Integration - brought to you by the letter “I”
Much of what I do through my own creative process and with clients is to fully integrate messages, brands, images and the personality of a company into everything we communicate. It’s what I call creating a living, breathing brand.
I was catching up on my newsletter reading this morning and ran across a good article by Gregory J. Pollack with PBM Marketing in Marketing Profs. In this article Pollack talks about taking the idea of fully integrated brands into “Partnership Brand Marketing”.
I found his ideas dead on. He writes, quite well, exactly what I’ve been talking with a few of my clients about recently. Choose your partnerships for promotions and marketing carefully and with a strategy of reaching a new customer base in mind.
Pollack writes:
“But the key ingredient is integration. It is not enough to create a promotion or align with a licensed property. It is not enough to create a joint merchandising display.
Well-crafted partnership brand marketing should include every possible touchpoint that your business has with its customers—both traditional and nontraditional marketing, including Internet, special events, advertising, promotions, public relations, packaging, merchandising, and a host of other marketing components. ”
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Vibrant Resource: Marketing Profs - I’ve been reading it for more than 6 years and it continues to provide fresh ideas and information.
Vibrant Challenge: Think about your brand. It’s more than just your logo, it’s a balance of your personality, benefits and primary point of differentiation. Is it fully integrated into everything you do in business? Ask yourself, “What do I need to do to prepare for brand integration.”
Vibrant Goals: Make a list of other brands you’d like to partner with to build your own brand. Remember to think strategically.
Cool Breeze
This morning there is a cool breeze blowing and it is so refreshing. It’s been hot, muggy and practically stagnate around here lately.
This morning’s cool breeze got me thinking, so I asked myself, “How can I freshen up my work?” It’s important to me and I think it should be important to any company in their communications, to stay fresh. So as I’m preparing this morning to start a new project I pulled out Roger vonOech’s Creative Whack Pack and selected two cards at random.
So today’s whacks are “Combine Ideas” and “Take a Whack At It”. The first is taking an objective look at the topic and see what is a different idea that I can combine with it. This reminds me of some signs my husband and I recently saw in Fort Worth that read as if it were “Charlie’s Discount Liquor and Gun Range”. It happened to be two different establishments, but the signs didn’t read that way. We got a big kick out of coming up with other oddly matched businesses. The example that von Oech uses is that Gutenberg combined the wine press and the coin punch to create moveable type and the printing press. So for this project at hand, I’m going to have to sit back for a few moments to consider a unique pairing for a great press release headline. Good whack!
The second one, “Take a Whack At It” is one I should probably carry plastered to my forehead. The primary point is you can’t hit a home run unless you step up to the plate. As a baseball fan that grew up on the diamond I’ve heard plenty of analogies to life from this sport and I don’t think one rings more true.
So my lessons learned from these two whacks? I’m going to take 5 minutes to brainstorm unique juxtapositions for this client and then I’m just going to start writing.
Now I ask you fair reader. What have you been mulling over for too long that you just need to take a whack at?