Everything has changed. But nothing has changed. Why Mad Men could teach us a thing a two about marketing in the digital age

As a planner, my job is about people and business. Cut through all the rubbish about what strategy people do, it really boils down to finding a link between what people are interested in and what the business needs to achieve. It’s really not that complicated.

It does mean that if you ever drift past my desk, you might find me not really looking like I’m ‘working; – you know, typing furiously with a furrowed brow – very often though, you’ll find me at my desk reading a book, paper or magazine.

Not really stuff about marketing, brands and business because reading the prescribed tomes on how to do marketing usually means creating marketing stuff that’s the same as everyone else’s (not to mention much of is based on false assmptions and little real evidence). Mostly stuff about people,since that’s what this business is really about, that lets me fish where others don’t, on sociology, psychology, culture, academia, not to mention general weirdness.

Every now and again, of course, there’s the odd book or article to dip into, especially more digitally focused things, since it’s all changing so fast there’s little chance to stop and think. Anyone who does anything to do with digital marketing and tells you they have all the answers is even more of a liar than anyone who deals in so called, ‘offline’ stuff. You can’t be a guru on something that changes every day.

I nearly bought Aaron Goldman’s Everything I Know About Marketing I Learned from Google. But then I read the synopsis again. Here are the rules the book elaborates on:

Tap into the Wisdom of Crowds: Get the signals you need directly from your customers
Keep It Simple, Stupid: Craft messages people can grasp in a nanosecond and pass along
Don’t Interrupt: Join the conversation— but avoid disrupting it
Act Like Content: Provide value, not sales pitches
Test Everything: Take no detail of your program for granted; you can always improve
Show Off Your Assets: Distribute your brand everywhere

You what? What we can learn from Google is the basics of marketing Don Draper would recognise? Boil down the jargon, this is really saying:

Understand your customer.

Tell them one thing well.

Be relevant or be ignored.

Don’t sell, charm and persuade.

Make everything as good as it can be and let your customer have input into that (much of series 3 and 4 saw Draper grappling with this).

You need to reach as many people as you can if you’re going to grow.

Even more troubling, three books on how to re-think marketing in the digital age I read last year basically concluded that the future is great storytelling people can feel a part of.

Three books to be told that the future of marketing is storytelling? Some the the most famous marketing I grew up with (and I’m not young by any means unfortunately) did just that. From the story of Dudley Moore searching for his Tesco Chickens to the Nescafe Gold Blend couple. Or Renault Clio’s Papa and Nicole. And you could get involved then too, you talked about it over the water cooler, this stuff was part if the national conversation. Just like the X Factor or Strictly are real stories about people today.

Exactly how can the self appointed digital gurus be telling us that NOTHING IS THE SAME ANYMORE when the advice they share to survive in the new world is exactly the same advice that was lived by in the 1980′s and even the 1960′s world of Madison Avenue Draper lived in?

What this really means is that while the tools and the context has changed for where and how marketing happens, the basic principles remain the same. Because the fundamentals of how humans make choices, how they are persuaded and the relationships they have with each other and the objects they buy or barter for doesn’t change overnight. It’s just the technology around it that does.

The basic principles of what earns people’s attention, fires their imagination and makes them part with their money has hardly moved on. How we need to go about this has.