INTO THE FIRESWAMP WE GO

One of my all-time favorite movies is Princess Bride. Directed by Rob Reiner, it starred an eclectic group of actors – Peter Falk, Cary Elwes, Robin Wright Penn, Billy Crystal, André the Giant (!), and several other well-known faces.

As the Amazon.com movie description says: “… using a storytelling framework, Grandpa draws his sick-in-bed grandson into the absurd, irresistible melodrama of the title story: a lowly stable boy, Westley, pledges his love to the beautiful Buttercup, only to be abducted and reportedly killed by pirates while Buttercup is betrothed to the evil Prince Humperdinck. Even as Buttercup herself is kidnapped by a giant, a scheming criminal mastermind, and a master Spanish swordsman, a mysterious masked pirate (could it be Westley?) follows in pursuit. As they sail toward the Cliffs of Insanity...” well, you have to see the picture.

In one scene, Westley and Buttercup run into the dreaded Fireswamp to escape the bad guys. As they run in, Buttercup cries out, “We’ll never survive!” Westley responds with a shrug, “Nonsense -- you're only saying that because no one ever has.”

I think in some sense, the future we are all heading towards is a lot like the Fireswamp. We really don’t know what will happen and, as a result, there’s a lot of doom-and-gloom hanging around. “We’ll never survive unless we dump everything overboard like everyone else! 

I don’t think anybody will dispute the value of facing reality, yet I wonder if the fear of the Fireswamp hasn’t affected our ability to see and think clearly. The world has gone through difficult times and massive technological disruptions before. Yes, there have been casualties along the way, but in the big picture we still seem to be moving forward.

The purpose of business has not changed. It is still to create and maintain long-term, profitable customer relationships. We still need to clearly understand who our customer is. We still need to be able to clearly differentiate our companies, products and services from the competition. We still need revenue growth.

We still need a proactive marketing strategy to accomplish all that, because the pendulum will swing. It always does. And when the economy starts chugging again, our fear of and obsession with the Fireswamp may blow up in our face.

When things are tough, as they are now, corporations tend to see everything as a Fireswamp. They focus on cutting costs in all “nonessential” areas. Of course, the definition of “nonessential” is usually “marketing.”

But wait a minute. What business are we in, actually? Are we in the “product manufacturing” business? Are we in the “service providing” business?

I would contend that we are all in the Marketing business. Peter Drucker thinks so, too. He defines Marketing this way:

"Marketing and innovation are the two chief functions of business. You get paid for creating a customer, which is marketing. And you get paid for creating a new dimension of performance, which is innovation. Everything else is a cost center."

If the purpose of business is to create and maintain long-term, profitable relationships, and if Drucker’s definition of marketing tracks with that, then it makes sense that we are all in the marketing business.

The beauty of realizing and acting on this important piece of information lies in establishing our competitive advantage while we’re all plodding through the Fireswamp. If we look at the Fireswamp the way Westley does in Princess Bride, then the future isn’t quite so scary. Of course, Westley and Buttercup face big obstacles as they trek through the Fireswamp (my personal favorite is the Rodent of Unusual Size). But they take each obstacle as it comes and eventually make their way through. Instead of focusing on the fact that no one had ever survived, they focused on the goal of getting through.

If we understand we are in the Marketing business, then our job is focus on the goal of capturing and keeping the customer. This may sound like a no-brainer, but apparently it’s not. When our focus is on our cost centers, then we take our eyes off the real prize.

But are trade shows still a viable marketing tool? Our office is currently conducting a large, industry wide study of attendee and exhibitor opinions and perspectives. While the study won’t be finished for several months, we’ve already learned some interesting statistics from the over 5000 attendee responses we’ve already received.

In one question I asked how they would rate the importance of attending expositions to their businesses. On a scale of 1-7 (7 being highest), the average rating is 5.29 with 46% rating them a 6 or 7! Sounds like expositions are important to attendees.

In another question, I asked how they rate the value of various media in gathering information for running their business. Here’s how things look so far:

As might be expected, Peer Networking/Word of Mouth ranks the highest in average score. But trade shows are a close second. And when looking at the top two boxes, trade shows actually come out on top!

A true, trade show industry spinmeister would use this information to show proof of the value of trade shows in today’s economy. And I suppose he or she would be right, to an extent. But my own interpretation of these results tells me a couple of things. First, trade shows have high value to the most important people in our business world – our customers and prospects. Therefore, as an exhibitor I’d better find out why that’s true and what those attendees are looking for at exhibitions. It’s been the fashion of late for corporations to moan the blues about not getting ROI from exhibiting. Well, if the attendee sees value, then who has the wrong perspective?

The second thing I see from the above numbers is there is no runaway winner. For that matter there is no runaway loser, either. Attendees are telling me they want to get their information via several different media tools, including trade shows. If I were looking at my corporate marketing strategy, I’d work very hard to make it as easy as possible for my customers and prospects to get information from me and about me. And that means using all the tools.

We are all in the marketing business. Not everybody understands that, which is to our advantage, if we choose it to be. We can head through today’s Fireswamp focused on cost centers and fear, or we can invest our energies in building marketing strategies that invest in the customer.

No one will survive this Fireswamp? Nonsense. You only say that because no one else has … yet.

©2004 Steve Miller