3 Lessons From A Marketing Superstar
I was just rereading Jeffrey J. Fox's marvelous book, How To
Become A Marketing Superstar this week, and had to start jotting
down some notes to pass along. Fox has a wonderful knack for
distilling his hard-won wisdom into two or three page chapter
nuggets that others would have to teach an entire college
semester to get across.
Here are a few of my favorites:
* NEVER USE WE. Eliminate the personal pronouns "I,"
"me," "we," "us," or "our" in advertising, packaging, sales
literature or anywhere else in marketing communications. "We" is
about the marketer and its story. "We" is in the first person.
"We" is a bad proxy for your brand name or company name. Your
job is to draw the customer into the conversation by focusing on
her and her story, her concerns, her headaches, her wants. Your
job is to build brand awareness, not "we' awareness...Never use
"we," "us," or "our" in the headline. The advertisement is not
about you, it is not about your success or experience or hard
work. It is about the customer and what the product will do for
her or him. To confound this sin, these same advertisers often
follow their "we" with trite clich