Common Marketing Afflictions

Posted on by Ron Shevlin

I’ve detected what appears to be some common afflictions that marketers suffer from. I haven’t found the cures yet, I’m still diagnosing the problems. Here’s what I’ve found so far:

Delusions of brandeur. A condition where marketers think that a branding effort will be the antidote to falling or stagnant sales. Showing sufferers pictures of babies, and explaining that their branding effort needs to be nurtured and cared for, has been known to minimize the delusions.

Net promoter syndrome. Sufferers of this “disease” believe that as long as the number of people who will recommend your company is outgrowing the number of people who hate your guts and will stop at nothing to destroy you, then you’re on the path to increased profitability and growth. Recent attempts to help sufferers come to grip with the affliction have been ignored.

Calcuphobia. These marketers display an intense dislike — and even fear — of trying to calculate the ROI on their marketing investments. Advanced sufferers don’t even bother to track what they’ve spent in the first place. This is often a sister condition to those who suffer from the first affliction listed above.

Channel vision. Those afflicted with this widespread and debilitating condition believe that the channel they’re responsible for is the only channel driving sales and profitability. Not uncommon among those working in eCommerce and mass media advertising.

Blogophilia. Wikipedia defines this as “the irrational belief that creating a blog will, in and of itself, help a company improve its customer relationships.” OK, I made that up. But you have to admit, it sounded real — as do so many of the other half-truths floating around Wikipedia.

Extinctivitis. Sadly, marketers suffering from this condition fail to recognize the importance of the online channel to their firm’s marketing efforts, let alone the potential impact of Web 2.0 technologies. Oddly, they have a tendency to collect America Online installation CDs from the 90s.

These are a few of the marketing afflictions I’ve come across. Perhaps you’ve found some more.

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UPDATE: Check out the SlideShare presentation that John Dawson put together based on everyone’s contributions.

13 thoughts on “Common Marketing Afflictions”

  1. What about these?
    Mistakeitis – a failure to acknowledge past mistakes. Symptoms include inability to review historical performance, failure to acknowledge performance other than than expencted and an irrational belief in future marketing success

    Digital Myopia – a believe that uttering the words digital and integrated every few sentences will make you wise to the new and emerging technologies (see also mobile marketing madness)

  2. I’m not sure the latter is a “myopia”. How about we tweak that to be “integrated-ignis-fatuus-itis” (you’ll have to look up ignis fatuus).

  3. Not sure about the name I chose, but the decription is right:
    Quicksand – Stuck doing the same old thing. Knows that a change of approach is needed but doesn’t know how, so does the sames things as before (only bigger). Thrashing around looking like they are doing something, but really only just sinking SLOWLY!!!

  4. CEOitus – this insidious marketing disease is awful because it is often mis-diagnosed as Brandeur. When in fact it just means marketing the CEO will say yes to, no matter how stupid of off putting it is to customers.

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