(Write Marketing Strategy
Seminar: Part I. )
The five
brief lesson plans on advertising on this site, in concert with our guide on how
to write marketing strategy, address fundamental positioning issues rarely
discussed in academia or in commercial enterprises. They discuss why
successful brands get stuck and two not-so-obvious ways you can turn them
around. The principles outlined can also be applied to brands before they
run into trouble. Planning ahead is often easier than
retrofitting.
#1 TURNAROUND IDEAS - An Introduction.
Why do
Brands
get Stuck?
You probably have a terrific product or service and a flawless selling
proposition. Why don't people listen? How can you write
marketing strategy that will turn things
around?
Well, your customers and
staff are all humans, and the human mind does work in curious ways.
People are always intrigued by anything new, but usually wait until someone
else tries it first. People see things they want, but they decide to
"wait and see." Corporate managers want to implement new
marketing and sales programs, but everyone down the line drags their
feet. What do all these phenomena have in common?
Here's
an off-the wall question for you. If you were a sunflower standing
tall in a field, could you decide one bright morning to become a
strawberry? Of course not. You have accumulate
eons of sunflower genetic code and subtle sunflower behavioral programs that makes you
irrevocably a sunflower.
All life forms possess deep systemic rhythms that prevent them from
stepping too far out of line, too fast. Yes, plants and animals adapt
to changes in the environment, but very slowly. And they probably
don't even know. (How, for example, did plants - which can neither
see nor smell nor taste - invent beautiful, aromatic flowers to attract bees that
possess all three senses?)
Only humans possess the cerebral ability to IMAGINE being, or doing
something radically different from what they're doing right now. Most marketing
efforts try to get people to TRY ME, BUY NOW, CALL IMMEDIATELY, HURRY, SAVE
BIG! If we scream, they will come.
We spend an tremendous effort trying to persuade the EGO, the conscious
mind, to CHANGE.
But there are in all of us, the same deep psychological systems, and
programs, and memories developed over millions of years and the last couple
of weeks that actively
resist change. The philosophical concept of Free Will has been debated for
several centuries. The physiological phenomenon of Me Won't has been
in force for millennia.
If you want
to turn around a brand whose sales have inexplicably slumped or stagnated,
you'll have to figure out a way to actually persuade some sunflowers to
voluntarily become strawberries. In the next four lessons you'll
learn to write marketing strategy that does just that.
Write
Marketing Strategy
