“I want a full-page. full color press ad and I want it to run in all the dailies.” You are far more likely to hear this than; “Let’s try to figure what we should mean to our customers.”
Too often in the marketing world, we have a penchant for building roads, even if the road leads to nowhere. We do this because we genuinely believe it’s the right thing to do. And we are rewarded and encouraged by our bosses to chase the grp’s train. When we took on Carib years ago with a little brand called Stag, we knew we could not fight Goliath with grp’s. The first thing we did is make it clear that with 6% share we needed to be everything that Carib was not with their 90% share. (Heineken had the other 4%)
So we chose to be the beer of the under dog. And we were interested in no one else. This lived first in the “Recession Fighter” campaign, followed by “The People’s Beer” one; this positioning was also expressed in our choosing All Fours and Wind Ball Cricket over Power Boat Racing and Lawn Tennis, preferred by the boys from Champs Fleurs.
Marketing people, decide what you want to be and make sure everyone in your company knows, before you call your ad agency.
