SD#2: marcomms, peak-end heuristic, next big thing and branding
January 23, 2022
Hi friends,
Welcome to the second edition of Seven Dawns. I hope the first one made you think or taught you something new. If not, let me know how I can improve or what you would like to hear more of. Now onto the newsletter…
Our seven ideas this week:
1. (Marketing) So many plans I hear of in marketing start with the channel (’let’s launch a Facebook channel’ etc.).Communications should only take up 5% of marketing, but it is taking up the majority of discourse. Try to move the conversation towards the other 4Ps (product, place, price, promotion), strategy, research. |
2. (Branding) The value created in consumers heads is much more valuable than the physical value of a product. Brand building has so much more value than just contributing to the sales; it can increase the price consumers are willing to pay, it makes your company a more attractive employer and it means your sales team has an easier job getting through to prospects and so much more. |
3. (Psychology) Peak-end heuristic – people remember the peaks and the end when it comes to rating experience. Use this in your next presentation, pay special attention to the peak and the end of your presentation that will be most memorised by the audience. |
4. (Business) Disruptive things are hard to predict. However it pays a lot more money to talk about them. Jeff Bezos was once asked what he thinks the next big thing in the business world will be. He said a more important question to ask is what will not change. You can build a business on things that will not change, but people are not as excited to talk about that. |
5. (Branding) Brand purpose is getting a lot of attention these days and it is mostly black and white. People either believe it is core to any business (ahem Unilever), or they believe it is complete bullshit. The truth might sit just in the middle. If you’ve done your research and see brand purpose as a great opportunity, there are no reasons why you shouldn’t go through with it. |
6. (Marketing) I often struggle to get my head around the difference between efficiency and effectiveness. If you’re like me, I found one simple way to look at it through a podcast I was listening to: efficiency relates to ROI and short-term results; effectiveness relates to long-term business results (price elasticity, non-ad buyers). |
7. (Marketing) One of the smartest things a business can do during a recession is to double down on marketing. Most companies reduce their marketing budgets during recessions, but those that don’t (or do the opposite) have been proven to reap tremendous rewards through market share gain post-recession. Unilever is a perfect example of this (company that survived many recessions). |
Fun things to click on:
A brilliant collection of microhabits to incorporate into your day (don’t attempt all of them at once though). I spoke to the founder of GoMeeta this week, it is a platform that connects small businesses with technology, sales, and marketing experts for short consultancy work. If you are an expert in something you can advertise your work for an hourly fee.
Thanks for reading! If you have any learnings you’d like to share with me, or disagree with any of the ones above then do drop me a message.
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Speak soon,
Tom