Marketing – from a sociologist’s point of view

Last week, Flurina and I had a meeting with the Marketing Manager of the Kaufmännischer Verband Zürich

– no, we are not that famous yet, she is the sister of our boss. See, relationships can get you anywhere 😉

After a short presentation of the association and the role of a Marketing Manager, we ended up in a discussion about our current society. For some strange reason this is where most of the discussions with me – the sociology graduate – seem to eventually end up.

Of course we talked about the general Marketing concepts – the 4 Ps, customer acquisition, binding and holding, promotion etc. – that’s when I first remembered my Marketing class at University. A feeling of fulfillment came over me: I did not only learn for the exams! This stuff is actually useful!

But as the conversation continued, I realized that just knowing the concepts doesn’t bring you very far. It’s easy to learn the theory like the concept of defining the main goal, the target group, the budget and the measures. But if the implementation was that simple, we wouldn’t even talk about it, right?

Once you have your target group, one has to ask himself: why should anyone buy anything from you? According to Simon Sinek: “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it” – guess where I heard of him for the first time. It was atAIESEC. So much for “AIESEC – the student drinking association” – how jealous non-aiesecers used to call us 😉

Sinek explains the golden circle in his speeches: It’s not the “What” (the product), nor the “How” (the difference to other products), it’s the “Why” that makes people buy your products. E.g. the Why of AIESEC: Peace and fulfillment of humankind’s potential – see, who would say no to this statement? Or Apple’s Why: We believe in challenging the status quo and doing things differently. If that’s not convincing!

Nevertheless, the process to successful Marketing is still not done. As we live in a society that is constantly changing and adapting to technological, political and economical change, the Marketing strategy has to be adjusted as well.

The best example was the one during our conversation with the Marketing manager: as one target group is the KV Zürich Business School, she could observe the change of the attitude of her target group in only three years. If three years ago, the class of 16 years old students were completing their apprenticeship to have a general education, they now feel more career pressure.

This change of mind-set and the fast shifting communication technology like Snapchat or Instagram forces them continuously to redevelop the marketing strategy.

Overall I was excited to see that the rather dry theoretical concepts from our marketing class at university come to life in the real world of business. As always the theory is interesting but the proof is in the pudding & reality is where the results count. Even more interesting was seeing the impact societal changes have on business and how business needs to react.

So changes in society are quickly reflected in Marketing; that’s why women are such good Marketing leaders, we’re used to sudden change of opinion 😉