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May30
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Gather your troops and complete this exercise:
"Marketing is about values. We have to be very clear on what we want our customers to know about us. They want to know who is ______________(fill in your company name) is and what do we stand for. What we're about is not making ____________ (fill in the literal description of your product), although we do that very well. __________ (your company name, again) is about more than that. What (we're) about, (our) core value is that we believe that ________________ (fill in with your core value). That's what we believe."
The italics are mine, but the words belong to Steve Jobs (AAPL) who spoke them some years back at the MacWorld that launched the semi-famous "Think Different" campaign. It is universal in its ability to boil down what you have to do to awaken your own marketing gene. Do this exercise and you're well on your way down the right path. Do it.
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May26
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My biz partner Steve Turner came back from New York this week after attending the big BrandWeek/Adweek conference (View). Here's what some panel members, all clients, had to say about agencies with "recessive" marketing genes: 1. Agencies who fall into...
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May25
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BrandWeek/AdWeek and Mirren Business Development sponsored a really useful conference this week in New York. My agency partner, Steve Turner, was there and brought back the following summary: There are 76,800 marketing firms and ad agencies...
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May22
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If you believe that people are actually buying into other people when they buy something, that traditional institutions are slowly losing their ability to create a sense of community, and that cult religions gain traction mainly because the people in...
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May17
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I hereby claim "rights", for whatever the hell it's worth (hint: probably very little) to the following line: Web 2.0, the blogosphere, etc., cuts the old "15-minutes of fame" thing down to "15 seconds". I'll let you come to your...
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May16
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'Tis the season. Mortar-boards, pomp-and-circumstance. Another class marching into commencement ceremonies, picking up their diplomas to the applause and hoots of well-wishers and...marching out to look for jobs. If there was such a place as Branding U., and they asked...
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May12
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Even a university that brands itself as The Home of Champions can suffer marketing-gene sleeping sickness. Consider Stanford University’s moribund football “brand”. While Stanford has never really been synonymous with college football in the tradition of its private-school rival USC,...
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May11
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...Flog your "newest technology" instead of talking in terms of the next-generation application. The latter means something to people who buy hi-tech gear. The former is of interest only to your friends and family (and probably a tiny minority of...
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May10
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In a very entertaining book that came out a couple of years ago,“The Culting of Brands”, Douglas Atkin starts out by calling attention to the monumental waste of time known as the corporate “offsite meeting”. OK, maybe I should amend...
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May 8
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He's lost more "friends" in the past year than he's made in the past ten, but it'll be awhile before Tom Cruise notices any dents in his net worth Still, we can hardly conceal our delight that his most recent "vehicle" looks...
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Good Morning Silicon Valley's comments today on "Core 2 Duo", the name Intel is giving its new processors for desktop and notebook computers, typifies a widely-held misdefinition of "brand": that it's all about a logo, or a trademark. Then, there's this quote: “Branding is a pretty...
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Peruse the May 4 edition of The Economist and you'll come across an article that really can't be "perused". You've got to take a couple of breaths and re-read almost every paragraph because it's one of those pieces in which...
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May 5
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There are principles to practically everything, even the humble (and immeasurably valuable) elevator pitch -- one of the indispensable elements of marketing. Here they are:First, as always, consider your audience. It's composed of the consumer/customer, or anyone who influences said...
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May 3
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As if we needed reminding, Ken Belson of The New York Times brings it up again. In Advertising : Best Cellphone Company? All of Them, to Hear Them Say It, we come face to face with one of the oldest...
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May 2
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So I'm on a caffeine high. So check this out from last month's Selling Power : "(Starbuck's) planned to raise hot coffee prices in the fall and wanted to use the iced summer drinks to help consumers become accustomed to the...
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The old rule of thumb was that the more technologically sophisticated the product, the more brand attributes (i.e. features/benefits) you could build upon to develop brand loyalty. Today? Yesterday's rule is today's myth. Consider the latest dustup between Google (GOOG)...
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May 1
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I blogged the other day on a topic that makes me crazy: go-to-market planning, or lack thereof, on the part of some otherwise very smart, disciplined entrepreneurs. The mortality rate of new products, and incipient ventures, as any venture capitalist...
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