When marketing doesn’t matter

Rubbish you say, marketing always matters.

Well, the next time you try and get some sense out of Optus or Telstra when you have anything that does not fit into an easily packaged Q&A form for someone in Bangalore who does not know Sydney from Senegal , try and tell yourself marketing does matter to them, and fall about laughing.

If it did, your issue would be treated as important to them, there would be someone who could fix the problem in easy reach, you would not have to wait hours being told your call was important to them, and then never get a return call.

Clearly in the current telco environment, demand is greater than supply, so marketing does not really matter, or so they think, customer churn is a part of the game, and annoying a few is a small price to pay in the chase for short term margin maximisation. 

Marketing does not matter to them, at least for now!

However, the worm usually turns. Remember when you could not get a spot on prime time television without selling your grandmother, or a preferred position in the Herald Saturday classifieds, and had to wait weeks and sometimes months for the local bookstore to get in an obscure title you wanted?

Now, response can be virtually instantaneous, and we have become very used to instantaneous, and when we do not get it, we can pile buckets on the perpetrator via social media, just as we can promote their great service on the odd occasion it happens.

Marketing always matters, because without a customer, you have nothing.