The Cost Of Not Knowing What Marketing Is

Beyond Advertising Anger

“If I ever see him on the street, I will punch him in the head.”

Not something we normally hear when dealing with clients, but it did come from the managing director of an industrial company in a personal state of retrospective regret over his business and marketing.

The background is as such: the business has been around for decades, has a national market, a very trusted and longstanding near-eponymous brand, and then someone came along and changed it

• Dont change unless you have to
• If you do offer somthing new, tell the market through content
• Why spend big when you achieve even more, cost effectvely?

Every marketing company has its own ways of helping clients move forward in business; whether an expensive advertising agency, an old-style PR company, or a modern e-based multi-comms strategy specialist such as ours which taps the minds of company directors to steer corporate messages and info relations.

But sometimes simple mistakes are made. Because some methods are tried and trusted, in a modern perspective its outcomes can backfire in the most spectacular ways.

When you have established brand presence, it is rare to find a valid reason to change it. Using a strategy honed over a long time, a usually capable advertising agency advised this client change its company name and rebrand.

Certainly, it had a fresh new look, but within 18 months it became clear its soul had been sold. What had taken 40 years to build and strongly rust onto strongly onto the psyche of the Australian industrial market was now gone.

Just like the powerful terms ‘hoover’ and ‘Kanga respectively enjoy over ‘vacuum cleaner’ and ‘pneumatic digger’, its brand name also hijacked a generic term of the English language - but that is now gone.

The advertising agency did what it thought was best. Unfortunately, in the modern comms age where content is not just important it is EVERYTHING, it changed just one word and left a lasting and costly footnote.

But at least he was able to compare the market. Part of his saving grace is a complete revamping of his marketing in business to bring leads inwards at much lower rates than creating expensive outbound collateral that has no legacy value.

It's set him up for the modern world and all its trading nuances. If you want a glance at what it's about, please download our free e-book. It is in simple English and will definitely open your eyes.