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Team DIGO | 04/01/2015 | in
When the agency fails to measure the runway, it’s the client who gets hurt in the resulting crash.
Here’s a story I’ve seen play out too many times:
A company that measures its success in direct sales – whether through retail, e-commerce, app, subscription or membership – reaches a plateau in its growth. The board puts pressure on the CEO who puts pressure on the CMO or head of marketing. A new idea is needed, a new level is called for, and probably a new agency.
Next thing one reads is that one of America’s great creative agencies has been retained. Some months later a new campaign is the talk of the advertising community. What insight! What verve!! What cojones!!!
A couple of months pass, and my phone rings. Or my email bings. Or my LinkedIn, or Facebook. It’s the CMO, and he’s in trouble. The campaign missed its mark or forgot to sell or lacked an offer or just didn’t work and all we really know is that we just missed our key selling season. Totally missed it! They – one of America’s leading creative agencies – just didn’t get it. We need a campaign to turn this around and we need it yesterday. Can you help?
They forgot to measure the runway!
No matter what the marketing leader told that agency, they just didn’t believe that sales were as important as re-launching the brand. Despite what they heard and learned, they were sure that there would be time, that the client would “get it” after the great campaign was launched and lauded. But it was a very short runway indeed – it always is in direct model companies – and now the agency has the consolation of their awards, and we of sharing the client’s problems – and a much shorter runway.
You can build a brand and sell at the same time. If you’re building a direct model or direct-led business, you really need to. Here, we use every inch of the runway to get safely aloft. After all, a few feet too late is a disaster. On the other hand, taking off with runway to spare just means you’re flying!
At DiMassimo Goldstein, we call that Inspiring Action, and it’s the only thing we do. My purpose here today is to inspire you and to help you gain altitude in all the ways that matter to you.
What action are you trying to inspire?
This was Key #1 of 10 to Inspiring Action: 10 Keys to the Future of Marketing. Next up: Key #2 – Follow The Money. You can download our summary poster of the 10 Keys here.
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Team DIGO | 03/17/2015 | in
Here are some lovely illustrations from a 2000 campaign for Gomez Advisors that ran headlong into the Dot Com Bust.
Lovely work from artist and illustrator Lisa Adams.
Check her work out here:
http://lisaadamsart.com/
http://dianebirdsallgallery.com/lisalymanadams.php
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Team DIGO | 03/10/2015 | in
In direct marketing, which I often refer to as “the direct model,” consumers can form relationships directly with companies without the need to go through intermediaries, such as agents or retailers.
The meaning they assign to those relationships is called “brand.” Managing the process of building that meaning is called “branding.”
The process of building value through developing direct customer relationships is direct marketing. Brand Response is the (mostly UK) term for brand-driven media designed to generate actions such as click-throughs, sign ups & purchases, known as “responses.”
In the 1990s, I introduced the term “brand direct,” which is the management of both brand and the entire direct marketing funnel synchronously to accelerate value creation.
– Mark DiMassimo
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Team DIGO | 03/10/2015 | in
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Back in the 1990s, I called for a brand revolution in direct and a direct revolution in brand advertising, and called it brand direct.
A couple of years after that, I started noticing a phenomenon in the UK – the rise of what was being called “brand response.”
I had long done my recruiting from the UK and New Zealand, because I found that the smaller, but more culturally uniform markets were hothouses for integration — ahead of the U.S. with its giant budgets and endless silos.
Since I thrived by getting and staying ahead on integration — on brand direct — I needed people who understood, and those people weren’t being trained in the U.S.
So, the U.K. now seems to have a wealth of resources on brand response and it’s phenomenal growth and history, as you’ll see in the article linked below:
https://www.marketingsociety.com/the-library/inexorable-rise-brand-response
-Mark DiMassimo
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Team DIGO | 03/10/2015 | in
Used to be that companies made products and agencies sold them. Today, agencies work with clients to craft the products and services, build the customer experiences, and inspire the actions that bring more people into the experience.
An inspiring customer experience will spread, but it will also need help spreading. The brand is the most important part of the experience.
Functionality is important. But there are usually near equivalents for functionality.
Personal, psychological, spiritual, social and societal benefits and meaning are the keys today.
Emotion is critical.
Does the service – the total customer experience — inspire greatness (even in some small way) in the customer?
Does our service inspire greatness in the client?
Does our team member experience inspire greatness in our team members?
That’s what it’s all about today.
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Team DIGO | 03/09/2015 | in
“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” Paul – Romans 7-15
People view marketing backwards — they think that it’s all about how companies sell products to people. It’s really about how people use our services, including our advertising, to inspire action in themselves. Without help, none of us does what we think we want to do.
IN THE FUTURE, PEOPLE WILL USE OUR CLIENTS’ SERVICES TO INSPIRE ACTION IN THEMSELVES.
ONLY WHAT WORKS WILL SELL, SURVIVE AND THRIVE..
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Team DIGO | 12/04/2014 | in
INSPIRING ACTION.
You can impel action without inspiring it.
Tyrants do that. So do frauds.
But, if your action isn’t inspiring,
then all the actions will never add up to something greater.
All the clicks, hovers, registrations, deposits, sales, subscriptions, shares, visits…
Wasted.
That may work for a while, but never works in the long run.
Don’t be fooled by short-term results. Many failed regimes and business models had excellent short-term results.
Determine never to merely invite, tempt, seduce, compel or incentivize action when you can inspire it.
It’s the only way to meaningful actions, relationships and organizations.
Inspiring action.
When first,
Inspiring is a verb
And then is an adjective
is the only way.
When you build with
Inspiring Action
What you do means so much more
Than what you say.
By
Team DIGO | 11/14/2014 | in
Someone just told me a great story about an intern she interviewed as a favor, about twenty years ago, who went on to be the CEO of LinkedIn, Jeff Weiner.
He was in business school at the time. She had already hired all the interns she could for the season. And, anyway, in their short interview, he hadn’t impressed her much.
She wanted to get him out of her office. She tried to usher him out.
“I’m sorry, I just don’t have any intern positions left for this summer.”
He said, “I have just one question.”
“O.K.” she said, “Shoot.”
“Do you have a five year plan?”
“A five year plan?! I have a plan for today.”
“If you hire me, I will write your five year plan.”
She hired him. He wrote her plan. It worked. He went on to great things, and no one was surprised, least of all her.
Great question. Great offer. Great career.
