Marketing Agency Call to Action: Return on Influence and Investment
We have two ears, and one mouth right? But somehow we still resort to stork startling, whistle-blowing and deflection tactics that remove us from the root cause of an issue, be it internal or external.
The remedy, as Mr. Mraz put it? Keep the main thing the main thing. Bring structure to your marketing, and process to your business. If the soapbox pulpiteering's critically failing, hold your tongue.
Marketing agencies, individuals and businesses are floundering in a typhoon of noise, clutter and lizard-brains. That residual then happily lends itself to our demeanor across social networks and profersonal relationships.
Wrongo.
More of This
Photo courtesy of Who Ate all the Pies.com: the Tasty Football Magazine
And less of That
Photo courtesy of fanpop.com
Not the loudest Voice in the stratosphere: Facebook IPO, Zuckerberg's hoodie. How immediate is that impact on balancing the sheets at day's end?
It is the quiet one, the disenfranchised or marginalized we can learn to turn our ears toward.
Or how about the harrowing margins of polarization: top and bottom heavy. What about the blue-collar, the Rust Belt? What about the true lifeblood of industry, the worker?
These are the true Champions.
Actionable insight via increasingly personalized web experience begins with asking the right questions. Of ourselves and our businesses. In our families and in our homes. Of the ways we treat one another. And not what we say, but how we say it.
To paraphrase Daniel Gilbert, professor of psychology at Harvard University and best-selling author of Stumbling Upon Happiness, we're not as unique, as exceptional or an anomaly as we think.
Or Fight Club: We are not snowflakes.
Some theorists claim our genetic composition, vis a vis dioxyribonucleic acid (we tend to default to DNA) is essentially the same.
But what if it mutates? Regenerates? (Scientists: Our DNA is Mutating as We Speak. We Are Developing 12 Strands)
What if the very composition of our business and personal lives were constantly in-flux? Words like replication, synthesis, pluck and mutation don't mean anything unless we garner action from the massive data and intelligence we derive from mere rhetoric.
Cull out the hyperbole. Forget the gimmicks, limmericks and manipulation tactics. Speak with candor, be frank -- and say what you mean. Mean what you say.
Perhaps there's a reason such cliches exist -- we haven't implemented them. How long will we continue to wait? How much time do we really have?
Time is money. Chronemics matter only to those who subscribe to it. 10-10 Rule? If you are 10 minutes early, you're on Time. If you're on time, you're 10 minutes late.
Our dioxyribonucleic acid makeup (der, DNA) is the only guarantee of our fallible human nature. A nature that wields nasty not niceness, things like duality and duplicity, which engenders equally spectacular (but in a different way) mistakes and failures.
Don't make promises you can't deliver on. Underpromise and overdeliver -- everyone says that.
What makes you, your business, your brand different? What is your "onliness" factor, as our agency CMO Barbara Robinson puts it? What can you bring to the table that doesn't sound like every other marketer or salesperson?
Bring value and questions to the lives of those who matter, and watch the change in sentiment, trust and loyalty. Covers all manners of wrong.
When we embrace the cultural shift from "I" and "Me" to a "We", "Us" and "Our" model, the healing factor and catharsis it will bring across channels, relationships and partnerships is profound.
The proverbial symbol for change, or delta is an upright isosceles triangle. Be it news releases or cultural paradigm to date, the apex of context and content has always begun with the individual.
If the bottom vertices are our business and clientele, what does that say about our model? We must fix our sights toward the inverse, toward subverting that premise.
No more unicorns and rainbows
To speak in more science, art and technology vernacular; we're immersed in ambient communications and covalent consciousness. From the ground to the Cloud, every:
- artist
- writer
- communicator
- speaker
- consultant
- athlete
- author
- student
- teacher
- master
- mentor/adviser (not advisor)
- sage
- technician
- nursing home assistant
- janitor
- practitioner
- manager
- leader
- business owner
- director
- producer
- executive
- entrepreneur
under the sun has a Voice, as Mark Schaefer says.
We are One. The titles and names are just masks, roles and responsibilities that help to segment, stratify, list and categorize the multiverse of our day-to-day lives.
We're not spin doctors. We're not voodoo malarkey. We're not disembodied entities. We aren't cuckoo, GooGoo Dolls or GaGa. We are consumers and investors. We are athletes, and performers on a stage.
The true RNA, DNA of it all? It's all coming back now - "history ReTweets itself." What strand, er -- stand will we take?
Bottom line? Relevance and relationships are the new revenue.