Are Marketers Insane?

While some might say that anyone who intentionally chooses a career in marketing needs to be a little “off” (which I’m not arguing), this blog pertains to the urban definition of insanity:

“Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”

Why do I bring this up? Let me paint a picture that may look familiar to you.

It’s January (or February or April or whatever month is your “annual communications planning” month), and you gather your team together for the initial kick-off (or briefing or brainstorm or whatever you call it). At this meeting, the team reviews the sales and business targets freshly minted by the executive team, and defines the communications goals and objectives that stem from them.

With this aligned purpose in mind, the conversation quickly turns to planning, at which point one of your team members pulls up a presentation (or hands out a copy) of last year’s Communications Plan. Reviewing each slide (or page), the team recounts the audiences, messaging and tactics you deployed, and debates the strengths and weaknesses, successes and failures of your efforts. Perfect! What a great start.

Unfortunately, it is right after this moment where things go south quickly – as one of the team members digs through their files and finds last year’s Word documents and Excel spreadsheets to work from.

Why is this a bad thing? Because it inherently puts you in a mindset of “tweaking” versus “creating.” But why is tweaking bad?

If the plan is working, why not just change a little bit here and a little bit there? Why would anyone start from scratch year after year?

Have you ever seen one of those TV shows where someone is cleaning out their attic? It’s usually a sunny day somewhere in a cozy middle-class neighborhood. There are kids playing outside, and the front lawn of the house in question is littered with all of the knick-knacks, keepsakes and hand-me-downs one would usually find in an attic. Right?

Have you ever wondered why everything is in the front yard? Why don’t these shows depict someone in the attic gently filling cardboard boxes with the few items they would like to get rid of? It’s because bringing everything out to the front yard makes it VERY difficult to put things back in the attic – so only the most important items will make it. You have to really believe that old wooden dresser is important if you are going to endure the pain of lugging it back up three flights of stairs and squeezing it back through the narrow attic door.

The entire premise behind this approach is to force tough decisions.

Let’s assume that all of the items in the attic fit into three basic categories: important, so-so and trash. Using the cardboard box approach – which really only focuses you on the obvious decisions – would most likely result in the removal of just the trash, leaving you with most of what was there to begin with, including a bunch of so-so stuff.

For your communications plan, starting with last year’s planning documents is tantamount to pulling out the cardboard box, as your focus will be on what should be removed versus what should make it back in.

The question is: are you okay with a plan that includes a bunch of so-so stuff?

While the obvious answer is no, in reality most of us are quite content with so-so. Why? Because we don't see the real harm it causes.

When reviewing last year’s plan, you should very easily identify the winners and the losers (the important and the trash). The winners will have very clearly identifiable outcomes and positive returns. The losers will also have clearly identifiable outcomes but with negative returns. With the so-so items, both the outcomes and the returns will be murky. So, while you can't say that these items did a lot of good, you also can’t say they did a lot of bad.

It’s because of this and the “cardboard box” approach that these items tend to carryover from year to year. Unfortunately the harm that these so-so items create has less to do with their individual performance (not too good but not too bad) and instead with the space they occupy. Every so-so item that remains in the attic or the plan is taking up space an important item could occupy.

By deciding to leave so-so items in, you are making a corresponding (yet inadvertent) decision to leave new important items out.

Going back to the idea of insanity, if your final plan ends up filled with some carryover important items, a bunch of carryover so-so items and some new stuff (to replace the trash), would you expect the outcome to change much from the previous year?

In this scenario, which is probably the most common, at least 67 percent of the plan essentially remains unchanged. Contrast this with the “front lawn” approach, where roughly 34 percent stays the same and the rest is tossed in favor of new ideas.

It’s quite easy to see which would drive the most different outcomes.

At the end of the day, taking a clean slate approach to planning does not mean starting from scratch, but it does mean changing your mindset from “what goes” to “what stays” and recognizing the insanity of expecting different results from much the same inputs.

This article first appeared on Think Shift.

In his Working Wisdom series, David Lazarenko shares insights and inspiration gathered throughout his 15-year agency career. Through real-life examples and an analysis of industry trends, he offers up practical advice and actionable strategies for marketers.

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