Customer Centric Marketing

Customer Centric Marketing

September 26, 1983. The US and the Soviet Union are locked in a bitter race for nuclear supremacy.

Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet, monitors a bank of computer screens for the first sign of a US strike.

Suddenly, an alarm sounds, indicating that the US has launched a missile directly at the Soviet Union.

Almost immediately, another missile launch is detected - then a third missile, and a fourth, and a fifth.

A red button flashes, ordering him to launch a counter-strike.

Then Petrov makes a decision against all of his training.

He believes his systems are in error. He will sit and wait.

If Petrov is right, he will have saved countless lives. If he is wrong, he will have missed his country's single opportunity to counter their aggressors.

Petrov is - was, right, and his decision resulted in him being both ostracised by the Russian military and dubbed a hero by a grateful world.

Petrov didn't trust his screens. The view of the world it presented to him didn't feel right. Petrov knew the direct consequences for ignoring his systems would be severe, but also that he had a wider duty. The marketers of today are presented with a similar, yet thankfully less prescient choice, presented by the pressure to attempt to understand consumers through the use of social media listening.

As a percentage of total customers, only a tiny minority elect to discuss products and services on social media, let alone 'brands'. Those who do tend to skew to the extremes - wildly happy, or seething with anger. Unfortunately, "I remain satisfied with my choice of Domestos bleach but would buy even more if Unilever introduced a sea salt variant" will never be tweeted, no matter how much marketers would wish otherwise.

Which leads me to the book ‘Customer Centric Marketing’, written by Chairman and CEO of Cundari Group, Aldo Cundari. Towards the end of the book, the author acknowledges that "the digitization of nearly every aspect of our lives [is] dehumanizing our relationships and creating superficial connections with no real, deep meaning". Yet, so much of ‘Customer Centric Marketing’ focuses on the idea that marketers need only electronically eavesdrop on their target audiences’ social media activity, and respond accordingly, to understand their customers’ deepest desires. I’m not sure it's that simple, or indeed, that complicated.

Don't get me wrong - there is value to be had in this book. Cundari accurately captures many of the challenges of the modern marketer - data overload, organisational complexity, the elongated path to purchase, and the changing media landscape. There is also a punchy chapter on innovation towards the end of the book and a very readable section on a new model of working for agencies based on the author's own agency.

However, Cundari stops at revealing how established businesses can reignite real-world conversations with customers - thankfully addressed in Rob Fitzpatrick's book ‘The Mom Test’. Whilst the author puts up a convincing argument that content marketing is part of the answer to many customers’ problems, he doesn’t clearly demonstrate to marketers how they can consistently identify those problems in the first place.

In ‘Customer Centric Marketing’ the author pulls together a number of contemporary threads, powerfully reinforcing the case for businesses to listen to their customers more frequently. Yet these threads by themselves don’t form a complete pattern of the changes needed to create a truly customer-centric company.

My advice? Borrow fifty pounds from petty cash. Buy this book, and then with the change take three customers (one large, one small, one lapsed) out for coffee. You never know what you might learn.
 

Newsletter

Enjoy this? Get more.

Our monthly newsletter, The Edit, curates the very best of our latest content including articles, podcasts, video.

CAPTCHA
15 + 0 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

Become a member

Not a member yet?

Now it's time for you and your team to get involved. Get access to world-class events, exclusive publications, professional development, partner discounts and the chance to grow your network.