CORNER ON THE MARKET
April 2001 By Ron Burgess

THE 2001 MARKETING HORROR STORY: CREEPING PERFECTIONISM - Part One

A huge black hole in the accountant's cost tally is the use of executive and highly skilled (and costly) technical personnel. One of the areas in which this important resource is misused is in creative design and copy writing. While these tasks don't traditionally fall into most executives' job descriptions, when a void in marketing staff or a misunderstanding of the strategic marketing process exists, in practice CREEPING PERFECTIONISM is in your building!

Most of you reading this will initially exclude your business as a candidate because you believe you don't have: 1. A void in marketing staff or 2. A misunderstanding of the strategic marketing process.

If you are one of those, two decades of working inside client businesses says the odds aren't even 50-50 on your side; so read on.

If you are a product oriented business instead of a marketing oriented business, or if you don't have a seasoned marketing professional in your inner management team, who has a staff that commands at least 4 of the 5 marketing personalities, your business is almost sure to be misusing highly skilled managers and leaders in areas in which they aren't skilled, namely: copy writing and aesthetic decisions.

CREEPING PERFECTIONISM is the constant tweaking and changing of copy or design elements, to the point of substantial waste, without commensurate improvement.

This disease is spreading due to a new and unforeseen force . . . the Internet. Now technical types fancy themselves in-charge of page design, logo animation, marketing navigation and even copy! Worse this disability is enabled by executives and marketers that are intimidated by the "technology" of the Internet. In companies without capable marketing executives, the decease is rampant. Here is a test, sound familiar?

Your finance executive gets final approval of brochure copy because he/she is good at grammar.

Your secretary is in charge of advertising placement because you don't have time, so copy is always last minute and requires approval of several trusted employees.

Copy and ad space requires multiple management sign-offs so rotates around the office like the slowing props of a landed helicopter.

Your IT expert runs Website design projects.

Your product manager runs Website design projects.

A product sheet or brochure requires more than two revisions.

Never happened in your organization? Go to the next column, you pass.

For the other 75%, try to kill this disease.

When your executives spend inordinate time checking spelling, writing, rewriting, changing and re-changing copy, the cost is enormous.

I have witnessed a run of brochures with a print cost of two thousand dollars, costing another $10,000 in executive time and a development duration of 6 to 9 months! Not a few times, this is common . . . you know who you are!

Likewise a Website that may cost $2000 can easily use up another $8000 in executive time and be useless as a communication devise, the product either too fancy with high-end features, or bone dry.

But if your company has a few wishy-washys, anal retentive, or a dysfunctional entrepreneur, you will certainly double the executive cost drain of the above examples. It's a quiet thief of your most precious resources . . . CREEPING PERFECTIONISM.

Next month- Inoculate your company against creeping perfectionism.

Creeping Perfectionism Part Two. If you would like to read Part Two now, it can be read on www.burgessman.com/resources/may2001.htm