THE SINGULARITY OF BUSINESSS
It was always this way
Marketing is the mechanism (system) by which an Organisation makes its promises to its audiences
Manufacturing is the mechanism (system) through which an Organisation makes the promised ‘substance’. (service, solution or product)
The Organisation is the system that connects/coordinates the two.
A Definition Of Marketing: The meaning - The brand, the promise, the advertising, media planning/buying, the PR, the messaging, value propositions, the story, the corporate identity, the packaging, the UI/UX - the research and analytics that improve the awareness and course correction and insight and data that drives decision making inside the organisation.
A Definition Of Manufacturing: The making - The design, creation and making of the substance, product, service or solution. The plant, infrastructure, resources, systems, skills, rules, procedures, techniques and capabilities to make or do what the organisation makes/does.
A Definition Of Organisation: The managing - Whatever isn’t covered by the above. The management, payroll, strategy and leadership. The decisions that ensure marketing makes the most efficient and effective interface with manufacturing - and vice versa. Managing the partners - eg distribution of what gets made - the substance and so on.
NOW Enter Disruptive Technology
Digitalisation shortened the time and distance between ‘marketing’ and ‘manufacturing’ and the odds of success for anyone misunderstanding that.
The promise to the audience is right there, fully exposed on display to all of us.
The audience sees what’s made and what’s being made right there.
The promise is palpable, viewable, experienceable and comparable in every dimension. In every sense.
What manufacturing involves is what marketing is.
A Definition Of Digitalisation: The act of automating the core business processes and systems to increase efficiency and effectiveness. The act uses techniques and technology, often third party skills and resources to transform existing business processes or install complete platforms and solutions for increased customer experience, business performance and all the transactions and actions within.
A Definition Of Promise: Everything that we hear, see and sense from a given ‘brand’ enterprise or utility. This promise gets called a wide range of things - brand, awareness, experience, reputation and all the new and evolving components that add up to causing a favourable choice of one solution over another. Omnichannel
The Singularity Of Business
The Definition Of Singularity: In our case the term singularity describes the moment when a system changes so much that its rules and technologies are incomprehensible to previous generations. Think of it as a point-of-no-return in history. Advances in expectations, processes and underlying technology mean that the way we’ve thought and worked are no longer valid.
First
Contemplate food, cars, consumer goods, retailing, fashion, sports goods, movies, computing, holidays - travel, legal services - anything.
Think Amazon, Google, Apple, Deliveroo and Uber and every one of their competitors as well as the online presence of every business on the planet.
Think about how we are influenced by countless channels and a plethora of evolving forms of media.
Social media, websites, activations, experiences, retail shopping excursions, out of home advertising, friendly referrals, consumer comment trails, peer opinion, traditional media channels, apps on our smartphones, product placements, Google searches, comparison website exercises. Everything.
WE CHOOSE
EVERYTHING
The making and manufacture of each part of what we choose is open and on display through modern day marketing techniques and technologies.
Everything is increasingly configurable by us - the ingredients in our food, the details on our cars, the services we experience in our taxis/transport and the holidays, hotels and lifestyles we inhabit.
Everything available in any way, at an any time and for anyone with access to a screen and the credit.
All the components (the processes and systems of manufacture) have become more and more transparent as organisations seek to differentiate and create uniquenesses.
Second
Contemplate how close ‘we’ (the audiences) now are to the promises made by every one of these organisations.
Think how close the manufacturing/organisation has to be as they deliver and back up that promise of delivery and experience.
Think of every decision we make along the journey as we choose their ‘promise’.
That’s the work every organisation is doing as they digitalise their businesses.
Summary
We are reaching ‘singularity’ in business.
The place where the meaning, the making and the managing collide.
Through ‘digitalisation’ there is no longer any distance between what we choose through the marketing and the making of it.
We are directly involved with the people designing, building, packaging, distributing, transacting and servicing it.
We are fully implicated in the whole experience at every step because (increasingly) what we do has an immediate impact on what’s being made.
Therefore (however we define the organisation) it’s indivisible from the ‘marketing’ or the ‘making’.
In fact for the failing businesses it’s only the words used to denote them (marketing, manufacturing and organisation) that’s keeping them apart.
