The Secret and Marketing Presence

A lot of folks treat marketing and advertising as a form of insurance, a sort of protection against the crisis day when the phone stops ringing and the nobody walks through the front door. In fact, that dreaded day came for many a business over the past few months; frequently their insurance policy failed to pay off.

Some wait until their showroom floor resembles a morgue before thinking about doing any marketing. They’re thinking: “Dear Lord, what will we do if this offer doesn’t pull in some business.”

Will your work be creative and innovative while a cloud of doom hovers over your head? If you’re advertising under duress, the universe responds in kind and brings you what you dread the most. It’s as if your customers can smell panic.

On the other hand, if you enjoy the marketing process, stay the course through thick and thin, proceed with positive long term expectations, keep a calm and quiet mind, and focus on remaining thankful for the myriad gifts we so often overlook, the universe will bring you more to be thankful about.

Here’s the math: Q=SM2. The quality of your work is geometrically proportional to your state of mind. It’s the Secret Formula for Success. Along these lines a quote from Eckhart Tolle:

When you are present in this moment, you break the continuity of your story, of past and future. Then true intelligence arises, and also love. The only way love can come into your life is not through form, but through that inner spaciousness that is Presence. Love has no form.

Parade of the Fads

In harsh economic times, it’s tempting to hop on the bandwagon and try cashing in on the fad of the month. It’s rarely a paying bet. By the time you’re firmly seated, the wagon has gone way past the bank.

Case in point: The regrettable 2005 decision of TV Station KTLA to trade in venerable Rose Parade host Stephanie Edwards for a younger model. That year we Angelinos all watched our beloved Stephanie get soaked in the rain while her less capable replacement bumbled her way through the broadcast in a warm, dry booth.

The gambit: new is better than old.

Taken another way, it’s a marketer’s lack of respect for her/his customers. It’s telling your customers: “you’re not smart enough to know better.”

That’s a strategy that can backfire, and frequently does. Did you know anyone who wasn’t at least a bit tweaked by the Rose Parade fiasco? It made parade fans of all ages mad as hell, myself included.

If there’s a lesson, maybe it’s this: any long-lived business model involves respecting your clients and their ability to decipher your value equation. It’s about appealing to your customers highest values, and steering way clear of the lowest common denominator.

Remember the reign of Krispy Kreme? Is Heidi’s Yogurt still around anywhere? What’s the shelf life of a TV reality show? Fads lack substance; their perceived value is low. They devalue the market.

Innovation sounds new, though the insightful, virtuosic thinking behind innovative ideas has been around for ages. So have truly great journalists, like Stephanie. It’s just that you don’t find them on every corner.

Organic Marketing, Part One: Mail Call

I personally check the mail every day. Today, along with the usual assortment of bill and checks were:

Three identical postcards from an accounting firm. None have my name.

Three indentical jumbo postcards from a courier company. Again none have my name.

A folded sheet full of flyers. Too much time to sort though all of that, me thinks. File 9 to all of the above.

A beautiful catalog from a large mailing list source. Part of their offering actually competes with my business. An uphill battle, to compete with your customers…

Coupons from an office supply store. Hmmm, some of these look good, but I generally shop at another store that’s closer.

And oh yes, the mailer from a well known bank that sounds like a fish taco place. This mailer was done perfectly, personalized with a great incentive. But… as a former customer, they repeatedly broke my trust. No mailer, however well designed, no offer, no spin could bring me back.

We spend a lot of time on how to spin our pitch. How to convince others to make a decision. But that’s only one cell of our marketing organism. The cells either work together, or they go out of control. It’s called cancer.