Three Ps, four Ps, five Ps, lots of alliteration and way too often the dull repetition of a nursery rhyme, which, like nursery rhymes, has lost all meanings. (Did you know that Ring Around the Rosy is about the Black Plague? Fascinating … but not the point.)

For a fresh and, I think, very useful new look at a different taxonomy in marketing, take a look at Seth Godin’s Five easy pieces post last week. If you care about marketing, then the image here will pique your interest.

Marketing is made up of interactions with people which, we hope, lead to connections. Usually about products (or services, obviously, we don’t need to get annoyingly literal), which we assume fulfill the promises made through the stories we tell. And we hope that starts with data, or is based on data, and generates data.

I get the feeling that if Seth bothered to write this up and present it rigorously and dully academic enough, then put it into the Harvard Business Review, then people would gather it up and elaborate and turn it into dogma. As if that would be a good thing.

But back here in the real world, I think this idea can open up some new ways of looking at the vital work we call marketing. Seth suggests some questions marketers must ask:

Does this interaction lead to connections? Do our products support our story? Is the story pulling in numbers that demonstrate that it’s working?

He concludes with:

In that light, what are you working on? If it’s not one of these five, not going to seriously change the dynamic of your marketing, why exactly are you bothering?

But you can’t get that from here; I really recommend clicking the link and reading it on Seth’s blog, at Five easy pieces.

Tim Berry
President
Palo Alto Software