This post is by Michael Pollock, the original owner of Small Business Branding. Yaro Starak now owns and produces the latest content for this blog.
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I had an interesting, if brief, email conversation with Bob Bly today. Bob’s a direct marketing guy, and in his words, "DM people do get smug about the fact that we can prove our stuff works and
you branding guys, as far as we can see, can’t. Probably a bit obnoxiously.
:)"
Anyway. The brief conversation stemmed from Bob’s blog post titled, What’s Wrong With Cluetrain.
"By proclaiming that ‘markets are conversations,’ and that talking
with customers is the ultimate marketing methodology, Cluetrain ignores
this important truism from Rene Descartes:‘To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say.’
That’s where we direct marketers have it all over the Cluetrain crowd.
We
aren’t guided just by what people say they want or will do; we
primarily pay attention to what they actually do – in other words, what
they buy . . .Actions speak louder than words, and what people actually buy is infinitely more important than what they say they will buy.
Which do YOU think is a more accurate indicator of what your market wants – a ‘conversation’ or a purchase?"
I just read The Cluetrain Manifesto a second time. I loved it. It resonated with something in me. Something I believed but didn’t have the words to express. At least not as completely as the Cluetrain crew.
And because I so resonated with the Cluetrain message, Bob’s post/question put me immediately on the defensive. Actually, I was pissed. If I didn’t know and respect Bob and his experience, I may have attacked right back. After all, he wasn’t just attacking Cluetrain, he was attacking me and what I believed. Or so it felt at the time.
After our brief email chat, I realized I misinterpreted Bob’s real question. To me, he was asking:
"Which is better? Direct marketing or Cluetrain/branding/relationship marketing?"
In reality, he was asking:
"Which is the best way to know what your customers want? What they say they want or what they’ve purchased in the past?"
In retrospect, he made the question pretty clear. But because I felt attacked in his lead up to the question, I couldn’t see the real question. I was already busy planning my defense/counter attack.
Fortunately, I asked for clarification, which he kindly provided:
"What I AM saying is that if you really want to know
what customers want, what they DO is much more an indicator than that they
SAY."
I’m compelled to list my many lessons from this little experience, but I’d much rather get your feedback on my reaction, lessons learned and anything else you might take away from this.
So tell me, what do you think?