IT'S ALL SUCH A LOAD OF BULLSHIT

I was on the Gatwick Express in that half-doze a train journey to London can induce. Behind me I heard a voice:

“I’m not sure the direction of travel aligns with the strategy…I’ll go to Warsaw tomorrow to ensure the co-ordination dynamic plays better…”

Had I died and gone to jargon purgatory? Another similar voice took over.

“Don’t they see this is an either/or decision? We need JD to grasp market realities. He’s in a no-hope space with the current trajectory.”

Stop it. Just stop it!

“Yes there are strategical contradictions in seeking to reach the tactical goal… but at least we have signs of moving on and re-orientating.”

Who were these maniacs? 30ish, sharply suited, MBAs (that incurable disease - surely they had that?) A-cut hair, serious. They strode off across Victoria Station to another mischief-creating meeting on incomprehensibility.
   

So it was a rare delight to hear Professor Mark Ritson sticking it up the digital marketing guys at the Marketing Week Live Conference. In blue, blokey and furious language he lambasted the current obsession with Millennials - there aren’t many, they have no money and their behaviour isn’t that different to the rest of us … “stop it guys get real” and so on.

He lit a fire under the idea of the big companies being one whit concerned about Corporate Social Responsibility an award for which had apparently gone to Google who don’t pay their taxes. How bad? He put it well.

“The average marketer earns around £44,000 a year and pays around £17,000 in tax. If they were Google they’d pay £269 …. Now don’t tell me that’s corporately responsible.”

He savaged “Cool Brands” as absurdly irrelevant. Brand valuation as phoney and erratic.  Brand Purpose as pretentious nonsense… who wants the Starbucks purpose of creating a better world when all we want is a better cup of coffee? And the claim that TV Advertising is dying is a big, fat lie. It’s huge and it’s growing so f….off.  This guy is splendidly in-your-face contrarian. His audience laughing nervously were bombarded by the “f” word and assaults on their stupidity. He accused them of being like sea anemones “totally brainless, merely reactive and in which mouth and anus are the same.”

Finally he pleaded with the audience to stop doing what David Weldon CMO at RBS described as “barking at every passing car.”  Marketing is a real heavyweight business he said:

“I need you to put down the dreaded,  dreary “D” word and come back to work…stop being juvenile and playing with the tools of marketing and get back upstairs to marketing strategy where you diagnose the market so you can decide where you’ll play and how you’ll win”

Pity he wasn’t on the train to beat up those MBAs. He is a yesterday marketer (as I am) but I see the millennial revolution more kindly than he does.

But that attitude and that rage? Great stuff Mark. Please stay angry.