Planning, Nurturing and Reaping Profits

Railroad tracks.

The  US  standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number.

Why was that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them in  England, and English expatriates designed the U.S. railroads.

Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used.

Why did ‘they’ use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they  had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in  England, because that’s the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads?  Imperial  Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including  England  ) for their legions.  Those roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads?  Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels.  Since the chariots were made for Imperial  Rome , they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.  Therefore the  United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Bureaucracies live forever.

It gets even better.  When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank.  These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs.  The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah.  The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site.  The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel.  The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as a Roman chariot.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world’s most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of the Roman chariot.

What does this story have to do with data-driven marketing in the 21st century?

How many of us are marketing just the way we did a decade or more ago, just because no one ever asked “why do we do it this way?”  Here are some examples:

• An 8-week creative and approval process to develop and launch emails.  Why?  Because that was how long it took to develop and approve direct mail, that’s why!
• Evaluating data-driven marketing programs once a year, right before building plans for the new year.  Come to think of it, building plans only once per year is another one of those rules.  Do our customers change their behavior according to your fiscal calendar?
• Trying to grow the business through steeper acquisition promotions when times get tough.  Nothing like creating a customer base of highly promotion-sensitive customers ready to leave for the next deal, is there?

I am sure that if any of us pause to think about our marketing, my own firm included, we would find old-fashioned, outmoded methods of growing our businesses.  But customer data, databases and the Internet have changed business models and continue to do so, on an accelerating basis.  Anyone marketing on the ipad yet?  2mm sold in 60 days, I heard!

We must subject our “rules” to close scrutiny, and challenge those that were built for business in years gone by (like for 1999 or so… ).  Otherwise, we will find ourselves dragging the chariot uphill, with only ourselves to bear the weight, and the blame.

What outdated marketing rules or processes do you have in your company?

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