Old Is Wrong. New Is Right. (A Fool’s Guide to Marketing.)

Brands are dead. Advertising is dead. Marketing is dead. All one need do is Google* any one of these terms for proof. Right?

Yes, marketing has (and is) changing at an astonishing pace. As is business, communication, and our entire society. Simply ponder the fact that, according to Eric Schmidt, we create as much information in 48 hours now as we did from the dawn of man through 2003.

But change is not death. In fact, in many ways, change signals rebirth. Take the idea of brand, for instance. Today, the concept of brand has migrated far from its humble beginnings as a mass-medium proxy for product benefits. Now, this overriding philosophy drives the thinking of political campaigns, religions, individual people, and more. However this powerful concept is applied, the idea behind brand thinking is (still) that a thing (person, product, concept, or other) can carry a perception that is greater than its day-to-day function and form.

Social media doesn’t change this fundamental premise, or signal its death, although it may certainly change the methods by which one accesses, or understands a brand.

What it does mean, however, is that those brands that simply gave lip-service to the idea of brand (let’s call them the shiny new logo people, for now), have and will, die an even faster death. These are the brands (and the companies) that confused a brand with advertising. Or a new identity. Or (fill in your surface strategy or tactic, here.) Once, it was said that, ‘a good ad will make a bad product fail even faster.’ Now, this tenant can be applied to what social media is doing to poorly developed brands.

Does this mean that brands are dead? Certainly not, except for the ones that should have died, anyway.

The web and social media are rapidly forcing organizations to embrace the functional benefits that every customer already wanted in the first place. Customer service. Free delivery. Better pricing. For commodity products and services that compete (and competed) in areas where there is negligible product, service or concept differentiation, functional benefits ARE the point of differentiation. New logos and taglines for these companies never were the answer. (Unless, of course, these logos and taglines were part of a bigger brand and marketing strategy that addressed functional benefit.)

The more science and technology is applied to marketing, the more we need to collectively remember how and why marketing strategy works. The new tools we have at our disposal today can create incredible speed and efficiency. They cannot, however, take the place of solid strategic (business and brand) thinking.

(By the way, if your organization is looking for stronger brand and marketing strategy, I know a firm that can help.)

While I’m working on my next post, I hope you’ll read about how Cohesion helps organizations, here.

*Note the uppercase indication that this is indeed a brand name being used as a verb.

The Business of Complexity: How to Leverage Change.

After more than a decade of consulting to some of the country’s largest organizations, Cohesion’s approach has been refined to accommodate and leverage the most difficult positioning and messaging obstacle of all: Complexity. The kind of complexity that often comes from acquisition, multiple businesses and brands, shifting categories, and more.

Cohesion uses research to build stronger positioning and in the end, to create more efficient and cohesivemessaging. To build broad, strategic communication platforms that can be utilized by an entire organization, not just marketing and sales.

“For our organization, Cohesion developed a core strategy, and then developed specific positioning and messaging that helped us optimize the value of the whole rather than only the value of the individual pieces/divisions/brands, etc.,” says Rob Shively, former president of SM&P Utility Resources, Inc.

Many times, Change is the trigger that forces an organization to address complexity. Said one Cohesion client in the life sciences business, “After 10 acquisitions and faced with a category that was changing on an almost daily basis, marketing just didn’t know what to say anymore.”

Here, Cohesion developed a positioning strategy that was flexible enough to evolve over time. Additionally, we created a Corporate Brand Platform inclusive of all positioning and messaging for this multinational company.

If your organization faces complexity, Cohesion can help build a more simplified path to differentiation and relevance. A path that can immediately begin saving you money and time; a path that can insure everyone understands where you are headed. To learn more about how Cohesion can support your efforts, contact Brian Creath at (314) 783-4900, x1, or email him, here.

The (Not-So) Hidden Cost Of Saying The Wrong Thing.

As we study new ways to save money and grow business efficiency, one area has gone largely untouched: Communication. Interesting, because it’s one of the biggest issues facing business today.

An SIS International Research study discovered that 70% of small- to mid-size businesses claim that ineffective communication is their primary problem. Communication issues are not just annoying; they are also costly. A business with 100 employees spends an average downtime of 17 hours a week clarifying communication. This translates to an annual cost of $528,443.

As businesses get larger, so do the communications problems.

Most C-level managers readily admit that their organizations do a poor job of communicating. But while many admit the problem, few have focused on its answer. For most companies, communication is a major liability.

A typical organization pays the average employee $9,000 a year to read, write and answer email. Mid-sized corporations spend $2.5 million on internal meetings every year with little or nothing to show for it. A recent University of Maryland study states that poor communication in U.S. hospitals costs $12 billion a year, which represents more than half of an average hospital’s margin. Many other industries pay a similar price.

Add to this the inefficiencies in brand communications, marketing direction and sales efforts, and many companies simply throw up their hands. “Companies live in denial,” a CMO recently told me. “Because without a strategic path to change messaging and behavior, everyone is convinced that communication is too big and too soft a problem to wrestle.”

Not only is the problem complex, it’s fragmented. While many companies do a good job of project and/or vertical communications efforts, very few address the issue in a holistic way. Said my CMO friend, “The sad thing is, with the right approach you can make tremendous strides. Problem is, most managers don’t know how and where to start – or how to keep the process alive.”

(By the way, if your organization is ready to tackle the communications problem, or if you’re simply looking for stronger brand and communications messaging, I know a firm that can help.)

While I’m working on my next post, I hope you’ll read about how Cohesion helps organizations build stronger messaging to increase consistency, lower cost and drive growth, here.