Medtronic’s Senior Paid
Media Specialist writes “Marketing has reached a moment, the money or power moment. Should we be prioritizing the tools we use over the people using them?”
Marketing has
reached a moment, the money or power moment. Let me explain what I mean, in House of Cards, the main character, Frank Underwood, explains that the most common mistake people make in
Washington is people not understanding the difference between money and power, so they end up choosing money over power. “Money is the McMansion in Sarasota that starts falling apart after 10
years. Power is the old stone building that stands for centuries,” he tells us. So right now, marketing is facing that choice: marketing is also not seeing the difference between the two and is
choosing the wrong one.
We are choosing the McMansion in Sarasota because marketing seemingly without fail is choosing tools over people. Of course, tools ARE important.
Tools help marketers, the world over, do their jobs more efficiently so we absolutely should be using tools in our marketing. The question, however, is should we be prioritizing the tools we use over
the people using them? Something like AI I can absolutely see the advantage of using for a team, so again my objection is not to the tool itself, just the importance we
attach to the tool. My objection is to the thought process that chose to prioritize them over the people using them. Every tool that has come along has been heralded as THE magic
bullet that will finally let us do …something …better? But like the McMansions they never quite live up to their promise because they start losing value the minute we have them. At
incredibly easily predictable intervals, no less.
Something that never ceases to amaze me about financial accounting is that people only show up as a cost to a business.
Somehow, in financial accounting we do not relate the work that people do to the revenue that a business generates. People are the mortar that holds our stone buildings together for centuries,
becoming more, not less, valuable over time. Even the most junior members of a team in the most entry-level positions have experience from having lived a life so in other words they may not have
professional experience but that does not mean they have NO experience. A good leader, and a good organization, helps to shape all that experience from life into professional experience thereby
growing the value to the team and the organization. The thing about experience is that it does not grow or expand in a linear way, it can lead to random and unexpected connections. Experience can
stall for a time and then suddenly start to grow again, becoming more dense where more connections are made. Those random connections are where greatness is born, it is in that companies succeed, and
careers are made.
Tools are money and people are power …now we need tools, to be sure, exactly like we need money but ultimately it will be our people that drive
our business’ success. Tools are temporary and will break down whereas people can, and do, learn from their mistakes compounding their experiences. Tools help us do something more efficiently
whereas, people help us do something better …but unlike Frank, I will still respect you for not seeing the difference. I, however, cannot respect someone who does not see the importance of
their people.
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