Marketing Formula Inflation: P’s, Q’s and Plenty of Bs

Inflation isn’t limited to monetary matters. Recently we’ve witnessed College Bowl game inflation: An increase in the number of bowl games, to 34 in 2009-10, leads to a loss of value among individual games. Somehow “Meinecke Car Care Bowl” and “San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl” aren’t in the same league as “Rose Bowl” and “Orange Bowl”.

And now, in our business, there’s marketing formula inflation: “The 4 (INSERT ALPHABET LETTER HERE) Of Marketing.” It all started back in 1960 when E. Jerome McCarthy proposed the 4 Ps of marketing: Product, Price, Place, Promotion.

This was a good idea, but before long agencies, consultants and others got greedy. The race was on to monopolize a letter of the alphabet (“hurry, hurry, special offer limited to first 25 responders”) to create supposedly-proprietary marketing formulas.

Why settle for the “4 Ps,” when the gurus of modern marketing offer you so many ways to guide your thinking? Here are a just a few examples you can choose from:
•    The 4 As: Analysis, Attention, Acceptance and Action.
•    The 4 Cs: Consumer wants and needs, Cost to satisfy, Convenience to buy, Communication.
•    The 4 Es: Experience, Everyplace, Exchange, Evangelism.
•    The 4 Fs (not to be confused with the militarily-unqualified): Filters, Fanatics, Facilitators and Firecrackers.
•    The 4 Ms: Market, Message, Media and Measurement.
•    The 3 Qs: Quantity, Quality and Qualify. (The idea here is the Scrabble approach to marketing– Q is worth 10 points, as much as A, E, V and W combined.)
•    The 4 Rs: Recognition, Relevance, Reward and Relationship.
•    The 4 Vs: Validity, Value, Venue and Vogue.
•    The 4 Ws: Who Are You? What Do You Do? Why Does It Matter? and What Makes You Different?

This list is the result of a quick Google search. Which one’s right for you, or your agency or your company? You could review all the options carefully, comparing one against another, passing judgment on which one best fit the realities of marketing for today and for the future.

Or you could take the deflationary approach. There’s a different kind of choice that’s implied by what’s missing from this list: The Bs. At R&M, we kind of like “Marketing With No Bs.”

Tags: 4 C's, 4 E's, 4 Ps of marketing, BS, marketing bs, marketing formula

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 at 1:49 pm and is filed under Alan Maites, Marketing Communications. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.