We know that ‘Marketing’ is best defined as ‘communicating your position with your audience’, but how often do we think about the way in which we ‘communicate’? More specifically, do we think that our Brand’s communications are always received with open ears, or are we annoying our audience…and why might that be? Do we have our audience’s permission to communicate with them, or are we actually interrupting them?

I was listening to an outstanding interview with Shaan Puri and Sam Parr and they shared a fascinating theory they dubbed ‘The 5 Levels of Marketing’. First and foremost, Marketing and Branding are not ‘hard-sciences’, as many of us know, yet the ‘rules of marketing’ are deeply rooted in psychology, which very much does have solid scientific underpinnings. I preface this topic this way because we already know Marketing isn’t a ‘hard-science’ and someone is going to say ‘I think there’s a 6th or 7th level to Marketing’…and that’s OK - this is an idea and it’s open to interpretation. The point of the concept is that it expands one’s mindset as they explore their own Brand, as well as the Brands of those they might support if you’re in a position like ours at TDC.

Milestones practically force one pause and reflect.

A few examples come to mind:

• Graduating High School or College

• Landing that first dream job

• Having your first kiddo

• Starting a business

I wanted to take a short break from our usual marketing ramblings and recognize an important milestone for TDC, and of course - reflect. We recently added our 20th employee (the group photo cracks me up because we get to see the top of Kendall’s head and Austin is inside of the ‘Owl’) to TDC Marketing and I’m just absolutely blown-away by all that this group has accomplished. So instead of making points about Brand, I’d like to reflect on an important concept that is often overused: teamwork.

It’s hard to believe a household name like PHISH hasn’t had a single hit. Right? No hits. None. Zilch.

And their albums aren’t big sellers, either. Yet…they got the opportunity to be the second band to play the Sphere in Vegas, the hottest venue for any performing artist, currently. How could a band that has zero hits and sells few albums compared to big acts like Taylor Swift, The Weeknd, and Billie Eillish be trusted to pack the Sphere?

Most people in the Marketing world have seen and been blown-away with the work OpenAI has done with a new project called SORA. It’s a tool that makes video clips for you based on feeding it a few sentences. We don’t know how to feel. Is it incredible? Is it frightening? Is it unbelievable? Is it all of those things at the same time? And maybe one of the biggest questions Marketers have is…is it coming for my video department?

I don’t think the answer to those questions has anything to do with SORA’s technical abilities. I think the answer has to do with something that’s at the core of any great Brand: *Trust.* The question isn’t ‘*is this technology incredible?*’, it’s ‘*can I trust what I’m looking at?*’ Take it one layer deeper as it pertains to your Brand: ‘*can I trust what your Brand is telling me is true…?*’ Is that the question you want your audience to ask?

When your friends, neighbors, and family are all talking about Snoop Dog ‘going smokeless’, as if that’s earth-shattering news, and they come to find out it’s a Marketing campaign for Solo Stove, and then proceed to laugh about it and say ‘hey, that was pretty clever’, and move on with their lives, the Marketing team did their job amazingly well. No question about it, they didn’t hit a home run with this campaign, they hit a grand slam. And now…the CEO is being S-canned…due to its lack of conversions from Brand Awareness to DTC Sales…?

I recently saw a post on Linkedin…that I actually enjoyed. What was that post about? Key Performance Indicators. Yeah, the super boring topic that is KPIs. Except…it wasn’t about CTRs, ROAS, or Bounce Rates. It was speaking the language of Branding. The thought exercise that was posed was to think about the measurement component of a KPI and completely replace it. Blasphemy, you might think? Well, it depends on what you replace it with. Here were their suggestions, along with some additions…

Without stating the obvious, the last 2.5 years have been somewhat of a wild ride. A pandemic impacted businesses, non-profits, and government in a variety of ways - and still continues to impact them, actually - especially in the field of workforce. Labor shortages based on category, wage inflation, ‘regular’ inflation, interest rate hikes. Basically, there’s no shortage of issues that are affecting the labor market. As marketers, it’s not really our job to explain them as an economist would - it’s our job to navigate them for our clients.

Believe it or not, your brand more than likely has something to say. The main assumption with this statement is that your brand is great at what it does, is full of great people who are great at what they do, and is a thought leader in the area in which it serves. I realize that’s a big assumption, but I am comfortable saying if those things are true, there’s absolutely zero reason you shouldn’t be writing your own news. Why?

I’m going to share three big-picture thoughts this month and break them down into smaller segments in the next few months a multi-part newsletter. These are based entirely on trends we’re seeing in marketing today. We’re not talking about pictures, videos, writing, Social Media, or anything else that comes to most peoples’ minds when it comes to ‘marketing’. We’re going to dive into that crazy little thing called ‘strategy’, AKA ‘where the ball is being kicked’.