The missing "P" of marketing is Time

"Well, there's a crucial letter missing: T, which stands for one of the most important variables in modern marketing: Time. Bolon believes that it's time for marketers to wake up to this new reality and to understand the challenges that consumers' feelings about time are raising for brands.

"Time is one of the few marketing essentials that doesn't begin with a "P", but it is, nevertheless, shaping up to be a major factor in marketing success or failure. Time might actually be considered a subset of one of the "Ps". It's a too-long hidden aspect of price that has been taken for granted until recently. Until now, marketers have tended to think of price and cost as being entirely about money. They're not. They're also about time."

He explains that recent global research by JWT into people's attitudes towards time has revealed that people are desperately pressed for it: "As the law of supply and demand dictates, that means we're placing more value on time. Our time is worth more to us now because we don't have enough of it. And that means that we're less willing to give away bits of it unthinkingly just because somebody asks for it. It also means that many of us are less patient with unrewarding and wasteful demands on our time - traffic and public transportation hold-ups, customer-service call waiting, telemarketing calls, un-entertaining broadcast advertising and the like.

"Time truly is a new form of currency. This change in people's attitudes toward time has been gradual; there hasn't been a single pivotal moment that marked a major shift. Yet the JWT trend research shows that our attitudes are sufficiently different to warrant serious review."

There are all sorts of ways time factors into a purchase, Bolon explains. "How much time does it take to find out about the product? How much time does it take to purchase it? How much time does it take to learn how to use the product? How much time does it take to use the product? How does using the product affect other demands on one's time?"

JWT's attitudinal research also shows that time is a handy shorthand term for other intangibles that are deeply connected with time in people's minds, particularly energy, effort and attention.

"It's the difference between Measured Time and Experienced Time," says Bolon. "The former is what clocks measure; the latter is a subjective reality that varies according to the individual's mind and mood. Time speeds up or slows down depending on how a person is feeling and to what he or she is paying attention. Hence the old adage, "Time flies when you're having fun!" Conversely, time spent doing something uninteresting drags by.

"From this we can see that the more time invested by the consumer with a product or brand, the deeper and more successful the relationship will become from the marketer's point of view. Take Apple's iPod as an example. It's a massive success story. And then consider how much time each consumer invests with his or her device. The challenge for the marketer is to duplicate this investment of time in other areas and the process begins with advertising and marketing communications that are clever, relevant, entertaining, witty - and don't waste people's time. That's why I believe that the missing "P" of marketing is Time," concludes Bolon.