Product is the P all marketers should strive to influence

Marketers should have a say in all 4Ps but one more than any other – the one they are well placed to help improve.Late last Summer I hosted Jon Evans. The System1 CMO and host of the Uncensored CMO Podcast was visiting Sydney and – as is usually the way – finding the city lovely if unremarkable.Downtown Sydney isn’t that flash. The real magic of the Emerald City is outside the downtown area. So I intervened. I met him at Circular Quay and got him on the first ferry to Manly. God’s country. Seventeen minutes and a quick whizz past the Opera House later we were at the Three Pines drinking cold ones and staring at a Pacific Ocean so blue it hurt my eyes to look at it.We laughed. Drank. Had a meal. Changed into our swimmers. And floated forty feet out from an idyllic sandy bay making marketing plans.The only one that survived the evening was a commitment to review the 10 greatest beer ads of all time, while drinking the beers in question. In a pub. And, sure enough, on a cold London afternoon a year later I met Jon and his production team in the basement of the Dog and Biscuit. Jon’s long-suffering producer had set up 10 pints of the various beverages and before you could say “possibly not a good idea” someone pressed a red button and we were off.An interesting thing happened towards the end. My beer consumption slowed. I was only half-way through my pint of the black stuff when we completed our discussion on the second placed ad for Guinness. Up next, the number one – the Heineken ad featuring Daniel Craig. One of the best directed, funniest long form ads I have ever seen. Off screen the producer approached with my Heineken.“It’s ok,” I said, motioning to my Guinness. “I’ll stick with this”.Partly because I was pissed, but also struck by my sudden reticence, I started to ponder. We had spent an hour talking about advertising. Watching ads. And we were about to see the beer ad that had tested best of all. With James Bond. And despite all that, my hand squeezed tight around my cold, black friend.I did that not because of the delightful Guinness ad I had just seen. Or some deep-seated emotional connection to the brand or a need to project myself as a “Guinness drinker”. Or because of any lack of love for Heineken – a fine pint I have enjoyed on numerous occasions. I did it because I was really enjoying my pint. You can see me on the video, pleasantly shitfaced, having this exact thought while Jon bangs on about Heineken about 47 minutes in.

Lessons from the black stuff

Here we were, discussing the best in beer advertising. And product was still winning the day. And that was not just down to the inherent fantasticness of Guinness the great stout. But all the work that Diageo has put into making it such a consistently well served pint everywhere on the planet. When I was a young man we would travel far and wide for a “good pint of Guinness”. It was not uncommon to have long, pissed up debates about where the ”good” stuff was. And where it wasn’t. But all of that is ancient history. Diageo has spent millions to make sure every pint of Guinness is now as good as the almost empty one I was clutching down in the basement of the Dog and Biscuit.And the Guinness marketing team...Read The Full Article at MarketingWeek