Eat your Marketing Ps…spit out some new ones.

Most kids hate peas.

They play around with them like small bugs, squashing their shells and oozing out their lime innards rather than taking on the pea’s nutritional value.

It may be elongating the analogy, but it has become the same with the 4 Ps of the traditional marketing mix for marketers.

We can all recall them, like some Marketing theory boyband where everyone had a favourite.

There’s Place- the intellectual with mixed-ethnicity and a knack for the street lingo of the day.

We all loved Product; the rebellious one with clear addiction to hair gel and subscription meds. Less favoured was Price; the private school kid with a record for indecent exposure in public.

Then there is Promotion; the outspoken frontman of the gang who is also an artist/model/pastry chef.

Catch any CMO in a darkened bar and they’ll begrudgingly acknowledging these Ps still form the basis of simple marketing strategy. But something about them just doesn’t taste that great anymore. Our palettes have evolved, the world has become smaller (and faster) and we’ve opened up to a wider range of ingredients when it comes to our marketing.

So what’s the mix now? A quick Google will tell you that Ps are still in but their number has increased to around 6 or 7. Some are running a strong campaign for Es. If you go deep enough in your Google page results you may even stumble across an obscure Estonian academic arguing the case for 21 Ž’s of Marketing.

Even though no-one is asking, I want to share how we talk about the current state of the marketing mix with our Clients at Ruck, looking at them through the lens of Brand.

We keep it pretty simple and have extended the mix to six:

1. Purpose - like Simon (Sinek) says when it comes to Brand start with Why? Understanding your purpose is the first step in developing your framework for your Brand. Once that framework is in place, you can attack the rest of your marketing strategy.

2. Product - The What? to your Why? Your product is interlinked to your Brand and should be the focus in your early efforts to establishing it. Taking an iterative, human-centric approach to designing a product or service that is of value to those you want to serve is key.

3. Price - Not only do we want to know how much do we sell our thing for, today we want to understand the value exchange between our Brand and our customer. When they engage with our brand (and it may not always be for a sale) what is the value exchanged? Attention for Entertainment, Time for Information, Money for a Solution. Where does the value lie for our customers in our product?

4. Place - No longer just the locations where we sell our product, but the physical and digital spaces our brand can be experienced. These can be websites, platforms, apps, pop-ups, collaborations, events and exhibitions. We want to curate a consistent experience that builds culture and tells our story.

5. Publishing - Storytelling is key to building a brand and we do this through publishing content. Each time we create a post, update content, create a video or record a podcast we are publishing tiny bits of our Brand story. If we do this consistently - that’s modern marketing. In many ways, content has replaced campaigns.

6. People - Now more than ever, Brands will only survive if they make sense to us as humans. To do this, we need to design the strategy behind them based on a genuine, human-centric principles. Your people (leaders, staff, ambassadors, influencers, sales team) will be the best or worst experience of your brand the customer will have. Invest in making sure they are the right fit for your brand and spend the time to educate them on what that is.

Like peas, these ideas may not be to your tastes but they are working for us and our clients.

Unlike peas the above concepts taste no-good in a creamy risotto with pancetta and rosemary.