Devoted to branding and building and protecting brands

'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 me to speak, here's what I'd say to the class of '06:

"It's a honor to be here today. Doesn't seem like that long ago I was sitting in a folding chair like the one you're in, fidgeting and adjusting my tassle, listening to some guy I'd barely heard of drone on and on about the challenge of the future. This is the staple of commencement speakers, after all. Me? I was thinking about the parties I would attend that night. And, now, here I am, addressing you.

"My message: if there's one thing you'll be able to count on in your career, it's that the technology you'll use by the time you're my age will make the stuff we're working with today look like quill pens. However, a word to wise: technology is now and forever a means, not an end. In marketing and branding, and giving people reasons to buy the things we try to sell, the ultimate technology can only be found in one place. The place where it's resided since long before humans moved out of caves. It's the fabulous loom that resides between your ears. Your brain. What we do as marketers, and how well we do it, is still all about The Idea -- and the strategies and schemes we conceive and develop on behalf of our products. No great ideas, no great results. It's that simple.

"Everything about the Web 2.0 world we're in right now portends exciting and dynamic times for people making their living in marketing. Indeed, it's been underway for several years, but now that it's mainstream, and being "discovered" by everybody from Newsweek to Saturday Night Live, you can bet that Web 3.0 isn't too far over the horizon. Web 3.0 is when we'll all become virtual. "Real" reality will simply disappear. Avatars will rule the universe. They will go around telling flesh-and-blood humans what to do. It's rumored that some already do.

"I exaggerate only slightly.

"Back to my message. Keep some basic points in mind, and you shouldn't wander too far off the path to success. Of course, this assumes that you're genuinely interested in all things marketing. Because if you're only kinda interested in something, you're only going to be kinda good at it. And people who are "kinda" good at something will never really hit the high notes in it. You'll be kinda successful. And kinda happy doing it. You deserve more.

"I hope you didn't get into this business simply because you always thought Nike commercials and beer ads were really cool. Actually, that's not a bad reason to become interested. I date myself by admitting that my attraction to marketing began when I saw those old VW ads -- no, not the ones with the guys driving around to the "Da-Da-Da" soundtrack. I mean the OLD ads with the headlines that said "Think Small", and "Lemon". Ask your grandparents about them. They were the "1984" Apple commercial of their day. Anyway, it got me interested enough to learn that you could actually make a career dreaming up this stuff.

"As I progressed along my winding career road something really stood out. The best ideas were always the riskiest ones and no matter what the product happened to be, the approach was based on the customer as opposed to the product. Seems obvious. Yet, most of the ideas and ads and campaigns I saw were low-risk, or risk-free. What these ideas all had in common was that the approach was always based on the product and not the customer. Like everyone was looking at the world through the product lens. They were not standing in the shoes of the person they (the marketers) were trying to persuade. Sometimes, they had no clue at all as to who that person was. They understood customers in the abstract. They didn't really know them up close.

My advice on generating the best ideas that will get the best results and earn you a rep for genius? Start everything you do, every marketing initiative, new product development, sales program, promotional event, everything -- with one thing, and one thing only, in mind: your target. The customers. The people you want to actually buy your stuff. Who are they and what do they really need in terms of the products you can offer them? How do they describe the problem you purport to solve with your new "thing"? What are you offering to them that is so radically different and so obviously valuable and cool that they will abandon what they're doing to today and flock to your alternative? Not to mention give you their money.

"Yes, you would think that all marketers do this. The fact is, it's relatively rare. It's one reason why so many new products fail. It's not that those products were bad, necessarily, although some were. And are. It's that the go-to-market strategy was based on what the manufacturer thought was a can't miss, wiz-bang product. They saw the world from inside out.

"So take the opposite point of view. See things the way your customers do. You have to be passionate about what you're selling, to be sure. But never let it blind you to what you absolutely must do to get that thing into peoples' hands. Imagine those hands were yours. What would make you reach out to grab that product? But beware: this insistence on outside-in thinking and marketing won't always make you popular with your colleagues, whose knee-jerk behavior is inside-out. But it will make you very valuable to your employer. You could do a lot worse. Good luck, and good selling!"