2007
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Telling Your Own Story
Dec 31
Back to our tackle shop example, only this time the shop doesn’t exist yet. Dock Dwellers, City Slickers or Locals: which segment should tell our story, and do we know enough to choose?
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Staggered Entry
Dec 19
Any entry into a new market should start with brand advertising. Sonic ran TV ads in my area long before it opened a single location nearby. When it finally did, business boomed.
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Landscaping
Dec 17
Before you enter a market, survey the landscape. Three questions every entrepreneur must answer in detail first. If you can’t answer even one, your brand will likely fail before it launches.
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Public Relations
Dec 13
PR is a two-edged sword. Listen to your story tellers (they’ll hear the good and the bad first), keep a plan ready for the worst, and when you make a mistake, admit it instead of trying to spin it.
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Brand Advertising
Dec 12
Advertising comes in two kinds: product and brand. Brand advertising never names a product. It builds anticipation, as AT&T’s mLife campaign did for months before anyone knew what mLife was.
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What’s the Point?
Dec 11
When I tell people I’m in marketing, they assume I mean sales or advertising. They’re three distinct disciplines, and it takes three distinct kinds of people to do them well.
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Negative Space
Dec 10
Charmin built clean, upscale public bathrooms in Times Square and won more mindshare than any billboard. Notes on a Marketing News article about advertising in communication’s negative space, and why guerrilla marketing is the same idea.
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‘Tis the Season
Dec 9
The fictional bait & tackle shop has found its real perfect customer. Now it has to rebrand to reach them. What rebranding involves, why timing matters, and how British Petroleum became BP, an energy company rather than an oil company.
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Story Tellers: Part II (con’t)
Dec 8
Three months into our bait & tackle thought experiment, sales are down in two of three segments. The fix: the Dock Dwellers, not the customers we chose, are the story tellers who send the City Slickers through our door.
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Story Tellers: Part II
Dec 7
Our bait & tackle shop picked the Locals as its perfect customer and rebuilt the store around them. The numbers that followed show why choosing your story tellers has to be an on-going process.
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Story Tellers: Part I
Dec 2
Someone not on your payroll is telling your brand’s story. Find that person, compare them to the perfect customer you planned for, and be ready to throw your original description away.