Trending in Marketing #18
Your story matters
The problem with corporate marketing today is there is no personality. It stems from fear.
Fear of being ridiculed. (Jaguar copped it for their latest rebrand)
Fear of being exiled. (Steve Jobs was thrown out of Apple)
Fear of ruining everything.
So we tend to stay quiet. Safe.
The problem is if we don’t hear from you, we don’t have an opportunity to connect with you and your voice / brand starts to blend into the beige noise of sameness.
When we share a story we allow a peek into who we really are, it’s magical.
Volvo’s new ad only features their new electric car towards the end of the 3min45sec short film.
Performance marketers will tell you it’s too long.
I’ll remember it for a long time as the ad that made a tear roll down my cheek. Will I buy the car? Not sure it matters. I felt something inside my normally ice cold heart. A tear rolled down my cheek. And I think about Volvo differently now.
Idea
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So much dysfunction at work is down to:
not following up
not reporting back
missing the connecting dots
how to turn something good into something great
This graphic is helpful when you want to show your progress to your team.
Quote
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"I will have to remember 'I am here today to cross the swamp, not to fight all the alligators!"
- From The Art of Possibility by Rosamund and Benjamin Zander
Marketing can feel treacherous - like you have to fix everything all at once. Fight all the alligators. Not true. Instead, focus on stacking small wins and celebrating momentum.
Question
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Time to speak up?
The loudest voices are rarely the wisest. Yet they take all the air time in meetings and even in 1:1’s.
It’s exhausting to speak up, especially for introverts.
I’ve got bad news. We need to hear from you. Your story matters. If you ever want to have an impact proportional to your ambition then you have no choice.
Speak up.
This is Marketing.
Cheers,
Sean Blake