Tribal Marketing 101

Tribal marketing requires a philosophical shift to the way we view our environment. To establish this foundational requirement of tribal marketing, I will first write about marketing philosophies. I can hear, “not one of those boring lectures”. Read on, particular if you are struggling with your business; this will change you in to a success story.

In the marketing literature we observe an evolution of marketing philosophies starting with the product orientation, followed by the sales orientation and then the market orientation. We are currently experiencing a domination of services within the marketing orientation. Academics call it “Service Dominate Logic”. The name is charming not because it is catchy but for the fact it ousted the Kolterian view of marketing. No more marketing dogmas that prevent us from thinking “outside the square”, what all marketers should be doing. In fact, that is what I teach my marketing students – to think outside the square. Presto - see what we have because of thinking outside the square - experience marketing, relationship marketing, service marketing and tribal marketing.

Most people fail to see the value of these philosophies. Many put them aside, thinking they belong to academia – not so. In simple terms, the philosophy determines the way a business is set up, that is, the wealth creating activities the business undertakes and the infrastructure required to support the activities. Infrastructure, as we all know, has a direct implication on our financial investment in the business. For this reason, the philosophy we hold is foundational to our business plan. Let me give you an overview of the marketing philosophies.

The marketing age commenced with humans starting to engage in activities intended to accumulate wealth. This age can be broadly divided into pre industrialisation period (prior to the 1920s), industrialisation period (1920 to 1960) and post industrialisation period (1960 to the present time). The way the philosophies became evident to scholars suggest they belong to each of periods within the marketing age, that is, product orientation to the pre-industrialization period, sales orientation to the industrialization period and market orientation to the present period. If this view is taken then product and sales orientations are redundant. That is a wrong understanding of the marketing philosophies. I believe they co-existed right through the marketing age at varying levels. By this, I am suggesting that there was (and is) one philosophy that dominates each of the periods. This is true at an individual level too in that a business can have one dominating philosophy while still keeping others. For example, a business can be totally marketing oriented to its customers but product oriented to the investors. The business will need to develop its infrastructure to facilitate the two orientations to the two stakeholders. Another example is a business can adopt marketing orientation for its regular products and product orientation for its innovations. By mixing and matching philosophy we can maximize opportunities to utilise our infrastructure to the fullest, thereby registering a higher return on investment. This is fundamental to productivity, that is, maximisation of wealth for unit cost of investment. The thrust of this piece is not on the philosophy but rather on businesses having a philosophy. I believe small and medium size businesses in New Zealand and in other emerging economies must mix and match philosophies to their advantage. The philosophies must then direct their marketing activities.

Perhaps I should mention couple of reasons why we fail to think about our philosophy. One is, we take over an existing business; in doing this we basically inherit the dominating philosophy by which the business has been operating. This happens in a lot of family businesses and big corporations. This also happen with business operators who buy into a franchise arrangement. Little do they realize that they are spending their investment to adopt the philosophy of another. In such cases, any subsequent shift in philosophy needs to be championed by the new owners or managers. It primarily comprises of making radical changes that usually receives the disapproval of the vast majority, hence the shift has to be championed. Another reason for failing to think about our philosophy is, for a vast number of us, we are struggling to meet our basic needs. Consequently our sight is fixed at the immediate future with no time to strategise the future.

Returning back to Tribal marketing – there is tremendous success in this novel way of marketing. However, to implement tribal marketing a radical change to our view of the world is required. If I have got you to read to this point, I know that I have captured your interest. I will blog again with an account of how to tribalise, which will delineate its philosophical requirement.