What's the current catch phrase for Burger King or McDonalds? Name a commercial you've seen on TV or in print or on the internet so many times that you could quote it like you work there. What are a few of the marketing slogans you remember from your childhood?
Do you want to know what they have in common?
In all cases, the companies who spent money, time, creativity, and sweat on getting those marketing campaigns launched and BURNED into our collective heads spent their time on ONE IMPORTANT MESSAGE. Coke didn't launch Diet Coke, Cheese Coke, and White Coke all at the same time. They launched Diet Coke. And they put one message around it. One simple, easy to remember, easy to repeat message.
Do you have lots of great ideas? Are you bursting with a million great new ways to make things better at your organization? Are you always coming to your boss with a million next best things?
How can anyone possibly remember your message? How memorable is a flood of messages versus a consistent, simple, BRIEF message that sums up the spirit of all your efforts? Are you being more effective by lobbing an abundance of information, ideas, and more at your "audience?"
Try a different approach: Look for a theme to what you're interested in conveying. Think of a way to sum that up in a REALLY brief message. Then, find ways to tag your ideas with that message at the beginning and the end of any conversations (presentations, emails, other documents, too), so that the "audience" hears and acknowledges the "slogan" as being an easy-to-reference container for your ideas.
What if you picked one overall theme for each quarter of this upcoming year? If you said, "I'm going to stress THIS one thing above all else for the next three months," what would that message look like? Does it tie to the things you think are most important for your or your organization's success? Can you make it a simple phrase that folks will remember when they think of you saying it?
And even more important: can you make it THEIRS?
Here's the bonus round, folks. The marketing campaigns that TRULY hit their mark are the ones where someone crafts an idea so soundly that you yourself HAVE to start using their words because it's how EVERYONE ELSE is referring to it. Make it theirs means that people aren't feeling so much "marketed to" as they are feeling that you've done a great job of summing up something that they needed an expression for, in the first place.
Look at the recent wave of internet and technology companies who have so strongly branded what they do that their name has become a verb. Do you search for information on the web or do you "google" it? Not capital "G." Just a verb. That's power. Do you listen to online mp3 broadcasts or do you listen to PODcasts? Do you record television programs on your DVR or do you Tivo them?
Take Away Points:
*Come up with a single, unifying SIMPLE message for all your creativity and ideas.
*Be faithful to that message. Use it always. Get it into the vernacular. Spread it around like butter.
*Infuse that message with so much value to what you're trying to get adopted (because marketing means that you have ideas/products/themes that you want others to pick up and use as well), that others are jumping on this same train.
*No more than a single marketing theme a quarter. Maybe even only two a year.
*Simple and brief. Did I mention simple and brief?
Who knows? Maybe your big ideas will become the "R-o-l-a-i-d-s" of the officeplace.
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And here is why I'll be working remotely for 2/3 of my days in 2006. (link).
