Why Marketing Matters?

A blogpost by Jennifer H. Smith (CMSA) 

Dated 1 Dec 2019

On LinkedIn the other day, the anniversary of my 4^th year of lecturing at VEGA School of Branding came up, it seemed quite a timeous reminder of four good years of personal growth and giving back to society through lecturing into the various degrees and Honours programmes at the Durban VEGA campus. 

It also comes at a time when I’ve decided to re-invigorate my own company, Marketing Matters^mm, and get back to my passion, which is to help companies grow and become great in whatever industry they are competing in. 

I have been fortunate in that I’ve had some excellent clients during the time I’ve been lecturing, but have only been able to work with a couple of clients at a time due to the time constraints of lecturing. Now I’d like to give my clients and the process of building up my client base, my full attention. 

In order to start this process, I have reviewed my various promotional tools, like my website, company presentation, business card etc.. I also looked at the various services I offer based on 30 years of experience in sales, procurement and brand marketing with some of the world’s top FMCG and skincare brands, as well as my experience in commodity/generic marketing of agricultural products. 12 of the 30 years have been spent working for myself as Marketing Matters. 

I was pleased to realise that my branding is still relevant and salient, my business card will need some tweaks as will my presentations and company profile, but not many, because I took my time 12 years ago to really give careful thought to what my brand was going to stand for and I’ve worked on it as needed over the years. The one aspect I really had to rethink however is my website. It was actually 12 years old. I love it still, but I know its day is done, so I’ve revamped the look, feel and functionality, but retained the content, because that still remains relevant.  

I’m really happy to say that the new website is launching tomorrow, the 3^rd December 2019 so you can go to www.marketingmatters.co.za and let me know what you think. My BCom Digital Marketing students will be very happy to hear this news, they’ve been nagging me for quite a few years. 

Whilst going through this process, it was interesting to evaluate my career and company experience, as I was looking for some stats for the website. I calculated that I’ve been in business for 30 years, I’ve worked in over 34 industries and business categories and sub categories and have created strategies and implementation plans for over 75 clients. 

It was this practical experience that made lecturing academic theory really come to life, but it also means that I am able to harness this combination of practical experience with multiple theoretical/academic models to analyse your brand and company and develop strategies with which to solve the brand and business challenges you are facing at the moment.

If you’re curious about my services please have a look at my website at www.marketingmatters.co.za .   I’d also love it if you would connect with me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/marketingmatters1963

Our First Blog Post

As this is our first blog post, I felt it appropriate to start with an introduction. The philosophy underpinning everything we do at Marketing Matters flows from my belief that empassioned marketing can only be effective if it is understood throughout the value chain. Each link in the chain from raw material suppliers through the various functions within the business, to the retail channels and finally the end user must somehow be engaged in the brand vision. Should this not occur, then discrepancies in behaviour between the vision and the delivery or experience of the brand start to surface, thereby jeopardizing the success of the brand/company.

You may also wonder about the picturesque visuals of an eastern nature that appear on the website and this blog. These represent my belief that there are excellent strategy tools available to us that are derived from ancient Chinese teachings. The key books that I have studied over the years are Sun Tzu’s “Art of War”, and Musashi’s “Book of Five Rings”, and the IChing. These books contain teachings that have been guiding governments and major corporates for over 2500 years. We are lucky to have them available in a number of excellent translations, which make their wisdom accessible to our modern day strategy dilemmas.

The “Iching” is, more philosophical or symbolic in nature. This is an ancient tool of divination, which has also guided theactions of leaders throughout the ages. However for my purposes it symbolizes the manner in which strategists have to look at the signs of the times in order to chart a course into the future. The information we have available to us at any one time is incomplete and subject to interpretation based on our own sometimes narrow perspective. Strategists of great vision however are able to interpret the various signs from the economy, government, social and technological trends and create strategies for business that change the course of history. We just have to think of people like Henry Ford, Jack Welsh, Oppenheimer to name but a few.

In this blog we would like to share some of our thinking together with old & new Ideas. We would appreciate your feedback as to the usefulness of the content and any topics you would like us to address. Blog post