The IC3 Blue Train - A little journal about design, marketing, sales and other matters

Tribute to Jo Siffert ***

Marketing is on course for a complete shambles. At the top, many companies pay only lip service to customer focus and fail to integrate marketing in their corporate strategy. Without a clear direction, they engage in sterile price wars or commit worse marketing blunders. In the ranks, marketers have fallen in love with the Internet and use related technologies to swamp customers with an increasing quantity and frequency of irrelevant information and irritating communication.

We can’t keep doing more of the same, increasing the quantity of ads, press releases, mail shots, electronic messages and so on because this is raising the noise level in which the whole communication is drowning. After manufacturing, administration and other business components, it’s marketing’s turn to start a quest for quality.

Technology has helped manufacturing to evolve from the mass production inflexibility of the Ford Model T to the mass customisation of Dell computers. Parallel efforts have significantly increased the quality of most products. The focus on quality has improved several business functions, including general administration. The Enron fiasco will probably force improvements in the standards for auditing and for the ‘creative’ aspects of accounting.

So far, marketing has missed the turn towards quality                            

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*** *** Speaking of ‘turns’… Jo Siffert was a racing car driver who was born in my hometown and who was (and still is) one of my heroes - see http://www.grandprix.com/gpe/drv-sifjo.html