The Enlightened Marketing Lessons You Can Learn from Santa Claus

Introduction
Let me give you an example of enlightened marketing. Have you seen the film Miracle on 34^th Street? If you have you may recall the scene where Kris Kringle (played by Edmund Gwenn in the 1947 version) working as a department store Santa Claus starts advising customers where to go to find the toys that his store doesn’t have. It seems the store has hired someone who not only believes he really is Santa Claus but he’s also helping to drive away the store’s customers by advising them to go elsewhere.

However, it turns out that what Kris does is a very successful bit of company PR. Kris's conduct helps the store to be seen as a company which can be trusted and has the best interest of its customers at the centre of its business activities. The store’s sales increase all thanks to Kris. Okay, so this is part of a fairy story, but the principle behind what Kris does is what today we’d call an example of enlightened marketing.

What Is Enlightened Marketing

Kris Kringle may have been acting out of naivety or innocence. Then again he may have realised that a customer is for life not just for Christmas. (Don’t Santa’s customers come back time and time again?) He may have decided to do the store’s marketing for it and take the long view of things. The philosophy that underpins enlightened marketing, says mbaskool.com, is

"…that a company should make good marketing decisions by considering some of the long term factors in mind. Those factors should support the best long-run performance of the marketing system. Essentially Enlightened Marketing is broken down into five principles: 1. Consumer-Oriented Marketing… 2. Innovative Marketing… 3. Value Marketing… 4. Sense-of-Mission Marketing…5. Societal Marketing."

Let’s look at each of these principles in turn.

Consumer-Oriented Marketing

It’s very simple: businesses should look at everything through the eyes of the customer.

Without customers you haven’t got a business. That’s not to say that companies shouldn’t look after their staff. They should. But without customers you don’t need staff.  I know, I know: that’s a pretty trite thing to say. I’ll bet you, though, that even in the last few days you have had an experience with a company that has forgotten that its customers are the most important people in the world.

Have you visited a website that looks fantastic but was clearly designed for web geeks not you the customer? Have you tried to work out the best tariff for you mobile phone only to realise that it’s probably easier to have worked out the solution to Fermat’s last theorem.  You get the picture, don’t you?

To repeat a point: it’s very simple. Marketers must look through the eyes of the customer.

Innovative Marketing

When you’ve been in business a while it’s very easy to become complacent about what you do, especially when things are going pretty well. However, a company that adopts an enlightened marketing approach will never accept that things can never be improved. In other words, it is always seeking to innovate. It must be stressed, however, that innovations should bring about real and lasting product and/or service improvements. Scott Thompson of Demand Media says that if, for example

"…a product can be redesigned to last longer for the same price, enlightened marketing holds that this innovation will be welcomed by the consumer and ultimately rewarded by the market over the long term."

Value Marketing

It’s difficult to believe that any marketer would forget that the aim of marketing is to build long term customer loyalty. There are plenty of things that can be done to gain short term increases in sales, but when customers recognise that they are not really getting anything that has truly added value they’ll vote with their feet (or computer mouse) and go to a competitor. Real improvements that add value to the goods or services you sell will be rewarded with customer loyalty. Will Charpentier of Demand Media gives an excellent example of adding value in a way that delights customers:

"Enlightened marketing’s approach to real value goes back to the first time a baker put an extra doughnut into the box of a customer who ordered a dozen. The idea was simple: the bit of profit the baker gave away in a single doughnut was insignificant when compared to the profit from that customer’s return visits."

Sense-of-Mission Marketing

When it comes down to it, any business is in business to make a profit. If it’s not profitable, a business is not going to last very long. However, that does not mean that a business should focus on profit to the exclusion of everything else. Enlightened marketing demands that companies look to the wider interests of each of the stakeholders it is serving. Businesses are a part of the societies within which they operate and accordingly have responsibilities towards those societies.

Operating in an ethically and socially responsible way is not inconsistent with running a profitable business. On the contrary, it is an approach that will help secure a company’s long term success.

 

Societal Marketing

There is a dilemma that will face many marketers. On the one hand, they will want to provide what consumers want in the long term. On the other, consumers sometimes want what is not necessarily good for them or for society in the long term. A first class example of this is the provision of tobacco products. The evidence is overwhelming that such products are not good for an individual’s health and consequently can have a deleterious effect on society in general. And yet people want to use tobacco products.

Societal marketing dictates that companies should attempt to meet consumer needs whilst at the same time acting in a way that is good for society in the long run.  Carl Hose puts it succinctly:

"In this type of marketing, a company uses its socially conscious stance as a way to attract consumers who may appreciate the company's desire to market its products with consideration for society." 

Enlightened marketing is not something that is new. Kris Kringle was doing it well over sixty years ago. It’s probably true that it is one of those things that we have only more recently put a name to. Santa Claus may not be real, but enlightened marketing will bring real results.

Garry Costain is the Managing Director of Caremark Thanet, a domiciliary care provider with offices in Margate, Kent. Caremark Thanet provides home care services throughout the Isle of Thanet. Garry can be contacted on 01843 235910 or email garry.costain@caremark.co.uk. You can also visit Caremark Thanet's website at www.caremark.co.uk/thanet.