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“Immutabilis” pandemic

Last years have seen most of marketing and related fields swiftly “immutabilized.” The “immutabilis” virus originated from the “22 Immutable Laws of Marketing” by Ries and Trout. A review of this remarkable infection source is to be found at .

There have already appeared several dozen books of “Immutable Laws” (let us call’em ILLS for short) on Branding, Marketing Categories, Corporate Reputation, Internet Discourse, Blogging, Corporate Job Interviews, Risk Management, Data Revenue Maximization, Universal Supply Chain Connectivity, Screenwriting, Web Marketing, B-to-B Direct Marketing, Digital Marketing, Internet Branding, Growing Business Marketing, Business, Advertising Directories, Human Behavior, and you name it. There are even “12 Immutable Laws of Humor.” The number of ILLS varies from 2 to 22.

True, some reviewers suggested Law # 23 – there is nothing immutable in marketing. But who cares!

What I haven’t seen yet is “N Immutable Laws of Marketing Lunacy.” It awaits its author.

Overall, this disease is extremely dangerous, especially for young marketing minds. The late marketing wizard Theodore Levitt lamented: “The problem with the marketing concept is a persistent tendency toward rigidity. It gets dogmatized, interpreted into constantly narrower and inflexible prescriptions…. There is not, and cannot be, any rigid and lasting interpretation of what the marketing concept means in the specific ways a company should operate at any given time.”

One could not agree more. First, marketing situations are influenced by a zillion of circumstances with the result that what works in one situation may not work in others – precisely what makes “a rigid dogmatization” in marketing impossible in principle. Second, any result in business is generally an outcome of joint efforts of many departments, so that it is often impossible to attribute anything solely to a marketing idea. For instance, better distribution and logistics may compensate for poor marketing decisions, and vice versa.

But some members of marketing academia disagree with Levitt. Like medieval alchemists, they are in perpetual quest for the non-existent “absolute” – some laws, paradigms, and schemes into which they could neatly squeeze all the marketing situations without exception. One “academic” paper identifies only three “principles” that allegedly have passed the strictest of screenings. The most striking of them is “Sheer weight of marketing dollars increases the probability of new product success.” I leave it to the reader to assess this “wisdom” and the caliber of other principles, which have not passed such a “rigorous” selection.

If most of these texts were written by a student, they would be pooh-poohed. But that “immutable” stuff is widely read and appraised. Why? Some explanation is suggested by the notion of the so-called Blatant Nonsense Effect, which is explained as follows: a reader comes across a blatant stupidity written by a venerable author. He faces a dilemma: to accept that nonsense as an article of faith, having suppressed his inacceptance; or to reject it. Normally they accept – it is simpler that way.

Situations even slightly resembling this are unthinkable in sciences, where everything has to be rigorously substantiated, tested and re-rested. No scientist would even think of submitting stuff that is even 5% that… well, “immutable.”

Why do marketing publishers with an army of “peer reviewers” let texts like this fly? There are many explanations. One is that marketing academia are a mutual admiration society.

David Ogilvy said about advertising of his day: “The lunatics have taken over the asylum.” But how about the marketing of our days? What do you think, gentlemen!

ILLUSTRATION

To what extent “immutable” wisdoms are unique and immutable can be gathered from three similar books: “10 ILLS of POWER SELLING,” “10 ILLS of SUCCESSFUL SELLING,” and ”10 ILLS of SALES SUCCESS”: