Hard Marketing & Soft Marketing

VOL. 0008 – FLORIDA, MONDAY, DEC 05, 2022

Juan F. Arjona Harry

President & CEO Strategee

Living marketing is something exciting! From the beginning when we are observing the consumer, from when we understand the competitive environment and make a reading of it; Then, when we formulate marketing trying to hit those strategies that we consider are appropriate; And finally, when we execute these strategies in the market, avoiding the setbacks that normally occur in this type of implementation... to receive the results at the end and evaluate if we are doing well or if we should adjust something in particular. The whole process is fascinating and immersive.

Those who passionately live marketing are par excellence the CMOs; Leading actors in this wonderful process. However, not all CMOs are the same or manage marketing variables in the same way. It can really be seen that, there are in practice three trends of CMO profiles; in the first instance, there are those who are distinguished by being champions and dedicated executors of what is called "Soft Marketing"; that is, the conceptualization, formulation, Implementation, monitoring and control of all those activities that revolve around Branding and Service, such as the conventional Communications process, the digital communication process and field implementations; The customer service strategy and its derivations in each Implementation. All these previous activities crucial for the life of the brand and, above all, for its future, take up much of the time in the day to day of these Executives, leaving topics of the other marketing variables -which also present an importance of the same level of the importance of Branding and Service-, pending execution, or executed by different persons, or executed slowly and late in execution, exhibiting on many occasions, shortcomings in the tasks of strategic supervision and control.

There is a second type of CMO, whose orientation is more towards achieving short and medium term marketing results such as Market Share, Gross Margin, Brand Equity, Innovation [including some commercial indicators]. This type of CMO can be found activating in this purpose all other variables such as Pricing [Revenue], activating Channel strategies according to the market, activating Continuous Innovation, dynamically continuous innovation and discontinuous innovation; activating the CRM and the first and second lines of the Backoffice in assured processes of consumer satisfaction; and it is also common to see it in the middle of Predictive Algorithms that support its decisions.

This type of marketing approach is called "Hard Marketing"; And it is precisely the action of managing resources and people in the form of strategies that only admit to obtaining effective, measurable and unobjectionable results, around effective methods of transferring instructions for the achievement of real results. And there is a third type of CMO, whose management style integrates the two previous approaches in a harmonious and engaged way through a Marketing Plan that has inteligente formulation and whose strategies and tactics commit the entire organization to comply with it.

Naturally, the integration of these two capacities is something that takes study [enough necessary to deepen and be able to formulate effective strategies], and takes time to learn and consolidate the knowledge applied in reality; that is, experience. That is why it is a real luxury to have CMOs that have these two strong approaches integrated and managed with precision and effectiveness. So it is not that Hard Marketing is more important than Soft Marketing -or vice versa-, but what is usually visualized in the market are these two approaches (most of the time); and on a smaller scale, the existence of quite competitive CMOs that cover with their management all marketing variables both in formulation and execution can be evidenced.