Marketing Babylon

VC Daniel Cohen writes:

“In my opinion, there are 2 types of marketing professionals. The majority (Call them “professionals”) focus on the technical side of marketing (setting the website, the PR tour, names, trade-shows, etc.). These people are necessary in every marketing department. However, it’s the 2nd type (the “wizards”) that make a real difference, that come up the wild & crazy ideas.”

He goes on to give three cases from Salesforce.com, Google & iPod.

Great examples, Daniel, but I have to differ on one bit.
It’s not the crazy ideas that make the 2nd type of marketers. Crazy ideas are easy to come by – you put 3 creative people in a room for 30 minutes and you’re bound to come up with a couple.

What makes those ideas remarkable is the ability to figure out what the brand/product is actually about, and then come up with ideas that embody this spirit. It’s about turning stategy into a compelling story, and about finding an oppotunity to tell that story in an engaging way, in the cases you give – through an event, a distribution idea or packaging.

If they just “painted it purple”, it wouldn’t work that well. It’s the underlying meaning that makes a difference.

Technorati Tags: apple, ipod, google, gmail, salesforce.com, marketing, purplecow, wordofmouth, branding

Some stories are so strong that they are bound to repeat across categories. This is one of them.

#1 creates a new category. He may not be the first one to come up with the idea or the product, but is the first one to leverage it for mass market.
#1 learns how to tell the market about the new product, #1 teaches people that it is good, and eventually many people are convinced. Maybe #1 even comes to stand for that idea or product. Their brand is the strongest in the category by far, there may be some small players pitching similar products, but they can’t touch #1. #1 is the one who teaches the market why the entire category is good, why it works, why it is important.
Everything is fine, until, one day, #2 comes to town.

#2′s product isn’t as revolutionary as #1′s. Maybe there’s a twist on the original idea somewhere, but sometimes that twist is more in the way they communicate about the brand. You see, #2 are quite happy with the fact that #1 is synonymous with the category, because it means #1 stands for values & attributes that are generic and shared by every player in the category – big or small.

Ironically, it is the fact that #1 built the category and told everyone what it was all about that made them generic and vulnerable.

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Many traditional branding methods, rely on values & attributes to define brands, but these tend to be similar in competitive markets. “Innovation” and “Simplicity” come to mind as current popular values. “Empowerment” and “Enabling” were very strong about 5-6 years ago in the bubble days.
Values & attributes also tend to be limiting when things get intricate, they start to merge or contradict, broaden their meaning to the point they become useless at creating focus, or worse turn to generic clichés.
Often they will just float out there in their pure bright solitude, increasingly disconnected from your organisation, your brand, what you meant for them to do. From meaning.

Stories are closer to the way people interpret, articulate and communicate (complex) meaning in most contexts.
That’s another reason one-word-equity (whether you refer to the “new” concept or the “old” one) just can’t work – The association networks people have about brands are tangled, fluid, complex things. Trying to introduce focus using this “laser” approach is hopeless – the mind will (and should) resist. Telling a story influences perception in a much subtler way.

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