Moses Richu

It’s hard to overstate the importance of effective marketing for any business.  However, I now realise that marketing pours beyond the shores of profits and sales, and flows into our daily lives. For everybody is a brand, and we’re always trying to sell that brand. The 4P’s have been painstakingly drilled into us, and we seem to have most of them down to pat; the Price, Place, Promotion(& Packaging). We have price in mind, which is what we hope to charge our employers. We have places too, guided by where we search out jobs  and Co-ops (COOL, newspapers, word of mouth). We even have an entire Comm 299 class dedicated to helping us improve our Promotion.

However, we seem to neglect the most fundamental of the 4P’s; PRODUCT. This is, ultimately, what we’re trying to sell, and the other 3P’s revolve around it. Despite this being painstakingly obvious, we continually forget to develop our product. We become comfortable with our progress, and decide to savour our accomplishments for far too long. We fail to push on, forgetting that ‘Champions never stop’ (Mohammed Ali). We spend so much time selecting the trendiest suits, picking out the perfect tie to match that shirt and leave an impression, and such little time developing the being who the shirt wraps around. When was the last time we carried out a consumer satisfaction survey, to find out how OUR product was meeting the needs of those in our environment? The last time that we pondered on what others were doing in order to become so successful? Have we given much thought to any possible strategic partnerships we could form? Or to alternative ways we ensure we deliver value to everyone who samples our product?

Very few surviving firms today can attribute their success to blind luck. There is generally a well-executed strategy behind their soaring profits. Likewise, we must strive to always improve our product, in order to best meet the needs of those around us, or risk languishing on the shelves as those around us are selected for opportunities that present themselves.