The difference between management and marketing

Management pays attention to facts, data and reality. Of course, management also understands the importance of cognition, but the problem is that they think that cognition is a response to reality. As long as reality is changed, cognition will also change. The School of Marketing disagrees with this view. They think it is not difficult to change the facts, but changing cognition is almost the most difficult job in the world.

Wal-Mart's image of low prices every day has been deeply rooted in people's hearts, but Wal-Mart does not want to lose its reputation of selling only cheap goods. They set up an office on Fifth Avenue, held a fashion show in new york and advertised in Vogue magazine, in order to create an image of "high-end atmosphere and high grade". What was the result? Fiasco!

Nothing is more important than the product. This is a typical left brain management thinking. What results can be obtained by comparing the products of Ford, Chevrolet, Toyota, Honda and Nissan? It is difficult for even experts in the automobile industry to point out obvious quality differences.

Of course, there are obvious quality differences, but not in the products, but in the hearts of buyers.

In fact, the differences that consumers can find are all created by the brand itself.

"Cognition guides facts." Starbucks tastes better because consumers think Starbucks is better.

Brand is just the tip of the iceberg, and category is this iceberg. The size and depth of the iceberg determine the value of the brand. Leading a category is the real goal of marketing plan. Many big companies are busy adding luster to their brands, while entrepreneurs and pioneers are looking for ways to get rid of categories. Big companies think with brands, and entrepreneurs think with sources.

When the iceberg begins to melt, managers with left brain thinking will try to save the brand. Although this is logical, it is not a good strategy. The best strategy is to see if there are new icebergs around.

Management hopes to produce better products with higher efficiency and lower cost. There is nothing wrong with this, but this is not the way for the company to lead in the market. Dell is not in the field of personal computers because its products are better than IBM, but because it is different. Dell replaced the traditional retail way with direct selling.

In the history of business, almost no second-ranked brand can surpass the leader because of "better", such as Burger King, Pepsi, McDonald's, Coca-Cola and Visa. A leader will not easily lose his leading position.

Why do marketers advocate narrow product lines? Isn't comprehensive products and services better? Because sales is the second step of marketing, the first step is to establish a brand in the minds of consumers, but it is difficult for a complete product line to form cognition in the minds of consumers.

"Growth" is the primary goal of every school of management, but the school of marketing doesn't think so. If it is to increase profits, not just sales, then enterprises need to shrink rather than expand. Marketing believes that brand extension can certainly play a role when there is little or no competition. But once the competition is fierce, brand extension is a shortcut to disaster.

The first Pod in the world was not introduced by Apple, but the first entrant had a very awkward name: Nomad Jukebox, and made the mistake of product line extension. IPod became the first pod to enter consumers' minds. Most managers only remember the first half of this marketing rule: the importance of first. But they ignore the second part: being the first person to enter the mind, not the first person to enter the market.

A "rocket" myth is popular among many left-brain managers, that is, new brands must take off in a short time, just like BIGBANG. Therefore, the company must make every effort to use resources to trigger this "big bang". But this is not the case. The more innovative a concept is, the longer it will be generally accepted by the market. General products or concepts may take off soon, but those revolutionary products will not.

And because revolutionary products take off slowly, management often thinks this market is small. It is too late for management to wait for a new category to develop into a big market and then enter the looting.

Large companies in many industries are aiming at the market center. The big three American auto giants have been losing money. They have neither strong low-end brands nor strong high-end brands. They are only strong in the middle market, but the situation is getting worse, because each industry tends to be divided into two independent industries, one at the high end and the other at the low end.

What is a Volvo car? Safe cars are the cognition of many consumers, but many brands have not established such cognition in consumers' minds, and the brand image is very vague in users' minds. To make matters worse, many managers have not even tried to establish such cognition. Management generally believes that customers will consider many things when buying such "big things" as cars, such as driving performance, comfort, power, style, maintenance, etc. This is very logical, but it is difficult to implement. Can you implant all this into the minds of consumers? If the brand can implant a word or a concept into the hearts of consumers, it will be very lucky.

Left-brain thinking managers like abstract elements. Do the language expressions such as "keep pace with world business", "excellent service" and "reliable performance" have practical significance? The marketing group in the brain thinking wants more straightforward expressions-"overnight delivery" and "enjoying the service of two rooms at the price of one room". It takes a nail and a hammer to build a brand. Language expression is a nail, and visual image is a hammer. To build a strong brand, both are indispensable.

In this era of excessive information and limited attention of consumers, why not put all sales and marketing resources on one brand? Some successful companies do this: such as General Electric, Microsoft and IBM. However, when these enterprises try to establish a new product or service provider that is divorced from their core business, they suffer great losses: for example, Microsoft does Internet search and makes mobile phones. ...

On the other hand, many successful enterprises are using multi-brands-Procter & Gamble is a typical example.

P&G has more than 26 brands, with annual sales exceeding $654.38 billion!

Advertising is positioning, and the best advertising is to spread the essence of the brand. Although most companies try to cram all marketing information into the minds of potential customers. But spreading unnecessary information will only backfire and weaken the brand.

A study of many advertising words shows that many brands claim to be better than their competitors, but most brands have not positioned themselves better.

A young lady may buy clothes at Gap, and when she is old, she will choose Macy's.

Enterprises should not only strive for more land, but also insist on irrigation in their own soil, so as to build a better brand. Let your customers leave you and let them climb the ladder of life.

In some cases, brands ignore the existence of life ladder, and it usually costs a lot to retain customers. Levi's has been going downhill all these years. One of its problems is that it is a brand worn by the elderly, and no child wants to wear the same brand of clothes as his parents.

Maybe the right thing to do is to limit Levi's waistline to no more than 32 inches, and let the old people walk around with their big hips and herdsman's pants!

Cigarettes, marijuana and coupons are all addictive. Marketing success is inversely proportional to preferential promotion. The management school regards coupons as a strategy, while the marketing school thinks that coupons can only be used as a support. Coupons not only hurt brands, but also hurt sales. Promotion is like smoking marijuana, with short-term excitement followed by long-term depression.

Everyone has played the game of scissors, stone and cloth. What is the best strategy for this game? The answer is obvious, it depends on what the other person will do. The same is true of marketing. The best strategy also depends on what strategy your competitors are using.

It seems difficult for managers to think from this angle. They will say, "We just need to use the same strategy and do better than our competitors."

The marketing school is looking for opportunities to become the opposite of competitors, rather than imitating competitors.

Marketers know it's hard to feel anything new. You must first understand the marketing rules such as "opposition" before you can feel it.

Montblanc's pens are chubby, and its main competitor Cross focuses on slender pens. Traditional wedding and engagement rings are all made of gold, so scott kay focused on platinum jewelry and became the best-selling jewelry brand in the United States.

"In the era of positioning, one of the most important marketing decisions you can make is what name to give your product." Negative opinions are always associated with bad reputation.

The cognition of names leads to people's cognition of products, services and prices. If Ralph Lifshitz had insisted on not changing his name, would he have achieved today? Fortunately, he wisely changed his name to Ralph Lauren.

Sometimes, management will accept the suggestion of changing the name, but they like acronyms. Management always thinks that the shorter the better. If your brand is already well-known, you can use letters to form abbreviations, but if your brand is not well-known, only using letters will only make it farther and farther away from fame. The name NXP conveys only one meaning: What do these letters stand for?

Those companies that rely on continuous high-flow innovative products will inevitably get into trouble later. Peter drucker once said: "There are only two basic intelligences of enterprises: marketing and innovation." AL Ries believes that "an enterprise has only one basic function-to create a brand that can dominate a certain category." Taking the automobile industry as an example, the essence of building a strong automobile brand is not innovation, but concentration. Innovations that deviate from the core positioning may even destroy the brand. Innovations like New Coke almost ruined the brand.

The secret of creating a brand is to know how to choose, not to innovate. Enterprises should use innovative funds to create new brands, rather than hope to repair or save existing brands through innovation.

Playboy was originally a magazine, but now it has expanded its brand to clubs, casinos, books, audio-visual products, cable channels, calendars, clothing, condoms, cigarettes, coke and other fields. 197 1 year, the value of the shares issued by Playboy was $23.5 per share, and now the value is $65,438+$0.92. Playboy fell into the trap of brand line extension.

Today, every print media believes that brands should be extended to the Internet to be successful. On the contrary, we should base ourselves on the original positioning and launch new brands in the new field of network. Sina, Sohu, Netease ... Which big website have you seen expanded from traditional media?

Now you know why Phoenix? Com is always on fire! ?

For brands, the idea of the School of Management is to "put all your energy on the core brand, no matter where its brand extends." This may work in the short term, but not in the long term. Marketing College knows that marketing is a long-term proposition, and the new strategy will take several years to bear fruit.

When the school of management encounters legal and accounting problems, it will seek the help of lawyers and accountants and accept their opinions without exception. However, when the school of management encounters marketing problems, they will turn to the school of marketing and say, "We will do what I think. Marketing is just some normal problems." Speaking of common sense, no one knows better than CEO, right?

"Common sense" is an insurmountable gap between management school and marketing school.