I'm in the middle of a book by Dr. Frank Lutz, "Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear", and came across a passage where he points to what he feels is one of the most effective political ads of all time, the "Daisy" ad for Lyndon Johnson's presidential run in 1964. It's a juxtaposition of a young child and nuclear war, which culminates in the statement "We must either love each other, or we must die." Wow. That pretty much spells it out.

I'm a big fan of marketing history, especially when I can see it on YouTube and I'm a bigger fan of seeing current marketers pay attention to marketing history in their current campaigns. Today's marketing is FULL of slogans, campaigns, and poor execution that, had the one who devised the strategy in the first place done a bit of historical due diligence, they would not have committed the same mistakes.

I was in a meeting recently where we were discussing a new marketing strategy (web 2.0 type stuff...) with a group of seasoned marketers around the table. I like to drag out historical marketing references from Marketing Classics in meetings like that, not because it makes me feel smart, but because so many of the current challenges we're trying to overcome and the prevailing 'new media' & new ideas are really rooted in time-tested ideals that if we just paid attention to, we'd be so much further ahead...

Anyway, I digress. The point is, I brought the discussion around to 'marketing myopia', or 'what business are you really in here'... None of the marketers around the table could identify w/ marketing myopia, though they did grasp the concept of 'what business are you really in.'

This type of disregard for marketing history is an issue. I'm thinking we need to coin a day "National Marketing History Day", perhaps Kotler's (May 27) or Levitt's (March 1) birthday or something. On that day, we'll read historical marketing articles and check out the 'marketing history' channel on you tube, and drink a bit of the The Real Thing (Coke - 1943).

What do you think?