The Pressure Cooker
March 12, 2008
Most marketing decisions are made under duress. A pending launch. Entering a new market. Or the greatest pressure, trying grow out of a slump.
Any decisions made under duress are bound to create mistakes. In the case of marketing, I think the biggest mistake is surrendering to tangibility. In the pressure cooker, it is easy to fall back to The List of marketing tactics. The tangibility of the list makes us feel like we are doing something; and it is something we can show The Boss. But if you live by The List, you will die by The List. Because The List makes what you are doing a commodity; it drops you below peer level.
Another mistake is to immediately go into blitz mode; to do some sort of promotion to create a bump in sales. Unfortunately, this usually means discounting - which (unless you are Walmart) creates no long term adoption from your audience.
I don’t expect the pressure cooker of being a marketing executive to change. But there are things we can do to manage the pressure:
- Look inward - focus on your existing customers first.
- Don’t over-think it - stay true to the original idea or core of the business.
- Listen - to your customers, employees, yourself.
- Focus on the customer experience. It is the one branding activity that you have the most control over.
Final thought … you have to delegate. Not necessarily to your employees, but your customers. Essentially, turn your marketing over to them. This starts by being transparent about where you are taking the company’s brand. This allows you to work on the big picture stuff like your core, identity, and interaction. This makes you more valuable to your company, while also recognizing that your customers are collectively way smarter than you.
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