Wow! I have been away from the blogging sphere for entirely too long! It's so great to be back talking to each of you, sharing and learning experiences in this crazy, jacked-up world of marketing. I will refrain from going into some lengthy, melodramatic explanation of where I have been, and leave you with this song from the late Kurt Cobain, "All Apologies."
In the world of marketing, each of us as marketers strive to enhance the way we implement strategy and create tools for communication in-support of our lovely strategies. What happens when you have no "clear" strategy? How do you create an impacting communications program that delivers a "real" ROI without a clear understanding of the marketing strategy? If you're scratching the old noggin, I am right there with you, and have a story to share below.
I once was in a meeting with a "text-book" marketing director who explained this dynamic marketing strategy to increase product growth to me using language that I don't think he even understood himself, but it did sound good. I remember wanting to say something to the effect of, "Now, in your words, what do you want to do?" However, I didn't and listened to the director's plans for increasing product growth among a segmented target audience. The meeting wrapped and I left with my task: Create a communications program to support growth.
Being tasked to create some creative communications, I knew that I had better make sense of what I deemed to be non-sense. But, how? As I pondered said strategy, I began to let the creative juices flow from my leaky brain. As these juices began to dampen my planning canvas, I stopped immediately in thought, and posed a question: What happens when I create some cool deliverables, but can't really measure them as positively impacting a strategy I don't understand?
Well, friends. I had to do something. I reassessed the director's strategy and thought about the audience he wanted me to speak to using whatever nutty tool I decided to use. Just as any artist takes inspiration from their environment, I realized what my canvas needed: It needed a linear plan in a box. What do I mean by this? I mean, that I had to reel in all those thoughts of engaging people with creative content delivered by vehicles driving behavior changes and think about my environment, which had to be set in the director's mind.
I immediately put up the paint brush and pulled out the hard hat. I began the mode of linear thought instead of my preferred visionary mode of thought. I put myself in the director's mind the best that I could to turn what I understood as some form of Mayan speak into marketing communications speak. I focused on the intended outcome from the director's perspective, and created a "text book" solution: PR. I decided that the only value I could bring to a strategy that was at best vague, was to create some interesting articles on new product developments and pitch them to a few influential trade publications and bloggers. I knew that the director would like the fact that I used a tool that could be measured and was "accepted."
By choosing to chain my creative mind to the steps of linear thinking I was able to deliver exactly what would be accepted by the director. So, friends, if you are having trouble creating value for your clients, get back in the box and you may actually find the tool you are looking for is in there. In this case, PR is always a good tool to use for a growth strategy. After all, you can measure it, can't you? Hmmm?
Be at peace!
Chris Teague
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