Marketing and communication people frequently produce odd things. Things that make you go, “hmmm…”, and occasionally, WTF?!
- Highly creative ideas that don’t hit the mark
- Content that doesn’t sound like your company at all
- Marketing and promotion that doesn’t attract customers – or attracts the wrong ones
- Plans with budgets, timelines, and resource requirements that make you suspect they’re written for someone else
You may have taken to “letting it go” and “choosing your battles”. You may shrug and think, “Well, I guess they know best. I don’t understand that stuff, that’s why I hired professionals.”
But you’re not off the hook. If you’ve hired talented professionals and they’re producing poor work, there’s a disconnect and you’re responsible for getting it resolved. As a leader, you’re the only one who can.
The solution isn’t external. It’s not about tough talk and setting better expectations. It’s not about hiring another agency or putting a different person in charge.
If the voice of your brand isn’t clear, no one can communicate with it or about it effectively, and that includes you.
I spent the better part of my marcom career learning to detect those disconnects early and repair them first, before branding or re-branding, before design, before website development or marketing collateral.
You may resist the process – think that it takes too much time or money. “We can’t afford to wait”, “We don’t have that kind of money to spend on this.” You may feel a sense of urgency that the rebrand or website or trade show booth has to happen NOW. We like to feel that Things Are Happening, and concrete deliverables like brochures, websites, and attractive designs create that illusion. But the reason for those urgencies is that you’ve gotten it wrong already. Lost time, lost money, lost opportunity.
When marketing and communications are disconnected from an organization’s Essential Story, when leaders are disconnected from their company’s brands, nothing can flow.
Customers, members, subscribers, great employees, money – none of it comes naturally. It limps along from accident to accident. Everyone involved takes shots in the dark.
That’s why we at Phrase Strategy begin with the Essential Story of a brand. Our process results in a Corporate Phrasebook™ that’s like a user guide to understanding and communicating with the essence of a business. It’s the proverbial “song book” that you want everyone singing from.
I’ll go so far as to say that it’s a tool for manifestation. If you believe in the Law of Attraction, the Essential Story is the magnet for all the good things you want the business to achieve.