The Marketing Year

So...its 2010. Does anyone really care? I don't. Did anything change when the date went from 12/31/2009 to 1/1/2010? Other than the date, not really. I'm still a thirty year old married male with a degree in marketing and a retail job. My wife is still my wife, and so on. I woke up the morning of 1/1/10 and went right back to work, I didn't have the day off.

So if you're expecting a retrospective on 2009 based on the title of this post, you'll be dissapointed, because that's not what this is. 2009 was good to me, and that's all there is to it.

I don't really understand the whole restarting everything on New Years Eve/Day bit. Why do we do that? Most fiscal years aren't calendar years. Most birthdays are not on those two days - IMHO, a year begins and ends on your birth date. There is an actual marked transition there, as tied into the calendar as it is.

So what the hell is a marketing year? Its nothing, its an arbitrary term I just made up. There really is no marketing year. Marketing is measured by projects, campaigns, promotions, and a whole host of other things, many only loosely tied into date of any sort.

That's the way I choose to live my life. Birthdays and anniversaries are important dates to remember, because they actually symbolize passage of time in a relevant way to that person.

What's marketing got to do with it? Everything and nothing, both at once. Marketing is what I do, so its obviously tied into my life and its evolution and creation. But marketing has nothing to do with what date it is, or what time it is.

If you get all excited by the new year thing, good for you, that's great. But if you see me celebrating wildly on some other day, I may have just made a useful or realistic transition, on my own terms, and with my own skills and abilities. I didn't do it because everyone else did, I did it because it was time for it, and it felt right.

So go ahead, be one of those people who tries through February, and fails in March. Come see me in April, or July, September or December, I'll still be at it and kicking ass...because I want to be, not because of some weird tradition nobody really knows anything about.

So why'd you make your resolutions? What do you want to accomplish? Why didn't you do it before? Why now?

The Importance Of Being First

In athletics and in other kinds of competitions, when something is first, it is generally declared "best". Gold Medal winners, Super Bowl Champions, World Series Champions, etc. They did what they do better than anyone else, came in first, and were declared best.

The business world is nothing like that. First does not automatically mean best. Honestly, it rarely means best. Being first can get you the notoriety, but it won't necessarily be because you are the best. In our world, first and best are mutually exclusive. In fact, since people have no attention span anymore, the best is constantly changing, and needs to be quantified any number of ways at any given time.

I'm not even sure that marketers or advertisers really care about being "first". R&D or Product Management obviously has a different idea, and in the mind of positions like that, first on the market (possibly even ONLY) can automatically determine "best". Marketing strategy rarely takes into account being "first" unless the person creating the strategy is instructed that they must do so. This is really more relevant in packaging design, in my opinion.

Why not publicize or be proud of being first. When I interned for the head of Corporate Sales for a Clear Channel concert venue, one of the things she was responsible for was coming up with new ideas for advertising space in or around the venue. When she/I/we/anyone came up with a new idea, we were proud of that idea, even if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Why aren't the first people to come up with a new way of marketing or advertising something blatantly proud of that? Why don't I know the name of the guy who perfected banner ads...or the guy at Google who perfected googleads...or something like that. If I wanted to, I could probably find the first person to do just about anything, and maybe even the person who is best at that same activity. Why not marketing or advertising?

Thanks for listening...