Brand Marketing Is Not a Science
During our daily industry readings, we came across this encouraging article by brand consultant Tom Hinkes, a contributor to adage.com. It was refreshing to hear from a well-respected and experienced brand marketer that great marketing requires a balance of strategy and creative. Currently, companies have been scaling back on creatively-led brand solutions and focusing more on "the numbers" approach.
More Data Is Not Better Data
Marketing departments used to be the creative engines powering successful corporations. Now they're overrun by number-crunching nerds. As a direct consequence, despite all the conspicuous focus on "change management," the way brands respond to change in the marketplace has deteriorated. A McKinsey Quarterly article several years ago argued that the key to "better branding" is to build brands "more scientifically." If managers would combine "forward-looking market segmentation" with structural-equation modeling, they could "build a better brand more efficiently." In short: more data, more regressions and more conjoint analysis mean the "brand crisis" is solved. But fluency with buzz words and expertise with spreadsheets do not guarantee brand-marketing competence.
We agree that there is a need for consumer research, but brand marketing is not a science, it's not driven solely by metrics or statistics. It requires analysis, discipline and detail. Even more, it requires emotion, vision and ideas. STARMEN shares this perspective. We manage and balance both successfully and have the marketing abilities and creative talents to do so.
