The causes of
ineffective marketing
The binary mindset
The binary mindset believes that every aspect of the discipline is based on two options sitting at opposing extremities of a scale, and that everything is resolved with an absolute. It follows the logic that only one option can be effective, so the other must be dismissed from decision making and/or execution. It has created an “all in” philosophy toward marketing: you pick a side, stick to it no matter what, defend it no matter what, follow it no matter what, use it no matter what.
Like society at large, approaches to business practice have become increasingly binaristic over the past few decades. To take two obvious examples: one, advances in technology and the expansion of digital tools brought an obsession with measurement, tracking and attribution, which started debates over the value of qualitative versus quantitative. Two, during the pandemic, the D2C craze created arguments about revenue or profit. It became the norm for businesses to turn fundamental aspects of operations into a polarity, but marketing has adopted it to an extreme, with most of them in two categories: reductive binaries and combative binaries.
REDUCTIVE BINARIES
Reductive binaries position options in an X or Y relationship, with the implication that one option should be used at the exclusion of the other. We see it in debates like ‘digital or traditional’ and ‘marketing or brand’. The overarching reductive binary is “right or wrong”, which creates a tendency toward the fetishization of approaches, tools, concepts, practices, and people that align with the marketer’s preferences, pushing marketing to operate with a disproportionate view of their importance, relevance, and efficacy.
It has led to an acceptance of opinion as wisdom. There is a constant supply of yellow journalism issuing death sentences or declaring that something is nearing extinction; if you use it, you lose. There are apocalyptic prophecies that such-and-such is world changing, paradigm shifting, trajectory altering, era defining; that society and culture will never be the same again. Articles, podcasts, conference sessions proclaiming the 'death' of X, the 'downfall' of Y, the 'end' of Z. Do you remember when Threads was going to kill Twitter? Do you remember when the Internet of Things was going make the world unrecognisable? Do you remember when every agency was going to have an MRI machine to help you hack brains with neuromarketing? How can you not remember the marketing revolution that came after NFTs! Marketers accept hyperbole as prophecy, and build marketing plans around it.
There is an obsession with outliers, pedestalling companies or work that succeeded while defying conventional wisdom and breaking all the rules. In turn, a cult of personality leads to the hero-worshipping of individuals who fit fetishized stereotypes: the flâneurs, savants, auteurs, mavericks, visionaries; those who triumphed by breaking boundaries or challenging norms, by forging their own paths. Marketers are bombarded with podcasts, conference speakers, articles; all platforming the game-changers, diving into how they shifted the paradigms by defying the odds, relayed through swashbuckling tales of the daring, brave, bold, counterintuitive, and unconventional roads that were travelled to get there.
Exciting stuff, but they are largely exercises in negationism. Sycophancy blinds marketers to the that fact that hindsight makes a wonderful editor. They are listening to highlight reels, not factual accounts. The stories leave out the ideas and actions that didn't work, and pick out the one successful thing among the ninety-nine dead-ends that quietly sank. They emphasize one risky part while burying the ninety-nine predictable and boring ones that allowed the risk to be taken in the first place. They include things that are cool in the current zeitgeist but leave out the unfashionable wisdom and practices that gave solid foundations to build on. They present a version of events where everything was meticulously planned and every eventuality accounted for, every variable controlled and every decision conscious and deliberate.
In a lot of cases, everything was a lot more serendipitous, chaotic, and reactive than they say it was. The results largely came from trial and error, blind luck, or using far more established theory and practice than they would admit. The risks were never as dangerous as they made out, the consequences of failure were never as dire as they present them, the methods were not as original or counterintuitive as they suggest. Did they really do anything different? Rarely. A lot of the time, it performed well because it was based on theory or best practices that untrained marketers don’t know about, so they think it is something innovative; or it is something that is known to work being converted into a new format or given a new name.
Effectiveness is damaged when marketers try to copy their false idols. They fail to consider the bigger picture, such as the effect that context has on outcomes: because it worked here doesn't mean it will work everywhere; because it worked once doesn't mean it will work every time. It misses the limited extent of any efficacy: whatever the 'success' was, it was only delivered in one-off or isolated instances, not repeatedly and consistently over a long-term marketing programme. When they treat the stories as how-to guides, they end up doing work that appeals to industry peers rather than prospects and customers.
Fetishes lead to means being treated as ends. Rather than skills or tools to be applied at relevant parts of the process, they are seen as the entire point of the job. A good example is positioning, often treated as its own objective and outcome; it should be one step in the strategy phase of the marketing process that informs subsequent tactical decisions and is reflected through the mix and content of tactical activities. The parts of the process end up being disconnected from each other, turning marketing into a collection of disparate elements that don’t augment and reinforce each other, compromising effectiveness with marketing that lacks a unified focus and direction.
COMBATIVE BINARIES
The combative binaries position options in an X versus Y relationship, fighting against each other with the implication there can only be one winner. We see it in false contests like 'differentiation versus distinctiveness' and 'creative versus analytical'. This view has morphed into an "us versus them" mentality within specialisms, leading to a certain amount of tribalism across the discipline.
It has made a subjectivity-objectivity divide acceptable, with marketers believing that their individual, subjective choice of a specialism means it is objectively and universally the most valuable. Intersubjectivity has evolved specialisms into in-groups that collectively believe their accomplishments and contributions are more valuable than everyone else’s. This has encouraged specialisms to see themselves as islands, and the combative undertone has turned marketing into a competition between islands trying to prove their superior value compared to the others.
They have become echo chambers that see a need to defend themselves while proving superiority over the others, only seeing what they want to see and hearing what they want to hear. External factors are interpreted in way that supports segregation: as an example, the siloed performance measurement that has come from technology targeted at specialisms is read as proof that marketing can only operate in distinct parts. The desire for confirmation bias has been exploited by influencers and agencies within specialisms providing “evidence” that validates the self-perception, and monetizing the desire for it with pseudo-empirical studies and training courses that reinforce the subjectivity-objectivity divide.
Effectiveness is damaged by two insidious behaviours that come from all of this. Self-interest discourages collaboration between the specialisms, preventing an output that is greater than the sum of its parts. Marketing works best when elements are combined to boost their strengths and compensate for weaknesses, and with each specialism prioritising their own performance these mutual benefits get missed. Self-preservation reduces integration with the wider business: in the race to prove superiority bigger means better, so the specialisms focus on inflating their own numbers. This myopia on its own metrics and measures draws attention away from the bigger picture, prioritising its internal performance over maximizing its contribution to the business objectives.
In both instances the cumulative benefits of synergies get missed. Internal collaboration and external integration help marketing identify where positives can be amplified and negatives can be mitigated to improve results, both within the marketing function and across the wider business. By operating as an antiutilitarian miscellany, it misses opportunities to leverage synergies, making it less effective than it could have been and leaving money on the table in the process.
CONSEQUENCES
A particularly adverse consequence of binaries is the removal of neutrality. The fetishes, tribalism, self-interest and self-preservation prevent a holistic view, narrowing the range of options to only those deemed acceptable by the chosen binary position; this becomes particularly problematic when it reframes best practice, as a narrow range of binary-approved practices are automatically considered ‘best’ and get prioritised even though they may not be appropriate, relevant, or optimal.
Effectiveness is damaged by the erroneous view that binary-endorsed best practices are universally appropriate for any and all situations; in many instances, problems end up being tackled with suboptimal solutions. For example, marketing channels are not created equal: some are better at the top of funnel, some are better at the bottom, some are better for moving people from the former to the latter.
Best practice is relative to the circumstances and objectives.
Like “marketing”, the health and fitness industry is dominated by binaristic approaches and influencers who all guarantee the same results in the same timescales for everyone, all pushing equipment, programmes, supplements, or anything else that guarantee the results because of their foundation in best practice. None of them work because they fail to account for the many variables that effect each body's response: age, diet, lifestyle, genetics, medical history, prior conditioning, and plenty of others that determine what is and is not appropriate and optimal for each person. The response is limited by the nuances of each circumstance being ignored and a standardized set of predetermined practices put in place, rather than curating a bespoke set of practices that minimize the effect of each factor to maximize the overall response.
The objectives are equally important. If you put Usain Bolt and Sir Mo Farrah in a marathon, Sir Mo would wipe the floor with Usain; if you put them both in a 100m sprint, Usain would wipe the floor with Sir Mo. The best practices for training for short distance, high intensity running are not the same as the best practices for training long distance, endurance running. Neither are highly successful Olympians because they use the same training regime and hope for the best; their training regimes use the best practices that prepare them for the physical demands of the specific event they will compete in.
OUTCOME
The binary mindset warps priorities by placing process over output, as the way decisions are reached is more important than the quality of them. The focus is on legitimizing biases and preferences, not working toward the objectives. The “all in” philosophy causes a loss of perspective that creates agendas, leading to better approaches, practices, and tools being dismissed or ignored. Reductive binaries have removed the balance and neutrality that underpin an effective marketing programme, while the combative binaries have limited the synergies that benefit marketing and the overall business.
Effectiveness is ultimately diminished by intra-discipline politics becoming the central concern of marketing, not the constituent contribution it makes to the business. Being guided by “our correct” choice and denying the advantages and efficacy of “their wrong” choice arbitrarily sacrifices some of its potential returns by missing the cumulative effects gained by adopting both.