Marketing communication: principles and practice

participative in constructing our own identity and those of others we
encounter, in generating meanings in our minds that cannot be directly
‘shared’ with others, and in producing knowledge. We will refer to an
appreciative system in which all this happens (explained in chapter three).
The cultural (interactional) approach is considered. This identifies persons
as role players in the process of communication. This approach will be seen
to be more sensible than the now outmoded conduit metaphor or
transmission model, but it also has a weakness. The context within which
communicating is pursued as an activity is not accounted for, and so a
relational approach is needed. 
The transmission model is convenient for a management that is centred
on control and authority. Deetz (1992) warns of the limiting effect of such
hegemonic managerialistic thinking and practices. The possibility of
responsive and responsible management is lost. Response is central to
marketing, and we will return to the problem of responsibility in chapter
eighteen. Deetz defined managerialism as ‘a kind of systemic logic, a set of
routine practices, and an ideology’. He goes on to specify that it is
a way of conceptualising, reasoning through, and discussing events 
. . . [involving] a set of routine practices, a real structure of rewards,
and a code of representation. It is a way of doing and being in
corporations that partially structures all groups and conflicts with, and
at times suppresses, each group’s other modes of thinking.
(Deetz, 1992: 222)
This is a political explanation for the communicative practices of many
marketing managers.
A C O M M U N I C A T I O N C O N C E P T
19

---

THE ORTHODOX VIEW OF MARKETING
COMMUNICATION
Our textbooks provide a simple model of human communication when
explaining the role of communication in marketing and management. The
trouble is, the models used are not just simple, they are also simplistic – and
misleading. Consider our everyday terminology as set out in Box 2.1.
Stop and reflect carefully on what is meant by such use of the terms
‘communication’, ‘message’, ‘perception’, and so on. The terminology is
confused and our use of it is confusing.
Traditional marketing thinking presupposes that producers produce and
communicate, while consumers receive and consume. In the marketing
process (i.e. in taking a product into the marketplace) production,
communication, and consumption are separate processes. The task of the
marketer is seen to be to reach, and stay in, the minds of consumers. In this
ideology, it is believed that consumers will buy if persuaded (euphemistically
termed ‘informed’) through messages to understand what is offered to them
and how to act on that knowledge. This transmission model is now examined.