Marketing versus demarketing

-Mamun Rashid

It is dawn. The sun rises with the promise of a new day. Health-conscious young and old alike head towards the local park for a satisfying morning walk. It is a beautiful day -- pleasant breeze blowing, birds chirping, sunshine gleaming through the green tree leaves and ... billboards and advertisement placards.

It seems that a local company has covered the entire park with signboards and other promotional materials in an effort to promote their range of products. The visitors at the park are appalled.

They are shocked to see the serenity and the tranquillity of their beautiful park be marred by billboards with the pictures of scantily clad women displaying the company's products in alluring poses.

It does not end there -- at the very entrance of the public park there is a huge signboard claiming that the park is 'sponsored' by the company, when it is quite obvious that in reality, a public park can be 'sponsored' by none other than the City Corporation itself. A public park can, at best, be 'maintained' by a commercial organisation, but never 'sponsored'. It is quite evident that a very smart business graduate sitting in the air-conditioned marketing department of the company thought of this 'innovative' idea to enhance their 'brand image'. But has this objective really been fulfilled? Their 'innovative' promotional campaign has achieved nothing but has greatly offended the respected elders who frequent the park. Many have called the phone numbers of the social organisation who has let them in, not to order their company products but to complain about the defacement of their dear solace.

The example above depicts nothing but the misuse of marketing strategy. The goal of marketing is to identify and meet human and social needs. There is a huge difference between marketing and selling. While 'selling' is to 'get rid of what you have', 'marketing' is to buy. Through marketing, organisations buy valuable relationships with their customers, capture sustainable revenue streams and attain brand loyalty. It is a shift from acquiring the 'shelf space' to acquiring the 'mind space'. Yet, time and again, we often mistake marketing for the art of selling products. The most important part of marketing is not selling. Selling is just the tip of the iceberg.

Peter Drucker, the leading management theorist, sums it up beautifully in his words: “There will always, one can assume, be need for some selling. But the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself. Ideally, marketing should result in a customer who is ready to buy. All that should be needed then is to make the product or service available.”

The term 'demarketing' was first coined by the marketing guru and incidentally my teacher at Kellogg, Philip Kotler in the early 1970s. Demarketing activities discourage demand, they discourage consumers from buying. According to Kotler, “Demarketing is that aspect of marketing that deals with discouraging customers in general or a certain class of customers in particular on a temporary or permanent basis.”

Some organisations face a demand level that is higher than they can or want to handle. Marketers then set out to find ways to reduce demand temporarily or permanently. General demarketing seeks to discourage overall demand and includes such steps as raising prices and reducing promotion and service. Selective demarketing consists of trying to reduce demand from those parts of the market that are less profitable.

However, sometimes marketers in an effort to do 'marketing', inadvertently end up attaining the results of 'demarketing', as the above-mentioned examples clearly suggest. Branding is the art and cornerstone of marketing. Perhaps the most distinctive skill of professional marketers is their ability to create, maintain, protect and enhance brands. A brand is a complex symbol that conveys the product's attributes, benefits and values. The process requires extensive research and perfecting the marketing proposition. Exposure is undoubtedly essential for creating and raising brand awareness. But overexposure can destroy brand equity instead of developing it.

Branding is a complex process. It should be such that just one name or symbol should be able to incite emotions and certain perception of the product in the minds of the consumers. Developing a brand requires a great deal of long-term investment. For a brand to survive and flourish, substantial investment must be made behind the brand. There are quite a few global brand names that have withstood the test of time just because of proper branding strategy i.e. investment made in the appropriate places. Marketing gimmicks may raise awareness, but it is only short-lived and eventually fades away.

Marketing's central purpose is demand management, the skills needed to manage the level, timing and composition of demand. Branding is the crucial tool that fulfils this purpose and this process is quite sensitive having numerous variables and influencing factors. Incorrectly done, it only produces the results of 'demarketing' and reduces demand rather than enhancing it.
The line between marketing and demarketing is therefore quite thin, and if one is not careful, one might end up achieving the opposite effect of the intended marketing strategy.