The Compadrazgo phenomenon as an impediment to innovation in the advertising and marketing services market in the Yucatan peninsula.
Yucatan and Campeche are two states with a high production potential of the Mexican Republic. Both states are ultra-conservative and their markets are very closed.
Another common factor between the two is compadrazgo, a situation that dictates the competition rules in their markets.
This article addresses the problem of compadrazgo from a marketing point of view and considers it as an obstacle to innovation.
With arguments supported by different sources, the author will explain the complexity of the problem and its repercussion on the aforementioned markets.
Introduction
The capacity for innovation is something that has accompanied human beings since time immemorial. Although the popular saying that idleness is the mother of all sciences is not wrong.
So we will understand that scientific idleness as innovation.
According to León G. Schiffman and Leslie Lazar Kanuk (1997, p.525) There are ways to classify innovation, these are company-oriented, product-oriented, market-oriented and consumer-oriented…
In our case, we will base ourselves on its market-oriented definition that judges the novelty of a product in terms of how much exposure users have to the new product. We will clarify this later.
It seems important, then, to define the services market. It is a market that apparently does not recent the effects of the innovative phenomenon, however; if we pay more analytical attention to it, we will realize that it is a market that depends on innovation for its subsistence. Someone had already mentioned that in business you have to renew yourself or die.
When you talk about innovation and entrepreneurship, you instantly think of the success achieved by people like Steven Jobs at Apple Computer and Ross Perot at Electronic Data Processing (Acquired by General Motors).
Becoming a millionaire and achieving it soon by establishing new companies is undoubtedly an extremely attractive idea.
Entrepreneurs have creative ideas; they use their resources and administrative skills to meet identifiable market needs. If successful, an entrepreneur can become rich. (Harold Koontz and Heinz Weihrich, 1998, p. 255).
But what happens when market barriers, dictated by a social phenomenon, close the doors to innovation?
Is compadrazgo an impediment to innovation? The perspective of this work will address these questions and any that may come off them, focusing mainly on the Yucatan Peninsula and the author's experiences.
The market
Yucatan and Campeche are two states with a high production potential of the Mexican Republic. The first is characterized by being Industrial and Commercial, while the second is a tourist State par excellence that bases its economy on public investment.
Both states, despite what is said, are very similar in terms of culture. Both, if we reprimand them through their respective capitals, are ultra-conservative states.
In the sense that both have forged very specific modus vivendis, and their inhabitants have convinced themselves that the current mode of production is the correct one.
The point I want to get to is that there is no risk in these two states.
Both businessmen and the public sector are dedicated to following a line drawn to make investments or manage business, which completely puts aside the possibility of innovating.
According to Lic. Francisco Acosta Ruiz from the CUJAE Polytechnic University of Cuba, "in science a paradigm is a set of universally recognized scientific achievements that, for a time, provide models of problems and solutions to a scientific community."
Based on the previous definition, we could suppose that the Yucatan peninsula lives in the lethargy of the paradigm of "classic operation".
In other words, we are talking about a territory that has set itself a model for solving commercial problems in which the company sells and the consumer buys, without more or less.
All activities that are alien to these two are simply enclosed in a black bag called "Public Relations" and it only has two paths: Either they are thrown away, or they serve to "lay hands" on a "buddy."
It is at this point that the opportunity for all innovation is closed beforehand.
At this point, it would be practical for the understanding of the idea that I propose, that an arbitrary definition be established for the concept of innovation.
In the previous chapter we outlined an idea of innovation that we will land in a simpler way, innovation consists "in the introduction of new ideas, products, services and practices with the intention of being useful" (2006).
Based on this definition, it could be assumed that states with established uses and customs such as those mentioned above, are undoubtedly deprived of such a concept.
But what are the consequences of such an absence? It is simple, business life is closed for those entrepreneurs. Only the select group that is already in the middle has the opportunity to continue growing, and the entry for new members can only be through “compadrazgo”.
Harold Koontz and Heinz Weihrich (1998, p. 255) mention that the entrepreneurial spirit supposes dissatisfaction with the prevailing state of affairs and awareness of the need to do things differently.
With the above, we could create a premise: “Compadrazgo kills innovation”, but the encumbrance of such matter would still be pending.
How does all this harm us? And what if businesses work perfectly in the way they are doing so why change?
Compadrazgo
Compadrazgo is a powerful figure in society, originally the bond between compadres was generated through children.
By attending the baptism of the son of a close friend granting him the honor of sponsoring him, one went from being the best friend, to being part of the family and becoming a friend.
”Compadres are very important figures in the family life of Hispanics; not to mention the comadres ”. Techy Salas mentions, who proposes that the term has evolved. "Although the" detail "of the christening sometimes goes into the background, the compadrazgo already has a life of its own and the term is used to highlight someone who is very close to our most sincere affection."
Returning to our social environment, this last meaning is what I refer to when mentioning the issue of compadrazgo.
In the Yucatan peninsula, although there is a tradition of compadres products from baptism, southern Mexicans have also evolved to the point of becoming compadres even before having children.
That is to say, you become a friend of your parrandas partner, of your friend with whom you play soccer on weekends and of the distant relatives of your girlfriend.
The compadrazgo relationship exists in the peninsula despite not bearing the name as such, even raising it again to a Hispanic-American level and citing Salas we would say that it is even historical and mystical.
"The history, folklore and politics of our countries are full of anecdotes in which relations between compadres have made a difference when choosing who to favor in any unusual situation.
Nor should we forget that a tradition among compadres acquires a dimension of Greek tragedy. Simply a kind of inviolable pact ”. (Techy Salas, 2004)
An anecdote
Regarding this, I have a personal anecdote. It turns out that I have had difficulty entering the advertising services market in both states, the situation I have detailed above left me and my partners with no possibilities. We recently had the opportunity to take part in the creation of a youth magazine.
It was a totally formative experience, we created a new information medium for young people and the readers welcomed it in a great way. The real problem arose at the time of sales.
We started visiting companies knowing that our prices were low and we were able to compete in the market for our quality.
The sales process was carried out in stages: The first stage consisted of making appointments with potential clients to present the project to them.
During this first stage many people were interested, however they objected that the magazine was only a project and that it did not represent a security to invest in it.
According to Gene N. Landrum (p.254) innovators cannot succeed if they are not persuasive. They must convince the financial community that their concept is viable. Key personnel must be convinced to join the company and then have them sacrifice the present for the future.
Continuing with the idea of Landrum, it was decided to release a first issue with its own financing, and the response from the public, as I commented previously, was surprising, since the magazine sold out of our distribution points in just one week.
It was at that time, when we decided to resume sales. The week after launch we continued to date, to no avail. For the second week we were already visiting door-to-door businesses, and even so, the results were unfavorable.
We began to lose hope in our project and we did not understand the reason for the situation.
Harold Koontz and Heinz Weihrich (1998, p. 256) themselves have already mentioned that innovations based exclusively on brilliant ideas can be very risky and sometimes fail… The most successful innovations are generally the least spectacular.
Without a doubt, we had made a mistake, and we had to fix it, that's when we decided to turn to family and friends.
Some "supported" us, bought advertising for their businesses because we are "friends", and it was during this stage that we received a call from a marketing company.
The company in question asked us for information about our prices and it was granted. All this opened the doors for a negotiation.
This process was quite illustrative, since this whole “compadrazgo” issue that I talk about so much in this article arose from it. Among what was said and done in that negotiation, something that the representative of said company mentioned to me was etched in my mind: -
Look, Rubén… your project is good and without a doubt we are sure that it can be useful to our clients, but you have to take “compadrazgo” into account.
Here they will not buy you because it is useful or not to the company, they will buy you because they know you.
This comment fell like a bucket of cold water. Goodbye Innovation, goodbye project and goodbye advertising.
And what is the role of innovation in all this matter? You may wonder.
As it turns out, our product was a youth magazine designed to encourage young people to read. What we were proposing to the companies was that they advertise through a medium that young people quickly acquired and that they would even keep for their topics of youth interest.
We were trying to create something different, get out of the mold and put aside the classic magazines without content that simply pirate their articles on the Internet and then fill their pages with pictures of the club.
The problem was, those magazines were counting on the compadrazgo to be on their side. We, on the other hand, simply had to sit on the bench and watch our innovative ideas gradually unravel.
The anecdote above, was a trigger for your server to take a break to reflect. I have to confess that I am a very restless person and that I usually do things instead of thinking about them. But this time I think it is time to stop the trains.
Marketing guru Philip Kotler (1998, 283) mentioned in his book Marketing Fundamentals, that many new products fail due to various reasons. While an idea may be a good one, it may have overestimated market volume. Perhaps the actual product was not as well designed as it needed to be. Or maybe it was positioned incorrectly in the market, it was priced too high, or its advertising was poor.
Although it is true that Kotler is not mistaken and part of the above quote is probably an x-ray of the mistakes we made with our magazine, it is also a fact that the compadrazgo factor exists and must be studied.
On the other hand, now that I have studied the matter a little more, I find our project even more feasible than before. Although it is true that I still would not know how to solve the sales problem, I have to say that I was surprised with the alternatives that social marketing could offer to the case.
According to Luís Alfonso Pérez Romero, there is a type of Marketing called “Marketing for social causes”.
Pérez Romero mentions that "Marketing for social causes is interpreted as the intervention of the private sector in solving various social problems, but without neglecting the primary activity of trade and profit."
This definition fits perfectly into the realization of our project, since although our main idea was to do business, I must also remind you that the emergence of the project was the detection of excess junk magazines on the market that did not encourage young people to read. Pérez Romero, would not only make us change the case perspective, but would also discover perhaps our worst mistake:
Market entry.
Market entry
Even with the possibility of entering the market using Social Cause Marketing, we would still have the problem of compadrazgo, and it is even likely that the situation would worsen, since we would be in this case asking our clients to become investors and join to our cause. Which is like asking a bank security guard to open the safe for us and let us have the cash.
What does this leave us?
This situation has existed in the world for more than two thousand years, and Sun Tzu had already spoken about it.
The mysterious Chinese warrior philosopher would classify the Yucatan peninsula as an unfavorable territory with forested mountains, steep gorges, salt marshes and other accidents difficult to traverse (Sun Tzu, 2000, p.1003).
The only way to survive in a terrain like that is according to the guru of the Win-Peder negotiation model, is through communication.
Being quite creative, we could land the Sun Tzu panorama to the compadrazgo approach and we would obtain that the communications that Tzu talks about are precisely the supportive relationships that exist between the people in the middle and those who intend to survive (enter) at.
With not much imagination we will be able to understand that Sun Tzu already visualized this situation of “compadrazgo” for two thousand years.
The possibilities to enter a market that is already defined, as we can see, are few.
In our case, the investment capital in the peninsula is poorly distributed through compadrazgo and the main problem of this situation is that jobs and opportunities are being denied to companies with the ability to produce results for the simple fear of change.
Yucatan and Campeche in particular, have created a family production network, which is inherited from parents to children and that occasionally jumps and splashes a few friends. To enter the circle of suppliers you need to be someone's buddy or that a great opportunity falls from heaven and you firmly establish a niche market.
Our peninsular business network is a Machiavellian affair in every sense of the word, as Machiavelli himself mentions the way in which a new principality is acquired in such a way that it is the perfect analogy to the way business is done in the peninsula.
"Principalities are very hereditary, because the same house reigns for a long time, very new. The latter are either entirely or are added members of the hereditary state of the prince who acquires them. The territories acquired in such a way were previously ruled by a prince or enjoyed freedom: and they are conquered with the arms of others or with their own, thanks to fortune or thanks to courage and talent ”(Nicolás Maquiavelo, p.34).
In everyday words and landed on the scene we are talking about, Machiavelli tells us that the only way to enter the market is through compadrazgo, that is, you can only enter the market by “inheriting” a little of its participation through the help offered by the compadre.
It also refers, in the last line of the previous quote, to the possibility that with great luck it is possible to find a virgin market niche and in that case it suggests the obvious, to conquer it as it is.
What is really interesting is that Machiavelli describes two aspects with respect to the conquest of the virgin market and it is with the weapons of others, that is to say, with the help of compadrazgo or with one's own weapons, but to opt for this last option, he warns that he is highly dependent on luck and other qualities.
If we choose between luck and compadrazgo, the balance will undoubtedly tip more easily for those who have more compadres and their chances of competing in the market will obviously be greater.
The problem of compadrazgo in business
The problem of compadrazgo is clearly a social situation, but what should really concern us in relation to this phenomenon is that the consumer does not act according to this rule.
Consumers are selective in the sense that they are indifferent to compadrazgo, although it is true that one attends friends' businesses, it is also true that each person forms a preference for the businesses that best satisfy their needs.
In the peninsula it seems that we have forgotten this premise a bit.
The advertising services sector has a mission to guide these customers towards the services or products that will best meet their needs, but if those products or services refuse to enter the game, the entire process is broken and the clients are released. wandering and experiencing for themselves.
The problem here is for advertisers, since they believe that they do not lose anything by not buying effective advertising (and perhaps it is true), however they are not considering everything they stop winning. Here is the challenge of Innovation and of the Mercadologist.
Regarding this, I remember a quote from Nicholas Negroponte that I will turn to in order to clarify a little the wrong thinking of the advertisers.
Negroponte in his book "Being Digital", comments to the reader that on one occasion, when making a trip he had to record the value of his computer and the writer valued it at one or two million dollars, while the receptionist calculated some two thousand dollars.
From this anecdote from Negroponte comes a reflection that supports my position: "The truth is that, although the atoms were not worth that much, the bits contained in my laptop were of almost imponderable value" (Nicholas Negroponte, 1995, p. 31).
Negroponte has an infinite reason in proposing that the digital world in which we find ourselves immersed has caused human beings, mainly those in the position of acquiring advertising, to gradually lose their ability to value intellectual capital.
In other words, advertisers by distorting the purchase of effective advertising, not only ignore the investment potential that exists in the person who has the ability to create such a medium, but also close their eyes to the economic benefits that innovation could generate. In every sense of the word.
In a way, they are unaware that there are other ways to generate better income for their businesses.
The seriousness of the matter is that according to Wikipedia: “An essential element of innovation is its successful commercial application. Innovation has defined and changed human history.
Economic planners see all innovation as the solution to any crisis of capitalism and it is the central element of many policies to increase competitiveness at the corporate or national level ”(Wikipedia, 2006).
That is, innovation is the magic recipe and the essential element to achieve success, and yet we strive to ignore it. We believe it is useless. It is a formula that has already been tested and that nevertheless changes shape every time we use it.
We talk about it being a possibility to increase competitiveness, and yet we continue to ignore it through our “compadral” practices.
Just as at one time the peninsula was an arrowhead in many business sectors, inversely it may be the case that it is starting a process of stagnation thanks to its bad habits and that this, finally, may mean its decline.
Conclusions
By practically landing all this research, we could conclude with the fact that in the Yucatan peninsula there is an obvious phenomenon of compadrazgo, which is nothing more than a fixation of uses and customs that dictates the entire distribution of the state's wealth.
Compadrazgo as a social phenomenon directly affects any negotiation and in the case of the states (cities) that we used as an example, compadrazgo does not distinguish between private or public initiative, since it influences them equally.
Similarly, compadrazgo approached from a marketing point of view is a problem that puts at risk, and at a disadvantage, the business performance of the peninsula when interacting in the globalized market.
Like any problem, it requires a solution, and in this case we have known it from the beginning. The counterpart of compadrazgo is the openness and flexibility of companies that will therefore allow for innovation.
It is a simple solution, we simply have to open our minds and pay attention to all those little ideas that occur in our heads.
If we are not very creative entrepreneurs or we do not have the necessary personnel to innovate, we must stop continuing under those influences "compadrales" that make it difficult for us to invest our money and venture to contact young people who bring new and fresh ideas that will undoubtedly will contribute to the development of our business. You have to be flexible.
Bibliography
Leon g. Schiffman and Leslie Lazar Kanuk (1997). Consumer Behavior (5th ed.). Mexico: Pearson.
Harold Koontz and Heinz Weihrich (1998) Administration, a global perspective (11th ed.) Mexico: Mc Graw Hill.
Philip Kotler and Gary Armstrong (1998) Fundamentos de Mercadotecnia (4th ed.) Mexico: Prentice-hall Hispanoamericana, SA
Mrs. Techy Salas (2004) The baptism, origin of compadrazgo.
Lic. Francisco Acosta Ruiz (2006). Do you really know what a Paradigm is?
Nicholas Negroponte (1995) Being digital (2nd ed). Mexico: Editorial Atlántica.
Sun Tzu (2000) The Art of War (18th ed.). Spain: Editorial Ark of Wisdom.
Machiavelli (1999) Prince Spain: Edimat Libros.
Luís Alfonso Pérez Romero (2004) Social Marketing Theory and Practice (1st Ed.). Mexico: Prentice-Hall
Gene N. Landrum (unknown) Genius Profile (p. 255)
