THE MARKETING AND PR “S” WORD THAT MATTERS MOST IN 2026
Marketing is full of buzzwords. I was an accidental marketer back in the 1990s when I worked as a commercial TV news director.
I wouldn’t have called myself a “marketer” back then, but the reality is that when you are flogging the nightly news with mostly the same content as your rivals, your main job is as much to promote the product as it is to create it.
Later, when I moved out of news media and had the word “marketing” formally added to my job title, I found that many of the things I had focused on in promoting the news had technical names. Things like brand narrative, vision and values, personality, tone of voice, single-minded proposition, and share of voice come to mind. These days, thanks to digital, there are dozens more.
I confess that in my very early days, as a manager of a formally trained marketing team, I would nod sagely at the head of the table when one of my younger team members cited some technical acronym in a meeting. Afterwards, having noted the acronym or specific term, I would wander around the corner to the City of Perth library to look up the definition in some marketing textbook. (Yes, folks like the Tyrannosaurus, I existed in the pre-Google days when libraries with books were a thing.)
One of those terms usually took its place halfway up the pyramid-shaped brand models we used in developing our brand promotional strategy. I had never heard it used before, but its meaning was pretty obvious: Substantiation.
Alternatively, it could be expressed as “proof points” or “Evidence”. The intention was to verify that the core messaging underlying the “brand narrative” or “single-minded value proposition” could actually be delivered in action as well as words.
In reality, in many cases, it could not. It has long been my view that too often in marketing, promotion rules over product integrity. We all know it is easy to articulate your so-called value proposition in words, but it is a lot more difficult to deliver it through your actions.
I remember with one prominent brand around town, that will remain nameless, their market research consistently showed that the failure to lift sales was not due to poor promotion but to the simple fact that, when customers compared the price and features of our product to the opposition’s, it fell way short. I can remember at the time, even our agency strategist leaning over the table at a café one day and observing that “your executive colleagues seem to have an incredible belief in the power of advertising.” What he was really saying was that it would not matter how much more money we pumped into making expensive TV ads; it would never make up for the shortfall in product and service delivery.
These days, when creating brand models for clients, I try to get them to focus on deliverability before we even start building the brand model or promotional strategy. What value can we consistently deliver, as opposed to some high-minded ideal of what we might deliver and can use in our marketing blurb. Just as importantly, is it a product or service attribute that customers actually need or want?
To be fair to marketers, this is often their greatest challenge, and it is the foremost failure of many company owners, directors and executives. They rely solely on the capacity of their communications professionals and agencies to deliver sales results through advertising, PR, or other forms of promotion. When a campaign fails, it is easy to blame the marketing team rather than accept that you need to spend as much money on product development and service delivery as on promotion.
This principle applies beyond product marketing to areas as seemingly disconnected as internal communications. Bang on about your organisational values all you like in the CEO’s monthly “Message to Staff”, on the intranet or in the employee newsletter. But more often than not, value statements are just words written on a bunch of sticky notes pinned to the wall during an executive retreat. When employees observe the “real-life” attitudes and behaviours of managers that entirely contradict the words of the poster on the wall, the communication ceases to have any benefit at all. Worse, they just create cynicism and disconnection.
This matters more in 2026 than ever before and it is going to increasingly be, I think, the critical requirement for success in marketing and communications of any sort. Consumers (and employees) today are smart and informed, and can quickly go online to read reviews and real-time feedback from current or former customers. If you don’t deliver, you quickly get exposed.
I am consistently flabbergasted by executives who ask their marketing teams to make them into their sector equivalent of Apple. The reality is that Apple, while far from perfect, has adopted a marketing strategy primarily based on product development. Sure, they spend a lot on advertising, but it is their ability to consistently refresh their product range and features that sets them up for success. It’s called substantiation folks.
For more insights and ramblings on strategic business communications and marketing from JLCA Director John Le Cras, visit the JLCA Journal page.
