What is Marketing?The general consensus is that marketing is about developing a message behind a product or brand and then broadcasting that message, in one form or another, to a targeted audience and beyond.
That’s old school thinking. We want to break that mold by developing a more holistic campaign dynamic that feeds its channels out of an elemental singularity of concept derived from a distillation of narrative that resonates outside projected receptors. Basically, I just said the same thing twice. Why? Because, write this down, there is nothing new in marketing. Since the dawn of time, when humankind first set foot on the planet, we have, all of us, been marketing experts – it was either that or die. Life has always been all about the marketing – from proliferation of the species by making ourselves more attractive to the opposite sex to dodging death by making ourselves less attractive to carnivores – we have been doing the marketing shuffle. That’s why sex and death are the underlying motivators in modern marketing – they’re the only two things we really understand – motivationally speaking. They are at the core of our existence. How does a thoroughly modern marketer tap into those elemental core motivators? Easy! No, I lied it’s not easy. As humans have developed society and insulated themselves from the harsher realities of the natural world, one has had to develop a more sophisticated approach towards cracking that marketing code – yet it still comes down to a basic element. It’s all about telling stories. The first thing to do is discover and develop the narrative of your client, their company, their product, their brand – make their story. Once you’ve created that then you need to distill this narrative down into its most base component. From that you grow the message. And the message is: This product/service makes you look good or makes your life easier – sex or death, baby - that easy. Now comes the hard part. Who is your audience? Look in the mirror. If you can’t sell it to yourself why would anybody else buy? You’ve created this new narrative that you want other people to absorb into their narrative – that’s right, everyone has got their own narrative –and believe me, they are the stars of those narratives and very protective of them as well. To do this you need to disrupt their flow of narrative momentarily with something that is attractive enough they can’t help but weave it into their own story. It’s all about getting them to make your story part of their story and if it’s a tip on how to get laid or avoid the grim reaper then they are probably going to pay attention. Where are your clients’ customers? It doesn’t matter. That’s the easy part. Finding an audience is like a lion looking for lunch – find the right watering hole and wait. The particular animal you are looking for is bound to show up. You should really be asking: Where are your clients? That’s a 30 for now. |