"So in order to achieve clarity and be fully and positively engaged in what you're doing, you must (1) know the goal or outcome you're intending and (2) decide and take the next physical move to propel you in that direction."
I've never experienced so much noise and so little signal as I do in the present field of marketing. Marketing is a mess. Marketing is broken! Half of marketers are on autopilot creating award-winning, irrelevant media noise, web nonsense and events. The other half is paralyzed - measuring everything to death and covering their collective butts.
Is there a way to fix it? Absolutely. But it requires looking at the marketing task in a completely different way. I've tried to articulate this new way in a short article titled Clarity: Marketing's New Task. Please let me know your thoughts.
Posted December 7, 2005
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Listed below are links to weblogs that reference David Allen on achieving clarity:
» Clarity of Purpose - And Strategy from Be Excellent
Tom Asacker, a brilliant brand expert over at A Clear Eye, refers to David Allen's two key points on CLARITY:
"So in order to achieve clarity and be fully and positively engaged in what you're doing, you must:
know the goal or outcome you're in... [Read More]
» Get clarity together with your customers from Not My Dotcom
I think marketer's will have to work in many more dimensions in the future.
Today's marketing is just focusing on awareness, but we have to work on both awareness, creating demand and creating customer values beyond just the product.
In other wo... [Read More]
» Tom Asacker on 'Clarity' from the brand builder
Here's another reason why Tom Asacker is one of my favorite bloggers these days:
"I've never experienced so much noise and so little signal as I do in the present field of marketing. Marketing is a mess. Marketing is broken! Half of marketers are ... [Read More]
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Tom is timely, thought provoking and all about the new brand vision packaged as a Seinfeld stand up. I went to school on his ideas.
Jeff Taylor, Founder, Monster.com and CEO, Eons.
When Tom Asacker writes, I read. Opportunity Screams is the right message for the right time.
Tom Peters
Kinda scary that having a strategy is the marketer's new task!
Although even scarier is marketer's who wrap a bunch of tactics in a theme and call it a strategy ;)
To achieve clarity I think two big issues marketers face are:
1. How do I create value [a.k.a. a brand idea] that isn't just a literal product demonstration.
2. How do I create something original to bring it to life, rather than being the poor cousin to the rest of pop-culture, always borrowing credibility from third parties.
Posted by: rupert | December 07, 2005 at 12:51 PM
Rupert, the problem is too often that "marketers" are brought in long after a product has been developed. They are handed a quasi-finished project and told "here, now help us sell this."
Effective marketing strategies start long before the conceptualization of the product even takes shape. They are part of every brainstorm, every sketch, and every prototype.
Unfortunately, most companies in the US still don't operate this way. Creative agencies and marketing firms are not usually equipped to assist their clients in this manner and so perpetuate the relationship that Tom describes in his post.
Marketers (real ones) are all about strategy and insight, brother. :)
Posted by: olivier blanchard | December 07, 2005 at 11:37 PM
Some excellent thoughts. I work with a lot of small businesses and entrepreneurs and even among that set it's amazing the attitude of marketing that is taken but beyond that I see less attention paid to making their brand remarkable and in a lot of respects marketing itself.
Sometimes it's very hard to see but marketing is all about building a trust in a brand. Building the "brand" starts with great attention to the greatness of the product, service and story behind it.
I'll definitely keep this thinking in mind when working with potential customers. Yes, I know it's a subtle art form but I guess to best thing I can do is let them know I'm available as someone to talk to from the start. It's also given me food for thought in the kind of customers I want to do business with.
Posted by: linkerjpatrick | January 19, 2008 at 06:54 PM