Madison Avenue Marketing Rules Have Changed, Forever!
“It was the best of times, it was the worst times”, goes the quote from A Tale of Two Cities. One of the beauties of being a semi retired engineer is I get to observe without a vested interest in the outcome. I am not sure of which two sad tales are worse. The old school Madison Avenue types that seem to think that social media is something smaller than a billboard and larger than a matchbook. Or, the ‘new age marketing experts’ yelling and screaming how they have ‘The Formula/The Secret’ to marketing on the Internet today.
I will leave it to you to decide which camp is more delusional. To me it’s a tossup.
There is another old saying about taking a lifetime to build a reputation and only a moment to destroy it. Today when virtually everyone has a wireless A/V connection to the world that moves at the speed of light, that saying has never been more true.
Operating on the assumption you’re not running a snake oil business, the next few entries here will be what is still the same and what has changed. For those of you who are looking to make a hit and run, I have some bad news for you. Go back and reread the factual statement that virtually everyone today has a wireless Audio/Video/Print connection that operates at the speed of light.
What Is Still the Same
Iconic (or once iconic) companies became so because of one word: Reputation. A few international examples include…
IBM, Toyota, Starbucks. There are less well-known firms such as Nordstrom’s. Some are franchises. McDonald’s hamburgers comes to mind.
Of course almost every town/city has its own local icons. It could be a café that has been handed down within the family for generations. Or maybe it’s a local financial institution. It comes down to reputation, which at the end of the day is your company’s most valuable commodity.
I spent enough decades living in Seattle to observe how reputation can be created and destroyed. The Emerald City had a regional savings-and-loan financial institution. Their tagline was: “A friend of the family.” Their formal name was Washington Mutual.
“WaMu” as they were known invested heavily in residential mortgages. In 2013 we all know how that worked out. Only the local residents saw the local headlines covering the dirty details of how the Savings & Loan frim tried to protect their reputation with coverups.
Moral to the story: Playing ostrich does not work out in the long run.
I hate to burst your bubble. There is no secret formula. No magic wand. No wooden stake and no silver bullets that are going to build and protect your reputation. I do however have for you two magic words:
Hard Work. Or more precisely, working hard at finding what works (discarding what does not).
This involves a lot of tedious and boring effort, typically centered around designing and implementing split tests. Oh yeah. There’s also that little detail about accurately measuring the outcomes. You use that data to redesign and re-implement new split tests.
The harsh reality is it’s just like computer security. It is a process with no end. This is because the landscape is ever evolving.
The written symbol in Chinese for danger expresses both the threat of loss and opportunity. At least that part of being human has not changed in thousands of years.
This entry is just the introduction to the dirty details I will be covering in the next few entries on how to optimize your business. What is still the same is were still humans. What has radically changed is our communication options. These new abilities has given mankind new ways to be its old self.
Joining me in seeing how smartly applying hard work means you will not be making your work an exercise in futility.
The post Building and Protecting Your Brand – Today and Tomorrow appeared first on Soliber Net - Online Business Optimization.
