hispanic and growing non-Hispanic customer bases, rigorously testing its ads with both groups to avoid alienating either one…. And, it (Modelo) spends heavily to run those winning ads.”
A brand like Cracker Barrel can address multiple segments of customers. Cracker Barrel can be a multi-segment brand. It is critical to recognize that people are multi-dimensional, not uni-dimensional. To be relevant, Cracker Barrel must also be multidimensional rather than unidimensional.
A multi-segmented, multi-dimensional approach has important strategic implications for communications, media, product development, pricing, promotion, restaurant design, packaging, and so on. For example, the increased use of non-traditional media to communicate multi-dimensional brand messages to our multi-segmented markets.
Loyal customers are valuable customers. Research shows that it costs more to attract a new customer than maintain an existing customer. And that cost is not just money, as Cracker Barrel management is finding out.
Core customers already know what is great about the brand. The goal is to maintain and grow their relationship with the brand, reinforce what they like about the brand, and encourage them to frequent the brand more often.
It is easier to get a customer who already uses your brand to come a little more often than to try to attract a new customer who does not use your brand at all. In a revitalization program, the brand’s objective must be to stop any decline in customer base while increasing their purchase frequency. A small increase in frequency can make a huge difference to brand health.
This is not news. Again, the “adore the core” principle has to be a guideline for any brand changes.
Craft website Etsy recognized the need to increase frequency among core customers in 2017. Eight years ago, the brand stated, “… we disclosed that about half of our buyers only buy once a year on Etsy. And, we really believe there’s an opportunity to bring those buyers, our existing buyers, back to buy more things on Etsy. So making it so that our existing buyers come back more than once, I think, is a big opportunity. Because half of them only come back once.”
Third, demographics are important. But age alone does not define a person. Multiple reports on the Cracker Barrel strategy indicate that Cracker Barrel was interested in gaining the love of “younger” cohorts. Many younger people love nostalgia, care about brand heritage, and share the values of older generations. A strategy based on age is not always the best strategy for enduring profitable growth.
Think Harley-Davidson. The brand has shifted back and forth over the years on just who to target: its baby boomers or its younger riders. The problem with both of these approaches is that for Harley-Davidson, the Hog appeal has never been about age. Harley-Davidson’s appeal was, and will be, fundamentally about a mindset, a values set, a personal spirit. Anyone at any age can have the Harley-Davidson soul. The idea that values and mindset are critical applies to Cracker Barrel as well. In a world that desires continual youthfulness, ageless aging, using age as a strategy is problematic to say the least.
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Using age as a discriminator may not be the best way for Cracker Barrel to achieve enduring profitable growth. The goal must be to maintain established core customers while generating new core customers.
Age may be a descriptor, but it is not a definer.
These three marketing truths are basic, intrinsic, evergreen marketing principles:
- It is possible to satisfy more than one target segment.
- It is death-wish marketing to focus on gaining new customers at the expense of loyal customers.
- Age should never be the sole definer. Values matter more than age.
Not knowing these truths and not activating these truths are marketing sins. Marketing needs people who focus on what makes marketing necessary rather than what makes marketing nifty. We cannot let the business press and others describe marketing as a trivial pursuit.
Again, it is impossible to know if these principles were part of the Cracker Barrel strategy. We only see what is given to us in social media and the news.
What we do know is this: Marketing is all about satisfying customer needs profitably. When marketing professors teach marketing, are they teaching prospective students how to manage a business or how to manage communications? How you run your brand is how you run your business. Is brand management taught at all? Until brand management is taught at universities, we can expect more Cracker Barrel chaos and more commentary on the mess that marketing creates.
Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Joan Kiddon, Partner, The Blake Project, Author of The Paradox Planet: Creating Brand Experiences For The Age Of I
At The Blake Project, we help clients worldwide, in all stages of development, define and articulate what makes them competitive and valuable at pivotal moments of change. Please email us to learn how we can help you compete differently.
Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth, and Brand Education
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