Masonry Magazine September 1978 Page. 27
MARKETING AND MASONRY
Monitoring the true cost price situation among competitors, both direct and indirect, is absolutely essential to effective marketing under changing business conditions. Effective intelligence here requires timely, accurate and complete information on the cost of competitive alternatives-not only in actual fact but in the minds of your prospects and their influences as well.
Selling your views to government legislators and regulators is an often overlooked but a centrally important part of the total marketing process. It's not a new thought that our representatives and regulators respond to the views and pressures of their constituents. After all, that's what democracy is all about. Someone recently said that Congress is simply a place where differing interests meet to bargain to a consensus.
Lobbying for a point of view is extensive at all levels of government and, in fact, expected for the most part. This lobbying takes many forms-one-on-one conversations, mail, advertising, research reports, and seminars. It can be aimed directly to those who legislate and recommend programs and indirectly to those constituents who are affected by moves impacting on your business.
The important point here is to view communication of your views on economics and government policy as an integral part of your own total marketing process- government viewed simply as one of the many publics you have to reach.
We've now briefly noted the four components of any marketing proposition in turn and tried to relate lessons learned from similarities and differences in other fields to your own practices.
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Before closing, let me comment on one further aspect of your marketing activity which affects and colors every one of these four elements that is the interplay and mutual support of national, regional and local efforts.
Not too many years ago, major, large-scale American marketing and advertising was a pretty simple and relatively rudimentary thing-distribution through a handful of major national grocery or drug chains or distributors; purchase of coast-to-coast radio or television network programs; and a schedule of advertising in country-wide mass magazines such as Collier's, Life and The Saturday Evening Post.
But our marketplace was much smaller then: competition less intense; sales and advertising clutter much less pronounced; everything moved at a slower, more predictable pace, and the cost of attempting to reach everyone indiscriminately and frequently was often a lot less formidable than it is right now.
Huge Promotion Programs Being Localized
The biggest single change that's come over American consumer marketing the past 10 years or so has been the trend to specialization and localizing of even the very largest, completely national efforts.
No marketer today can afford to keep up his distribution and selling pressure all by himself, every week in the year, all across the country. McDonald's, Coca-Cola, General Motors, Colgate, all rely on a considerable amount of cooperative, localized efforts among franchisers, bottlers, dealers and retailers to enhance the power and effectiveness of their own total selling efforts.
Moreso today than ever before marketing and advertising plans are being built, painstakingly, from the local please turn page
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