A big debate is raging amongst marketers at the moment, as the ‘More Magic, Less Logic’ ethos is discussed.
Unilever has unveiled a new marketing philosophy around that concept in the hope of moving away from marketing by numbers to a new culture of creating a better balance between magic and logic. (See Marketing 2 November 2011).
But what does it take to be a ‘magical’ marketer?
Take the test – Are you any of these things? Brave, Risk-Taking, Creative, Full of surprises; Quick; Wizardly; Inspirational; Bright, Spectacular; Innovative, Mystical, Amazing, Tremendous or Enchanting?
Now that you’ve decided you have some of these attributes, if you look at your professional marketing track record, can you claim that you’ve had the freedom to deploy any of these skills whilst delivering your marketing programmes? Can you look back at your proudest marketing deliverables and point to the ‘magic’?
It’s tough. On the one hand, how aspirational; how enabling to let a whole team of marketers go deliver ‘magic’! But the reality of actual implementation may be somewhat more difficult. After all, the inference behind ‘magic’ is something of the unknown. There’s an element where we trust the magician to deliver the most beneficial of surprises and therein lays a very important assumption – the assumption of trust.
At Unilever, the message to the Marketing Team seems to not only be about giving ‘permission’ to balance magic and logic, but the sub text seems to be something about trusting the marketing team to create a bit of magic and all that entails. Sometimes magic experiments work and sometimes they don’t, but imagine for a moment, that politics, egos and the overbearing financial constraints were lifted – what would your marketing deliverables look like then?
At Marketingmoves we look for candidates that have a bit of magic about them. But we also look to work for clients that are brave, inspiring, and innovative and risk takers. The real pizazz is in matching the two and then it really is ‘Shazam’!
Sandra Malone
Marketingmoves .Only the best marketers. Only for IT and Telecom
