Heroic Branding – the marketing lynchpin between corporate success, internal culture and engagement.
Zero budget marketing, the clean slate and the route to recovery aka the new approach to creating wealth through marketing.
No need explaining the current scenario of the passing milestone on the map of the 21st century, the new wave of Black Death that originated in the 14th century and made its name for robbing nearly 25mln people of their rights to live; this time coronavirus so far has feasted on nearly 18mln innocent lives with confirmed 685K dead. Maybe it is not fair to compare both pandemic events however this time around looking through the prism of the impact on business life and marketing function – is there any optimal path that shall be adapted across industries?
From the perspective of business owners, founders and professionals as well as the opposite side – individuals, customers and target markets, we are all in the same kind of scenario, there is no room for pink glasses stories and promises without coverage. The only certain things are yesterday, today and tomorrow. Apart from these nothing is 100% guaranteed as there nothing called certainty guaranteed over any phenomenon in life with the exception of own birth, the Present moment and death |
This rather rational (NOT pessimistic) take on the life of organizations in the shadow of COVID-19 place a large amount of responsibility on arms of CMOs and CBOs who nervously scratch their heads while double-checking the pockets of corporate budgets in search for marketing spend and the leftovers for this year.
The key questions such as, “is there any marketing budget?” and “what is the brand positioning?” represent some of the essentials and starting points that any brand shall consider while revisiting their marketing strategies and auditing current approaches. The most commonly adopted action by numerous brands is rethinking the overall strategy of a business and placing marketing at the heart of everything that they do, starting fresh appears to be the go-to approach as there is no point going back what worked in the past.
This is a completely new reality that is happening right now at this moment and the optimal approach shifts towards zero-based budgeting suggesting that brands shall assume the need to generate interest and communicate properly with their ideal consumer personas without any dedicated financial support that has been left from the last financial year and starting with a clean slate.
Why ZBB (zero-based budgeting)?
As adopted and already works its magic so far with several brands including this no-need-to-introduce the tech master, Dell, as well as a start-up art and culture platform that aims to promotes wellness, senses.studio, this strategic approach allows CMOs and CBOs heading organizational departments to reassess their practices and dig deeper into their current and past propositions.
How does ZBB work?
Simply, working from the ground up and putting the business wellbeing at the core focus of everything an organization undertakes or represents, followed by marketing. The time has come for investing into CX more than anything else because both individuals are needed to engage with brands to prolong their visibility in the marketplace have the desire to collaborate through experiences as well as companies that need customers to sustain own operational growth communicate with stakeholders through CX.
The role of marketing shall never be diminished neither underestimated across the impact it makes on a company due to the fact that “marketing is everything and everything is marketing” meaning that marketing is the quality of engagement across the marketplace and the ground for innovation and sustainability of an organization.
The principles of the new era of marketing before, in the presence of and after COVID-19, is based on McKenna’s understanding of the essence of marketing that is far from the concept that marketing tries to sell something to a client that is not necessarily needed
- Marketing is a quality
- Marketing is owning and leading the market – not selling a product or services
- Marketing is a dialogue – no longer announcing solely but engaging and looking for feedback
- Marketing is evolving in the presence of technological progress
- Marketing is an experience that creates meaningful moments
- Marketing is marrying technology for bettering engagement of brands and stakeholders
Is there any place for branding and what is its purpose?
Branding oftentimes is mistakenly taken as advertising or trying to trick somebody into something that always comes with costs in various business models is not being treated with the fullest respect it deserves.
Branding is about driving the demand to a business and can be translated as a support arm to generate interests, to build positioning and to grow the customer base.
The ultimate two-fold purpose of branding is to simplify the communication between a company and target audience and secondly to show how and why a company is worth spending or investing money and time.
Is there any direct line link between sales and brand marketing?
Firstly: Yes, secondly: yes, thirdly: yes.
Sales is not a process of begging somebody to buy something, sales to be efficient, sustainable, long-term and, ideally, repetitive shall be approached from a consultancy standpoint. To reach its potential, sales shall be marketed as an investment of finances that consumers spend on products or services and time on connecting with a business and its offerings. Sales is the process of connecting consumers with a business with the support of strong and authentic branding that encourages demand generation while preventing customers churn levels caused by overall dissatisfaction.
Branding has a very special place at the heart of any business due to the fact that branding is about driving business’ growth and supporting all departmental efforts towards attracting, retaining and increasing marketplace penetration outcomes of which can be directly seen in sales numbers, revenues graphs and incoming orders.
What is heroic branding and why this is the new marketing religion?
Heroism is the mental and moral strength to persevere, to be fearless, courageous and of “firm mind” in the face of difficulties… the challenging times called COVID-19 era of transformation shall be seen as an opportunity route for businesses to take heroic steps towards innovating their way to engage with the marketplace.
Why heroic branding?
Heroic because it shall be brave in facing obstacles, addressing issues, and answering the changing needs of consumers.
Heroic branding to have the chance to create positive results shall be crafted according to the eight principles of “being a hero” according to Scott T. Allison and George R. Goethals
- Smart
- Strong
- Resilient
- Selfless
- Caring
- Charismatic
- Reliable.
Brands to excel their potential to become truly iconic by implementing the rules of heroism based on smart engagement, the strong image, resilient proposition, selfless advice, caring support, charismatic credo, reliable offering and inspiring mission have every chance to be heroic |
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Have a good day!
