Core Competencies
We Listen
We start by listening to our client. No! I'm not kissing up here.
The fact is that our client knows their product or service better than we ever can. This is a no-brainer. Clients live their brand every single day. Of course, we do our homework and learn their product/service, their competition and the market.
That last item is worth developing further. We listen to the market...who they are, how to engage them in a dialogue, what motivates them and more.
OK! So the client knows their stuff. And we know ours. Ours is Disruptive! Marketing and Advertising...from strategies & tactics to execution & tracking.
Here's the best part. We listen to our 20-years in this business that tells us the best way to do effective marketing is by partnering with our clients. They bring their knowledge and we bring ours. "No one of us is as smart as all of us".
We also listen to the market and remember that we're not creating marketing communications for our preferences...nor for our clients (sorry). We hear what the market tells us they want to hear. It's that simple really.
Give me a call. I bet you find that I'm one of the best listeners you've ever come across.
Lifelong Learners
When you think you know it all you're done.
I actually took marketing in school but that was quite a while ago. Things have changed since then. Heck, in marketing, things have changed since last year.
So I read the new marketing books and take the hot seminars to learn. This new learning helps me, and Quantum, help you.
Here's some of our recent favorites:
We are smarter than me
Brand Hijack
Eating The Big Fish-How Challenger Brands compete with Brand Leaders
Purple Cow
Disruption!
An example of our disruptive principals in action is the Hanging Sign we made for Hero Nutritionals at the NPE West Trade Show. Each of the molded Yummi Bears® you see here is about 18" long. Hanging high above the booth, this sign disrupted the show.
What is your reaction when you hear that one of the core competencies of the agency you may hire is: Disruption!??
Was it off-putting at first? Or make you nervous? Or...
Whatever your reaction, it's probably safe to say there was a reaction. The word didn't just slip by unnoticed.
And that's exactly the point. It stops you. Makes you think. Or, one of our favorite words, engages you.
That's what you want for your messaging. That's what we want for your messaging. Being ignored is the worst result of an advertising campaign.
So, yes—we're Disruptive! but more importantly, we bring Disruption to everything we do for you.
But, you may say...”We're conservative...” Disruption! is not wacky, crazy or off color.
It's a shift—a zig when everyone else zags. It's often something subtle. Rachael Ray's 30-Minute Meals is Disruptive! (it's also brilliant Positioning—and we'll talk about that in the next core competency).
Positioning
On the left you see the old packaging for the Hero Nutritional product Healthy Indulgence, and on the right our updated packaging.
We positioned Healthy Indulgence as the best-tasting calcium supplement, and changed the shape and style of the box to make it stand out at point-of-sale.
Positioning is the key to the whole (marketing) thing. And the key to positioning is to remember that it happens in the mind of your prospect.
So what is positioning anyway? It's how your product/service is perceived versus all the other product/services in the same category. Everyone in the same category gets assigned (by the prospect) an attribute or benefit.
Let's look at car manufacturers, and to illustrate, let's start with attributes.
Some attributes, as assigned by car buyers are:
safety
performance
value
economy
cool
Now, let's assign manufacturers to each...just as the buying public does.
Safety...Volvo
performance...BWM
value...Honda
economy...Ford
cool...H2
What you want to do is own one single attribute all by yourself. And if the attribute you want is taken, it's time to find an attribute that is not taken and yet can apply to your product/service.
Easy Breezy, right?
Let's look at some examples of good positioning. Then, we'll ask you to come up with some examples on your own.
Rachael Ray's 30-minute Meals. No one owned this attribute. It's memorable. It sets her apart.
The Heavenly Bed from Starwood Hotels. It's a Memorable and unique position in the buyers mind. It's also a relevant attribute, another pre-requisite for a viable position.
Sony has Peyton Manning pitching their unique position that Sony is the Brand the Pro's use...they (the networks) use it (Sony) to shoot the games. They use it to produce the games. They use it to broadcast the games. So, why wouldn't you use it to watch the games??
Using this unique positioning, Sony let's their competitors fight over number of pixels, etc. They (Sony) are in a position by themselves as the professional's choice. Brilliant!
OK! Your turn. How many unique positions can you come up with?
Responsive
We are responsive to deadlines, market feedback, client needs and ROI.
We've never met a deadline we could not hit, even when it meant running through an airport to get that incredibly important piece of something on that flight. OK...we only had to do that once. Errrr...twice.
Our sensitivity to market feedback is real. We really do react quickly when the market talks to us, even when we're in the middle of a campaign. We'll make changes on the fly to help achieve the desired or forecast results. Which also means we build as many monitoring mechanisms in place as is feasible.
As far as client needs...well—Duh! We're a service organization...and the Enemy of Good Enough. So, if you need it, we'll get it done.
As for ROI it's a necessity. Marketing is supposed to be an investment. As such, we calculate a projected ROI before we deploy any campaign. Then we do a post-mortem to give you—and us—an analytical picture of what happened. what we expected to happen, contributing factors, etc.