Where did all the marketing plans go?
It may be because of the unpredictability of the world we live in or the popularity of agile approaches, but marketers seem to have abandoned marketing plans. The Royals’ Andrew Reeves makes the case for their return.
I recall University. Vaguely. Among the band comps, trips to the uni bar, frisbee sessions, and the general haze of life at nineteen there were also the classes. Actual in-person classes in tremendous lecture halls.
In those classes, I discovered the classics of marketing. The 4P’s. The hypodermic model of media. The definitive funnel.
It was a golden age of pre-programmatic marketing and advertising. A time when print and television monopolised the advertising landscape, the internet was dialed up (literally), and the first celebrity influencer was being created by some unsuspecting and soon-to-be proud parents someplace.
Quick in, quick out… and why pay a middleman? So it seems.
..but how to shift the behaviour to favour more long-term outcomes?