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