A CLIMBER'S GUIDE

“Fixing Symptoms”
06/10/2008

a) Advertising is the Drug War of Sales and Marketing.

In the spirit of the Wizard - Roy Williams, we've often equated the quick fix sales event to the cocaine or morphine of advertising. With a symptom like slow traffic, the temporary fix is usually a sales event or a special offer (cocaine or morphine for the quick high) and ultimately, by masking the problem, you never end up diagnosing or fixing it. What is causing the slow traffic that's resulting in a decrease in market share, and can you fix it? When traffic is down, your business is trying to tell you that it needs your attention in order to get healthy. But you don't listen because you can make the pain go away, even if it is for this month only. You start by driving people through your doors with "1 Year to Pay" then, after some time experiencing the law of diminishing returns, you move to 2 years to pay, then 3, then 4, then 5 because you're chasing the dragon. Just like in drug addiction, it always takes a little more to get the same high that you got from that 1st hit. Soon you're right back to where you started - and not only is the problem still there, now you're hooked.

Here's another parallel that sheds a new light on the futility surrounding marketing today:

b) Advertising is the Heart Disease of Sales and Marketing.

"Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease"
Written by Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., MD.

That's the name of one of the best books on advertising that I've ever laid eyes on. It looks at the causes and effects of Coronary Artery Disease and the efforts of Dr. Esselstyn to eliminate it. I haven't yet completed it as I just got it the other day at Borders and read the 1st chapter or so while my wife was driving me to Healthy Living to pick up some hummus and tofu. See, I'm addressing the problem - for now anyway. Over the last month, I was diagnosed with, and treated for, Heart Disease. From the moment I picked up this book and others like it to learn more about the disease, I saw the parallel with advertising.

"Over the course of a lifetime, one out of every two American men will have some form of the disease. The cost of this epidemic is enormous - greater by far than any other disease. The United States spends more than $250 BILLION dollars a year on heart disease. But here is the truly shocking statistic: nearly all of that money is devoted to treating symptoms. It pays for cardiac drugs, for clot dissolving medications, and for costly mechanical techniques that bypass clogged arteries or widen them with balloons, tiny rotating knives or stents. All of these approaches provide only a temporary relief from the symptoms and do absolutely nothing to cure the underlying disease."

Sounds almost exactly like advertising to me. Countless billions being spent on fixing symptoms, coming up with short term miracles without ever dealing with the underlying problem. The really sad thing is that heart disease is the number one killer in America, and, whether it's lifestyle or genetically induced - it can be reversed. The problem is that we keep fixing symptoms with procedures and drugs and are unwilling to fix the underlying problem.

Why do we keep avoiding the problem? In my opinion, it's because we lack commitment and discipline.
Although the parallel provides for an easy comparison - if you look further, the epidemic, whether it is advertising or heart disease, can be reversed and the problem eliminated if we would only embody more commitment and discipline into our approach. It's just that simple.

"While consulting patients with heart disease as a surgeon at the renowned Cleveland Clinic, Dr, Esselstyn noted the most difficult part of the physician/patient relationship was - "the time when, in effect, a death sentence has been rendered. Most demoralizing for those who had been the beneficiaries of the clinic's surgical interventions was the recognition that so much was done to save them-repeated open heart surgery, angioplasties aplenty, stents, and a host of medications-seemed no longer to have any useful effect."

In my case, I have heart disease and it will never be fully cured. But whether that's from genetics or from my love for fatty, salty foods - or lack of exercise, it doesn't matter - it could be reversed. While most advertisers keep their businesses alive with stents, balloons and drugs, and they are never really committed to fixing the problem. I, however, will not follow suit.

"I believe that we in the medical profession have taken the wrong course. It is as if we were simply standing by, watching millions of people march over a cliff, and then intervening in a desperate, last minute attempt to save them once they have fallen over the edge."
This is eerily similar to the role that many advertising people play for their clients. Instead, we should be teaching them how to avoid the chasm entirely, how to walk parallel to the precipice so that they will never fall at all."

This Dr. Esselstyn is wise beyond his field.
Don't fall off the cliff. And if you already have, here's a rope.

Keep Climbing,

	Climb With Passion
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