Comments on: The argument against growth

By: Aaron Keller

Aaron Keller — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 00:27:45 +0000

Agreed in full force. As human entities, the more we eat the more we hunger. The same applies in the business and advertising community. 2009 calls for a bit of calorie counting all around. Nice post.

By: Gavin Heaton

Gavin Heaton — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 01:19:19 +0000

Great post, Tim. We are often attracted to the top line rather than the margin — ie new customers over maximising current relationships. Again it depends on focus … and if we really looked closely, we may find that 80% of our customers contribute 20% of the profit. By following the money trail we should be able to make our customer experience/engagement efforts deliver value to those who are most valuable to us!

By: tbrunelle

tbrunelle — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 20:18:29 +0000

Awesome. Thanks, Scott, Mads, Olivier and Joseph for the insights and thanks for carrying this idea further.

On the one hand, I guess I’m arguing for Quality over Quantity. Pretty simplistic. On the other—to Joseph’s query—I’m suggesting marketers are better off investing in the relationships they already have, versus trying to gather even more. This isn’t to say acquisition shouldn’t happen, it should. But not at the expense of more strongly developing those relationships which already exist.

Maybe that’s what Jaffe was hinting at. If your advertising *was* working, your relationships would be strong, hence you wouldn’t need as much acquisition-based messaging. Or, as Scott’s second quote suggests, a lack of innovation in maintaining and nurturing customer relationships forces a marketer to spend (recklessly?) in acquisition messaging.

I’m enjoying this conversation.

By: Joseph Rueter

Joseph Rueter — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 18:52:36 +0000

To my mind you’ve made a solid comparison. More is not necessarily better. It can be but does not have to be for both financial markets and advertising.

So, the boat we’ve been on is sinking. What next?

By: Discovered on Twitter… (Week 2) | MarketMe 2.0

Discovered on Twitter… (Week 2) | MarketMe 2.0 — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 17:59:51 +0000

[...] @conversationage (Valeria Maltoni), Hello Viking’s Tim Brunelle argues against growth: I’m beginning to think we’ve reached a point where advertising as it is currently practiced [...]

By: Growth versus development — Vad NU!

Growth versus development — Vad NU! — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 07:12:29 +0000

[...] that what we want? The question is quite interesting, as a post on Hello Viking indicates. Speaking about this difference from a viewpoint of financial services, the underlying [...]

By: Scott Drummond (Come Together)

Scott Drummond (Come Together) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 04:29:24 +0000

Great post! I interviewed Joseph Jaffe once when I was working at Marketing Magazineand he said "The more you advertise the more you are admitting your advertising isn't working." I found that a pretty profound statement. Another one (forget who I heard this from originally) is that advertising is the price you pay for a lack of innovation.