BY: Brian Sullivan
You may have heard the saying, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” This is not just a mantra for those with wanderlust. It is a powerfully simple statement about the importance of vision and goal setting.
Vision helps pave the road in the direction you want to go. Goals are the mile markers that help measure your progress.
Goals give you something to work towards and something to measure both personal and professional success. A simple concept no doubt but there is both an art and a science to creating a vision and setting goals.
The science to setting a vision comes in the consideration of your strengths relative to your competition and establishing what place you can own in the minds of your consumers. Communicating your vision is an art. You have to paint a clear and compelling picture of your vision so all those that will help you get there know where you want to go and maybe even why.
The science to goal setting comes in the quantitative or qualitative measures used when setting your goals. This usually involves almost every aspect of your business working together to establish where you want to go and likely how you are going to get there. Here you have long term and short term goals with the timeframes relative to you business cycles i.e. quarterly and annual or weekly and monthly.
These goals can seem overwhelming not just because of their size but because of the relative long term nature of most of them. The art to goal setting comes in establishing check in periods with goals specifically for these periods. These can be more qualitative measures but should be on the same continuum as the overall goal. I think this is a critical step because it gives people something to work towards in the interim and the opportunity to celebrate successes along the way. These successes can improve employee morale and give them a greater sense of investment in the overall goals. If there aren’t successes at the check in times, you have the opportunity to adjust giving you a better chance at achieving the overall goal.
This logic applies both to overall business planning as well as marketing plans that support the business plan. For example, in our work, we start with a shared vision for the brand created by members of our team and the client. This vision supports the business goals of the organization. We then agree on goals and metrics we will use to measure the success of each campaign. Armed with clear goals, we monitor (or check in on) our campaigns on a daily basis. This gives us the opportunity to adjust spending or messaging during the campaign as well as make adjustments for the next flight. It gives our staff a great sense of investment and the opportunity to share in both realizing successes and sharing those with the client.
So, unless you are happy wandering, pave your road.
BY: Brian Sullivan
I watched a short video today that challenged the viewer to guess the name of a movie based on the icons in the video. The icons morphed from one to another in a very clever way touching a wide range of movies. While movies are not my thing (I have a hard time sitting still that long), I loved the challenge of trying to guess the titles and felt good when I got one or two right.
I believe consumers like it when you challenge them. To be clear, I am not suggesting consumers like to be challenged to a duel or have their comments challenged (think Apple’s response to iPhone 4 complaints), but I am suggesting that consumers like smart communications that challenge them to think (even just a little bit). The goal is to engage them and not just talk to them. And, consumers find it endearing when you give them credit for being intelligent. Of course, there is a time and a place for this type of dialogue with a consumer just as there is a time and a place for “Big Mac $2.99.”
When a brand speaks to their consumers intelligently and treats them with respect, they will earn loyalty. When they can make their audience think just a little bit whether it is a reference to something in pop culture or a simple double entendre, people respond positively to the challenge of figuring it out.
This type of thing happens everyday in conversations around the world from… Andy Roddick referring to spontaneously shaving his head as a “Britney moment” to someone (me) playing the Violent Femmes Blister in the Sun over the company paging system just prior to a beach vacation. Smart communicators know the value of a payoff when the consumer has that “aha” moment which really translates to “they really know me.” Consider a Pepsi spot I did a few years back for an under-the-cap promotion that used the song Twist and Shout as the background, or Gastro One, the new name of the leading GI practice in our region, or the new tagline Live it Up, Just Down the Road for Tunica, MS, a primarily drive-in destination gaming market. All of these create “aha” moments, but in very different, very subtle ways.
So, as you can see, we consider every touch point an opportunity to give our audience credit for being smart, to engage them in a meaningful way and to ultimately gain their trial and resulting loyalty. Of course, social media outlets have become the ultimate way to engage consumers and have a true dialogue. However, it is important to remember that you can’t ignore the other opportunities to engage your audience. Man cannot live by social media alone.
I challenge you to see how many movie titles you can guess and can almost guarantee it will be more than I got. Click the image to view the video.
BY: Walter Rose
In my last blog post, “The Bass-o-Matic Reborn,” I alluded to the marketing challenges that result from the physical clutter (signs, inflatables, flags, etc,) existing in areas with a great concentration of retail establishments. While you can argue the aesthetic impact this has on a community from a strictly marketing perspective, it is just a manifestation of a broader issue. Clutter exists not just on the side of the street but in the minds of the consumers we’re trying to reach. So as communication professionals what can we do to break through?
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