It always amuses me when I approach new clients and am told, “Our marketing strategy is great, we don’t need you”. I always have to bite my tongue and come up short of saying, “Yeah, well prove it”.
It is a tired cliche, but still a truism: The proof is in the pudding. Any restaurant owner will tell you their pudding is the best, but if they never see it leave the kitchen and never chat with the customers, how do they know?
All too often folks assume that because they have a marketing strategy or have hired someone to do it for them they are covered, the job is done. However, without any form of tracking you never really know.
Popularity: 25%
Sifting through my inbox lately leads to a lot of despair. Fuel & Jet-A malaise, the economy, the climate, the dwindling US Dollar, the tragedies never stop. News and media folks (myself included I suppose) are more drawn to dark stuff. Frankly, it sells better. Because of this trend, there is a whole new generation of millennials who were born into an era where the news is always bad and everything is shocking so that at the end of the day, nothing is really that shocking.
Popularity: 27%
Being a German workaholic, my father came to America in the late 60’s with a few hundred bucks (most of which disappeared into the pockets of his fellow immigrant taxi driver upon arrival in New York). Nevertheless, he retired a successful business man with a multi-million dollar company. As I was reminded daily as a child, he worked his butt off doing everything he could to succeed, and built a plastics company from the ground up. Nothing was given- everything was earned. It was this obsession with perpetual labor that convinced me that this was a man who would never retire. Nothing shy of death would stop the man who was impervious to the concept of “time off” from not clocking in 6 to 7 days a week. Needless to say, it came as a surprise when I got that late summer phone call telling me he was selling the company and calling it quits.
Dad was quick to allay my fears of terminal illness or dementia. Ultimately, it was marketing that got him in the end. Dad always took care of everything for himself, trusting none but his two giant, calloused hands to cover ever detail from turning the heat on in the morning to firing up the machinery, then into the front office donning a suit and tie to shake hands, wheel and deal, and watch the business boom. Then the playing field changed.
Popularity: 22%