We recently started a content marketing campaign for a successful industrial manufacturing company. Before we started content marketing we all agreed their brand message needed to be pumped up. This manufacturer is in a competitive and commoditized niche and we all felt that a stronger, more memorable brand theme that could stand out would be a content multiplier.
We worked with a brand specialist and did some heavy duty industrial branding. We developed a brand theme that would be memorable and separate our customer from the “me-too” competitors. I required a brand theme that would not only separate our customer from the competition but also raise the bar internally. I wanted a brand theme that could raise the expectations of the employees and help them understand their company’s uniqueness compared to their competitors.
I believe we succeeded. I would love to share the terrific brand theme we executed, but to protect the innocent it shall remain anonymous.
For our customer, we now had a memorable brand theme that had the potential to extend itself into plant floor, trade show booths, blog posts, videos, e-books, etc. We are ecstatic.
We were just about to deploy new content based on our brilliant new brand theme.
Then we were fired.
FEAR is the culprit. No doubt.
I had a recent “conversation” with David Meerman Scott at recently launched www.inbound.org. Scott is the author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR and a leading evangelist for content marketing or inbound marketing.
Scott addressed the fear that I had just witnessed.
“- Fear comes from bosses who insist on calculating the ROI of the new rules of marketing & PR based on sales leads and press clippings.
– Fear comes from offline advertising and PR practitioners cautiously making the transition to web platforms to generate attention.
– Fear comes from those who insist on copying the competition.
One of the most frequent manifestations of fear is that the new rules of marketing & PR does not work “in our industry.” The proof people provide is that nobody else is doing it. I’ve heard “The new rules do not work for mutual fund managers or lawyers or dentists or politicians or Singapore based software companies or Canadian blood donation centers or Florida based real estate agents or churches or rock bands…I’ve heard them all. I see the excuses of “this doesn’t apply to my market” and “people in my market do not use social media” literally every day.
Duh. Someone has to be a pioneer.”
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