Marketing... what is it?
The university student doing in-store promotions on Saturdays to pay the rent – she works in marketing. Also the Junior Account in your advertising agency, who spends his nights in the agency for little money hoping for a brighter future – he works in marketing. The Product Manager of a multinational company, with a MBA from a top school works in marketing too, as well as the top manager who is Marketing Director for a big Telco and earns hundreds thousands of Euro a year.
Marketing is a very wide concept. It includes all the activities linking a company to the market. Studying the market, analysing customer needs, developing new products, designing a brand with its packaging, setting up communication programs. Marketing is all this (and more).
And every company does it, more or less consciously, also produce companies do marketing.
Here’s the produce marketing problem: quite often, important marketing decisions like choosing a name for a brand or designing its pack are taken without thinking too much, or basing decisions on intuition or friends’ advice. In the end - this is the prevailing idea - producing and selling is what really matters. Then we leave the market deciding whether this year we’ll make some profit. All the rest is a waste of time.
This was possible, once upon a time. Now, it’s not. World has changed. Produce offer is wide and global. Big retailers dominates the market. Competition is far stronger. Pressure on price and margin is becoming more and more unsustainable.
To get out of the scenario where the winner is who sells at the lowest price, produce companies need to start using marketing concepts, and need to do it in a professional way. They need to convince trade and consumers that their products are worth being paid more for. They have to design strong brands, with a unique and differentiating idea behind. They need to improve their communication with consumers, starting with a better packaging.
You don’t need a lot of money to do all this, You just need to do things well.
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Pisani Fresh Marketing is a consulting & marketing and commercial services agency for the produce world. It has been founded by Maurizio Pisani, former marketing Director for Chiquita and Commercial Director for Del Monte.
For more information:
Maurizio Pisani
maurizio@pisanifm.it
www.pisanifm.it