Historian, entrepreneur and founder of the Cambridge Marketing College, Charles Nixon discusses the moral dimension of marketing. The consumers' perception is that marketing is about communication, but Charles argues that marketing is actually all about being aware of the market.

We discuss the difference between the customers wants and needs. Should addictive 'sin' goods (such as cigarettes and gambling) be allowed to be marketed?

He also has advice for marketers in adapting to the current crazy world we inhabit: if your customers are nervous, look to alleviate that; if your customers want to shop online, look to adapt to that.

We also discuss strategy. Why are so many books of strategy related to war? How can marketers learn strategy?

Transcript: Philosophy of Marketing

Kiran Kapur: Hello, I'm Kiran Kapur. And on this week's podcast, I speak to historian, entrepreneur, and founder of the Cambridge Marketing College, Charles Nixon, on a number of topics. Firstly, the moral dimensions of marketing. Charles welcome. You've written a number of books on marketing theory, but I've always been most intrigued by your book on the philosophy of marketing, not two obvious words to put together. So why philosophy?

Charles Nixon: Well, I think the important aspect for marketers is to understand that there is a moral dimension to what they do. We are very good at doing some parts of marketing and to some degree perhaps not as good as telling people about what we do. And we need to think a bit more clearly about what we do when we do marketing. So let me explain a little bit. I've seen marketing done well and badly over many decades now. And sometimes it is because people understand their customer, what the customer wants and what the customer actually needs. The two are not necessarily the same thing, and there isn't a certain amount of empathy between the company and the marketplace. For others it has been a case of really just trying to sell or produce the existing product, irrespective of the customer's specific needs. We have various terminologies for this in terms of the theories of marketing.

But one of the biggest problems I think is that the consumer's perception of what we do is mainly that of being the communicator. But in reality, for marketers, marketing is much more about understanding the marketplace and bringing about a problem solution, so that we are able to innovate to bring about the world as we know it today for good or well, mainly good I think. But I believe that the issues need to be debated. And one of the things that we don't do well is to communicate clearly to companies and internal markets, but also to the public at large, and especially people like the media who would always immediately say that it's the problem of the marketing men when things seem to go wrong in marketplaces. So I think we need to understand a little bit more about the background and reasons why we do marketing, as well as some of the implications and responsibilities that we have when we do marketing.

Kiran Kapur: I'll come onto the reasons for marketing in a minute, but you made an interesting point there about the difference between wants and needs. And because I think that's one of the areas that marketing gets criticized for, can we just explore that a little bit? The difference between a consumer's want and a consumer's need?

Charles Nixon: Okay. The way in which one might see this is that the consumer has a set of desires. Some of which are seen as being essential, some of which are non-essential, let's put it that way. All of which satisfy a certain amount of psychological satisfaction. So why do we buy goods and services? Well, we buy goods and services sometimes because we actually need, whether it happens to be a computer in order to do work, or whether it happens to be food in order to live. The question then becomes, what type of computer do we buy? Do we buy a very posh and very nice big one, or do we just buy one that's functional? Do we buy food that is easy to consume and immediately satisfying, as opposed to something which is potentially nutritious and perhaps less satisfying initially?

So the need is slightly different from the want. The want is immediate satisfaction quite often, but is satisfaction that is much more psychological than physiological. There is a whole host of issues in marketing which don't really get discussed, which is essentially the hormonal impacts and the biological impacts of marketing in terms of setting off various hormonal rushes as to the basis of why do you go out and buy. Why do you buy? Because you get a rush of endorphins, which says this is really good, versus actually doing something which is perhaps less satisfying in the initial term.

So from a marketer's perspective, we have historically, if we wanted to sell things, we would use things such as sale as a terminology, or price off, or definitions of bargains, which is to entice people to buy more perhaps than they need at that particular time. Now that can be for various reasons, might be for the fact that the company needs to improve its sales, become profitable, or for various other business reasons. But there is implications for that. And the implications may not necessarily be good. We've had discussions over the last few years about the levels of sugar in foods and the impact of that on obesity. Historically speaking, we've had discussions about tobacco. Now we have discussions about fossil fuels. The implication of course is that perhaps we are offering things which are not good for people. And therefore there is a moral dilemma about the way in which we market inverted "products and services."

Kiran Kapur: It's always an interesting one, isn't it? Because if you were marketing gambling products, you could argue that it's legal and people choose to gamble, but there is also a whole philosophy and ethics behind should we actually be offering gambling in the way that we do? So, yes, I think there is a very interesting distinction between wants and needs. Thank you for that.

Charles Nixon: And if you wanted to be quite firm or extreme on the subject, the argument, which I discuss in the new version of the book is whether or not any addictive product or service should be allowed to be marketed?

Kiran Kapur: That's interesting. And what's your view?

Charles Nixon: I think probably not. I think if you are marketing something which could be given to people who are vulnerable and who would therefore perhaps be self-exploiting, there are significant downsides, which should therefore not allow a product to be marketed. Whether it happens to be alcohol, whether it happens to be tobacco, whether it happens to be gambling, these are the issues. The debate needs to be had, and I don't think it necessarily always is, whether or not you define addiction as being the boundary, or another means of setting that boundary, whether it happens to be the level of sugar in certain things is an interesting debate. We have people who will come back and say, "Well, you're impinging on my right to choose." And therefore freedom of expression and freedom of choice becomes something that, it becomes the moral dimension, which is therefore why the philosophy of marketing.

Kiran Kapur: It's interesting, isn't it? Because I would argue, you shouldn't stop me wanting to, I didn't have a flutter on The Grand National, which I do once a year, just for a bit of fun. And if you stop that marketing....

Charles Nixon: What I'm saying is that it shouldn't be marketed. You shouldn't be able to advertise it, to promote it. I'm not saying it should be banned.

Kiran Kapur: It's a really interesting ethical issue, Charles. I want to move us on slightly. And you talked about the reasons for marketing before I interrupted you with one's need. So what do you see as the reasons for marketing? Why does marketing exist?

Charles Nixon: Ah, that is a very interesting one. The analogy that I talk about in the book is initially that most people's view as to what marketing is about is marketing is the voice of a company. It is the selling and the promotion of goods and services. If you take the human analogy, it's the mouth piece. But in the same human analogy, marketing is also about understanding what's going on in the marketplace. Therefore it is also the eyes and the ears. It is the listening to, it is the observation of. And in reality I think marketing should be in that proportion. We have one mouth, but we have two eyes and two ears, and therefore we should be, and most good marketers are, spending more of their time observing the marketplace and seeing opportunities for people's better lives.

So marketing is about understanding what the problems are, or modern terms, the pain points are in people's lives, in society, in business, and trying to find better solutions. And increasingly marketing is about those better solutions, which has always been around. But now we tend to talk about it as innovation and bringing about new solutions to problems, especially these days in the fact that there are more of us on the planet than there have been. And the result of which is that many of those new innovations need to be consuming less resources.

Kiran Kapur: One of the things I also wanted to pick up with you, you have some very interesting ideas in the book about how to view marketing and you talk about marketing as gardening, for example. So I wondered if we could step through some of those, because I found it was a really interesting way of looking at marketing. Let's start with marketing as gardening.

Charles Nixon: Well, yeah. The way in which people tend to view anything in life is they tend to see it as an analogy of something else. If you're trying to explain something to someone that isn't something new, you tend to find different ways of presenting it. So there are several ways that I've talked about in the book. Though they may not all be there in the new book because one of the feedbacks I've had is that most modern marketers don't get the gardening one. It's an interesting one. They get the cookery one, because most marketers tend to be of a younger disposition, then cooking is what they tend to do much more than gardening. The gardening one though I like, because gardening is about taking your time. Gardening is about planning and evolution, it is not about revolution.

Now you can rip out a garden and you can put a new set of plants in, but not all of them will come up, because the circumstances differ. If you put a group of plants in one particular side, which has got lots of full sun, not all plants like full sun, not all plants like drought conditions. And so you have to understand the market's requirements and the individual's responses to those. One of the other elements that I think is quite nice is a book that I would recommend to quite a lot of people is, Planting Flowers, Pulling Weeds. The common garden analogy is that a weed is actually a plant that's in the wrong place. So essentially speaking, there's nothing that is inherently wrong with many of them. The question is that they're just not where you want them doing the thing that you want. So they may not have the right flower head. They may not have the right leaf shape. So the analogy to marketers is that whilst you may go out and get as many new customers as you want, you don't always get the customer that you want.

And I think nearly every company would tell you that a large proportion of its customers are fine, but there are a small number of customers who are not suited to that company. And these have to be pooled as it were. You don't want certain customers, whether or not they happen to be ones that take up a lot of time in initial selling, or large amount of time in servicing them thereafter. So the understanding of the fact that not every potential customer is the right one for you, I think is an important philosophical approach. So gardening is about taking time and also being selective.

Kiran Kapur: That's quite interesting, isn't it? Because most companies, particularly at the moment, would be quite scared to be very specific about going, "That's not a customer that I want."

Charles Nixon: Well, it is and it isn't. I think a lot of the existing companies that have been around for generations would be precisely that. They would choose their customers quite carefully. And a customer who comes along and says, "I would like something," but it doesn't ask him the right way or the norm way isn't something you get rid, or you just don't respond to. It's somebody who you then educate. You spend time with, you tell them how to drive this particular mechanical device or how to use this software. And you spend time educating them. Classic example, historically been ones that we've used in the past, which is Apple store is much about educating the user as to how to use the product that Apple sells, as they are about selling the product in the first place. And therefore the concept is about developing and nurturing your customers, as it is about saying, "No, you're not a customer."

Kiran Kapur: So that was marketing as gardening. And I realize now that I've given away my age by saying I was interested in that one. So tell me more about marketing as cookery?

Charles Nixon: Oh, I'm terribly sorry, Kiran. She's very young, people, she is, certainly younger than I am. The element of marking as a recipe is an interesting one, because it's something we all get very easily. It is a combination of ingredients that make a successful campaign or a successful product. Now you look at the idea of first mover advantage, which in most instances really just doesn't exist, because most first movers don't get all of the marketing mix correct. They are brilliant technologists. They've got great ideas. The product works, but doesn't work as easy as it could do when someone else comes along with a customer orientation perhaps. And so the idea of recipes is I think very easy to get down. Now it is about getting the right mix. And we talk about a marketing mix. We talk about getting the product right, and having the right core benefit.

But it's got to be at a price. It's got to be distributed in locations that people [inaudible 00:17:17] access, it's got to be given the right levels of service to explain it and how it's going to be best use. And this combination is about the same as it is with a recipe. Jamie Oliver can make brilliant food on the television, but he come to do it at home, it may not turn out as well, because you may not do it in exactly the same way. So this is one of the things that is about understanding that it is a mix. You've got to vary that mix, and you will get different outputs as a result.

Kiran Kapur: Another one I wanted to push you on was marketing as war. And I know when I became a more senior marketer, I was immediately given a copy of Sun Tzu's The Art of War. And was told that this was something I should be reading and have by my bedside. And it would help me create a competitive organization. And I think in fact, you were one of the people that recommends that, because well, is marketing actually, should it be viewed as war?

Charles Nixon: He pauses to think whether or not the answer is yes or no, and there is the dilemma. The marketing isn't war, but an element of marketing is strategy. And strategy has in most instances been seen by most commentators as being military. I'm sitting here with various books on marketing and marketing strategy, and most of them will take a militaristic terminology or language. It is about exploiting marketplaces. It's about a campaign. It is about being Offensive Marketing, Hugh Davidson's famous books.

And the terminology has been around mainly since the last century, when the people who are running businesses had come out of a military background and the result of which was they thought in command and control techniques. Marketing these days is probably not about war as such. But if you want to build a company, if you want to take a startup to being a unicorn, then you will be asked all the time for your strategy.

And one of the discussions that we have now at some of the higher levels, whether it's the entrepreneurial level where I'm a mentor, or it's that they Chartered Institute's marketing leadership program, is whether or not strategy actually is something that is planned and defined and then stuck to. Whether or not it is completely emergent. And we respond to the marketplace as it changes. The current situation with COVID would tell that you can't plan for these sorts of things. Though everyone would say that there was a contingency war game on the subject done last year. But the question is, "Do you actually feel that it's worthwhile putting the investment into something that may never happen?" Fortunately it did.

But the idea of Sun Tzu as being an important read is like a lot of Chinese philosophy. It is worth reading. So is Lao Tzu, and indeed some of the Greek philosophy is quite interesting to read because of the interpretation that it gives. Sun Tzu doesn't tell you how to run your army. He doesn't tell you which flank to attack on. What he tells you to do is to consider things such as the elements. So consider the world around you, consider your internal motivations, consider the people who are on your side and their aspirations and how they're going to be best motivated.

Sun Tzu is applied in all sorts of areas. One of the ones that's quite interesting is that I recall someone saying that a section, one of the chapters, and they have rather short chapters, of Sun Tzu was put underneath the door of every cricketer on the Australian team's bedroom before they went out for the final day to win the test match, which would get them the ashes a few years ago. And it was because the coach was trying to get people to think about what it was that would be a mindset that would be successful for them. So Sun Tzu, although he wrote about a military situation, isn't applied or is as military, it is about thinking about the elements around you,

Kiran Kapur: Fantastic, from philosophy to Sun Tzu to the Greek philosophers.

Charles Nixon: Kiran, can I just have one other thing, if I may? The biggest book that I've ever come across, and it's really quite an interesting tome, and it is a tome, but if anybody wants to take it further is a book called Strategy: A History. It's written by a general and it starts off with strategy in the Bible. And so we go back to the moral philosophical aspects, even with strategy.

Strategy in a time of Covid - 2020

Kiran Kapur: Before I let you go, Charles, could I ask you to get out your crystal ball? If one question I think we're all asking is, "What on earth is going to happen next?" Now I know you're not an epidemiologist, but you are someone that looks at marketing strategy. What should marketers now do? We're in the situation where we've been in COVID now for six, seven months, and it looks like it's going to be never ending. What should marketers do?

Charles Nixon: Adapt to the circumstances. It's the simplest answer. There are lots of opportunities, various phrases and wonderful little anecdotes of come out. The obvious one I think from historically is, "Never let a crisis go to waste." Depends on your marketplace. But the simplest and easiest thing to do is consider your market, consider the customer and the changes that there have been. I'm a trustee of a museum. And when we came to think about how we were going to reopen, the government hadn't issued any guidelines at that particular point, but we did it in a basically a straightforward customer orientation. What does the customer want? How clean do they want to feel it? How easy do they want it to get in and out and around, and how safe?

And how can we add things which will reduce people's stress levels? I think that's an important issue these days. How can we make it fun? So we knew that we were going to have to be socially distanced. So how can we make it fun? Well we basically, we got to two wooden swords, two kids, and we said, "Right, okay, you've got to stand to sword swipes apart. If you can hit one another, you're too close." So we did two sword swipes apart for our social distancing. If we want people to stand in a particular place, then we don't just put a line down, we put a picture of a lobster helmet, which is the famous helmet of the Civil War cavalry. And all of these things were commented on. They made people forget the circumstance, but look at the individual aspects that was slightly humorous and relaxing. And we found that we were one of the first museums to be able to open.

We've now been featured as a case study in the Association of Independent Museums, which is going out to all museums in the UK as an example. So understand your marketplace and adapt to it. If your customer is concerned and afraid, try and alleviate it. If your customer wants to now shop online, you've got to adapt. Like John Lewis is adapting at the moment and Marks & Spencer I think today actually starts its campaign with Ocado. So you got to move with the market.

Many of the issues that you've seen historically for the last maybe three to five years have been accelerated. So, if you don't have an app and people want to do something on the phone, you probably now need to have an app to do so. If you're going to travel or you're in the hospitality sector, you've got to have an app, because it makes life so much easier for people to feel secure, to book themselves in, to book themselves out, to do the ordering, et cetera. And how this could be applied in your marketplace is what you've got to ask.


Kiran Kapur: I think that's really good advice. I actually finally went to the cinema for the first time in months yesterday, and I chose, of the three cinemas I could have gone to, I actually chose the one that said that the COVID cleaning seemed to be the best. So it wasn't so much the experience, it was the fact that I felt safe. So I think you're making some very good points. I love the idea of being two sword wipes away from each other. We may adopt that in classes. Charles Nixon, thank you very much for your time. And if anybody wants to get hold of that tome that Charles mentioned, it's called Strategy: A History, and it's by Lawrence Freedman. Charles, thank you very much.

Charles Nixon: That's wonderful. Thank you very much, as good as ever. Well done.

Kiran Kapur: And that's your lot for this week. Don't forget to like and subscribe to the podcast, and I'll see you next week.

Please note: there are links in the transcript to the books mentioned. These are NOT affliate links and the College does not receive money for them.