Fresh Eye : : Articles

Fresh Eye for the Marketing Guy

I have a special favor to request. I'm re-launching my company Web site. Please wander through the beta version and shoot me any input you have about it at any level, from graphics to content. Thanks!

 

Typically, an e-mail message like this would result in a polite "wow, great site - love what you've done to the place." However, seeing how I was checking e-mail at 4 a.m., I decided the only way to cure my insomnia was to review yet another Web site from yet another colleague who believed he had cracked the code for cutting through the clutter of consultant gobbledy-poop.

 

Yeah, right. I mean, the company's tagline was "A Strategic Communications Company" (have you ever heard of a non-strategic communications company?). The pages had enough sound and fury signifying nothing to make Faulkner weep. I knew better than to look for something clever, but this site was the marketing version of a lobotomy.

 

The site had "All the Necessary Stuff," which was the problem - and one that's been replicated faster than those Agent Smiths in the Matrix sequel, albeit with less charisma.

 

Several years ago The Cluetrain Manifesto (if you are not familiar with it, get a clue at http://www.cluetrain.com) begged us to get real, be inviting and maybe just a bit dangerous. And while we marketers were exhilarated and intrigued and climbed aboard with aplomb, we've pretty much continued down the same old marketing track.

 

Time to face facts: Our strategies are stale, our customers are exhausted and worse, bored. We need something in the mix that is enticing, a new approach without all the preservatives and additives. We need marketing that hits home like comfort food.
Call it fresh-baked marketing.

 

Fresh-Baked Marketing

Fresh-baked marketing is about offering the stuff our customers are truly starving for - real knowledge and real connections, a voice instead of "the brand" (need help? see Bullfighter at http://www.dc.com/insights/bullfighter/index.asp).

 

It's about becoming genuinely interesting instead of shouting for momentary attention. It's about becoming teachers, and listening, and asking questions. But fundamentally, fresh-baked marketing is about embracing and actually integrating into our marketing initiatives what has happened to every single aspect of our lives due to the Internet and the growth of "multi-mediums."

 

Fresh-baked hits home, but isn't even close to your mother's marketing.

Taking a Fresh-Baked Approach

Today, you are who your markets say you are, because everyone is connected to everyone else and your markets are fast and smart - smart enough to know that truth does not come from nor is it dependent upon a single source (you). Being fresh baked requires a new attitude and approach, one that does not necessarily assume that you are the chef.

• Fresh-baked marketing is listening whether you like what you hear or not. It requires you to become what you say you are.
• Fresh-baked marketing is capitalizing on "frame of mind" and throwing away the idea that we just need to hit 'em from all sides. It understands the nuances of individual's interactions with modern media (although that is only one connection point).
• Fresh-baked marketing is a truly consultative and integrated strategy - where advertising, promotion, web presence, sales, e-commerce, interactive media, earned media, public relations, direct marketing, and employees all deliver maximum market value because they create a cohesive and efficient whole. We are still operating in silos and that means we're missing opportunities - for ourselves, our clients and the customer.

 

So what makes a company fresh baked? Fresh-baked companies understand the market power derived from everyone being connected to everyone and the sheer delight people have in being connected with each other. These companies use multiple connection points, make them useful and truly participate in them. They recognize that in networked markets, nothing is a commodity.

 

These companies don't perpetuate a broadcast or an inside/outside mentality. They provide ingredients and let the customers co-develop products - and they put customers in touch with each other. How many companies are willing to allow customers to post negative reviews about products they are trying to sell? Does this really work? I don't know, look at Amazon's brand value and you tell me.

 

You may not be looking for new ways to market, but your customers certainly are. And guess what? They don't need you as much as you need them.

 

Being Fresh-Baked requires regular trips back to your customers, tweaking the recipe and standing vigilant against becoming stale. After all, the last thing we need is another "Strategic Communications Company" who doesn't get it.

 

Then again, the more there are the more sleep we'll all get.