• Marketing that’s Meaningful

    Posted on September 14th, 2006 by and currently 9 commenting.

    I believe that there’s a change in the air in the marketing and advertising worlds. And I believe that it is shifting from seeing how fast we can take dollars out of peoples wallets to seeing how we can make their lives better.

    In our F.I.R.E. philosophy (Fascinate, Inspire, Reward and Engage), we talk about how, when it comes to inspiration, people want to be a part of something bigger than themselves. And I think that’s beginning to ring true in the marketing/advertising worlds now, too. It’s not enough to produce a clever ad campaign anymore (at least with the new guard). It’s about figuring out how to make people’s lives better. It’s about empowerment. Ownership. Starting a real, honest conversation. Making friends instead of customers. And making your company or product relevant.

    I know, I know. It sounds all touchy-feely. But take a look at the burnout rates and churn in the marketing departments and agency world. One of the main reasons people leave is because they don’t like their job since they feel what they are doing doesn’t matter. It doesn’t contribute to the greater good.

    Making money is still number one. But making a company meaningful is sneaking up fast. How do you measure that? Where does it fit into an ROI report? The truth is, making a company meaningful is going to show up on your bottom line in a big way. It’s even more powerful because it attracts kindred spirits who turn into loyal advocates…the best advertising you could ever hope for.

  • http://www.ck-blog.com CK

    It will show up on the bottom line, both in brand equity as well as customer loyalty. It will also show up on worker productivity (decreasing costs adds to bottom-line profits).

    Plus it decreases risk for companies, they get less bad “ink” (press) when they do more good. And press most definitely affects stock price.

    Net/net: We’ve long had to think about “value-based” offerings now we need to migrate to “values-based businesses” and meaningful income.

  • http://brainsonfire.com Spike

    Nice insight, CK. (Is that you, Calvin Klein?) Offerings are nice, but more and more, people are considering the source…

  • http://www.thebrandbuilder.blogspot.com olivier blanchard

    “One of the main reasons people leave is because they don’t like their job since they feel what they are doing doesn’t matter. It doesn’t contribute to the greater good.”

    The irony is that having fun, falling in love with your work every day, and making money are not mutually exclusive. As a matter of fact, the first two tend to drive the third.

  • http://giddlebits.wordpress.com Nathan

    Again, I totally agree.

    Authenticity plays a big role in what you’ve described above as well.

    Companies need to not just listen to their community, they need to join with them.

    I imagine one of the ideal situations I can be in is when I’m working for whatever company I end up working for, I get a call on my cell phone or office line. This call isn’t from anyone in the company or a family member, though. This call is from someone in our business’s community, a community we joined with. I get to find out how the person on the other end is doing, because we’ve now got a relationship. And when the conversation is almost over, they ask me to a hockey game, because that’s the kind of relationship we’ve established.

  • http://www.woolardspeak.blogspot.com Woolard

    Preach! I may be overly optimistic, but I believe this “new guard” of marketing – which I isn’t an exaggeration by any means – will end up “proving itself” and ideas by becoming valuable partners with like-minded companies that want to engage/form a relationship.

    Maybe instead of companies’ ROI shaping marketing ideas/tactics, marketing can shape the idea of what is truly an investment and a return.

  • http://moblogsmoproblems.blogspot.com Mack Collier

    One of my favorite meaningful marketing examples is still Sarah McLachlan’s video for World on Fire. Sarah took all of her $150,000 budget for the video (an absurdly low amount), and spent $15 on a video tape to record the footage, and donated the rest of the $150,000 to charities around the world. The video shows how the video was orginally budgetted (production assistant for a day, catering on the set, lighting, etc) and instead Sarah showed what the money was spent on (water systems for 5 villages Africa, meals for street children Calcutta, ambulances in India).

    Sarah used the video as a marketing tool to bring attention to helping others, instead of herself. End result was that she helped over a million people around the world with the donations, and ended up with a Grammy nomination for Music Video of the Year.

  • http://www.biestmilch.com Susann Kraeftner

    I agree, it is correct and sounds good. It is my way to do things. But it is much more difficult, because authenticity needs maturity, sovereignity, self-confidence from the individual and the group respectively, and it is even more difficult if you leave the beaten path. It may take so long to achieve your goal that as a start-up and pioneer company you do not survive your own efforts. Even though, I ask myself every other day: do I have an other choice?
    I don’t think so, but it is very hard, because authentic communications (the other/real marketing) within a company and beyond question yourself on very different level, they oscillate around being too private and too official, and to avoid triviality remains a permanent challenge.

  • http://beanstalktalk.com/beanblog/ everysandwich

    I do think consumers crave honesty, fairness, and quality and will reward companies that can demonstrate and provide those qualities. Maybe that’s nothing new, but the craving feels more desperate, maybe because those virtues seem so rare in all levels of culture, from O.J. to Ken Lay and well beyond. But Susan, I’m not sure triviality is always a bad thing. Isn’t there place for amall talk and chit chat on the way to more meaningful or rewarding exchanges or as an honest tool to reveal personality, interests and priorities?

  • http://www.biestmilch.com Susann Kraeftner

    Of course, there is. But for me this is more what I would call the free flow of thoughts/improvisations/associations without self-imposed censorship, let’s say hanging loose. Perhaps, I would not call this process trivial. It is more a gift not to babble but to flow within the language without or very little constraints.