Marketing Re-Imagined: Dr. Josh Coleman Of Missouri State University On How We Can Re-Imagine The Marketing Industry To Make It More Authentic, Sustainable, And Promote More Satisfaction
An Interview With Drew Gerber
Remember that people are people. We have tremendously sophisticated customer databases today that help us systematize and personalize customer relationships. However, I fear too many of us are spending more time navigating algorithms and analytics to engage with our people than we are actually engaging with them. People are more than profits, and we need to remember the “relationship” part of customer relationship management.
From an objective standpoint, we are living in an unprecedented era of abundance. Yet so many of us are feeling unsatisfied. Why are we seemingly so insatiable? Do you feel that marketing has led to people feeling unsatisfied and not having enough in life? If so, what actions can marketers take to create a world where people feel that they have enough, and they are enough? Can we re-imagine what marketing looks like and how it makes people feel? In this interview series, we are talking to experts in marketing and branding to discuss how we might re-imagine marketing to make it more authentic, sustainable, and promote more satisfaction. As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Dr. Josh Coleman.
Dr. Josh Coleman is associate professor of marketing at Missouri State University. He received his PhD in marketing at the University of Memphis in May 2017. Before that, he studied at Western Kentucky University, where he received a Bachelor of Science in marketing in December 2009 and an MBA in December 2012. For nearly 10 years now, he has researched cause-related marketing and social enterprises. Working with nonprofits and small businesses over the years, he has published research in leading academic journals, taught classes and seminars on socially-conscious business practices, and consulted nearly two dozen clients. He has also contributed a chapter on the evolution of social enterprises to an internationally syndicated book. His most recent work describes the ways businesses use social causes to promote authenticity through their advertising.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to know how you got from “there to here.” Inspire us with your backstory!
Thanks for having me! I’m a professor at Missouri State University, and as cheesy as it sounds, it really is my dream job. I was a sophomore in college taking my first marketing course, when the light bulb went off and I realized I wanted to be a professor someday. I never imagined it would take me to Memphis, TN, nor that I would ultimately end up in Springfield, MO, and especially that, through personal connections I made along the way, I’d travel all over the world — yet somehow here I am. And it has been so exciting to press into purposeful business every step of the way.
Can you please tell us about your typical day? What day-to-day structures do you have in place for you to experience a fulfilled life?
I don’t think professors have a typical day! I teach both online and in-person classes, I conduct marketing research, I work for my church when I’m not at MSU, and in between it all there’s a good chance I’m driving my kids to and from school or playing with them at home. So, that being said, I don’t have many day-to-day structures in place, since every day looks completely different. However, no matter how crazy each day might be, my wife and I live by our shared calendar. We spend time every evening talking about what we’re doing the next day, where we’ll be, who has which kid for dropoff and pickup, and then we make sure lunches are packed and the coffee is ready for the morning. So, preparing every night helps ground us and keep us focused for whatever each day might bring.
What lessons would you share with yourself if you had the opportunity to meet your younger self?
I would tell my younger self life is going to be a lot less exciting than you probably think it is, and yet there is much more beauty in the mundane than you can ever realize. That sounds really pessimistic, but it’s more a caution against the idealistic adventures I had in mind when I was in college and all of the visions of who I would one day be. I’ve had the privilege to do amazing things in my life so far! But there’s a lot of time in between the adventures. Those are the times in which contentment and joy are sometimes hard to find. But those are the times where it means the most.
Ok, thank you for sharing that. Now let’s discuss marketing. To begin, can you share with our readers a bit about why you are an authority on marketing?
As a professor, I’ve taught advertising for many years now, and I’ve published in journals and at conferences all over the nation. But I feel like the most valuable insight I’ve gained is simply being with students every other day. College students have a knack for telling it like it is, and they usually have their thumbs on the latest trends (and social media influencers). When I’m not lecturing or grading their homework, I try to spend as much time as I can listening to their view of the world. They never have any problems sharing it!
Throughout history, marketing has driven trade for humans. What role do you see that marketing has played in creating the human experience?
Humans are built for relationships. We see this for thousands of years of communal-based societies, where trade and community welfare were the drivers of ethnography. It’s really only been over the past few centuries that marketing has turned into a derisive tactic, where the primary focus has shifted to making as much money as possible rather than seeking the welfare of the community. I believe now we’re seeing a shift back to purpose-driven marketing, where relationships and societal good are the motivating factors to a greater extent than profit.
Many 21st-century marketing professionals in a capitalistic society will discuss solving human “pain points” as a way to sell products, services, and other wares successfully. In your opinion or experience, has aggravating pain points led to more pain? Can you explain what you mean?
Absolutely, marketing has shifted to solving problems. Which is fine in some sense — we need food, we need medicine, and it’s totally okay to provide economic solutions to these needs — but when the primary focus is providing immediate fixes to problems, we lose sight of the underlying reasons as to why those problems exist in the first place. And it’s such a slippery slope! Many of the “problems” today’s marketers promise to fix are not much more than first-world issues of comfort and luxury. This leads to a derision of sustainability, where marketers are simply serving as quick-fix solutions.
Different cultures view trade/marketing differently. While some may focus on “pain-points” others may focus on “purpose-points”. How do other cultures differ in how they approach marketing? Please give examples or studies you may know about.
I’ve had the privilege to travel all over the world, from east Asia to eastern and western Europe to southern Africa, from first-world to third-world. Across so many different cultures I’ve seen firsthand, the value of human relationships has not once diminished. I’ve seen modern marketing trends alive and well in London, Paris, Florence and Rome, and I’ve watched a young girl hand over a few coins for a farmer’s potatoes in Lesotho, Africa. In both cases, humans depend on other humans to meet their basic needs. Social media influencers in Florence are totally considered “marketers” while the potato farmer in Lesotho would never think of himself as such. Yet, both serve fundamental human needs in very different ways. Across any culture, community and society, relationships play such a vital role in how humans relate to one another. Marketing, then, is simply a tool which facilitates the engagement of relational exchanges, which presses into your idea of “purpose-points” rather than “pain-points.” I believe we all long for “purpose-points” to be fulfilled, but modern marketing — and American culture, specifically — is settling too often for the immediate gratification of “pain-points.” It should be no surprise, then, when so many of today’s marketers struggle so deeply to achieve and attain customer satisfaction.
Okay, fantastic. Here is the main question of our interview: It seems as if we have never stopped to question marketing. In your opinion, how can marketing professionals be more responsible for how their advertising shapes our human experience? Based on your experience and your area of expertise can you please share “Five Ways We Can Re-Imagine The Marketing Industry To Make It More Authentic, Sustainable, And Promote More Satisfaction”?
1. Remember that people are people. We have tremendously sophisticated customer databases today that help us systematize and personalize customer relationships. However, I fear too many of us are spending more time navigating algorithms and analytics to engage with our people than we are actually engaging with them. People are more than profits, and we need to remember the “relationship” part of customer relationship management.
2. Know your audience. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to marketing today. We have so many channels at our disposal, and so much instant access to international reach, that it can become really difficult to know the best ways to communicate with our customers. And when I say “know your audience,” I don’t just mean know facts and demographics about them. Take time to actually know your audience — what their favorite coffeeshops are, what they like to do in their spare time, what they value and what’s important to them.
3. Know yourself. I fear we have way too many leadership books today. These books provide so much great insight for marketers and business leaders! But in the process, I believe they are causing too many young business leaders to lose sight of who they are in their pursuit to become who the latest, trendiest thought leader says they should be. When the latest trends change so rapidly, marketers become nothing more than shallow chameleons, changing with the current times (and memes), but having little foundation or substance beyond what the latest podcast can offer.
4. Take the long-term approach. If true, purposeful marketing is built on and around relationships, and it’s going to take time. Real relationships are messy, and they aren’t built overnight. This stands in direct opposition to today’s instant gratification society, where likes, retweets and viral TikToks are the new measures of success. Marketers must take a step back, invest in the time any good relationship takes and restructure benchmarks for success around long-term relational value. Customer satisfaction can’t be measured in Tweets and TikToks alone.
5. Be honest. The number one thing I tell my students is to always be honest. Not just when they’re taking an exam and I don’t want them to cheat, but in every business practice, customer interaction and relationship they have. It’s way too easy to hide behind our social media personas today. We must be honest in the ways by which we conduct our businesses, but before that we’ve got to learn to be honest with ourselves. This deeper level of authenticity is challenging, but the long-term dividends are potentially world changing.
Do you have any favorite books, podcasts, or resources that have inspired you about marketing differently?
I love “Start Something That Matters” by Blake Mycoskie, the founder of TOMS. I’ve also really enjoyed “Amusing Ourselves to Death” by Neil Postman. It was written in the 1980s, but Postman was almost prophetic in how well his insight applies to our social media-saturated society today. I also love “Jurassic Park” by Michael Crichton; it doesn’t really have anything to with marketing (but it sure inspires us to think twice before we do the “next big thing”).
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement to reimagine marketing, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
I would love to see a movement where everyone’s primary motivating factor for anything — business, education, medical care, you name it — was simply love. If we loved people more than profits, if we loved every human as a beautifully designed individual and not as a threat to our own personal motives or values, the world would probably look a lot different than it does now. Too many of us are so busy loving our own lives (and posting about them on social media) that we’ve lost sight of what it means to love one another, much less be truly loved ourselves.
What is the best way for our readers to continue to follow your work online?
This sounds super ironic given that my job is to teach advertising and social media, but I have little to no online presence! If I want to know who someone is, I’d much rather actually talk to them than snoop on their social media first. And I want the same for other people with me. So, no real social media presence, and no real online followings. But I’m happy to meet up at a coffeeshop and engage in some old-fashioned human-to-human interaction anytime.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this. We wish you only continued success.
About The Interviewer: For 30 years, Drew Gerber has been inspiring those who want to change the world. Drew is the CEO of Wasabi Publicity, Inc., a full-service PR agency lauded by PR Week and Good Morning America. Wasabi Publicity, Inc. is a global marketing company that supports industry leaders, change agents, unconventional thinkers, companies and organizations that strive to make a difference. Whether it’s branding, traditional PR or social media marketing, every campaign is instilled with passion, creativity and brilliance to powerfully tell their clients’ story and amplify their intentions in the world.
