Jack Trout: That Dog Don’t Hunt

I lived in the South for a brief period about a decade ago. There were several charming expressions I learned during my tenure there. I still maintain they are among the most eloquent elements of our national heritage. One of my favorites is: “that dog don’t hunt” and its wonderful corollary: “if you can’t hunt with the big dogs, don’t get off the porch”. 

Well, one of the quote-unquote “big dogs” got off the porch this week, and he should have stayed right where he was.  Acclaimed advertising guru Jack Trout has a column in Forbes this week decrying the uselessness of digital word-of-mouth marketing. His rationale? You can’t control it. His solution? Advertising of course. 

It would be laughable if it wasn’t so pathetic. Mr. Trout is correct. In the new world order advertisers have lost control of brands. He’s also correct that the opinions of the blogosphere are unpredictable and that it’s difficult to base a sales forecast on its whims and trends. I’ll grant him that. But with all due respect, he’s missing the point. 

Consumers are exhausted with the loud-mouthed blasts of mass media advertising. They’re immune to the 3,000-odd marketing messages they receive each day. So they’re taking matters into their own hands: they’re opting out. Between on-demand entertainment, do-not-call lists and spam filters, consumers are successfully blocking more and more marketing output. 

Rather than bury their heads in the sand and remain dependent on increasingly inefficient old-school tools, marketers are becoming even more creative and trying new ideas. Viral marketing, podcasts, and corporate blogging are just a few ways marketers are engaging in conversations with customers and prospects. More will emerge in the future. 

What Mr. Trout and his brethren seem to forget is that, at the end of the day, marketing and sales is about building relationships. That used to mean the one-to-one relationship your grandmother had with her neighborhood grocer. In the era of social networking and Web 2.0 we have the capability to build relationships digitally, across cities and around the globe. If anything Mr. Trout and his minions should welcome this shift – it amplifies and extends brands in ways that weren’t possible ten years ago and will become more effective and efficient marketing strategies. 

The film “Good Night and Good Luck” is a sonnet to the era of responsible journalism. The characters in that movie angst about the impacts of their editorial choices on the show’s sponsor. Ultimately they make the decision to pursue the higher standards of journalism, despite the risks to the show’s advertising budget. No doubt Mr. Trout would have regarded that as the golden age of advertising. Would he have acted with as much grace and forethought? 

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Jack Trout, Viral Marketing, Web2.0, Word of Mouth Marketing

Comments

[Mack Collier]

Actually it's 'that dog won't hunt', but your opinions about Trout and his old-school mentality are spot-on !

[Leslie]

Mack,

Thanks for the correction, and for reading the blog. My Southern friends must have been grammatically challenged when they gave me their version of the saying. Either way, I agree with you that it applies to Mr. Trout, and many of his old-school counterparts. The good news is that there are more of us around now. Keep the faith!

[Mack Collier]

Don't worry we have butchered every word/phrase in the english language at one time or another ;)

BTW love your blog, I'll definitely be stopping back by!

[Leslie]

And I've added yours to my RSS feed as well. Looking forward to future comments.

[Errol Smith (of the Nanocasting Alliance)]

In response to all the chatter about Jack Trout's comments on word-of-mouth marketing, Jack Trout invited a group of "buzz evangelist" to face off with him on his radio program. Steve Rubel and Rick Murray of Edelman, Emanuel Rosen of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, Seth Godin, Joseph Jaffe and Errol Smith (me....producer of Trout Radio) sat down to deconstruct the buzz around word-of-mouth. I listened to all the arguments before sitting in on the roundtable discussion to end the series and concluded that rumors of Jack's "passing" are indeed greatly exaggerated... You can hear the interviews at the roundtable wrap up at:

http://www.jackstreet.com/jackstreet/WJCK-SteveRubelE.cfm

and the entire series at:

http://www.troutandpartners.com/radio/Strategy.asp