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There's something that's been bothering me for a while, and I know I'm not the only one.
We've built a culture where people don't think deeply anymore- not because they can't, but because the people who are allowed to think, don't.
Senior leaders could challenge the defaults. They could ask better questions. But too often, they don't.
And that sets the tone for everyone else.
If more people were encouraged to think (rather than just follow frameworks) | genuinely believe the work would be more interesting, the industry would feel more energizing, and a lot of the frustration people feel from box-checking for a paycheck would disappear.
In media and marketing, the default response to any challenge is to reach for a pre-approved framework or theory. Byron Sharp, Binet & Field, Ehrenberg- pick your flavor. Doesn't matter if it fits the actual problem. It's safer to reference a theory than to question it.
I'm not anti-framework. I'm anti-dogma. Sharp's NBD-Dirichlet model doesn't account for time or marketing pressure. It's a useful lens-but it's not a law of nature. And yet we build strategies, assign budgets, and define success based on these assumptions as if they were universally true.
Meanwhile, nobody can answer basic questions like:
- Who are we trying to influence?
- Why would they change their behavior?
- What, exactly, are we expecting this
campaign to do?
Most media plans can't even explain what business challenge they're solving for because, in many cases, no one asked.
I've been trying to change that in my own work. I start by segmenting people behaviorally:
Who would use the product? Who never would?
Who might buy it for someone else?
Among potential users- are they loyal, lapsed, indifferent, unaware, or actively avoiding us?
Once you know that, then you can decide what kind of strategy might actually move them. Maybe it's reach. Maybe it's messaging. Maybe it's price, or distribution, or nothing media can fix.
But you only get there if you think.
I'm posting this here because it's not the kind of conversation most agency leaders want to have. It challenges the status quo. It asks uncomfortable questions. And if you're too persistent about it, it makes you "difficult."
But I don't want to just do the work. I want the work to matter. And if we were more honest about that, I think more people would actually feel passionate about what we do.
Open to thoughts. Or disagreement. As long as there's discussion.
I agree there’s a crisis. That said, part of it, IMHO, is that many people in our world don’t fully appreciate the dynamics of business outside of marketing.
The truth is, there are just some immediate goals that marketing’s NEEDS to contribute to in order to satisfy shareholders and stakeholders in order to justify the spend. The economics matter.
Brand building is definitely HUGELY important, but it’s how important is dependent on broader context. The “60:40” rule is actually a luxury that smaller businesses, for example, often can’t afford if they want to keep afloat. I think the current emphasis on brand-building (sometimes, seemingly, at all costs) is slightly misleading and potentially damaging to growth strategies because it can mean spending money today without seeing the return for months or years—which puts pressure on short-term profitability and cash flow.
What are your thoughts?
I think all of your questions and comments make sense. I personally like frameworks as a guide for thinking, but using a framework still means we need to think! (which is your point). I was brought up on the old JWT framework (Where are we? Where do we want to go? How do we get there?) - it was so simple as a guide for critical thinking, but not prescriptive at all and gave us enough room to apply our insights and logic. I am astonished in recent years to see that many planners don't seem to ask these questions and frequently don't even know who we are trying to reach and influence through our campaigns.