Every marketer should read this. "Global replace" the words
advertising agency with
marketing team and
clients with
customers in your mind as you go. This manifesto
Marketing at a Point of Change was written in 1994 by the team at
HHCL, a very forward looking agency of the time based in the UK. I was still in school when it was written. Yet it is so true even now. If the trajectory of marketing change is a bullet, this feels like the gun that shot it. The bullet is still going and flying fast. One of my marketing heroes says the difference between old and young isn't age. It's that young, vibrant brands believe the future is better than the past ever was. I'm not looking backwards. I'm learning so we can propel forward. It inspires me to make things even better today and to write
our manifesto for the future. Please read it now, now, now.
Marketing at a Point of Change is
here
One of the most important relationships you will have as a marketer is with the strategic planner at your creative agency. Find them. From briefing for a simple email campaign to the largest of brand strategies, they will be your invaluable partners and eventual soul mates. For marketers who need help writing the future, agency planners can be diviners. They may have the most misunderstood role in marketing. Funny that.
Pat, you were right. The manifesto was definitely ahead of its time!
ReplyDeleteWhat really appealed to me was how well it simplified marketing/branding into a few key notions. The one that made me go "a ha!" was that "buying something is only the first step" and that the "initial purchase" of the product is only "an application for brand membership." Thus, if marketed well, the brand will become part of the experience and the customer will become an “advocate for life.”
Disney knew that even before people had terms of what they were doing. Take me, a regular consumer, for example. I knew about Disney since I was a baby, but I truly got hooked on Disney when I saw “Beauty & the Beast” on VHS (yes, it was that long ago), followed by “Aladdin” in theaters, and then “Lion King” in IMAX, twice. All four times, I was just a consumer, enjoying the product… And then, one day, my parents took me to Disneyland. Disney wasn’t lying when they claimed “Disneyland is the happiest place on earth” because for me it was. Not only did I meet the characters I had seen in films, I interacted with them! Having Belle say “you are adorable” or dancing with the antelopes in the Lion King parade was a BIG deal for a kid. Of course, going on all those crazy roller coaster rides with my parents and seeing how they channeled their inner kids also made the experience amazing. From then on, I was hooked. I followed Disney closely. I even bought my first stock with Disney. Then, when I grew up and matured, my parents assumed I would grow out of the “I <3 Disney” phase. I didn’t. Instead, I fell even more in love with the brand, especially after it acquired Pixar and subsequently Marvel.
My point is: Disney provided me more than just a product, it gave me a whole experience forever coupled with the best memories of my life. To this day, I still watch the old animated films with my parents and recount the first times I saw those films… I still want to go to Disneyland… and I still follow Disney (mostly Pixar and Marvel now). Like the manifesto predicted, “Create a meaningful level of interaction with the brand and you will have an advocate for life.” That is me. A Disney advocate for life. (Props to the branders @ Disney!)