Absolution and activity

Today I had a great lunch with Cordy and Florian, which got me thinking about the marketer's need for absolution through activity. Feeling safe in the illusion that you have done enough to be safe from reprimand.

If you take a look at how the typical positioning maps work, it is all about 'attribute' or 'brand equity' associations by brands in a relevant set.
I wonder how this would change if you had both the internal and external views of the situation on one map. What would happen if we could see the company's 'attitudes' and 'feelings' towards a brand, mapped in the same way that we map consumer beliefs.

The missing link between how we feel about our brands as an organism, and how our consumers feel means that it is often difficult to make the link between actions and outcomes, or more importantly, what the right type of action really is. Should I spend half my day working through a media schedule to get the best value from my plan, or should I take the sales guy out to lunch to get him to lobby for more budget?

Does the mindspace dictated by externalizing the problem distract us from taking the right team actions to be successful? Being focused on the market(ing) activities needed, creates a kind of safe haven discussion forum whereby the enemy is out there. If we turned the looking glass around we might end up with a very different set of brand behaviours. Just "doing stuff" does not absolve one from the responsibility to engage minds and hearts.