Speaking of Not Understanding How Business Works

Having worked at Nordstrom for more than six years, I'm confident there is a team of "Brand Strategists" who work at Saks and are painstakingly critical of any activity that does not "protect the brand". If you are a middle manager who wants to have some sort of field event in a parking lot there will be a Brand Strategist who tells you that you do not understand the brand and that you need to go back into a conference room and sit there until somebody delivers a box lunch to you for sustanance.

And yet ... the Brand Strategist lets this pass. Follow the orange arrow.

Tell me how either the Digital Marketer or the Brand Strategist know anything about how business works? How is this "protecting the brand"? Is this how you want your brand portrayed, with a horribly flimsy digital ad that is 40% cut off by some redonkulous video that nobody will ever watch?

The Digital Marketer knows how ad delivery works, so that individual knows something.

The Brand Strategist knows ... what? I don't know. But the Brand Strategist should never allow this to happen, correct? 

Here's a peach for ya ... as I performed a screen dump Norton informed me that it blocked a malicious attack from this page. What does the Saks Brand Strategy team think of that? How does that "help the brand"?

I know, I know, here comes the hate mail ... "Kevin, you don't understand how digital marketing works". Yeah, I understand how digital marketing works, you have no idea where your display ads end up and nearly half of the money is skimmed off the top by shady third parties. That's how it works.

"Protect the Brand". I've been in a thousand meetings and Zooms where somebody who doesn't understand how business works utters this phrase to say "no" to something while allowing this nonsense to happen, happily saying "yes" by turning a blind eye to an entire advertising discipline.

Here comes more hate mail ... "But Kevin, you don't understand how digital marketing works, you just don't have control over where your ads end up." Maybe that's the point. Maybe you shouldn't engage in a discipline where you no control over anything. Your Brand Strategist would tell you that in five seconds, right?