For the past few months we have been running free marketing clinics, partly to attract new clients, partly to stimulate dialogue and partly to give something back. Word quickly spread and we have enjoyed some spirited and interesting meetings, some of which have come to nothing and some of which have resulted in some quite decent business.
Having worked at a variety of agencies, from Performance Improvement to Communications, and now a simple design agency, I am coming to realise that when it comes to their own brand, people are blinded by emotion. They might be staff, in which case they have been indoctrinated over the years to believe in the published "brand values" of the organisation, or alternatively it is their own business in which case they seem to look at their brand through a Miss Ellie vaseline lens.
In either case, any form of criticism whether solicited or simply as a helpful, constructive comment either falls on deaf ears or is taken as a personal sleight - almost as if you'd called their children ugly.
I want to use this blog to illustrate ways that we have discovered to make marketing as fun. painless and cost-effective as possible.
But the only way for anyone to take anything meaningful or even helpful from this is is they can manage to step back from their brand, to look at it with critical eyes, not as a parent or a relation but as a stranger.
This is my first post, so I have kept it as brief and to the point as possible, over the coming weeks and months I will doubtless unleash my pent-up frustration and write long rambling diatribes. In the meantime, I would like to leave you with a question:
Does the way your clients view your brand align with the way that you do?
Follow this blog if you will be interested to hear our thoughts on - amongst other things:
- SEO - a beginners guide
- Advertising - does it work?
- Turning a site into a website
- Don't just sit there and think about doing something
- Mail merged Direct Mail in all it's glory
- And other stuff that occurs to me
