Welcome to my first blog post. I know folks do this every day but with a
busy family and a crazy work schedule, carving time to write is pretty
difficult most days. With daylight
savings time, getting an extra hour got me thinking about starting a new
habit. Regardless of the reasoning, the
goal of my blog is to share some of my insane thoughts about marketing and
project management.
You will not find academic theories in this blog but a blue
color view of marketing and project management concepts and how to make stuff
happen. I have simple thoughts about
getting the message out and have spent the last 10 plus years in the back
ground making products successful, enabling sales teams and working with
project based organizations to improve process and to implement best
practices. I have not done everything
right but have had more success than failure. I have learned from my failures to create some
interesting views on communicating complicated solutions in clear and simple
ways. Simple is better or at least in my opinion.
One of the first ideas is a concept I call beer and pizza
messaging. Many of my friends keep
telling me to get a better name but I kind of like it. And, no we are not selling beer and pizza. I
want you to think about a Friday night after a rough week and everyone is
sitting around the dinner table just relaxing and shooting the breeze. Adults, parents, friends and kids are all
unwinding after a hard week of work and school.
And the pizza shows up. Think
about the excitement in the room at that moment; the scrambling of everyone for
plates and the positioning for the first piece. The warm smell of melted cheese
and the pizza box smell. The cardboard
takes on a unique aroma of tomato sauce and basil. You can just smell it as you think about
it. Now add the cool refreshing taste of
beer contrasting the hot slice of pizza expanding over the plate. There is nothing that compliments pizza
better than an ice cold beer; dark, light, import or domestic, it just does not
matter. They just work together to make
something bigger than the individual components. Close your eyes. You can put yourself there!
Let me ask you one question.
Does your marketing message give you this feeling or any feeling for
that matter? Does it hit a nerve,
include any emotion, or even connect with the impact to the customer. Most business messaging is sterile and boring. (Boring with a capital boring) Yet, most buying happens when a customer has
hit the tipping point where they have had enough of a bad situation. The impact has made the status quo
increasingly painful and worth changing.
Think about your own major purchases.
When you replace a car, heater, or air conditioner, you have hit the
point where an action has to happen.
Whether it is increasing costs, reliability, or an unacceptable
situation, something has to change and you will find the money to change
it.
So I ask again, does your messaging target the tipping point
or does it just talk about the boring features with some perceived value
generated from an internal committee. Connecting
to this level of pain and emotion requires a new approach to messaging; an
outside in approach. I have worked with
a number of companies and most think they understand the customer problems
better than the customer. They fall into
the trap of listening to feature requests to incrementally move products
forward and they fail to connect with the customer to understand the real
problem. The problem (yes I said the P
word) that causes people to lose sleep, get fired or go out of business. And since when has the word “problem” become
taboo? If it isn't a problem, why
change it.
So, look at your messaging and take the beer and pizza
test. Does your message pass or
fail? Are you connecting with the
customer pain to push them over the edge?
Will they scramble to find the money to purchase like when the pizza
boxes first opens with folks jockeying for the first piece. Regardless of it does or does not, you understand
the value of the beer and pizza test.
We must first understand and admit to a problem and have the
courage to change.
