Marketing communication: principles and practice

commanding
: giving orders in exercising authority over people to control
them for the purpose of domination
•
persuading
: inducing belief or action through reason
•
influencing
: manipulating beliefs and actions of others from a superior
stance
•
collaborating
: pursuing jointly held goals for mutual benefit
Commanding, persuading, and influencing are authoritarian methods for
egocentric pursuit of goals, whereas collaborating is a participatory process
of joint social action motivated by sociocentric interests. We are arguing
here that a conversation model of marketing communication comes much
closer to the contemporary need for responsible business responsiveness than
does the traditional and now outmoded expressive model (Box 4.4).
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If marketing communication is strategic corporate gossip, perhaps a more
sophisticated acronym is that represented by Figure 4.9, and compare 
Figure 4.10.
Thus marketing is enabled and facilitated when we take into account
(appreciate) before we seek to be taken into account (to be appreciated).
This assertive behaviour was identified by Covey, who advocated seeing to
understand before seeking to be understood. There is a good lesson in this
for marketing practice.
Of course, another way of saying this is Vickers’ appreciative system:
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BOX 4.4
CONVERSATION IN THE CONTEXT OF MARKETING
OBJECTIVES
Conversation is
:
Consensual – both parties willingly come together to engage in communicating for a
purpose
Control-less – neither party is in control or intends to assume control over the other
Change – recognized as possible (and necessary?) for both parties (why else
communicate?)
(
Source
: Based on a presentation by Don Peppers, 
Royal Mail Conference on One-to-One Marketing, 1995)