Take away the bells and whistles, drums, guitar, mics, speakers, audio mastering etc and this group remain ‘remarkable’.
If you were to take away the ‘bells and whistles’ of your marketing operation – what are you left with? If you were to take away promotion, offers, advertising, direct mail, email, SEO, “spin”, booklets, tradeshows, leaflets, call centres, seminars, PR campaigns, etc etc – would you be remotely remarkable or memorable?
If you are not left with much – I’d advocate you forget about the bells and whistles for a while and concentrate on improving whats really under the covers of your business.
Focusing on the essence of your company is the only way to truly be remarkable.
Well put. I’ve noticed one of the greatest challenges is getting everyone (and my everyone I mean mostly upper management) to agree on what that essence is. Any tips on how to get there?
[...] o’ the hat to Chris for leading the way – [...]
>bdunc1
Odd as it may sound, if you can’t get senior management to agree on the brand’s essence – there’s obviously gonna be a fair degree of trouble ahead. Sometimes BIG trouble. Sometimes DAMAGING trouble. Sometimes CORROSIVE trouble.
I mean, I can understand differences of opinion on routes to market, or marketing strategy even. But having differing opinions on the brand and what the brand essence is, MUST be avoided.
I think the best tip I could give is that ‘essence’ ISN’T about finding and defining the ONE thing you do – It is about finding the SINGLEMOST IMPORTANT thing.
Too often people try to shape lots of things they do, into a single essence statement. That’s kinda flawed.
Picking the singlemost important thing doesn’t exclude ideas – it just ranks them.
And typically senior management are more comfortable thinking about lists and ranks.