Description
For decades, psychologists have been perpetuating a saying attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." This is total B.S. because every time your competitor (you know the one I'm talking about) launches a new ad campaign or marketing stunt, customers eat it up. Your customers. Bam! Your heart sinks. Your head explodes. As a marketing professional, you feel you've failed your company. I can only guess but I'll bet your company makes a better product, and your service is far superior, too. (Yup, life isn't fair.) So you have to decide. Will you hang your head and accept defeat? Or worse yet, make excuses for getting beat up on the marketplace playground? Or, is today the day you decide to take charge of your brand and the trajectory of your growth?
If you are a Chief Marketing Officer, Marketing Director, Brand Manager, Digital Marketing Specialist or other influencer of your company's branding and marketing, I want to make you a promise. In 35 days you will stop introducing yourself as the person responsible for your company's marketing, and start introducing yourself as the person IN CHARGE of your company's marketing.
Not one, but two editors tried to talk me out of writing this book. Because much of its content is heavily biased toward creative- and emotion-driven thinking—stuff both editors felt would unfairly challenge marketing directors and turn off corporate decision-makers. I respectfully disagree. It is not a new concept that people buy on emotion (95% of our brains—and therefore our decisions—are powered by emotion) and later validate their purchase decisions with
rational thought. So it is imperative to purposefully create, or re-create your branding and marketing based on emotional expression, not just rational thought and data. I've been using
creative- and emotion-based stimuli described in this book for over 15 years and found that marketing directors and corporate decision makers "get it" and absolutely hone in on how to identify the things that make their brands unique and powerful. And how to articulate their brands' purpose and product features and benefits in unique and powerful ways—in traditional, experiential and digital channels.
Most of the marketing people I've worked with are ingenious, hard-working and proud of their companies. The problem is, most of them (especially those in B2B) underestimate the power of branding and marketing and rely almost entirely on their sales people and reps to introduce products, build relationships and grow their businesses. My mission is to help them power up their branding and marketing so they can shorten the sales cycle, generate more qualified leads, build stronger customer relationships and leapfrog right over their competitors.