Seth Godin is a marketer for whom I have the utmost respect. His head is screwed on straight. His books are easy and worthwhile reading. I do have an issue with his approach to Purple Cows and if, in the unlikely event, we should cross paths one day, I will talk to him about plain black and white cows that yield chocolate rather than regular milk or, at the very least, fat free, Omega 3 milk, directly from the udder.

Seth’s Blog, where he posts almost daily, proves that he has reached iconic status. He can be recognized by a single name like Madonna, although he is not at the point where he would be “the marketer formally known as the marketer formally known as Seth”.

In a recent post, The Marketer’s Attitude, Godin describes the perfect marketer. It would be a high energy, relentlessly positive person. It would be someone self-motivated and self-sufficient, able not only to visualize complex projects but also to carry them through to fruition. He or she could engage strangers and embrace ambiguity. He sees the down streams and the downsides of any plan and adjusts accordingly. And so on.

There was something missing from his description, however. The perfect marketer must also be the perfect politician. The astute marketer knows that, in a perfect world, all things are possible. But in a highly volatile world, where people see their investments and imagine their lives going down the rabbit hole, where Boards are insecure and CEOs intractable and budget cuts inescapable, not all things are possible. Indeed, most things – even the small things and especially the right things – require a great deal of personal conviction and much cleverness to gain the collaboration of those in high places if projects are to ever see the light of day.

The marketer must know how to properly package a proposal, how to wrap it in the context of necessity, how to make it risk-aversive, politically-sensitive, environmentally-friendly. He must show it as right for the times and right for the customer. He must know how to segment a project so that it is not a capital intensive venture requiring a long-term commitment from skittish shareholders, but a series of small bite-sized chunks with quick wins and easily quantifiable gains to the bottom line. He must know what to say when and to whom, how to recognize windows that are slightly ajar and how to contain disappointment and move on when they are not.

This is not a cynical view of the corporate world. It is a practical one, reflecting the times and the importance of timing. Selling starts not when a product or a program is ready to launch. It begins when it the next most perfect thing is just a gleam in the perfect marketer’s eye.

One more bit of anecdotal evidence that habit gets hardwired in our corporate psyches.

The head office at my old company has several conference rooms. The primary venue for meetings is The Blue Room, just outside the president’s office. It was called The Blue Room because, back in the ‘80s, the chairs around the conference table were blue. Over time, these were replaced by burgundy chairs and then black ones. Even the black chairs are, at this point, long overdue for replacement.

Down the hall, beyond the accounting offices, through a locked security door, beyond a small lobby, down a corridor lined with motivational posters and union message boards, past the nurse’s station, the lunchroom, the washrooms and the morgue for useless files of failed projects, is a second meeting place, The Red Room. It was called the Red Room because, back in the ‘80s, the curtains covering the grubby wood windows were red. Over time, the red curtains were replaced by blue ones and these, eventually, by white vertical blinds. (Last time I looked, though, the windows were still pretty grubby.)

The point is, two decades and three generations of management later, The Blue Room is still referred to as The Blue Room and The Red Room as The Red Room though absolutely no one – with the exception, perhaps, of a certain superannuated gentleman – has the slightest idea why.

I guess I shouldn’t be smug. In our kitchen is a counter where the microwave used to be. We had long-ago graduated to an over-the-range unit. But when we look for important papers, my wife says, “look on the counter where the microwave used to be”.

Our old places and things and friends are comfortable because we cling to the terms of reference that defined them in the first place…long after they have changed and most especially long after they have gone.