What's that you say? You don't believe in Santa Claus or you don't celebrate Christmas? It's true that Santa may be mostly mythical, but ask almost anybody who Santa is and what he does, and they'll tell you. And there are millions of children who are convinced he's real. So put your doubts about Santa aside for a moment and take a look at why he's so good at marketing.

Knows How to Be Unique Whether it is his trademark red suit, his unconventional transportation, his belly laugh or his occupation, Santa is different. He's one of a kind, which makes him memorable.

Gets Free Publicity He’s a master at getting free press. He’s mentioned in media constantly during winter holidays. Many songs, movies and books have been written about him.

Is Customer Focused While everyone knows about Santa, his marketing isn't focused on his credentials. He rarely talks about how long he's been in business nor does he bore people with long discussions of his work processes. Instead, he makes a huge effort to learn what people want.

It is estimated (http://ask.yahoo.com/ask/20021213.html) that each year over a million letters are sent to Santa. Santa supplements this effort by appearing in thousands of shopping malls around country, listening to an average of nine thousand children per mall. He does all this just to learn what his customers want.

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=========================================== Summary: Traditional marketing is overloaded with analytical methodologies and statistical suppositions. Such marketing, as a stand alone business tool, must end. A new and more successful growth-dynamic must replace it. That dynamic is tied to human emotions and results-producing actions those emotions trigger. =========================================== The End Of Marketing By Brent Filson

Working with top companies worldwide in all major sectors for 20 years, I've discovered that few of them come even close to achieving their potential results.

A key reason is that their leaders "don't know that they don't know".

They don't know that marketing as we know it has come to an end. A more successful growth-dynamic must replace it. That dynamic is tied to human emotions and results-producing actions those emotions trigger.

No question: Emotion is a critical driver in business success. Clearly, people in business have to be skilled and knowledgeable about products, processes, and customers. But simply having rational knowledge is not enough to get big increases in results. We must have emotional knowledge too.

A fundamental truth of human motivation is that we define ourselves in terms of our emotions. Descartes didn't quite have it right: it's not, "I think therefore I am; it's really, "I feel therefore I am".

Yet most marketing strategies and programs focus on rational — market share, target identification and validation, and customer needs analysis — and ignore emotional. In doing so, such strategies ignore great opportunities.

To achieve quantum leaps in results that most businesses are capable of, "the end of marketing" must be recognized.

Conventional marketing served companies in relatively stable economies when businesses were like large ships, with captains giving orders to mates, mates to crews. But today businesses are in white-water canoeing races.

In rapidly changing markets, exclusively rational marketing can't compete well.

What will replace marketing? To answer that, let's understand what marketing is all about. It's about one thing, organizational growth. Such growth happens through strategy and action.

Today's marketing activities are superficially linked to strategy and have little to do with action. The result: businesses rattle along not hitting on all cylinders.

Strategy: We grow in business or ultimately die. So it behooves each business to have a strategy for growth.

We might develop a growth strategy. It might seem convincing on paper. It might interest security analysts. It might brighten an annual report. But unless employees and customers alike believe it passionately, wake up in morning motivated by it, spend each day exciting others about it, see it as a key stimulant of their life, and zealously realize it in their work activities, then it is merely a recitation of dry postulates. It can only realize partial results.