Why you need to follow your instinct as a marketer
A short story about marketing, standing out, and the importance of taking risks
Sometimes we tend to forget the most basic of marketing tenets: Standing out. That is literally what marketing teams are supposed to help products do. Everything else is downstream from there.
A huge part of why I write this newsletter is to make sure that readers (and me as well) don’t forget that in the end, if we don’t get the basics right, all of our clever tactics and growth-hacks ( a word I despise) don’t matter one bit.
So it was heartening to have something play out right in front of me that underlined my faith in exactly this.
A friend of mine, founder of a hugely successful agency, was having lunch with me at a Vietnamese restaurant. We were just catching up and retelling old stories when he put forward a certain situation he was in: He was pitching to a huge conglomerate, a storied group that was in another domain than the one he specialised in. But he knew the value his agency could bring, and his champion inside the organisation was confident as well. But the final decision rested with the chairman, and over the last call he had not seemed completely convinced. He had seen the work, he had seen the expertise, but he just wasn’t sure if the domain my friend had done the most work in lent itself to his organisation.
My friend wanted the deal. And he knew the chairman was the only person he had to convince.
So he went all-in.
He conducted a thought experiment. If his agency was given the go-ahead, how would he approach this? Which star would he pick for the campaign, and who would be best for this idea he had? He finalised a few actors, all moderately famous, and reached out to them on Insta, completely cold. Remember, he didn’t even have the deal yet.
One of them, the one he wanted most, texted back. He would love to work on this brand, he said. They joined hands, and now, an hour after our lunch, he was going to talk to the chairman, and have this actor on the call to convince him that no one could do this better.
Audacious? Yes. Slightly stupid, even reckless? Of course. What if it didn’t work, and he looked like a fool? The possibility existed.
And yet. It was a swing that said all or nothing. The risk signalled seriousness and initiative. The audacity showed energy and boldness. These are all elements that would make my friend and his agency stand out. Should he go ahead and do it, he asked for my advice. He was nervous. It was a gamble.
I thought for a bit, but only for a bit. I said he should go for it.
He was going to stand out. The risk was that the chairman might find his methods reckless. Well, he wasn’t very impressed in the first place, wasn’t he? What was there to lose?
And as I told him this, I found myself thinking. These are the kind of reminders you need from time to time because it’s so easy to get lost in tactics and day-to-day stuff, and completely miss the bigger picture.
So ask yourself this, as I started doing too: Are you standing out among competition? If yes, how? Perhaps you should double down on that. If no, you should start thinking about it immediately: Follow your instincts, get the basics right.
My friend called me that evening after his call with the chairman. Everyone on the call had loved the initiative, they had enjoyed the surprise, and had been impressed with the drive to do more. He had landed the deal, and changed the trajectory of his already-thriving agency.
We would all do well to follow his lead.
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