Respect for the customer

Arguably, the most important asset a marketing researcher has is ... a respondent. The Canadian industry association, MRIA, has created a Respondents Bill of Rights - and much effort goes into best practice development for research methodologies that both respect the respondent and provide insight on which to base business decisions.

What is the most important asset an advertising agency or a marketer has? I think the answer is ... a customer. Not inventory, not intellectual property, not real estate, not world-class leadership, not strategic location, not stock price, not exclusive market rights, not employees (even though in my mind employees are intrinsically linked to the customer).

Why is it then, that there is so little effort made to care for the customer or the potential customer? Over 90% of new products fail and fewer than 50% of advertisements are effective - so why are they getting created and who are they really speaking to?

Instead of relevant, timely, opt-in, creative marketing activities, much of marketing seems to still be trying to yell louder or funnier or whatever at a fairly large group of people.

If advertisers want to be relevant then they might reconsider their focus and place the customer at the heart of business and marketing considerations. There are successful CRM implementations and there are impressive case studies of brands connecting with customers by acting on the knowledge they collect about them and creating many meaningful, memorable interactions.

Because it's the customer that matters. Not so much mind share, or intent to purchase.
Instead, try measuring the degree of relationship a customer has with the organization and the degree of relationship the organization has with the customer.