---
title: "Lao Miao: Marketers, It's Just a Transformation! Don't Be Shy, It's Not the First Time"
description: "Coca-Cola's elimination of its marketing department has alarmed marketers, but P&G made this move three years ago. What should we do? This article discusses the urgent need for marketing transformation, emphasizing that traditional marketing roles are becoming obsolete and that marketers must adapt to new realities."
author: "苗庆显"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2017-04-06"
language: "en"
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# Lao Miao: Marketers, It's Just a Transformation! Don't Be Shy, It's Not the First Time

> Coca-Cola's elimination of its marketing department has alarmed marketers, but P&G made this move three years ago. What should we do? This article discusses the urgent need for marketing transformation, emphasizing that traditional marketing roles are becoming obsolete and that marketers must adapt to new realities.

**Introduction**
Coca-Cola's cancellation of its marketing department has marketers worried, but P&G made this move three years ago. What should we do?

**1**
As the world's top marketing-driven company, when Coca-Cola catches a cold, the global marketing circle sneezes.
Indeed, the cancellation of the Chief Marketing Officer position, replaced by Chief Growth Officer, immediately caused a stir in China. Some marketers are anxious, some feign calm, and some turn a blind eye.
A few days ago, Liu Chunxiong wrote an article titled **"Marketing is Changing, Marketers on the Road to Unemployment"** which sparked widespread attention and heated discussion.
In fact, this trend was already evident years ago:
> Some foreign companies have renamed their marketing departments as "Communication Department," roughly meaning "communication department."

In 2014, P&G eliminated its marketing department, renaming it the Brand Management Department; while most domestic companies place great importance on sales departments, P&G long ago called it CBD, "Customer Business Development," mainly to assist distributors.
Around that time, Lao Miao told traditional marketers to transform, saying it would be too late if they didn't. Basically no one paid attention, and later he stopped bothering.
In 2001, Ye Maozhong proposed "Marketing = Communication," roughly meaning to understand marketing with a communication mindset: **Product, price, place, promotion—these elements are all communication elements.** They not only carry information but also serve as communication channels.
All effective marketing actions are based on insight and research into consumer behavior, and changes in consumer behavior stem from the information they receive. The information our eyes, mouth, ears, nose, hands, and even body perceive fundamentally influences our consumption behavior. Depending on different market environments, periods, and marketing objectives, we should convey different marketing messages to consumers.
Therefore, from this perspective, marketing is about designing different communication messages, selecting appropriate channels, and using suitable methods to transmit information and receive feedback, thereby influencing consumer behavior.
At that time, few understood; it was like talking to a wall, and some even called Ye Maozhong "advertising-only" or "tricking clients into advertising."
Good advice is hard to give to the doomed; after a year or two, Lao Ye also gave up.
After years of not seeing, not understanding, and pretending not to see, the urgency of marketing organizational change in 2017 has grown from a "hair's end" to a cartload of firewood; turning a blind eye is no longer possible.
What's more palpable is: traditional marketers sticking to old ways are either unemployed or on the road to unemployment; traditional marketing organizations are either transforming or on the road to transformation.

**2**
Lao Miao has always disliked scaring people with death; scaring the doomed is useless, and those not doomed have already started new explorations.
[Link omitted]
> _"China's marketing has been built this way over the years; countless brand glories were achieved by running from store to store and negotiating with clients one by one."_
>
> _"But now marketing's reliance on information and content is increasing, while the value of sales channels is declining. Traditional manpower-heavy tactics and terminal maintenance costs are rising, with diminishing returns. Many companies are significantly cutting traditional sales staff."_
>
> _"These marketers won't be 'unemployed' for now, because there are still many companies with a 'channel is king' mindset: thinking that having a distributor sell their goods or leveraging a relationship will sell well... But in recent years, such models have almost universally failed, often ending with both companies and marketers cursing each other and parting ways."_
>
> _"...As these backward-thinking companies decline, such marketers, who once made great contributions to Chinese marketing, will gradually be eliminated (or transformed). The state in 2017 can be considered a kind of hidden unemployment."_

When discussing transformation, let's return to a common sense: **Sales only occur at the consumer level.** As Zhao Bo put it, **sales only exist at the C-end.** What we usually call the sales department is actually managing the marketing channel chain.
A name that isn't proper makes words less effective, so P&G calls what we consider the "sales department" the "Customer Business Development Department," and Kotler calls them "assistant managers."
Our brand companies have always **treated distributors as customers, cooperation partners as sales targets, and united front targets as adversaries, leading to massive channel internal friction and waste.**
Even for distributors and retailers, the mindset must not be "selling goods" but **service and value provision.** Your selling mindset should be directed at consumers; if you apply it in the wrong place, the more force, the uglier the death.
Therefore, the transformation of sales personnel seems logical.
If you excel at selling and have a selling mindset, shift to B2C, dealing with consumers: offline roles include in-store promotion, management, training, promotional activity execution, and terminal sales scenario design; online roles include traffic generation, activity conversion, and store operations.
If you still think dealing with middlemen and retailers is more high-end, then you need to shift to a **supply chain mindset—** managing the supply chain, not the entire chain, but the segment from brand to terminal: including brand, distributor, secondary wholesaler, retailer, terminal store, platform, and various tech service providers, covering logistics, information flow, capital flow, warehousing, time cycles, product mix, and technical services. The fundamental purpose is still **to reduce channel internal friction and waste, improve channel efficiency, and lower channel costs.**
[Link omitted]
In the past, Gree and Wahaha, and currently Laoganma and Dali, because they treat distributors not as sales targets but as united front and service objects, now have lighter channel burdens, fewer but more efficient staff.
VIVO and OPPO's success in third- and fourth-tier cities in recent years appears on the surface to be due to deep distribution increasing consumer contact frequency, driving growth. But the deeper reason is BBK's channel top-level design of "turning agents into branches": under high personnel, rent, and logistics costs, they can do deep distribution well, relying on efficient channel operations and low internal friction.

**3**
The traditional marketing department's functions are also being weakened.
Market research is weakened by big data, and now e-commerce trial sales feedback mechanisms are accurate and fast, with relatively low costs.
Ground promotion is less efficient due to rising personnel costs and declining offline foot traffic, reducing its weight in corporate marketing.
The original advertising, PR, media, publicity, and event departments, as "chief spending officers," are the most affected in this round of change.
A major misconception among traditional marketers: **trying to attribute all market goals to the company's own marketing activities.**
Hence concepts like "advertising bombardment" and "terminal bloodbath," and metrics like CPM, GRP, and 1+ reach.
[Link omitted]
> _A product that achieves huge market success is influenced by its direct marketing actions on only a few consumers. Most consumers are influenced by the overall market atmosphere: purchases, reviews, discussions by people around them, online buzz, positive reviews, etc._
>
> _Take a successful internet campaign: it typically goes through four stages: initiation, fission, diffusion, and trending._
>
> _Companies can fully control only the initiation stage, and partially control the fission stage. In the diffusion and trending stages, companies actually cannot control it; it's determined by the internet's emotional atmosphere toward the content._
>
> _So the most accurate marketing investment posture is not advertising bombardment, publicity offensives, or terminal battles. These tactics might have worked in the channel-dominated era with less information, but today, with massive, fragmented information and fragmented channel business circles, they are "more money than brains" (or less money and less brains)._

Previously, the principle was "the bigger the ad, the better," where high awareness brought high sales and channel pursuit.
Now, if you don't press the right market button, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, or more in promotion costs will go down the drain; Evergrande Spring Water is a living proof.
If you can press the right button and ignite market sentiment, even smaller budgets can create sensational effects. Wang Jianlin's "small goal" and his son's various "antics" saved Wanda, already wealthy, countless promotional expenses.
Many large companies are significantly reducing traditional media spending, while some small companies are abandoning it altogether.
So in this round of impact, departments and personnel originally doing publicity, promotion, media, events, and activities have depreciated the most. This department's functions will become internet-based and self-media-based, focusing on internet content dissemination.
Product managers (PMs) seem to be in demand, but the original PM function was built around the 4Ps: developing product strategy, creating new product concepts, managing product life cycles, determining composite channel strategies, setting promotion strategies, and coordinating production, supply, and sales.
**The new product manager, however, builds functions around "consumer communication," which is 1P+4C (1P is product, 4C is Schultz's customer, cost, convenience, and communication). The new PM will place more emphasis on consumer feedback and establishing communication channels with customers.**
The development goal for product managers will be IP-based products that can bring their own traffic; in the future, channels will attach to content, like water flowing naturally rather than digging channels to divert water.

**4**
Drucker said: "The essence of a business has only two core functions: innovation and marketing." Kotler said: "Marketing is creating and delivering value, a growth strategy."
Both true masters said this, so marketing's role is not diminishing but far from fully realized. What we marketers need to do is adjust to the new environment.
Over the past three decades, our marketing has evolved from the planned economy's "sales section chief" era: from sitting facing south as a lord, to going out to do business, from "alcohol capacity determines sales" to channel and terminal construction, from channel push to terminal supremacy; in promotion, from "good wine needs no bush" to CCTV's "king of bids," from advertising bombardment to media mix strategies, from advertising shouting to "creativity is power"; in marketing theory and tools, from USP and brand image theory to positioning and integrated marketing communications, all have been continuously practiced.
Our marketing has gone through several rounds of great waves, each transformation eliminating countless people and companies, while countless others have risen from the ashes. The difference is that this time the waves are especially fierce, and the physical environment marketers rely on is especially poor.
Isn't it just transformation? What's the big deal! Lao Miao has been through it. **"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." — Let's encourage marketers and companies in transformation!**
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