Three Vicars and a Therapist

A paid post, because it'll help you make money. That's the deal. It's about why everything that you believe about marketing's 4 P's is almost certainly wrong.

Here’s the deal. If I’m banging on about something that’s on my mind it’s only fair that it should be free. I mean, seriously…

But where it’s something that constitutes “business advice” I put that behind the paywall. It’s cheaper than hiring me for the day. Although feel free to take up that option for bespoke advice. But the modest charge applied seems a piffling sum to pay given that what follows will lead to you and your business being showered in untold riches. Or even the more likely scenario of a moderate-but-deeply-satisfying uplift in customer engagement, sales, profit, and a general sense of well-being. Under-promise, over-deliver, as they say.

If you sell wine, market wine, make wine, or make your living communicating about wine I’d warmly commend you take out a subscription. But like a bald, middle-aged Mandy Rice-Davis I would say that wouldn’t I? You can always claim it as a business expense. Which in fairness is more than John Profumo could do.

Three Vicars and a Therapist

Four years ago I was trying to think of a subject for a talk at a wine marketing conference. I suggested doing one called “Three Vicars and a Therapist”. “Absolutely not” said a friend. “A title like that sounds like an off-colour joke. And knowing what you’re like, you’ll end up winking at the audience saying something like “and that’s what SHE said”¹. I never did the talk, but I’m writing about it now. It does. I did. She was right. #meta.

The thing is, I was making quite a sensible point. Great marketing relies on three vicars and a therapist. But there’s a twist. We all think the therapist is a vicar. And anyone who’s spent time with three vicars needs a therapist. Trust me, I know. I went to a priest-run boarding school.

The “vicars” in marketing are the thing you’re buying, the price you pay, and the place you buy it from. The therapist is all the ads, social media, blogs, and PR. The sharp-eyed among you will have noticed this is marketing’s fabled “4 P’s”, which aren’t actually all P’s, more two P’s an IMC and a D.

This is the sort of thing that led the late Bill Hicks to say…

By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing…kill yourself. It's just a little thought; I'm just trying to plant seeds.

This is surely because marketing people imagine everyone else is as interested in marketing as they are. But just to help “normal” people make sense of this, the “4 P’s” are the pillars of marketing tactics. Product, Price, Promotion, and Place. Except that they don’t really make sense. So in reality it’s Product, Price, Integrated Marketing Communications, and Distribution. But “the 2 P’s, and IMC, and a D” doesn’t roll off the tongue in the way marketing aphorisms are required to by some unwritten law.

The Product Vicar

Anyway, that thing you buy, the product, is a vicar wearing brightly-coloured vestments.