As it happens, the comment is from Tony Blair, who said it just the other week, and the only marketing he had in mind at the time was to carry with him his party conference. But it reminded me that, like politicians, we marketers can be dangerously quick to adopt new catch phrases. We use them first a little bit lazily, as a kind of shorthand, and later as a rallying cry, putting them into headlines and agendas in a way that can turn them, not necessarily productively, from items into issues.
The trouble with such buzz phrases is not just their inevitable progress toward cliche status - like 'back burners' and 'leading players' - but that they become a bit overblown, in a way that can actually misdirect our marketing judgment.
'Global brands' is a typical example. It is arguable that for all practical marketing purposes there are no global brands, only local ones. Wherever a brand originated, in an age of growing tribalism marketers more and more need to concentrate strongly on localising their brand communications, and too much thinking and talking about globalism can easily take their eye off the ball.
I believe the days have largely gone when most successful brands moving into a foreign market could automatically rely on their traditional roots, their native culture and imagery, their very foreignness, to be a central part of their long-term appeal abroad. Indeed, in this country it is arguable that brands which were once 'foreign', like Band-Aid, Nike and Ryvita, have now achieved such a strong consumer franchise in the UK that they are accepted as local without any conscious thought by most Brits at the moment of purchase. We must not be so carried away by 'think global' that we forget to 'think and act local'.
Another very topical example is 'new consumers'. Increasingly in recent years consumers have been presented to us variously as more sophisticated and knowing, cynical and idealistic (a neat trick when you think about it), powerful and insecure. I am not at all sure that, again for practical purposes, we should not dismiss all that new stuff, at any rate during working hours, and concentrate on the old consumer's basic, unchanging needs and motivations. As a wise headmaster once pointed out, human nature remains remarkably prevalent.
Another wise man said: "The world is passing through troubled times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age; they are impatient of all restraint; they talk as if they alone know everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness for them."
The wise man? Peter the Hermit. The year? 1274. Some things never change.
Gayle Moberg is speaking at The Marketing Society's annual conference on November 20.
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