Because ever since Adam was sold down the river by a snake-apple salesman, marketers have put pizzazz before pragmatism by isolating just one of many aspects of marketing and making out that this is the silver bullet, the magic potion and the simple answer to getting sales to skyrocket.
Right now the flavour of the month is social media or "digital." Awhile back it was branding. Before that it was advertising and so on and so forth down the ages as marketers grabbed whatever they could and gave it enough spin to make their clients believe they were onto something new.
Public relations people are past masters at this sort of reinventing of the wheel. PR begat public affairs which begat reputation management which begat public policy which begat a whole lot of things until it all begat public relations again. All of which was intended purely to make the same thing look a lot more exciting and desirable under a different name. A bit like a hooker changing her name from Gladys Smith to Exotica Erotica.
I subscribe to an online magazine via an iPad app called Zite. It's generally excellent and puts together for me content of my choice - both locally and from abroad.
But, when I open the page called "Marketing" it has for the past year or so consisted 99,9% of articles on social media. The "Advertising" page is almost as bad but at least has a few items of interest besides social media.
Now, I am the first to agree that the development of the internet, online publishing, the digital environment and indeed social media, are extremely important. Critically important, in fact. All of this is going to play a critical role in the way companies market their goods and communicate with their customers.
But what worries me is that right now marketers, ad agencies and their ilk are giving the impression to their clients that marketing = social media.
The situation is a bit like motor car manufactures becoming obsessed with engines and in their rush to get the consumer to purchase they completely ignore things like design, aesthetics, seating capacity, road holding, fuel consumption and myriad other aspects of car ownership. They just bang on about engines on the basis that nothing else matters.
My worry is that just as branding and advertising have been the flavours of the year, this fixation on social media and "digital" by the marketing industry and its advertising progeny will disrupt focus on all those other elements of marketing that are critical to achieving a good return on investment.
It is precisely because marketing and advertising people home in on whatever the flavour of the month is, that South Africa wastes roughly R50bn a year on dysfunctional marketing.
Social media, online publishing and the whole gamut of digital marketing tools are extremely importantly but not exclusively so.
Marketing has not changed in decades. It is nothing more than a checklist to ensure efficiency. A checklist that requires tick marks against a host of elements not just one or two.
Ironically, social media is nothing new but simply a technological extension to the age-old and extremely successful marketing strategy of word-of-mouth. Which in fact, was the first ever marketing tool ever to be employed when the serpent persuaded Adam to eat the damn apple.
I have been banging on for years about the advertising industry in particular, starting to promote itself to the consumer as an important contributor to the economy of this country. Nothing has happened and all the consumer sees is the occasional controversy when the ASA bans an advertising campaign or a TV commercial that makes them sit up and take notice even if they can't remember what it was promoting.
It is small wonder that government has plans to ban all sorts of advertising from liquor to fast foods because they know that they will not lose any votes by doing so.
Government knows that the majority of the South African population considers advertising as some form of trivial pursuit.
And while advertising agencies appear to be far too self absorbed to do anything about the image of advertising, perhaps marketers will take the lead by educating both corporates and consumers on the contribution this function makes to the economy and the lives of every man, woman and child in the country.
