I think I’ll never forget my grandfather who, watching TV, like any other retired grandfather and with the fruits of the garden already gathered, got angry every time his favorite sleep show was interrupted by an advertisement:

“What’s with so many ads? They advertise only products that are not sold.”

Little did my grandfather know at the time that I was preparing to be a graduate in, guess what, advertising.

With the old man’s words, I was heading for a career where I had to advertise products that didn’t sell. I was doomed. How can I make sure that my clients, who put all their trust in me so as not to go bankrupt (in my grandfather’s opinion), will manage to emerge victorious in this crazy race to glory?

My great surprise was when, in the first class at the university, our teacher asked us, without any dodging: “So before you came to college, did you think that advertising is only done on products that are not sold?”. We in unison Yes, that’s right. But what did we, the first generation of advertisers, know about Facebook just appearing? I was shocked. Did my grandfather know more about this industry than I did? Should he have been in my place on the faculty benches? Should I have found another career?

Fast-forward for a few years, and my grandparents were sitting next to me to take pictures of their beloved granddaughter, who had just graduated from Advertising. And from that moment on, the long string of questions related to my job began. What do you work on? … (pause) … Oh Advertising. Luckily for me, they weren’t the only ones who put me in this difficulty. Parents, relatives, friends, almost everyone who had nothing to do with the industry followed. And it’s not over yet.

Recently, we introduced a new marketing term .

So, grandpa, this article is for you, although probably with your non-existent access to the internet you won’t read it, but at least the next time you ask me, again, what I’m working on, I’ll be able to explain it to you more easily.

Think of it this way: all your life you have worked at the furniture factory in Târgu-Mureș. In your free time, when you no longer had work in the garden or didn’t need to go shopping for the ingredients from which your grandmother made the famous “tree trunk” cake, you still crafted at home, in your own workshop. You started small, making a bed, a wardrobe or some chairs for your own home. Basically, you saved some money and worked what you liked, theoretically you could bring an additional income to the family. Which you did and, unconsciously, you were also doing marketing. But you didn’t know what he called it or what the principles were.

Probably, visiting your neighbors, you have noticed that one has a table with 3 equal legs and one shorter, or that the other needs a more comfortable bed. And you took notice, because you were a specialist, and you started to propose to them to repair their furniture or, why not, to do something from scratch. Thus, you discovered a potential market in your village and got to work. At first it was more like a chicken or a duck, but it didn’t take long before you received money. Now, if we had already met back then, you would have come to me and said:

“Reka, I discovered that there is a shortage of carpenters in my village and I want to start a business. There are few furniture stores in the area, and people need repairs and new furniture.”

With my marketing knowledge, I would have asked you some questions based on which I would have made a marketing strategy that would include several aspects, for example: how to attract new customers, how to make sure that the neighbors keep coming back to you for new products, how to promote your two discovered niches (repairs and production), and if I had Valentin in the team, together we would have made a business strategy in which we would optimize costs, production, etc.

Most likely we would have put a sign on the gate in which we say what services you offer, we would have printed a few sheets with more details and we would have put them in the mailboxes of the people in the village and, because you had little money, we would have put an advertisement in the Sunday newspaper.

Here you were in the launch phase of your product, not many people knew about you, you didn’t have sales, you didn’t know what price to ask for the services offered and you did everything: you supplied yourself with the raw material, you worked alone and managed your resources as you could.

After you started having more orders and your neighbors recommending you more and more to their neighbors, you moved into the growth phase. You co-opted your grandmother into the business, and she helped you sew all the materials for the furniture, and thus reduced the cost of the textiles that you had to buy already made. But, you could also offer a better product because this way you could make much more personalized custom furniture, in short, you perfected the initial product. You started investing in the workshop, thinking about how to develop and how to optimize work processes. But you’ve also noticed that your colleague from the factory in Târgu-Mureș, the man with whom you commuted every day, starts crafting in his workshop and telling his own neighbors that he makes custom-made furniture. There was nothing you could do, already having a small name in the village, it was normal for competition to appear.

And I would have gladly helped you to think of a strategy through which we can retain existing customers, improve the services offered, do a little research related to your competition and see what your strengths are and how we can use them.

In today’s marketing tactics, I would have put a bench made by you in the train station full of people to try your product, we would have sent flyers to the neighboring village and we would have written a very nice article by you in the Sunday newspaper.

By doing all of the above, you have reached the stage of maturity. You already had a customer base and people knew you as the one who makes quality furniture. “Gura lumii” helped you to develop and already have a larger workshop and orders enough so that you can afford to offer your family a better life. You got to a point where you were satisfied with what you were doing, with how people saw you in the village, but also in the neighboring villages. The competition increased a bit, another of your commuter colleagues opened a new workshop and he had the advantage of having a car with which he could transport the furniture. But you managed to keep your customers because you always invested in quality and long-term relationships and tried to please your customers.

I would have gladly helped you at this stage and I would have suggested that you open another workshop a few villages away where you can have people employed, make new furniture for the children at the orphanage and open a small presentation store with serial furniture.

And after many years of being an exceptional carpenter, you entered the decline phase of the business for several reasons: you could no longer work alone and the people in the village started to buy poorer quality products, but at lower prices from the furniture stores in the city. Grandpa, you should have adapted in this phase and opened your own furniture factory or niche yourself and open a learning center where you could pass on what you knew very well how to do.

Even if you didn’t do that, you taught me and helped me understand how to fix my little problems in the house. And now you’re back at the stage where at your 70+ years old you have a hobby that keeps you fit and young. And, on top of that, you made a very happy little girl who received a wooden swivel chair when she was little, a desk exactly as she wanted and a bed with a built-in wardrobe like you couldn’t find at any store. And that’s exactly what your customers have received over the years, a pleasant experience, which is why you have lasted so long in the field.

You see, grandpa, in all these years you have also done marketing: you have identified a need, you have developed a product, you have offered extra and adjacent services, you have up-selling and cross-selling (you have sold them 6 chairs instead of 4 or a table that goes with the chairs), you have talked to your customers and asked them for feedback (if they like the product or if they would change something about it, if they were satisfied with the working times, etc.), you developed the workshop, you brought extra people to the team, you learned what the competition is and you promoted yourself through different channels (adapted to those times and your location). You have even gone through the entire life cycle of a product. And you understood, more unconsciously, that in marketing it is important to have a direction from the beginning and that you have to adapt it according to how the demand is going. After all, you couldn’t carry the furniture around the village indefinitely by bicycle