The Blirt! Blog

Marketers Please Stand Up!

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

If there is to be a recovery to the current downturn it must be lead by marketers.

My sincerest apologies to those in finance, design, operations, administration, management or engineering; your fate rests in the hands of marketers.

For all non-marketers, before you dispel what little remaining hope you had of keeping your house and mid range European car during 2009 because your financial fortune rests on those crazy people on the other side of the office playing with the free promotional gifts, please read on.

Who is a marketer?

Anyone who dares listen to a consumer, understand what he or she wants and work out a way to deliver it to them.

Sometimes marketers have the description ‘designer’ on their business card, or sometimes ‘sales’ or some times ‘general manager’ or ‘CEO’ – sometimes even ‘finance’. (Ouch, did I really say that!)

The only way Mr and Mrs Consumer will start to spend more is if brands start to work out where Mr and Mrs Consumer are dissatisfied and work on solving those problems.

The last time I checked the GNH (Gross National Happiness Index, yes, crazy, but this does exist) some of us, apparently most of us, are a bunch of very unhappy people.

Please excuse my callous capitalism for a moment. This is entirely a good thing for marketers facing a possible recession.

Unhappy = dissatisfied = problems = new solutions needed = value created = desire for solution = transaction.

Is buying more stuff really going to make us happy? No, the last 16 years of unprecedented economic growth in Australia has proven that.

Personal happiness is not the objective.

A consumer’s unhappiness is merely the door to the over flowing cupboard of dissatisfaction.

This dissatisfaction will reveal where the problems lie in your products and your competitors products.

Treat these problems as big, very big, buckets of raw opportunity. Take one portion of raw opportunity, mix it liberally with well oiled creativity and bake in a hot oven.

It’s a well proven fact, when freshly cooked solutions are placed in front of hungry, problem fed consumers, they begin to eat.

This is the year the marketer must stand up and cook.

For my sake; for your sake.

Perhaps we haven’t had such an important year in business for the marketing discipline for quite some time.

Marketers, of all descriptions, sizes, skills and ages, please stand up!

Posted in brand, marketer, marketing, product, research | 1 Comment »

New is Boring. News is Interesting.

Tuesday, February 17th, 2009

There is no shortage of ‘new’ in today’s market. New homes, new software, new TVs, new super accounts, new breakfast cereals, new deals, new offers…… the list really does go on.

New is simply not newsworthy anymore. New is boring.

So what turns ‘new’ into ‘news’?

New becomes ‘news’ when it is simple and different.

Two rules.

1. Be simple.
If your product can’t be understood at first glance or in the first sentence, it probably hasn’t been well thought out. Being simple is very difficult. The value in simple is added by taking things out, not by putting them in.

2. Be different.
New doesn’t become newsworthy unless it’s different. Likewise, brands don’t stand out unless they’re different. When it comes to rising to the top of the pack, being the same is marketing suicide.

The next time you are assessing the potential cut through of a product message explain it and it’s point of difference in one short sentence. If you can’t, go back and rethink it (better also see Thunk).

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The Creative Psyche…

Saturday, February 7th, 2009

If you’re a creative person anything like me, then you’ll agree that there’s nothing quite like inspiration to motivate you into action. The great thing about creativity is that there’s no end to the number of ways you can express yourself – although new techniques only come along once in a while, tried and true techniques when in the hands of truly creative people, produce new stories that are totally unique and inspiring. Picaso, Monet and Warhol all had the same handful of colours to paint with and Mozart, Beethoven, The Beatles and U2 all had the same 12 notes.

Every now and then you come across creative that’s entirely out of the box. It inspires thoughts and ideas that lay dormant in a creative mind, which may never have come out if someone hadn’t first decided to do something different, and share it with others. There’s two elements of a creative persons psyche that guarantee there will always be new stories to tell. Both inspire us to write better stories, or to invent new ways of communicating the same ones…

1. Competition – whenever we see something new, something different, something that changes the way people live or something that brings excitement or happiness to someone’s life, we can always rely on that little voice that says – “Why didn’t I think of that?” As if you had the ace the whole time, and somebody else snatched it out of your hand. That’s kind of a good way to think! There’s nothing quite like someone else’s great idea to inspire a creative person toward their own.

2. Perfection – something all creative people strive for. Some with greater levels of OCD than others. How often do we find ourselves half way through the creative process, only to wish that in hindsight, we would’ve done it differently? The bar shifts so quickly for creative folk that the latest project is never as great as the next one that’s brewing in our head. I guess in many ways we are always competing with ourselves.

One thing I know i always need is someone around me doing things I’d never thought of, creating sounds I’ve never heard, taking photos of moments I’ve never thought to capture, and telling stories i never thought I needed to hear, until it moved me.

Here’s something that moved me today. The vision, not so much the music. See, there’s always room for improvement

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Ever Thunk about something?

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

Research is a wonderful thing. Just spent a few days up to my neck in research in old Sydney Town with a client.

You never fail to learn something when being in front of a customer. A real person. Not just a survey but really hit the hard questions to the people that matter – the customers.

So here’s my new definition of the playful word ‘thunk’. To ‘thunk’ is to ‘u-turn’ on a thought or presumption that you previously held. For example, I almost called this business Leo Ideas co. A couple of conversations later with some customers (and after registering some domains and business names) I had to thunk. Why? It sucked. For many reasons, but the name Blirt! expressed the personality of this business far better.

Sometimes your customers are more objective than you.

Research often makes you ‘thunk’.

Do you need to ‘thunk’ some of your marketing strategies?

Posted in research, strategy, thinking | 1 Comment »

Welcome to Blirt!

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

Well the opening party lasted so long I’ve just had to time to write the welcome blog!

Hah. I wish.

Well, Blirt! is open for business. Really, we’re open for story telling. You’re probably asking what is all this stuff about story telling and what is the point?

We live in a world of stories, some true, some untrue. (Thanks Jill Cattarini from RZIM for some wonderful and inspirational writing on this).

These stories are our experiences, our culture or sub culture. Sometimes they’re woven with our history. These stories are the engaging aspirations, dreams and realities that we all live under. Sometimes our stories intersect, but they’re all connected.

What has this got to do with branding?

Our brands have become or are a part of people’s stories. How we communicate between brands and consumers is through the art of story telling.

Welcome to the Blirt! story. Where are we going? Well, you may well help define that.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »