Gas-guzzling pickup trucks and marketing tools

Until last week, I had never driven a modern pickup truck.

I had read stories about them being the gas-guzzling bullies of the road.

But I never appreciated their size and power.

For most people, pickup trucks are overkill. (Apologies to all F150 owners).

If you’re driving in the city, there’s few, if any, reasons to own one.

But lots of people like how owning a pickup makes them feel.

They like the idea of having a robust and spacious machine.

If they ever need to move a lot of stuff or pull a trailer, they’re ready for action.

In the marketing world, marketers are enamored with high-power, multi-feature tools.

We like having tools at our disposal that can do it all, even if a few features are used.

There’s comfort in having something feature-rich and multi-faceted.

But a lot of marketing tools are an abundance of unnecessary riches.

Marketers could easily use simpler and less expensive tools to get jobs done.

And the learning curve to use them would be shorter and less painful.

As marketers build technology stacks, they need to focus on tackling tasks, not the tools.