Don’t get bored
November 7th, 2006
I was in an internal meeting yesterday and Cordell uttered these words: “A huge danger companies – and marketing departments – face is getting bored with their own messaging.” As soon as something is starting to sink in out there in the public, the marketing department tends to get bored with it. So, for no good reason, they change it. Tweak it. Fiddle with it.
The result is confusion in the marketplace.
We’ve seen it happen. And we’re probably guilty of it. But he’s right - boredom can be a big danger. You work with your brand every day, 40+ a week. You know the nuances and are so intimate with it that you could probably talk about it in your sleep. Not so for your average customer - especially for the one that just discovered you. I think we should all remember that.
Other posts by Spike.
Robbin says:
It’s interesting. I have heard that expressed my whole career. And you know what Spike and Cordell — I don’t buy it. A great identity has “legs”. And a true identity has infinite ways to express itself. Maybe we are talking about different things. (Because I hate the term campaign as much as I hate the word branding.) I just think everything a company does should interest them and their advocates. And it will, if they do a good job of carrying on a conversation with their customers…
November 7th, 2006 at 10:56 amSpike says:
I’m with you, Robbin. I think marketers SHOULD look at the possible extensions BEFORE they overhaul everything… just because they are bored.
November 7th, 2006 at 11:03 amSpinningSilk Multimedia » Blog Archive » Dress Appropriately says:
[...] I just read a good post on the Brains on Fire blog about companies having a tendency to get bored with their marketing plans. It’s very easy to get enticed by new ways of communicating who you are and what your company is all about. Sometimes it is good to refocus and to redefine your mission. About six months ago we split our company into two parts because the original way was confusing to customers but we have also been careful to transition slowly and keep the core of who we are and our mission of being a place where small businesses and organizations can come to for cost effective marketing and information sharing with a commitment to quick customer service. The music side of the business also shares similar goals except on a more personal level. [...]
November 7th, 2006 at 2:57 pmolivier blanchard says:
See, Robbin? You were bored with terms like “branding” and “campaign,” so you changed them. Tweaked them. Fiddled with them. In ten years, if it even takes that long, you will also have grown bored with terms like “conversation” and “kindred spirits.” It’s just the way our brains are wired.
It IS a different thing from what Spike and Cordell were talking about, but the process is the same. We’re creative people. We get bored with the same old message day-in, day-out. Once something which drew its power from being new and exciting is no longer new, it loses much of its hold over us and we feel the need to move on and do it allover again.
It takes discipline to stay the course when we lose interest. And we do lose interest. We wouldn’t be any good at what we do if we never felt the need to move on.
Spike is absolutely right: It is something to be on the lookout for.
November 7th, 2006 at 6:05 pmStephen Denny says:
Funny you should bring this up — once upon a time, a little over 10 years ago, I was a pup marketer at Sony. I was reworking consumer packaging for VHS and audio tape. I fell in love with the Sony “S” Mark — you know, the little block of dots with the wavy right side? I wanted to feature it on the face of the packaging, just like the Nike Swoosh.
Corporate threw up on me because, they decided, the “S-Mark looked old” and they were going to change it… to something akin to a globe wearing headphones. Branding murder.
I was lucky for two reasons — I was in the middle of a huge amount of consumer validation and provided them with multiple demographic slices of people who — unaided — correctly identified it as a Sony mark. We fell somewhere between Nike and Apple in recognition. And fortunately, they listened. I think it still lives today.
We marketers are fickle people - we’re creative and we get bored of stuff that has huge, untapped power with our consumers. Make sure you talk to them before you make random changes.
Good post !
November 8th, 2006 at 3:28 pm