Best Buy is a shining example of a company that's not afraid to push things over the edge in their marketing dept, and they're not afraid to fail.

As burger burgher Larry Light explained in his insightful speech at AdWatch, the "positionistas are dead." You can't dictate to the consumer and there is no more mass market to be reached with a single message. In such a world, continuous innovation, testing a variety of messages and channels, becomes a necessity -- and that's going to mean misses as well as hits.

Far to often, we see corporate marketing departments that are truly not experimenting. This is especially evident in the B2B space; the B2C marketers have a bit better read of the market pulse, but sometimes not much. There are certainly a number of reasons for this, but in my opinion, at least with the B2B marketers I've talked to, they seem to be insulated and encumbered by dead perceptions of buyer behavior in their marketplace and are hindered by a lack of awareness of the latest & greatest tactics in corporate marketing. They are not totally to blame though, perhaps their industry is behind the times - many are, which is why they aren't feeling the same pressure that other marketers in more "public facing" industries are.

Nevertheless, there's a great deal to be gained through experimentation in marketing. More to the point, marketers can accelerate their learning if they aren't afraid to test and MEASURE (aka - total accountability in marketing). Not that marketers don't have some measures, but if you tried to run your factories or finances with some of the measurement systems that marketers use, you'd be in a very sorry situation indeed.

[via AdAge]