The dilemma of being human in marketing & following the rule book
The post-pandemic new normal has thrown up several challenges for marketers – on the one hand, they face significant problems in restoring topline and bottomline growth amid growing inflation and costs, while on the other hand they need to meet the expectations of customers who have undergone a change over the last two and a half years. In the new normal, empathy and experiential marketing must be at the forefront of marketing strategy. Furthermore, the digital transformation has introduced its own set of difficulties and opportunities.
Adgully held the second edition of its premier event for marketers – CMOs’ Charcha – on May 18, 2022, with the overarching theme of ‘MARKETING 3.0’.
Starting with her keynote address on ‘Role of Being Human in Marketing’, Jessie Paul, CEO, Marketing Guru and Author, remarked that the reason that pushes marketing to be more human-centric is that “we marketers do care for other humans and our customers. So, if we as an individual are faced with a particular situation, we know that we are going to respond in a humane way”.
Adding further, Paul said that when a brand blueprint is being laid down, the values of the organisation are also set as a rule book. “Now, we expect that the brands also would be able to respond in a similarly human way. Marketers also look at ways in which they can talk about those values and make sure that everybody lives by that.”
However, according to Paul, there is only one problem in sticking to the values and rules approach and why it falls apart every now and then. She cited the example of Indigo Airlines to explain this. Indigo Airlines recently came under a lot of criticism for denying boarding to a child with special needs. Paul noted, “The Indigo Airlines executive didn’t move away from the company rule book, even though there was this whole other audience around him telling him to try and be human.”
“That is the challenge that we marketers face when you put together a brand book, but then that gets cast in stone and we are just not able to make decisions which are not in the rule book. So, what is required are actually two things: one is that we have to define what we mean by human behaviour, and secondly, you want to be as thorough as possible.”
These are edited excerpts. For the complete address, please watch below:
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