When Did You Last See A Really Good Ad? (Introducing The Adcrafter.)

While my brand and marketing consultancy, Cohesion, continues its work in marketing and brand research, strategy and messaging, I have, for some time, continued to concept and write roughly 10 print advertising campaigns a year, along with a smattering of radio, outdoor and TV work. Most of this work has stemmed from my background as a creative director and copywriter in the advertising agency business. A career which several longtime clients have continued to leverage for creative work.

I wrote and concepted the above outdoor advertising for Volvo, advertising that went on to win a Clio and, sell a whole bunch of Volvos. I’ve also had the good fortune of being featured in the Creative Black Book, PRINT, CA, and winning dozens of ADDY’s, and more than 60 TAM awards.

But for the past several years, that work has been more of a ‘passion project’ than a true business focus.

Watching through the strategic lens of Cohesion during the past several years, however, I’ve witnessed an increasing ‘digital marketing focus’ which, while appropriate from a priority standpoint, is killing the quality and effectiveness of traditional advertising in mediums such as print, outdoor and radio — mediums still important and critical to many companies. Mediums which function and behave differently than web and digital. Mediums which, unfortunately, no longer receive the attention (or craftsmanship) they deserve.

Which is why we recently launched, ‘The Ad Crafter, a division of Cohesion.’ I’ll serve as creative director and copywriter to develop and craft better ads for a short list of clients. We’ll be using in-house creatives, plus a short list of nationally recognized art directors and writers with whom I’ve worked in the past.

We’re not interested in becoming an agency, a design firm or other type of creative services firm…simply makers of fine advertising. All developed from the umbrella of Cohesion, a nationally recognized strategy firm. To learn more about The Ad Crafter, please visit:http://theadcrafter.carbonmade.com

To put our expertise to work for your business, simply give me a call at (636) 530-3670, or email me at bcreath@cohesioncompany.com.

The 3 Types of Marketing Firms. (A few words on focus.)

One of the big knocks against marketing firms is that far too many try to be all things to all prospects. For the untrained and/or novice client, this can be an issue. Either in the form of “they’re really all kind of alike to me” or perhaps worse, “don’t all of them do all that stuff?”

This post isn’t about specific disciplines, but rather about discussing the core, driving philosophy behind a marketing firm. For those purchasing marketing services, it’s important to know what kind of firm you’re in the market for — and what kind of firm you’ll be most comfortable with as you engage in any kind of marketing effort. In my nearly 30 years in the business, as much as things have changed, I can still identify three (3) types of marketing firms, which I have labeled below:

RESELLERS: The origin of the word agency comes from the term ‘agent,’ a firm whose primary service was to ‘resell’ media and hopefully, add a little strategic value to that sale along the way. Today, you’ll find this type of firm in the form of agencies that repackage and resell all kinds of private-label services and products.

MANUFACTURERS: I’ll put most agencies and firms in this model. Here, you’ll find companies that assemble internal staff the same way Henry Ford did. Often selling their services by the hour, these firms are built to make things. Ads. Websites. Facebook pages.

ARCHITECTS: (Of which, my firm is one.) These firms, at least the very best ones, exist to provide strategic direction and initial development. They are not built to deliver any one tactic, so their solutions are based on the ‘best possible’ outcome…not just those with which they have the most experience.

Semantics, you say? Yes, I suppose so. But important distinctions. Just ask anyone who has hired one type of firm thinking (or hoping) they were buying one of the other two.

Of course, most firms have aspects of more than one of the three types listed above. (I know we tip slightly into the manufacturing realm.) The big question — and the one you should ask your current or prospective marketing firm right now — is:  Which one of these philosophies best describes the firm’s primary focus?

If they can’t commit to one, that’s a problem. If you, as a purchaser, can’t decided on which is most important to your business, that’s an even bigger issue.

(By the way, if you’re looking for a brand and marketing architect, I know a good one.)

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 revenue, here.

A Novel Idea: Say Something Worth Saying

In ways even he could not have imagined, Marshall McLuan‘s 1960′s theory has come to pass: The Medium is the Message.

Proof is all around: People mindlessly flip through hundreds of cable channels, watching, well…nothing really…simply because they have the technology. Others, adorned with head and ear attachments, oblivious to fellow shoppers and commuters, converse about trivial matters, simply because, yes…they can. Smart phones at the ready, people of all ages text millions of introspective messages such as: where u at? (Hopefully, swerving to miss the car in front of them.)

Because we can, we do. We have been empowered by the technology afforded us, and dammit, we’re going to use it. Whether we need to or not.

Of course, the appetite for new technology will only increase. But while the explosion of communication mediums has certainly democratized control of ‘the message’ (more people have the ability to say more things to more people than ever before), it’s had a severely negative impact on the quality of the message itself.

Is it really necessary to ‘Tweet‘ about what one has had for breakfast?

Here’s the point: The biggest, real opportunity for marketers today is not about embracing the next technology, but about better using the ones we have. And to do this properly, we have to look beyond the medium, and look to the intrinsic power of the message. The age-old, technology-agnostic craft of saying something worth saying. Something of value. Something of meaning.

God knows, you’ll stand out.

Woody Allen once said, ’80% of success is just showing up.’ From a communications standpoint, we’ve certainly embraced this, haven’t we? We’re connected. We’ve got gadgets and toys that would frighten Alexander Graham Bell and Mr. Watson. In the time it took to read this post, you’ve already received 10 emails, three texts and 25 Tweets.

Problem is, how many of them are really worth reading? For the astute marketer, the answer is clear: Say something really worth saying. Relevance, my fellow marketer, will get you everywhere.

While I’m working on my next post, I hope you’ll read about how Cohesion helps organizations build stronger brands and marketing efforts, here.

Marketing Services: Should You Build or Buy?

While I was courting the business of a Fortune 500 company last year, the company’s CMO turned to me and said, “You know, I can hire people to do everything but think.”

The company’s marketing staff – good, smart people, all – had become institutionalized. They were having a difficult time thinking outside of their own politics, and an even tougher time translating positioning and real benefits to those outside their own walls.

Thankfully, after the CMO overturned a longstanding policy of not hiring outside strategists, we were hired.

This illustrates a debate companies have been having for years: Should your company build marketing services internally or outsource them? Today, as the economy forces companies to more carefully scrutinize budgets, more and more companies have made the decision to take marketing matters into their own hands.

That’s certainly a logical option. Especially for those efforts that directly tie to the day-to-day operational and financial workings of the business. But there is another issue. Value. Does what you buy (internally or externally) provide you with the best possible chance for marketing success?

Twenty-five years of careful study have proved one point: With very few exceptions, when a solid marketing department supplements its efforts with a quality outside firm providing strong counsel, strategy and creative, the results will be more successful than that of an internal marketing department working alone. (And yes, I have been on both sides of the table.)

There are a number of reasons this truth holds. Among them:

1. Objectivity – an outside firm can ‘speak the truth’ easier than someone on the inside, often solving problems that others may not see
2. Talent - pure strategists and pure creatives are more often found on the outside of corporations
3. Focus - because outside firms usually work in a specific role, the work is often more focused than that of a marketing department wearing many hats
4. Perspective - outside firms work with other clients; they tend to have a broader world view and can utilize the experience of similar situations and efforts
5. Collaboration – in situations where an internal department demands and champions great strategy and creative, and an outside firm develops and produces it, marketing success will follow (if not, you’ve got the wrong firm – but that’s another post…).

Perhaps the better question today is not “to build or buy,” but rather: Given your budget, how can you structure your marketing functions to give you the best possible opportunity for success?

Unlike any other time in the last 50 years, today’s economic environment offers companies a chance to wipe the marketing slate clean and start over. To customize functions and efforts based on real opportunity and need, vs. what has been done in the past. For most companies, the right answer isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition; but rather, a blended approach: of quality and affordability, of strategy and execution, of internal staff and external resources.

To those looking for a firm, find one that can provide continuity between strategy and execution. This will allow internal staff to partner with the firm at all levels, utilizing services as budget and need allow. This continuity will also provide insurance that the firm won’t build efforts in a vacuum — that each will be cohesively and consistently tied. Today, it’s more important than ever that you find a firm that will work with you at a business level, and not just a tactical or creative level. If you can, work with principals to ensure you will be working with the same people tomorrow.

(By the way, if you’re looking for a firm, I know a good one.)

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.

Quick, What’s Your Message?

“We’re hoping the economy turns around sometime this year so we can work on crafting our message,” an anonymous VP of marketing said to me last week. That’s funny. The reason I contacted this company in the first place was because the lead salesperson (a good friend) told me what he — and the rest of the sales staff — need right now is, “the right story; the right message to tell clients and prospects.”

Marketing has been quick to respond to trimming fat from budgets. But in many cases, these same cuts are now beginning to tear into the meat and bone of an organization’s core message — of its brand and reputation. My salesperson friend says that in lieu of a defined message, he and his staff have been left to create their own. “I think it will be hard to unwind some of the ‘survival mode’ sales tactics we’ve developed by the seat of our pants during the past few months,” he says. “We really need to find and stick with a core message we can all live with — right now.”

We’ve run into this situation numerous time since the start of the recession: Well-intentioned companies that needed to cut marketing budgets, cut them across the board, rather than prioritizing. Strategic planning and core messaging needs vital to the existence of the company were often cut to save a few short-term tactics that management hoped would produce short-term sales. The result: Brands have been driven backwards, and short-term sales haven’t been all that great.

By the way, what’s your message? Has it been left to wither during the past few months? Is it consistent and cohesive at every management, marketing and sales level of your organization? Does it need to be re-crafted to fit a new and changing direction? Regardless of the money you intend to spend on marketing — now and into the future — you will still need the right message. In fact, the fewer dollars you spend, the better and more consistent your message needs to be.

Coincidentally, if you’re looking for a firm that can help you craft and platform that message, I do know a good one.

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.

Why Every Company Needs Outside Marketing Perspective.

Something funny happened on the way to the future: As organizations have cut back on budgets and taken many marketing services ‘inside,’ many have also become extremely insulated…often, seeing things solely through the lens of an office window.

It’s one thing to take creative services in-house. It’s quite another to look internally for truly innovative brand and marketing strategy. Because more often than not, the time, the broad view and the development expertise, just don’t exist on the inside. This is not to knock some very good internal marketing people. Simply to point out that everyone has a different set of skills and training. (As as many extremely talented marketing managers will tell you.)

Yes, many of the companies we talk with are struggling with perspective. Mostly, how to find it and how to use it.

Certainly, what a company ‘needs‘ is not the same as what it ‘can‘ or ‘should‘ do. That’s where outside perspective has its primary value. And no where is this more true than in marketing.

Without outside marketing perspective, strategy simply becomes a wish list and marketing execution a never-ending series of ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ by committee: an environment in which, success has a difficult time surviving.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am in the business of providing marketing perspective. Developed and sold through the context of strategy and messaging, but perspective, nonetheless. It’s through marketing perspective that value and relevance can be created. That new insights and the experience of having done something before, can co-exist. That internal vision and external realities, can successfully come together.

Is this a sales message? Of course we’d like to provide our perspective to help your organization develop successful marketing strategy. But more than a sales message for us, it’s a sales message for the importance of buying outside perspective. Outside (sometimes referred to as ‘third-party) perspective is a critical tool in building strategy. But obviously, outside perspective cannot be found or brought ‘in-house.’ (Then it wouldn’t be outside, anymore.)

(If you’re not buying marketing perspective from our firm, please do buy it from somebody.)

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

How to Never Get Ahead in Marketing. (Or) Always Let Tactics Drive Your Strategy.

“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.
Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory.” -Sun Tzu

[Please Note: This post is not intended as a strategy vs. tactics treatise, but rather, as a discussion starter to point out the real lack of (and real need for) strategic thinking in today's marketing efforts.]

For some, marketing has always been viewed through a tactical lens. You know the type: the person who mistakes a logo for a brand, or a website for a marketing program. And make no mistake, tactics are critical and necessary to every marketing effort. But because they are tangible, many have confused their necessity with being the ONLY focus of marketing. Sadly, strategy — the thinking that directs a tactic — is increasingly being overlooked, or completely neglected.

Imagine if buildings were built without blueprints — if wars were fought without plans. Lewis Carroll said, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.”

Social media (and the bold, consumer voice that has arisen from its power) have many marketers now convinced that they cannot guide a brand, or their marketing efforts, but instead, must simply monitor the experiences of customers. And to successfully monitor and react to these experiences, these marketers have focused their resources on the tactics that will enable these efforts. Many times, regardless of what carefully planned core missions, or operations models say they can, or should do.

Should a company listen to its customers and steer accordingly? Of course. Should it simply become what a customer desires, with no strategic input regarding what it can, or should be? Of course, not. This one-sided view is as bad (and wrong) as the one-sided ‘company push’ advertising strategies that customers are rebelling against in the first place.

Strategy is (or should be) the thing that links the internal wants and desires of a company (brand) to the wants and needs of external audiences (partners, suppliers and customers). Developed properly, it’s a flexible bridge that anchors a few core principles and then allows that business and people change — sometimes quickly, sometimes over time. Tactics, are the tools developed from this strategic platform and guided by its direction. Important and critical, but tools, nontheless.

If you don’t have this strategy in place, you run the risk of never differentiating, never knowing what to do next, and yes, never truly getting ahead.

(By the way, if your organization is looking for stronger business, 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.

The Numbers Don’t Lie. (They can’t tell the whole truth, either.)

In a 2009 Ad Age article titled, “Metric Madness: The Answer to Mathematical Failure Seems to Be More Math,” (registration required) brand and marketing veteran Al Ries says, “If you run a company by numbers alone, you’ll run it into the ground. You might be successful in the short term, but never in the long term, as the financial crisis demonstrates.”

Ries is concerned that the marketing community appears to be “drifting from the right to the left — from a right-brain approach to a left-brain approach.” He cites a prominent U.S. marketing executive who has held top marketing jobs at Procter & Gamble and other companies, as recently saying: “At its core, marketing is 70% math.”

Is measurement inherently bad for marketing? Of course not. It’s when measurement becomes a replacement for insight and experience that the problem begins. And today, more and more, that’s exactly what’s happening.

This is a deeper argument than one of science vs. art. Or even of logic vs. emotion. No, this is about the erosion of marketing wisdom. The enlightened integration of the right-brain and the left-brain. (Most humans I know are equipped with both.)

In an article published in this month’s Inc., leading corporate consultant, Charles Jacobs discusses how brain structure can impact business management: “Objective decision making is a myth. When the area of the brain responsible for logical thinking is activated, it also receives input from the area responsible for emotion. Without input from your feelings, you can’t think long term. You don’t learn from past experience; you can’t empathize. The more complex the problem, the more of the brain should come into play.”

Marketing wisdom accepts that an illogical thought can succeed. That counter-intuitive strategies can work. That some ideas cannot really be tested.

Marketing wisdom is not a replacement for measurement or analysis, but rather the totality of instinct, experience and observation, tempered by logic and data. You cannot google wisdom – it takes time and must be learned. Perhaps that’s why it’s no longer in style.

Marketing is still a business run by humans, for humans. To the dismay of marketing science, so is measurement. Which means, necessarily, that ‘the numbers’ are still open to interpretation, manipulation and sometimes, fraud. (Just ask Bernie Madoff’s accountant.)

Measurement for measurement’s sake is every bit as wasteful as creative for creative’s sake. Just because we can, does not necessarily mean that we should. I know of no company that ever measured its way out of an inferior marketing effort.

As we look to economic recovery, it’s critical to remember: Metrics are not the overarching context through which marketing decisions should be made. Wisdom is. It’s the thing most lacking in marketing today. And, the most valuable, too.

(By the way, if you’re in the market for a bit of wisdom, 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.

Business is Changing. (How relevant is yours?)

It’s the question on the minds of nearly every C-suite executive we talk with: Is our business (brand) as relevant as it should be?

It’s been our experience that most organizations are actually quite good at making and/or sourcing marketing materials. It’s when the challenge is developing and articulating comprehensive strategy that many companies struggle. The reality is that far too many companies lack a consistent and successful method for designing and maintaining positions for their brands, products and services.

Companies that have developed successful positions, tend to have one thing in common: Before the first tactical thought begins, these companies concentrate their marketing focus on structure, strategy and messaging. Not coincidentally, these three (3) critical elements are the focus of our business, as well.

If you’d like to help your organization broaden the practices of brand strategy, positioning and messaging beyond marketing — and into comprehensive, organization-wide internal and external efforts, 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 develop more relevant and differentiated positions, here.

Marketing Gurus Are Giving The Really Good Ones A Bad Name.

Have you noticed an increase in the number of marketing gurus? Geniuses, too. Perhaps you’ve also noticed that these labels are often self-proclaimed, or bestowed by a book publisher or publicity firm. Funny. The smartest people I’ve ever met in marketing never considered themselves gurus, or geniuses. Then again, they were too busy successfully practicing the craft of marketing with real businesses to consider such fodder.

Practicing? Yes, the business of marketing is a practice. Tempered by the fires of time and experience. Integral to a commercial enterprise. The business of being a guru, is about…well, I’m not really sure what it’s about.

As this post is written, Google returns 751,000,000 results for “marketing” books. Some are seminal. Some are important. The majority are not. But increasingly, our culture embraces any kind of celebrity–warranted by deed, or not. And the realm of marketing is no stranger to this trend. Unfortunately, as more people seek ‘guru’ status and vie for attention, the points of view they espouse have become increasingly obscure, and in many cases, simply wrong.

A business writer once referred to me as a strategy guru. Back then I laughed. Today, I denounce my title.

As the adage goes, “those who can’t, teach.” Apparently, they also write books. And give seminars. And speak at conferences. Problem is, building real brands and real businesses is a bit more challenging than delivering a PowerPoint to 30 people at the Dayton Ramada Inn.

Nope, for my money (and I hope yours), give me the practitioner. The one who folds trends and new points of view into a long history of marketing perspective. The one who can think and do. The really good one, not the guru.

(By the way, if you need strong marketing practitioners for your business and brands, 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.