Marketing Strategy is not a thing.
Or shouldn't be.

Marketing Strategy is not a thing.
Or shouldn't be.

Even if it feels counter to some Rule or Great Order of Things you've heard or been taught...

1. Marketing Strategy is not a thing. Or shouldn't be. See #2 below

2. Your Business is your Brand. Brand is Strategy. Your only strategy. Strategy is singular. See #3 below.

3. Everything Else is a Plan.

You reduce org friction – time – and increase customer-to-sale velocity – money – when you get your singular Brand Strategy right. And discipline every Plan to it.

If customer experience matters. If time and money matter. Words matter.

So, if, like most orgs, you have multiple strategies — Marketing Strategy, Media Strategy, HR Strategy, Product Strategy, Events Strategy, R&D Strategy, Sales Strategy — you are unwittingly dividing and weakening the operational flow and essence of your business.

A "strategy" for each dept/function, even if subtly variant, is an oar rowing off-cadence. The boat is in friction mode.

Plans are designed and guided by One Strategy: Brand. Think Business as the shell in a rowing regatta. Brand as coxswain. The crew/oars are in sync, in rhythm, to One message. For one purpose: to reduce friction. For one goal: To win.

Or think business as the brain. Most vital organ. Command Center. Coordinates all body actions, reactions. Including heart's rhythm. Brain ceases function = clinically dead, even if heart continues to beat.

Brand ceases. Customer Experience ceases. Business dies. Even as Marketing continues to bleed out budget in any form of communication and selling. Dead. Brand is Brain is Life of Business.

Heart that.

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If you're looking to create your brand or to rebrand,
do you do the Manifesto? Or a Category-Brand POV?

Both.

The Category-Brand POV is a thorough laying out of the customer problem, current market solutions, and argument for the creating of a Different POV, a new solution, a new category. It isn't primarily concerned with promoting the client's business or brand.

As an example, in a 1,300-word POV, we didn't mention the brand until the last 250 words. Rather, the POV is the point-by-point scholarly case Against the status quo – and the argument For a breakout solution, a breakout Category. This articulates the category name, category-creating attributes …and The Singular Strategy of this leadership brand. Every function/department develops Plans (not multiple strategies!) off this one Strategy. The POV as a document is not for public consumption. It is for marketing and other functions to understand and abstract from and edit into communications.

The Manifesto is the poetic distillation of the POV. It can be the rallying cry internally and externally. The essence of your Purpose. The soul of your Strategy. The blood of your Creative. The words that Design Your Different. Its very last line – that single climactic word or words – ought to naturally arrive as the tagline. The credible, emotionally resonating Feeling one gets every time they experience your brand at any little-big moment.

If you'd like me to share a Category-Brand POV and Brand manifesto, DM me. 

To attend my sessions at NYU Stern School of Business and other venues, contact me at janzlotnick@gmail.com