As he explained, "I got into marketing by marketing my own small business." He added, "It really plays to my strengths because I've always been good with words, and I think being able to present a concept that's either technical or abstract, or simply presenting the real message, is something that I'm good at in terms of creating something that ordinary people can understand, appreciate, relate to, and be moved to action from."
The fact that marketing allows Horowitz to draw upon his strengths not only enables him to create effective marketing but also allows him to recognize marketing that is ineffective. For example, oftentimes Horowitz finds that marketers do not appropriately target consumers, or worse, target the right consumers with the wrong message.
Mostly, though, "bad marketing" involves creating marketing communications that are, for the high-tech sector in particular, "focused on the people who are writing the manuals as opposed to the people who are using them." In fact, Horowitz later joked that his role is to "save the world from really bad marketing."
The main concept behind these books, and Horowitz's marketing beliefs in general, is twofold and incorporates both frugal and ethical constructs. Both facets are rather straightforward. As Horowitz simply stated, "Ethical marketing is doing things that allow you to sleep comfortably at night and look in the mirror and not see somebody evil."
And Horowitz is a firm believer that marketing ethically will enable businesses to become more successful. Essentially, it allows companies to develop and maintain a level of trust with the consumer. A vocal proponent of ethical marketing, Horowitz is a big backer of the Business Ethics Pledge, a campaign that is "try[ing] to create a tipping point toward ethical business."
During the time that he has been in the field, Horowitz has seen the marketing industry evolve tremendously. The consumers to whom companies are marketing their products are more informed and connected than ever before.
"Metaphorically speaking, it's no longer enough to dangle a carrot in front of somebody and say, 'Here, bite me and see what you think.' Now you have to compare 10 different breeds of carrots, different soil conditions, and now anybody can jump on the Internet and look for carrots in Hadley, MA, and find 20 providers and find the differences between them. Also, if the consumer goes away unhappy, the consumer doesn't just tell 10 friends anymore; now they tell 10,000 people on yourcarrotsucks.com or on a blog."
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And marketers, take heed; the field will continue to substantially evolve in the coming years…especially in terms of mass-marketing communications, which over the years have become less and less effective.
"People are so immunized to commercials right now. They can avoid many commercials with devices like TiVo, but even if they see the commercials, it doesn't register in their brain because it's marketing to the masses, and the masses don't really exist," Horowitz said. "The masses are composed of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of individuals with individual interests and individual passions and individual dislikes and individual disabilities, and all have to be approached differently."
So how should marketers approach this ever-changing field? Horowitz had this to say: "I'm very much a believer in human-centered marketing. You're marketing to people; you're not marketing to computer chips, [and] you're not marketing to telephones, [and] you're not even marketing to job titles."
Yet some of his greatest influences—Claude Hopkins, David Ogilvy, and Joan Stewart—support one general message that provides the best advice in terms of how to approach marketing now and in the future. The idea, Horowitz explained, is "to write copy that is honest and compelling and tells a story and shows the prospect how he or she will benefit."
