"Are you Global or Granular?"
There are two tribes in the marketing profession today. Each has its own language, rituals, beliefs, and knowledge. They worship different gods. Each approaches life with a different set of presuppositions and assumptions. They operate under paradigms so profoundly alien to each other, they see the same phenomena but perceive different realities.
We can call these tribes the Global and the Granular. You enter the marketing profession as one or the other, depending on your education and early experience. Once the belief system "sets" in your mind, it is hard to change sides. And there are precious few who can operate on both sides of the divide.
Globalists have dominated marketing since it began. Lord Leverhulme said "I know half my advertising is wasted but I don't know which half," was expressing a classic Global dilemma. Globalists are mass marketing warriors. They see markets as broad segments, and believe that the "woman, 29 to 45" exists as an entity. They live in a world of TARPS, gross ratings figures, audiences. Their world is constructed of big numbers and big ideas. And they move huge armies around like generals in the Napoleonic Wars. Their agencies create massive campaigns, mobilising millions of dollars in major assaults. It is a great feeling being a Globalist. The big ad agencies became big ad agencies on the back of Globalist patronage.
Globalists start at the top - with the brand or the big idea - and cascade communications down via a command and control model of management. Information comes from the battlefront in the form of despatches delivered periodically - sales figures (indirectly connected to the communications) or research results (indirectly connected to consumer behaviour). The Globalist surveys the world from on high, but the distance dictates a degree of disconnection.
Granularists see the world from below, at grassroots level. They see markets as composed of individuals. They are less likely to be selling to segments about which only the barest of information is known about the individuals within those segment. They are more likely to be addressing their messages to individuals about whom they know a great deal. They spend more time talking to IT people than TV people. They move smaller armies around in a vast number of smaller campaigns. They see marketplace reality through the eyes of atomic physics rather that geography. They receive almost instantaneous reports on their campaigns and can adjust their armory on the run. They measure success in different terms - in sales results, often directly related to the communication.
Granularists swim in data soup. They could wear the smug look someone who knows something you don't. But most look too stressed by the number of campaigns they have to report on.
You can tell a member of each tribe by the language they use, words being loaded with assumptions and values. A Globalist will profess commitment to "integration" and "seamless communications" and 360° views, etc., and focus their attention on the word "creativity" because it leads back to 'the big idea'... the big everything. A Granularist will mention "customer files" and "fields" and "profiles" and "hits" and "registrations" and "links" and "conversions". And ROI.
After years of suffering the scorn of their Global fellows for being "junk mailers" and brand destroyers, the Granularists took over the neighbourhood as management decided that targeted communications were more efficient and that holding onto good customers was more cost effective than talking to prospects. The CRM movement confirmed this shift in resources and attention. CRM is a Granularist animal.
But in recent times the Globalists fought back - criticising direct and CRM as brand-depleting and resource-hungry, and as being "boring", "unexciting" and "uninspiring". They are right, if by exciting you mean entertaining and diverting and colourful, like a TVC. Some Globalists admit the accountability of direct and database marketing is actually dangerous, because you can't argue when there is a scoreboard. Your campaign can "fail" in full view of everyone. Big mass advertising campaigns rarely 'fail' because they are rarely measured meaningfull way (ie. in a way connected to selling stuff - the business of business).
Is failure necessarily career limiting? Not among banks and financial institutions where Granularists accept failure as the price of knowledge. ("Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You can be discouraged by failure--or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember that's where you'll find success. On the far side." Thus spake Tim Watson Sr, who built IBM.)
Granularists live unexciting lives? How boring is ROI? A recent survey of 222 big US advertisers, reported in Advertising Age, found that boring old direct mail topped the list of communications channels as best for ROI and media advertising topped the list as worst. Network TV scored lowest for ROI. Direct mail was cited by 42% as best for ROI, followed by the Internet (19%). No other media discipline was cited by more than one-in-ten respondents. The biggest spenders on TV were the greatest critics of TV's performance. Sounds exciting?
How boring is CRM? How exciting is transforming the entire way a company does business?
I have seen the next generation of Granularists emerging from the banks and the telcos. They are scary. Marketing is becoming sci-fi. Globalists are safe so long as Globalist CEOs survive. The safest are the Globo-Granularists - contortionists who can carry two sets of paradigms in their head at the same time.
Which are you?