Growth takes courage
“If I invest in advertising, will I get the money back?”
This is one of the elephants floating through the air in the corporate meeting rooms, whether the question is directly asked by the marketers or inferred through a mix of cold, sweaty fear and anxiety. The short answer is: it depends. The difference between black and white is highly nuanced, but if a marketer follows the right process, guided by the right principles while employing the right expertise, this path may lead to legendary outcomes.
The key is not only to get the money back, but to generate sustainable brand growth through marketing & advertising. Marcomms must make economic sense and produce ROI. Marketers must employ wisdom and competence, understand game theory, be at peace with volatility, Black Swan events, and unpredictability. It’s (not) that simple. They must be intuitively good gamblers! However, this question typically marks a significant fork in the road, between two distinctive and opposite outcomes, both surreal at the moment when this question arises.
But this is, in fact, not the key question to ask. The key question should point out the problems that constitute the barriers to brand progress and unveil how to overcome them. While change may be deeply annoying, burying one’s head in the sand is a shortcut to a dead-end road, hence the high percentage of companies that disappear and the low percentage of companies that can add “Since ...” to their name tag.
Fear vs. courage: the decision pendulum
Fear of failure or loss, aversion to change, lack of experience, bad experiences, anxiety, and the instinct of preservation all translate into staying still, as well as other sabotage tactics that paralyze decision-making. Stagnation is more dangerous than moving forward. Risky, but rewarding moves make life possible. Static things are dead ends. Moving forward is the only option when everything around us changes. If the only constant is change, how can one afford to stay still?
While growth always happens outside the comfort zone, fear is natural, and sometimes it’s an old ‘friend’. But courage is action despite fear, not in the absence of fear. Kodak and Nokia didn’t lose because they ran out of money or possibilities; they ran out of imagination, innovation, vision, courage, and will to keep moving in the only direction that would have granted them access to survival and success: forward, heading beyond their horizon line.
Courage is rewarded, whether with added value or just wisdom: while fear blocks growth, well-orchestrated moves make the future possible. Brand building is not a choice, but a survival & growth engine for any business.
The vision beyond the horizon line
Brands can remain relevant if they evaluate and fine-tune their journeys every year, perform complete brand checks every five years, and dare to ask themselves the most uncomfortable questions that fuel and inform the next chapter of their journeys. Why are we still relevant? What could ruin the game for us? What are we not seeing yet? What if ...?, Why not ...?, What next?, What does it take to ...?, etc. Through highly introspective and brutally honest Q&A strategy sessions, brands can adapt and grow intentionally and purposefully. At each pit stop, a brand must see 10 years beyond its horizon line in order to continue to move in a direction that ensures continuity, survival, and growth. A brand should reinvent itself as often as needed in order to ensure its survival. Each brand must learn smart, preferably from the mistakes of other brands (The Collective Wisdom), in order to master how to overcome and surpass the Barriers of the Impossible. Learning from their own mistakes is also valuable, but more costly and painful, and sometimes lethal. The golden rule: once a brand eliminates what’s impossible, the only thing left is what’s possible.
Frequent brand pigeonholes
More often than not, when a brand gets stuck, marketers try to unstuck it by lowering its price and/or advertising it beyond its true potential, into the realm of surreal fantasy and untrusted territory. This is where many brands either fail and/or give marketing & advertising a bad name. Cheating a brand’s way through its lifecycle is not a long-term strategy, but a long nail in the coffin.
A tricky pigeonhole is when the brand’s main differentiator is the price. At this point, the marketer might be inclined to believe that the price is the only brand differentiator, since no other symptoms are being recognized. At this point, the brand is in a dangerous race to the bottom. A price battle for survival is a dangerous high-pressure zone brand managers must avoid at all cost. There are many strategies for staying distinctively different, relevant, and purposeful. True brand value is perceived and experienced, not priced. Theory alone is never enough, although the best practice always starts with a solid theory, driven by foundational values and implemented rigorously.
When growth is the ultimate target (when isn’t?), marketers need to reignite their drive that got them going fearlessly when things moved in the right direction. Staying still always costs a brand more than moving and thus creating its future, beyond its actual horizon. A brand leader who thinks that good marketing is expensive should contemplate how expensive bad marketing can be and how frequent it is.
Smart, strategic marcomm is not just an investment: it’s future made possible, an insurance against oblivion. Strategic marcomm applied well builds up brand grit and legacy, while giving the brand a chance to transcend time.
Buyology
“Marketing beats science”, as Prof. Daniel David PhD. well pointed out, but when marcom is rooted in science, guided by strong values and ethics, and presented as an art form, buyology happens.
This story is part of the Buyology Journal of Marcom Wisdom, which includes diverse experiences of working internationally on brands that write history, while pursuing science, ethics, and wellbeing.