Seth Godin made a post recently about what to consider if it appears your marketing efforts aren’t yielding desired results:
Marketing isn’t hype. Marketing is making a product or service that matters.
If you’re struggling selling the thing you made, it’s worth reconsidering the audience, the promise and the change you seek to make–and then be honest with your team about whether your offering is actually remarkable, or just the best you could do with what you had.
This reminded me of a post I made almost exactly a year ago about Godin’s thoughts about branding being a promise you make and so rebranding should represent a change in the promise being made and expectations consumers should have about your business. He makes a distinction between re-branding and re-logoing.
They think a rebrand and a re-logo are the same thing, they’re not. A rebrand happens when you change the promise that you make, and the expectations we have for you. A re-logo is cosmetic. Rebrand at your peril, especially when the old brand is trusted, iconic, historic and connected to a basic human need. It’s a mistake to focus on clicks, not magic.
That concept of branding being a promise has been living in my brain for the last year and resonating with a lot of what I have read and listened to about audience/community relationship and marketing since then.
