I have a new thought for today. Actually, better than that. What do planners love more than a thought?- a quality diagram.
How marketers are thinking?
Look at this diagram. It is a representation of the high-school style peer pressure issues that marketers face today. It represents all the typical, unhelpful questions that marketers ask, in that I-don't-even-stop-for-breath way:
"What's this new hot media platform I read about in AdWeek? Why aren't we doing it? Why is a brand, not even in our category doing this hot cool thing and we aren't?"
So that's this diagram. Also known as the "I want to be cool" diagram. Marketers see a platform and want to push it out to users (pushers, Ha Ha. I didn't even see that one coming!), without thinking about strategy, target and aim.Also remember that whenever anyone OR anything flags that they're "cool" you know straight away, in that instant, that they're not. It's about being like the Fonz. You exude cool without having to tell the world about it.
How marketers should be thinking
This diagram is where we need to head. This is the new, clean approach that we're beginning to see unfold.
"What does my consumer actually need and how do I meet it?"
This diagram, in layman's terms is the "How do I make sales?" model. This is where advertising taps into the needs of consumers and actually meets our strategy, target and aim. It can be both virtual and real world. And offering some real benefit, some value to a person's life.It does that without having to offer these fancy whizz-bang whatevers that consumers don't care about or get any real product benefit from.
So marketers out there, put down that drug of peer pressure. Look at your product/brand, look at your consumer and really understand how you can extend that product usage in your consumer's day to day life. It's going to be a hard transition, you'll suffer from withdrawal, and you will get envious at what those apparent cool kids are doing.
But, in the end, your bottom line will be secure. You will have a valid future and those other marketers, the ones that took those peer pressure drugs, they'll look like drug addicts do in 20 years time - old, tired, ugly and one foot in the grave.
1 comment:
That happens to me very often - talking to clients and having them ask about "This nifty Ajax thing I keep hearing about," or "What is Second Life?," or "Can we go on this thingy I heard of called LinkedIn?"
There seems to be this enormous pressure out there for brand managers to try and stay current by jumping on whatever bandwagon they find and - let's face it - get a shout out in AdWeek praising them for their boneheaded, newfangled, cutting-edge application of some thingamabob that is neither driving a better customer experience, nor helping the bottom line.
Marketers need to be much more shrewd about where they put their dollars. Avoid the bright red ball of "let's do something cool with mobile that no one will want!" and instead invest in the decidedly unsexier back-end infrastructure that will enable you to do something way cooler (and useful from both a customer and brand standpoint) in the future.
Well, that, and actually exercising a fair amount of common sense. Sound like too much?
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