New Year resolutions for marketers

Perhaps these new year resolutions will help keep the bean counters happy, allow brand and product managers to keep their jobs, agencies to keep their clients and PR people to justify their fees.

1. I resolve not to use big ideas only, but to apply all the fundamentals of marketing to my advertising.

2. I resolve not to do any more focus groups and to accept that all they do is waste money and skew the reality of what consumers actually want and think.

3. I resolve to build measurement tools in at the start of implementation of marketing and particularly advertising strategy.

4. I resolve to get the attention of my target market before trying to impress them with my brand/product/service.

5. I must stand up to my client/board/boss when producing advertising and PR when they don't agree with the absolutely fundamental marketing premise that its not what they want to say but what the customer wants to hear.

6. I must not keep ignoring the enormous impact and opportunities presented by social media.

7. I will try and remember that unless I put a lot of effort and budget into the point at which the consumer comes into contact with my product/brand/service, I will be wasting a huge amount of money.

8. I will continually audit what I am doing to make sure it remains relevant, cost effective, efficient and make sure that I am not contributing to the enormous waste of money by marketers every year. (see below)

9. I will try to remember that the most effective advertising is not necessarily the stuff that wins awards.

10. I will think very hard about the role of marketing in what will be a very competitive 2011 and keep telling myself that the whole purpose of marketing is to eliminate as much risk as possible.
    

These are ten of what could be 100 or so resolutions that might help towards reducing the R50 billion that is wasted on bad marketing in South Africa every year.