Moments Later: Incomplete Marketing

Is there something incomplete in your marketing efforts? Do you feel like something is missing in your positioning, communications or the product that you deliver? Do you feel like your brand blurs into your category and never get noticed? Why do brands go only so far to complete the picture and tell a full story?

What holds them back?

I have noticed more and more brands who don’t understand the power of fully fleshing out their key message. They take a step toward standing for something but quickly hide in the corner in fear of being too different. They want to talk about their nifty features but don’t realize that the customer initially just cares about the benefit – particularly the emotional connection. If I am your target audience, your brand has to solve a problem or do a job for me. And, your brand has to make me care about you so that I need you.

Can your brand quickly tell a complete story in a clever way that lets the consumer think you see thing from their perspective?

Brands often get stuck in what I think of as half-speed. If you are giving me a long laundry list of features, it leaves me feeling washed up as if something is missing. Marketers need something more than a half-baked idea. How can you get the whole picture and make me see it all?

Camel Committees
Half an idea usually means you are unwilling to take a risk. It’s like a toe in the water that doesn’t allow you to truly take a swim. Half an idea feels like that wonderful saying that a camel is a horse built by a committee. Someone needs to own the idea and be willing to go out on a limb to shift their category into a new direction.

Three ways I know an idea is rich, robust and complete.

1. It makes me a little uncomfortable. I feel as if I am in a new space and it is uncertain.

2. I have a good gut feeling about the effort but it is backed by some useful data. Both left and right brain activity is cooking.

3. No one else is in this new space. My brand is out by itself creating a new way of seeing a problem or a category.

Focus on a Complete Message Idea

I saw a billboard for Pearle Vision that really made me pay attention. At first I thought, wait a second this ad is out of focus. Then I realized how cleverly they delivered their message and how by being out of focus, it drew my attention to the ad, their key message as well as their brand. This is a full and complete idea.

I can imagine how uncomfortable some of the right brain (logical) colleagues at Pearle Vision must have been when this idea was first introduced. Talk about not blurring a category...

I am not in the market for glasses today having just gotten a new pair a few months ago, but you can bet that the next time I need an exam I may have a new brand to view. This ad caught my imagination and it made me want to know more about this pearl.