😍 Most brand experiences don’t have an impact on us. They are expected and unexceptional experiences.
Some brand experiences have a big impact on us. They are the unexpected and exceptional ones.
As a marketer you should be looking to push the experiences you create for customers up to the unexpected and exceptional level. Over-delivering on expectations with an exceptional experience has an exponentially greater impact on people – especially in a world where so much of what so many brands do is expected and unexceptional.
Delivering the unexpected and exceptional is hard. And, by definition, impossible to do all the time. But if you find the opportunities to do so, even if they’re few and far between, you’ll achieve that holy grail of modern marketing – having your brand actually matter to people.
✍️ Try changing your perspective on how you think about your content and comms planning this week.
Think like a journalist, not a marketer.
Journalists think about their audience first. They think about telling engaging stories that their audience would find valuable.
Many marketers think about their brand and product first. They think about the message they want to promote that will bring them and their company value.
The change is subtle, but the implications are huge. As a journalist you put your audience first and you focus on adding value. This ‘value mindset’ will lead you to the content and comms that people will pay attention to, engage with, and share.
🧱 The power of a brand comes from how authentically it represents who the company is. Building a brand is an exercise in uncovering what’s already there, not creating something new.
✉️ This might seem a bit random, but the Coinbase Bytes newsletter is actually a really good weekly read for marketers looking to stay on top of what’s going on in the crypto and NFT space. Much of the opportunity in that space right now comes from the application of basic marketing principles into a new channel, culture, and content ecosystem. You need to understand the basic context of what’s happening in order to consider how to build your brand or drive business results in it – Coinbase Bytes does a great job of giving you that basic context. Check it out here.
💰 Want to see the greatest sales deck ever written? Well, at least according to Andy Raskin. He published a Medium article on it almost five years ago that’s become pretty famous. And the advice is still very relevant and actionable – not just for sales, but for any storytelling (i.e. marketing).
