Recently I referenced the way that BMW’s “Joy” advertising campaign is a potential “game-changer” for them. In that blog I also referenced one of my (and Steve Jobs, but “Jobs blogging” is a ripe them for another day for me as a marketer!) favourite marketing thoughts, that of Henry Ford… the “Faster Horse” thought.
Now, thanks to Twitter and @WorldNomads , I’ve just heard about how SRS Energy have launched a solar panel product that looks just like spanish roof tile. I’m sure if the average solar panel supplier asked their customers what they wanted, they would have heard “less expensive”, or “less ugly”, but unlikely to have heard “can’t you use curved plastic materials and embed it into a roof tile so nobody can see I have solar panels”.
The message ? Sometimes you have to listen to the inner need of the customer and use whatever creative thought process works for you (there is no perfect formula) until you come up with something that you know will work for you and your customers.
For me, a recent example was inspired by this tweet last week from the CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh. If you don’t know Zappos, suffice to say that they GET the customer, they are driven by a) company culture, b) customer service, and c) happiness. Tony, or @Zappos , recently tweeted :
Embarking on a social media strategy to help w/ marketing is like embarking on a facial muscle strategy to help w/ smiling.
To which my comment to the immediate ReTweet was.. BAM ! …He got it….social media is not a “bolt-on”.
At that time I was just thinking about a client who had asked me to look at their social media strategy. This wasn’t social media 101, they already are pretty good at it.. but they are a great organisation, and they just want to focus on where they need it to be in the future.
Inspired by that tweet and with my thoughts already turning to how I could come up with a uniquely suitable way to perform a review that worked for that particular client… I threw out the rulebook on how one would typically review an existing social media strategy in an already successful organisation.
Suffice to say one thing they won’t get from me will be a faster horse…it would be bold to think I came up with a “game changer”, but certainly what I did come up with was more than a little different, and when I meet the client and their team they will have to, as Apple said, think different :
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