Guest Column: Action Speaks Louder

Not long after joining the Promotion Marketing Association of America (as it was know then) in 1987, I developed a simple way of explaining promotion marketing, especially to students and others who are not familiar with our profession. It came to be known as “The Marketing Sentence.”

It begins with the “noun,” which is the product or service. Advertising, p.r., and the other communication media comprise the “adjectives.” They attempt to describe the noun, either by extending or highlighting its attributes or by creating an aura about the product in consumer minds.

Promotion is the action word, the “verb” in the marketing sentence. Promotion says “Try me,” “Win me,” or “Buy me now!” Promotion converts brand equity into case sales better than any other marketing tool.

In 2002, the way that we communicate with consumers may have changed somewhat, but this basic strategy has not. Consumers still respond to quality products, they still expect to get those products at a good price, and occasionally they still respond to a “special” deal.

Ironically, the fact that much of what we do is now referred to as “offline” activity points to just how dramatic this communication shift really is. While mass media is still an effective — if somewhat diminished — tool, the “online” world has changed forever how we communicate with consumers, and how they can communicate with us.

Yet another unchanged reality is that, unlike advertising, most promotion dollars are still allocated internally. This perpetuates the misconception that, because advertising agencies were bigger than promotion agencies, the advertising industry must be bigger than the promotion industry.

For a time, the promotion industry inadvertently extended this misconception by strategically trying to say, “We’re just like advertising.” Asserting that promotion contributes to brand equity is like saying that a Chevy Silverado looks great. Maybe it does, but you don’t buy a Silverado to go fast or look good. You buy it to move something.

And that is what promotion is and continues to be extraordinarily good at. As an industry, we need to appreciate and indeed celebrate the validity of promotion in the marketing mix.

Sadly, as long as it is more fun for brand managers to watch a commercial shoot than it is to monitor an instant-win print run, this misconception will probably continue.