1520

View Original

What The Election Results Mean For Marketing

Hey everybody,

Wow. Okay. Obviously we aren't happy with this, and we definitely aren't happy with the role millennials payed in this, but it is what it is. Let's have a short look at what the results mean for marketing.

Steve Jobs once said the following:

Some people say, ‘Give customers what they want.’ But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, ‘If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, “A faster horse!”‘ People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. That’s why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.

We at 1520 always agreed with him, often to the slight dismay of our business school teachers. Don't get me wrong, data is great, but it is not everything. A heavy reliance on data driven marketing rather than classical, go-with-your-gut marketing can be dangerous. Doing the opposite is a big part of why Trump, an old school marketeer, won the election.

Although we wish Hilary Clinton would have won the election, we do hope the lessons learned here lead to a much needed renaissance of classical marketing. It's good for consumers, good for business and good for the economy, no matter who is president.

One Love,

Marius | 1520