The thing I hate most about my job is when people tell me how to do it.  This happens more often to me than it does to other people at the company, because I’m in the marketing department and everyone on Earth has apparently taken a marketing class.

“I think our company should rely more heavily on the three ‘P’s,” says someone standing in my cube who works as a data entry clerk.

“Huh?” I know that I’m probably about to get hit with someone’s marketing course curriculum, but I’m still willing to maintain a veneer of civility.

“Yes.  The three Ps of Marketing.” The data entry clerk simpers and preens.  I think about creative things to do with a nearby stapler.  I smile thinly.

The data entry clerk doesn’t leave.  Fortunately, I know how to make people leave.  I tell them, “Here, have a coffee mug with our company logo on it.” “OH MY GOD!” they respond, and drop to their knees.  They hold it in front of them as though it’s the chalice that caught the blood of that one guy that one time.

It is beyond me why some people go crazy for free crap emblazoned with a logo that glares at them all day, every day, from each nook and cranny of their 9-5 lives, but I don’t question it: it’s like throwing fish to a seal.  They happily clap their flippers together and scamper away.

Anyway, back to the three Ps. I admit it. I’ve never taken a marketing course in my life.  I took literature classes and then I decided to do something besides teach, so I went into a silly field and tried to learn as fast as I can.  So, okay, for all I know, maybe the three Ps of marketing actually mean something.  I Google them.

Turns out that this person probably got a ‘C’ in the class: it’s actually the four Ps of marketing.  Product, Price, Place, and Promotion.

You know what I say to that?  Bollocks.

Let’s start with the first P, and let’s say you create a product that’s a big, dangling, spring-activated hand that allows you to slap your own face any time you want.  Let’s call it the One’s Own Face Slapper.  It has many settings, such as Pulsating Pink and Roaring Red.  It has a long battery life. Then you move to the second P: you set the price at $20.  And you sell it at a Place: let’s say convenience stores.  And then you Promote it through radio ads.

The problem is, no one wants a One’s Own Face Slapper.  This entire exercise leaves out the most important letter in marketing: the C.  The Customer.

I may not have taken marketing classes, but I do spend a lot of time talking to our customers.  I write them up for case studies and press releases.  I take them out to lunch.  I know what causes their pain. I know how our service solves that pain. I know where it sometimes fails to solve that pain.

But I wouldn’t know any of that without knowing them.  The most important part of Marketing is the big C.

And you may have gathered that there is, in fact, a P involved as well: Pain.  Without pain, you have no customers and no product.

For example, if the inventor of our mythical product had bothered to talk to me, he or she would know my own pain.  And he or she would have modified the product so that it was no longer a One’s Own Face Slapper.  Rather, it would have become a product that I’d happily purchase by the truckloads-- a Face Slapper that I could used on other people.  The very same people who constitute the hitherto unknown fifth P of marketing, which I’m revealing here for the very first time in the history of history.

The People who Pontificate on Pointless Platitudes that Professors Poorly Preach to Procure a Paycheck.

That’s right: the Pinheads.