For many MBA types, it’s probably pretty easy to recite the 5 Ps of marketing, right? Just take a ride on your machine back to grad school and spit out the following: Product, Price, Packaging, Place, and Promotion.
Nothing bad.
But in today’s consumer and business environment, relying on the traditional 5 Ps won’t put you or your brand in the winner’s circle. Today, you need to start breaking through and finding ways to develop communications that go deeper into the way your target segments interact with each other and with your brand.
It was twelve years ago that my then boss Tom Patty (President, Global Account Director for Nissan at TBWA / Chiat Day) first introduced me to a new set of the 5 Ps of marketing. At the time it was quite revealing. It was a lesson that has stuck with me ever since and is as applicable today as it was in 1997, and one worth sharing now.
Then get ready. Here are his newer, non-traditional 5 P’s of marketing that are more abstract and conceptual than their older siblings. Are:
– paradox
– perspective
– Paradigm
– persuasion
– Passion
The old 5 Ps were based on a world dominated by stability, a rapidly growing economy, and a much less competitive environment. Our new set of 5Ps will help us succeed in a world where chaos has replaced stability, where the rapidly growing economy has slowed and a global competitive environment demands even greater innovations in effectiveness and efficiency.
1.) Paradox:
The most interesting thing about paradox is that paradox always contains an opportunity. To master the paradox, you must first find or identify this opportunity and then exploit the paradox. Successful examples to consider are “Tastes great, less crowded” or “Affordable luxury car.”
2.) Perspective:
This implies the ability to see things in their correct relationship to each other. Here you must move away from what and how the company / brand sees the market and the consumer. Rather, you must genuinely consider and care about “what consumer need does my product or service satisfy?” and “How do you satisfy differently and better than your competitors?”
To be a victor rather than a victim, a lot of time and energy must be spent answering these questions. And not once a year, but every day!
3.) Paradigm:
The most critical point to understand about Paradigm is that in a paradigm shift, everything returns to zero. What does that mean? It means that whatever made you successful in the old paradigm may not even exist or be necessary in the new paradigm.
To master the paradigm, you must be able to identify the paradigm shifts that are happening around you and position your brand accordingly.
4.) Persuasion:
As marketing and advertising professionals, we are all in the business of persuasion. You know, induce people to think or do something. To master persuasion, you must understand the three essential components of an attempt to persuade:
– You must have a credible speaker
– You must have relevant content
– You must appeal to the basic emotional impulses of the audience.
5.) Passion:
In the old world of marketing and traditional 5Ps, passion wasn’t that important. In fact, it was probably negative. So you would leave your passions at home when we went to work. Remember, “work” used to be a place you went to rather than something you did. In today’s new world order, work has to be more than just a place you go and passion has to be something you take with you, wherever you go.
It is clear that we have already moved into a new paradigm, one in which we have unique and individual products designed for specific needs and wants. In addition, consumers now have an incredible variety of options in all categories and can obtain information on any topic in a matter of seconds with a simple Google search.
As a result, now more than ever, advertising needs to create exciting and stimulating dialogues with consumers designed not only to make a sale, but also to create a relationship.
So the question remains, “Will you still count on the old 5 Ps to get the job done?” Or are you ready for something new (er)?
If you’d like to learn more about the latest 5 Ps in marketing, feel free to contact us at Union Square Advertising.