I didn’t intend to characterize the entire industry. Most marketers, in my experience, are thoughtful and data driven. However many try to take the easy road and there is no shortage of gurus to encourage them.

- Greg

Although it might be easy to categorize marketing in such a fashion as “Cargo Cult Marketers”, it might also be a disservice to characterize more than just a few folks like that.

I agree with your premise that marketing isn’t always so straightforward but those that might fall into the “cargo cult” might be “formula” or “template” driven people. In other words, they always use the same paradigm or model to try to explain or exploit the market.

Unfortunately, with resources so dear and product life cycles so swift, those kinds of approaches are not as flexible or relevant in today’s market drive society. Are their cargo cult marketers? Of course, but they may the novices. I hope the more seasoned a marketer is, the better able that they can avoid such logic traps.

I didn’t know about the writing thing and didn’t think much about the imitation without thinking angle.

Thanks a lot for great insight!

- Greg

A classic behaviour would be copying the act of writing as the leaders of the technological society would seem to do… alot. It would not matter if the marks had meaning to the tribesman, it was the outward act of making marks that delivered the status and goods (apparently).

Many small companies and marketeers act this way. they practically think that it doesn’t matter about content so long as we are making random marks on the company website.

I enjoyed the article and a fair analogy. So many small companies try to copy successful companies outward actions in a similarly arbitrary and pointless way.

Tea leaves? I thought you were a Starbucks guy?

- Greg

So what is the short message here?

Digital Tonto is great.

Thanks. Although I don’t think the “digital age” has much to do with it. Ries and Trout were publishing crap long before personal computers.

- Greg

- Greg

Thanks. It’s an excellent point. A similar example is that if you have 100 monkeys flipping coins, a few will have exceptional success. Are they “exceptional coin flippers?”

However, I actually put Seth Godin in a different group. He seem to focus on the marketer rather than marketing as a discipline. I don’t think he sets down rules to follow and doesn’t even try to pass himself of as an academic. There is a very clear subtext of “Hey! This is what I think and it works great for me!”

Moreover, he actually is a success in the field of commerce so what he thinks is of more interest. He is his own case study. As far as I know, he doesn’t profess to be an expert of anything besides his own experience. His writing is clearly personal and, at least to my knowledge, doesn’t proclaim to have done any serious study, but is merely voicing his opinion.

Ries, Trout and others I have a bigger problem with. They certainly do profess specific marketing expertise and exude a pseudo rigor. They not only proclaim, “do what I say” they also suggest that they are writing about more than their opinions.

Jack Trout’s web site touts him as “the world’s premier marketing strategist.” Al Ries web site dubs him a “legendary marketing strategist.” Based on what products other than their books?

However, if you look a bit closer you’ll notice their is an appalling lack of rigor. All “case studies” are appallingly one sided – no alternative explanations are discussed or other views considered. The examples are clearly chosen to support their argument.

Moreover, I am not aware of one marketing success that that either one can claim. They do give examples where they had proposed strategies but, tellingly, they are followed by “and if they would have listened to us.”

Even worse are the “Blue Strategy” guys who wear their academic credentials on their sleeve, but don’t seem to hold themselves to academic standards. They selectively pick out examples that fit their argument and don’t even attempt to explain evidence to the contrary.

Where would Apple be if they followed a “Blue Ocean Strategy?” Certainly not in the business of selling music players or mobile phones. What is even more irksome is that while they are clearly advocating disruptive innovation, they don’t reference serious thinkers on the subject.

Contrast them to Clay Christensen, who coined the term “disruptive innovation”. He not only has done serious research, he shares his data and the reader is free to draw his own conclusions. He shows his work and one can’t read “The Innovators Dilemma” without being impressed as much by his rigor as by his conclusions.

Moreover, he points out the strategies he proposes apply in some cases but not others and clearly explains where they do not. He takes great pains to stress that he is making a prescription for specific situations.

Finally, he describes not only successes, but also failures. He shows how blindly following his prescriptions can lead to serious problems if they are not applied in the proper context. There are no “simple solutions,” but rather techniques for understanding complex and difficult situations.

- Greg