Improving Profitability

It’s a possibility that the marketing industry has marketed itself into a corner, and it’s not impossible that the reason for this can be laid at the feet from our cousins across the pond. There’s nothing sinister or contrived about this, but rather to do with culture and geography. Expand please?

Right, the US is much bigger than the UK, and has lots more people (geographic). The US is not only more connected, but will always look for ways to connect further (culture); we couldn’t conceive of the idea that our PM could negotiate Brexit via Twitter, yet the US President can fire senior staff thus without raising an eyebrow amongst the electorate.

Despite a preponderance of digital exhibitionism in dear old Blighty, we are nonetheless far more reserved than our American counterparts. It’s because of the sheer size of the US and its connectivity that when a new firm launches in whatever market, it has really to get on with it and shout loud before someone from a different coast grabs the initiative, shouts louder and ‘eats their lunch’. The idea is to work flat out for five years, then float before going global. On that basis, there probably aren’t that many US start-ups that never harboured ambitions to become ‘a corporate’.

How vulgar. Well, not really. UK plc needs its corporates too; they create jobs, provide a platform for our pension funds, and occasionally even make some contribution to the exchequer.

But the proportion of companies that start out with the sole ambition to set the FTSE alight will be much lower than in the US for the Dow. It’s not just pragmatic pessimism (culture) behind this – although there may be an element of that, but rather that we don’t need to: at our widest point, we’re probably no more than 400 miles across compared with 3,000 in the US, and with a 1/6^th of the population (geographic).

The trouble is, our marketing in the UK generally tries to ape that of the US when it’s not necessary in a lot of cases. There are many companies here that don’t want to expand, don’t want to increase capacity, but certainly do want to increase profitability. Yet our marketing industry, particularly the social media ‘experts’ – sorry chaps, I’ve singled you out again, but you have rather walked into it – are pushing growth over profitability and therefore not providing the service many UK companies need.

If, then, you are one of these organisations that doesn’t actually want to make any more stuff, but does want a bigger margin and a life to enjoy outside of work, then drop us a line.