Schizophrenic Marketing For Schizophrenic Customers

Let's face it, your company is schizophrenic as hell. Don't worry, you aren't alone. Most companies are. The consumer goods folks don't talk to the B2B people. The engineers think they are better than the sales folks and everyone has different, often divergent goals. As a result, your marketing is schizophrenic too. Especially your website. (Websites never lie.)

So, whatcha gonna do?

Well, you could try fixing the problem, or do what a lot of us do – act like your customers are schizophrenic too.

A few weeks ago I presented a very simple schizophrenic slide in a speech at a marketing summit for a large corporation with multiple business lines. Geez, they loved it. It was a drawing of a two headed customer. One head said: “I am a business person. I only think of the bottom line. I live in a cubical. I have no emotions. I understand numbers…and covering my ass.” The other head said “I am a consumer person. I only want pleasure. I am really stupid. I buy everything based on emotions. I want happiness, piece of mind…and sex.”


This slide was met with giggles, but after the speech many in the audience commented “that's exactly how we end up thinking about customers. We ignore that in many cases, B2B and B2C customers are the same person in a different content.”


It is easy to see how we arrive at this state. Within many organizations we structure our marketing efforts to match the structure of the company. Then we structure the perception of the customer to match the marketing efforts. This requires us to invent the two or three headed customer so that one person can be completely receptive to our uniquely hived off marketing messages. Its the ultimate next new thing in segmentation....the segmented customer.

I'm having a bit of fun, but I'd be a rich man today if, over the lifetime of my branding career, I had a dollar for every time my goal for brand consistency was met with the statement “But my customers/segment/situation/whatever...is different.”

The end result is usually a brand that is increasingly irrelevant due to inconsistency and an external brand consultant making a ton of money simply by walking into your CEO's office with one slide that shows all the divergent images your company pushes out to the marketplace. (Every brand consultant has this slide template and they are just waiting to populate it with your brand.)

While what companies end up creating is usually overly complex marketing, I think the reason why we do it is not complex at all. Most organizations are full of smart people and smart people know that they don't stand out and get ahead by assimilating into the brand. You can't stand out if you are standing in the circle. If someone wants to make a name for themselves within a company, the brand can sometimes be the enemy. Brand is viewed as that thing that stifles ones individuality and draws attention away from ones efforts to get attention.

A lot is said about building brand cultures within organizations. I think it begins with finding ways to reward people for building a brand as much as they get rewarded for other goals. If that isn't in place, I think smart career minded people believe in “the brand called me.”

Don't go thinking I'm a dogmatic brand consistency preacher. I'm not. I believe in consistent variability. I'll talk about that and my golf swing metaphor next entry.