Blow up the marketing department

6 Responses to “Blow up the marketing department”

1. Eric on January 23rd, 2008 10:43 pm

   I was really struck with your point that:

   If some of your members do not get the fact that they are marketers, they have no long term future in your organization. They just want the paycheck.

   I can’t agree more. This is critically true for small businesses. If you’re employees don’t understand that everythign they do has an impact on the profitability of your business (and therefor the security of their paycheck), they shouldn’t be working for you for much longer.
   I was kind of blind to this until I started reading a blog by James Brausch (http://www.jamesbrausch.org). He takes a really hard core tact on employees and interns. Basically, if you can’t do the job without asking questions, and realizing the importance of your task - you’re fired! A bit hardcore perhaps, but I have to say that it has helped a great deal in my own business to take a hard-nosed approach to employees.

   Thanks for bringing up such a key point.

   Cheers,
   Eric

2. Bob Mincus on January 24th, 2008 1:40 am

   Hi Eric,

   I also am a regular reader of James Brausch, and he does have this mentality.

   In fact, he says that if you aren’t helping the bottom line of his business, you are hurting it.

   With that being said, I think getting all your employees to think of themselves as marketers would be very hard at a large corporation.

   I work in IT for one of the largest banks in the U.S., and we are of course aware that faulty software or unresolved problems would hurt our image with our customers, but my whole organization - up to our leaders - would not, in my opinion, think of themselves as marketers. There is a separate product organization of which we are partners. Our goals revolve around our technology “portfolio”.

3. Ron McDaniel on January 24th, 2008 9:11 am

   Bob,

   Let me challenge you a bit on that. I agree that if someone is great at their main job, but they are not good at being a marketer, they should not be fired. However, they should get the concept and at least do no negative marketing. (Complaining)

   In a larger corporation, each department is responsible for letting other departments know what they are doing. It is internal marketing and buzz. That is very important and a challenge for HR people to succeed with.

   Also, any company regardless of size will seem difficult if you are not currently doing it. When I implimented this strategy with 10 employees years ago we did loose some people. But it also grew the company quickly.

   Disney is currently doing it, so it seems easy for them.

4. links for 2008-01-25 | The BFD on Brewed Fresh Daily on January 25th, 2008 4:26 am

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5. Jay, memberspeed.com on January 25th, 2008 11:41 am

   You said that if some of your members do not get the fact that they are marketers, they have no long term future in your organization. But what makes these members not know or not acknowledge the fact that they are marketers? Maybe some values and insights of the organization were not imbued in the proper way.

6. Ron McDaniel on January 25th, 2008 12:18 pm

   Hi Jay,

   It is up to each organization to define this. With that said, I believe that any person of average intelligence understands that complaining and creating a negative atmosphere hurts the organization, hurts the work culture and hurts future success.

   “They didn’t tell me I wasn’t supposed to be a PITA” is no excuse.
   PITA = Pain in the Ass.

   When people work in an organization but feel like it is them against the organization, then it is just time to move on. Of course, if they are working in a factory or something, this may not be so clear cut. Maybe they need a new career if they are not happy, and it has less to do with the org.

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