Buzz!Words

Everyone's a Consumer

Met with my first official client today. The meeting went better than I had expected. But that's not what this post is all about. This client is in the tourism marketing business, and she said something very wise today. She said

I think that everyone is a tourist.

That got me thinking. In fact, everyone is a consumer. The problem is, when we are thinking about our own businesses, we stop thinking like a consumer, customer, client. We start thinking about all of the other business issues that get in the way of treating our customer they way we want to be treated.

This thought is a continuation of my rant about brands and marketers not getting the new consumer the other day. We need to have empathy for our customers, to really walk a mile in their shoes. To get how they feel.

Reports of the Death of Branding

I just finished reading the first chapter of Love Marks, by Kevin Roberts. I actually have to agree with a lot of what he says. (At least so far... we'll see in chapter 2). But something got me so bugged that I just had to blog.

Roberts says that brands are "all out of juice". So far so good. He backs it up with some pretty compelling points. Brands are worn out from overuse, have been smothered by creeping conservatism. You get the picture. But the point that got me "juiced up", was as follows:

Brands can't understand the new consumer.

To be blunt, that's crap. It's marketers that can't understand the new consumer. And marketers don't understand the new consumer because they are not empathetic to their needs. They aren't trained with the new tools in anthropology, psychology and sociology, and they don't get the average consumer's life. Brands will become even more important precisely because the well executed brand does understand the new consumer.

More later on the missing tools in the marketer's kit.

Blog Fog

I read an article on blogging in Marketing Magazine yesterday that made my hair stand on end. Not about the blogging part, but one of the participants interviewed for the article really hit a sore spot with me.

He says he's still waiting for Canadian marketers to embrace the blog, but he's not holding his breath. "It's a generational thing," he says. "To be blunt, senior management in their 40s, 50s and 60s-they don't get it. They'll never get it, and to a degree, we won't see significant change until the younger generation takes over the corner office, because they've grown up in this universe. They think differently, they act differently, they don't have the hangups."

What a load of crap. People in their 40s 50s and 60s do embrace change. The reason that senior management doesn't embrace blogging has nothing to do with their age. It has to do with corporate cultures that punish risk taking and reward those who make as few decisions as possible. People who embrace new ideas and technologies eventually get chased out of the organization, leaving risk averse managers who manage for the downside, not the upside.

If we want to see Canadian marketers embrace blogging, I think we need to do a better job of demonstrating the benefits of a blog to both marketers and senior management. I always found that within the fog of the large corporatation, that persistence and a lot of repetition were necessary to persuade management to test new ideas.

A Brave New World

Well, I'm experiencing a case of "physician heal thyself" today. After 12 years in the brand marketing world, I've finally decided to take the plunge and join the vast armies of marketing consultants serving the business community.

And it's more than a bit scary. Suddenly the art of creating, positioning and naming a brand has taken on a whole lot more importance (at least to me). And yet, it really should be simple. I took a look at Doc Searle's latest on branding. He says;

And yeah, I do believe that branding matters, only so far as being clear and consistent about your name (or your product's name) and what it means. After that, marketing needs to be about conversations and relationships

I suppose that's true. The only thing is that it's very hard to be consistent and clear about the brand and what it means, especially when customers are pulling you in every direction.

So, in an effort to walk the talk, I decided to plunge into blogging. I figure if this is stuff I'm recommending to clients, I had better be a good example. So, for the next few weeks, I'll try to post my thoughts and experiences of building face to face relationships with new customers, and of learning about the fine art of blogging.