Zenel Batagelj, Tomaž Kolar Marketing Strategy As A Creative Sense Making

Marketing strategy as a creative sense-making: Using metaphors as a strategic tool Tomaž Kolar [email_address] University of Ljubljana , Slovenia Zenel Batagelj [email_address] VALICON 9th International Forum on The Sciences, Techniques and Art Applied to Marketing Madrid, November 29th 2007

Background and friends…

“ Positive contamination” of marketing with recent developments in military field?

Strategy as output of formal, “inside-the-box” decision-making and configuration of 4P’s?

Where creative strategy comes from?

Tools for strategic creativity?

Challenges to traditional view

“ S tructural rigidity" leads to lack of dynamism, creativity, and innovation (Dennis and Macaulay, 2003)

A utonomous personal judgment as enable r of creative strategic decisions (esp. in conditions of increased insecurity and incomplete information , Brownlie, 1998 )

Need for a more integral perspective and openness to different mode (l) s of strategic thinking ( Fodness , 2005 )

Reconceptualization of the marketing strategy;

Set of disorered processes, improvisation ( Frankwick et. al., 1994 , Moorman and Miner, 1998 ),

Imagination, creativity and judgement ( Brownlie, 1998 , Andrews and Smith (1996 )

Intuition ( Kilroy and McKinley, 1997; Enright, 2001 )

New business context

Globally : Globalization, homogenization

Locally : Retail consolidation and private labels

Internally : Marketing as investment and domain of financial guys

Strategy as sense-making vs. decision making Business and organizational context Assumptions Thought worlds Intuition Pre-rational Symbolic Strategy as sense-making Creativity Reflexivity Judgement Insight Imagination Strategy as decision-making

Strategy/plan:

segments

positioning

4P’s

Analysis:

markets

SWOT

Mission Corporate objectives

Strategy as (collective) sense-making

“Strategy is, at its most powerful, a process for generating and encapsulating significant meanings about the nature , direction and purpose of the organization, which enables members to make intelligible their organizational worlds and explain to others that what they are doing makes (collective) sense .”

(Green, 1988)

Metaphors as linguistic, conceptual and strategic sense-making tool

“ Time is money ”

Metaphors as a form of figurative speech

Metaphors give meaning to innovative or non-common concepts

Metaphors are lenses which structure our world-view !

Metaphors enable intuitive understanding, imagination, creativity, articulation

Metaphors foster shared understanding

without analysis

across functional borders

challenge assumptions

demonstrate now vs. future gap and need for change

Metaphors as strategic marketing tool

How can we use metaphors to reposition marketing itself within organizations and marketing in general?

What is marketing?

Marketing is war

Marketing is organism Marketing is jazz Marketing is science Marketing is casino Marketing is marriage Marketing is art Marketing is cooking Marketing is fog Marketing is magic Marketing is jungle Marketing is religion Marketing is game Marketing is machine Marketing is manipulation

What is marketing?

Marketing is war

Marketing is organism Marketing is jazz Marketing is science Marketing is marriage Marketing is art Marketing is cooking Marketing is religion Marketing is game Marketing is fog Marketing is machine Marketing is magic Marketing is jungle Marketing is casino Marketing is manipulation

What is marketing?

Marketing is war

Marketing is organism Marketing is jazz Marketing is science Marketing is casino Marketing is marriage Marketing is art Marketing is cooking Marketing is fog Marketing is magic Marketing is jungle Marketing is religion Marketing is game Marketing is machine Marketing is manipulation

War traditionally

War NOW

“ MARKETING IS (POST)MODERN WAR”