IS AWARENESS ALL IT TAKES TO WIN CUSTOMERS AND BUILD YOUR BRAND?

I’m having difficulty with the theme and, therefore, the title for today’s Marketing Matters article. I could have chosen a title about the BIG Idea. Or, it could have been about creating relevance for your target customer. Perhaps, it is about all three. And more? What triggered this article? Well, Pill Club ran an event […]

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WHAT ARE YOU MARKETING?

This question that I’m posing, “What are you marketing?” requires answering three questions: “What is your business?”  “What is your brand’s “WHY?”  “What is your brand’s promise to prospective customers?”  A photo a client shared with me prompted the question. It shows a delivery boy of about 14-years old leaning against his bicycle in front […]

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IS YOUR MARKETING HALF-EMPTY OR HALF-FULL?

No, I’m not asking how you might view the bottle of Chivas. Instead, I’m raising the question regarding how you see your marketing. Is it half-empty or half-full? Every marketer I ask professes that it is more than half-full. No one will turn the finger on themselves and proclaim their marketing is half-empty. We believe […]

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BREAKTHROUGH ADVERTISING

Make it so powerful, so unusual, or so dynamically dominating that it captures the eye despite the competition of other advertisements less unique or less positive in their impact. Victor Schwab, HOW TO WRITE A GOOD ADVERTISEMENT When I think of the word “breakthrough,” I imagine a leap forward. Unfortunately, in the domain of advertising, […]

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WHY CMO TENURE DESERVES TO BE SHORT

According to a MediaPost Weekend report, “CMO Tenure Hits a 10-Year Low.” It dropped to 40- months (that’s only 3-years and 4-months!), with median tenure falling to <26-months. This contrasts to CEO tenure of about 6 and ½-years. What gives? One of the key reasons given for the short tenure is that marketing is changing rapidly. […]

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SUMMER BREAK ANNOUNCEMENT 2021

Dear readers of DISPATCHES and Marketing Matters, DISPATCHES and Marketing Matters are publications of Brand Development Network International. The purpose of each is to contribute to helping make marketing matter more through sharing our perspectives—honed from decades of brand marketing experience with Fortune Top 100 Companies throughout the world—on marketing excellence. Our writing is founded on […]

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MAKE YOUR MESSAGE “MEANINGFUL” TO GET RESULTS

We need to make our brand messaging meaningful if we expect to generate favorable results. What is a meaningful message? Well, first and foremost, it depends upon your chosen target customer. What’s meaningful to one person may not be meaningful to another. So, you must be strategically astute and select your target customer carefully. (Your target […]

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SING YOUR BRAND’S PRAISES

We want Key Copy Words (KCWs) to stick, like a Post-It-Note in our target customers’ heads. What better way to do it? Sing it! Have you ever experienced an “earworm?” You know, a tune that keeps popping up in your head. Try as you might; it just won’t go away! Well, jingles are like that, […]

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ADD CREDIBILITY TO YOUR BRAND MESSAGING

As I wrote in the last Marketing Matters article, “Key Copy Words” are essential to memorable and compelling advertising. They convey the strategic benefit in emotive customer language and complete the Campaign Idea.  I shared how the cigarette industry used KCWs to differentiate one brand from another. It starts with the strategic benefit, what we […]

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REMEMBER, KEY COPY WORDS

We recently had our neighbors over to our home for dinner. One of them brought up the subject of “taglines.” I explained that there’s a difference between taglines and key copy words (KCWs). Do you know the difference? “Key copy words” are essential to the advertising. They convey the strategic benefit in clear and compelling […]

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