Interactive Marketing and Creative Differentiation
 |
| John Delaplaine, CEO of Delaplaine Creative |
– Submitted by John Delaplaine,
CEO of Delaplaine Creative
Just what is the value of marketing if it doesn’t raise sales? OK. Stupid question. But why are so many good companies marketing themselves without utilizing their greatest value - creative differentiation?
Welcome to a new world of marketing, an environment of apathetic consumers and saturated producers, a landscape cluttered with over 16, 000 promotional messages - 5,000 of which are advertisements - per person, per day.*
Getting the picture? Nobody really cares about your products and services. Unless you provide an individualized solution to the customer’s unique needs and wants in a way that has never been done before, you only add to the distortion.
Selling is really about building perceptions - clear, concise, quick, and compelling. In turn, perception drives demand, and demand drives your success. It’s not about what you want to say to your customer that matters, it’s about what they need to hear.
Now that’s not hard to understand. Yet, so few marketers position their products with communications that are powerful and memorable. Why? In a word - Fear. After all, if an idea is great, some people won’t like it. But that’s only part of being truly great - nobody wins total audience acceptance, ever. So we play it safe. And in failing to be amazing, we become invisible within the busy marketplace.
Thus, there are only two directions in a viable creative strategy:
1) Remain uncriticized and anonymous - essentially, no creative strategy;
- or -
2) Take the risk to be unique and differentiated. Funny. As it turns out, remaining unnoticed is the riskiest choice of all. Boring always leads to failure.
Features versus benefits. Even smart businesspeople have difficulty distinguishing the two. However, consumers quickly read the distinction. Features are boring, benefits are amazing. Features are what’s in it for you, benefits are what’s in it for them.
How do you create marketing media impact with compelling differentiation? Start by telling the truth, then deliver a brand promise that fulfills the customer’s need, and finally, do it with all the courageous zeal that you can muster. After all, what would happen if you actually got noticed? It just might be the first step to effectively compete and win your market share. That means you have to be a leader, not following somebody else who’s already amazing.
Just what is the value of marketing if it doesn’t raise sales? Nothing. What is the value of creative differentiation in your marketing communications? Everything.
*SOURCE: AdAge
