Find Your Twins, Savory Tips and Your Robot Rendering
The Sullivan brothers are identical twins who don’t look alike.
And for almost a decade, they were one of my go-to resources for marketing advice and creative feedback because they thought most advertising, marketing, and branding was, in their favorite descriptor, “crap.” They worked at Oscar’s, the deli across the street from our office, and for reasons I never completely understood, they were fascinated by what we do for a living. They would pay me – in grainy, bottom-of-the-pot coffee, day-old bagels, and cream cheese that tasted suspiciously like mayonnaise – to critique our work. They would ask the questions self-important “experts” like me wouldn’t, like: “Why would anyone care about that?” and “What does that actually mean?” and my personal favorite, “Do you actually get paid to do this?”
They reminded me that simple is smart and that great work is artfully easy to understand.
So, my unsolicited advice: Find your Sullivan twins. Find the people who will tell you what others won’t. And listen to them.
But before you leave to start your search – or get a pastrami wrap slathered with cream cheese – feast on these well-toasted tips and trends.
Tips and trends
- Write your Declaration of Interdependence. Creative depends on technology. Technology depends on user experience. UX depends on content. Content depends on people. People depend on coffee. Yada x 3. The best marketing organizations understand something our wig-wearing founding fathers would have appreciated 250 years ago: Success is built on interdependence: Different strengths. Different perspectives. One shared mission. They’d probably put down their quills and call that self-evident. So, write your dependencies down, show clear support from the top, and share your declaration with your “citizens”.
- Attribution retribution. We all love our dashboards, some of us more than our pets and poker buddies. Unfortunately, the customers these track and measure refuse to behave like flowcharts. Someone may discover your company through a LinkedIn post, then search for you later, read a review, visit your website, talk to a colleague at a trade event, and then forget all of that once they become whatever your organization calls a lead. The more channels we add, and the more they evolve, the more important it becomes to understand influence, not just attribution.
- DO NOT READ THIS UNLESS YOU WORK IN HEALTHCARE. Here’s the bitter pill you need to take: Patients compare experiences, not industries. If they can book a flight in two minutes, bet on Cape Verde to beat Uruguay in the World Cup, schedule grocery delivery in 30 seconds, and order lunch from Oscars with their phone, they start expecting similar convenience everywhere else. Including, yep, healthcare. Fair or not, you’re competing against every good digital experience they’ve had lately. And your “competition” is leveling up. Physician heal thyself. And hey, you fintech marketers, scram!
- Your website still answers the wrong questions. Organizations spend months crafting messages about products, services, capabilities, and internal priorities. It’s inside-out and all too common. Then managers are surprised when visitors arrive, wondering: Can you solve my problem? Have you done this before? Why should I trust you? What happens next? One set of questions generates marketing materials. The other generates customers. Which ones do you want to ask?
- Your customer is not thinking about you. This sounds depressing, I know. But my forlorn friends, this is actually liberating, like a cold plunge (ok, maybe not that). Your audience isn’t obsessing over your latest campaign, your new logo, or your carefully crafted messaging framework. They’re just trying to get through their day. Marketing starts working when we stop making ourselves the hero of the story.
- Use Olde English in your email comms. No, don’t do this. I’m kidding. But if you got to this point, I assume you need some comic relief (assuming this qualified).
- The organizations that win will feel more human. This may be the most unexpected trend of all, even to you impossibly charming and insightful folks (see your picture below). As AI-generated content grows, automation expands, and digital experiences become increasingly slick and sophisticated, like you, humanity becomes more valuable. Customers and prospects want expertise, but they also want, even need, authenticity. They want competence, but they yearn for confidence. In short, they want to feel connected and understood. Technology can accelerate that journey, but it still can’t create it, at least not yet…
Robot rendering (i.e., what you look like to us)
I told my electronic buddy, Chad, to draw me a picture of what you, my good friends and colleagues, look like. Check yourself (ok, a persona representing stars like you) out below. My quick observation: You’re smart, funny, friendly, and much more attractive than we are.
As always, if I can do anything for you – share some experience, make a connection, deliver some truly awful deli coffee – please let me know.
Thanks again for your patient indulgence.
Best,
