Action: the only viable marketing strategy

The Harvard Business Review of October featured an interview with Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com. In it, Bezos describes how the company is completely focused on the customer. Amazon anticipates to the reality that the world moves towards almost complete information transparancy, a situation that gives customers more power. Bezos says "If in the old world you devoted 30% of your attention to building a great service and 70% of your attention to shouting about it, in the new world that inverts." Most products and services have an information part which means that if you communicate that your product is fantastic, consumers can check this immediately, will provide instant feedback and switch easily when disappointed. So, Amazon made it part of their strategy to listen carefully to clients, observe what works and what doesn't and adapt quickly. What does this mean for companies? Well, it's obvious that marketing can only succeed if companies did all the other homework. You can trumpet your fantastic service in a brilliant ad or organise a perfect PR strategy, but if your call-center doesn't perform, it will back-fire for sure. Consumers will know and walk away. In the age of information transparancy, action is the only way to credibility and success.