Aug 11
2
Image by Stephen Downes via Flickr
Its a question that anyone who is in marketing will ask at a meeting. Its a question that should help us define how to start a campaign.
Maybe its not the only question that we should ask, though. How about, “Why’s your customer….?” Why is your customer going to respond to your campaign? Why is your customer going to decide to purchase your product?
The path to making a sale is actually quite complex. That is why brand architecture is important. The brand helps the various people in the decision ecosystem decide in your products favour. The people in this system are incredibly important if you are going to make the sale and through understanding “Why?” you can then get more focused on the real “Who?”
The person who really helped mentor me to understand how this works is a guy by the name of Rob Irving. Rob used to be a pretty big wheel in advertising. He was with JWT for a long time in very senior roles in South Africa, the UK, and then Australia. However, for quite a while now, he has been mentoring managers, CEO’s, marketers, in a variety of companies. His style is to make you figure out the solution to the problem you have. He is one part salesman, one part mystic, and one part psychiatrist and a whole lot more besides.
Rob was recently diagnosed with a rather aggressive form of cancer. I spoke to him yesterday on the phone to catch up and to find out how he was coping. He is taking it in his stride. He continues to work with clients – but is trying to make sure that he doesn’t overdo it. He is getting chemo. And he remains unbelievably positive about life, about his friends and his family.
He has also just started a blog. It is called Power Of You. Read it. It is excellent writing and it is helpful and it provokes thought.
Rob is someone who helps people develop their own personal brands. And let’s face it, if your personal brand values are just about making money, how does that differentiate you from a mass of others in the marketplace. Why would anyone want to buy you? If your personal brand has a set of values that aspires to greatness of another kind, based on the “why” rather than the “who” doesn’t it make you a much more interesting person?
