Okay, so we have all learned about the 4P’s of marketing in undergrad: Product, Place, Price and Promotion. If not, you can open up one of your old marketing text books, blow off the dust and read about it there. The 6 C’s, however, is a not a concept that replaces the 4’Ps; rather, it just expands on the promotion element and provides a more granular approach to consumer marketing.
Okay, so we have all learned about the 4P’s of marketing in undergrad: Product, Place, Price and Promotion. If not, you can open up one of your old marketing text books, blow off the dust and read about it there.
CUSTOMER
In this day and age, a company’s marketing strategy needs to be customer focused. It’s about understanding the target consumer; their wants, needs and motivations. Not as demographics, psychographics or any other graphics, but as real people. Its understanding why customers do what they do (or don’t do),when they do it and why they do it. Such knowledge is critical in marketing since having a strong understanding of buyer behavior will help shed light on what is important to the customer.
CONSISTENCY
Companies need to maintain consistency in their message; a practice called integrated marketing communications – from packaging and advertising to sales promotion and publicity. This will maintain and reinforce a brand’s personality and image in a real life context and avoid doing something brainless like changing the distinctive color of the UPS truck to orange.
CREATIVITY
Creativity is imperative to attract attention in a world cluttered with thousands of messages. Creativity means laying aside the rules, and engages in out-of-box thinking so that marketers can reach beyond logic and structure and tap into their imaginations.
CULTURE
All marketing communications needs cross-cultural research to be able to succeed. It’s simple to see things from your own perspective, assuming that everyone else in the world thinks exactly like you and should understand what's so great about your product or service. One of the most famous examples is Coca Cola translating the name into Chinese without back-translating it ("bite the wax tadpole"), ultimately resulting in a horrible response from an insulted society. Marketing books are full of examples like these. As David Ogilvy, known as the Father of Advertising, states, “If you are trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language in which they think”.
COMMUNICATION
This one is basic. Consumers don’t want to be “marketed to”. Rather, they want to be “communicated with”. Good marketing communication creates value with target customers, speaks in their language and tells your story. It’s about building long term, trustworthy, and profitable relationships with your customers. As Seth Godin states, it’s about reinforcing the lies that consumers tell themselves everyday (i.e. I look much better in these jeans from Abercrombie; they make me look sexy).
CHANGE
Marketing is not just a business function, but a process. There is a beginning, middle, but there is never an end. Marketers must constantly CHANGE as society changes. They should never be afraid to try something new. Marketing today is not what it was 2 - 5 - or even 20 years ago.
Conclusion (not the 7th C)
So there it is; the 6 C’s of marketing – Customer, Consistency – Creativity – Culture – Communication and Change.
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