Marketing and Innovation

The eminent management thinker Peter Drucker proposed that
"the business has two basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs."

If the logic of that isn't obvious to you, think of it like this...

All organisations exist in an environment of challenge and change. For example

• The people or organisations they serve may change in number, age, expectations, needs, wants, knowledge, wealth and a host of other characteristics.
• Competitors may develop new and improved products and services at lower cost.
• New technologies or regulations may emerge and move the goalposts.
• Business collaborators or suppliers can find alternative partners, set up in competition or just grow greedy.
• Over time, the products and services that an organisation offers its customers, and the way it communicates and delivers them, may lose relevance or start to seem dull and too familiar.

The timeframes and intensity of these forces will vary but it is clear that to survive and prosper organisations themselves must recognise the need for creative, constructive change and work out what changes will best serve their own long term interest.

The role of marketing is to give direction and purpose to creative change

• by connecting it to the functional, emotional, psychological and spiritual needs and wants of actual and potential customers
• to create value for customers and for the organisation.

Marketing does this...

Strategically, by aligning the organisation's resources coherently and continuously towards the customers whose needs it can serve

• best (for customers) and
• most distinctively (against competitors).

Operationally, by ensuring that the connection between what the organisation offers and what the customer needs

• is communicated in a clear, consistent and motivating way
• and then delivered in the form of satisfying customer experiences that build valuable branded relationships

That's marketing thinking.

Marketing Thinking from GCM Marketing Ltd. provides consultancy, advice and practical help with marketing analysis, marketing research, business and marketing strategy, marketing plans, marketing communications, brands & positioning, from a base in Scotland. Copyright © 2004, 2005,2006.