Marketers are imagineers

What could be, not what is

Practical ideas on marketing strategy and self-mastery they don’t teach in B-school. Performonks reaches 6,819 curious marketers and founders - join the tribe.

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There are many false assumptions about marketing.

For the longest time, my extended family used to think that as a marketer, my job was to go shopping every day.

Most think that marketing is glamorous.

That anyone can do it.

That all it takes to build a brand is to throw money at a problem.

That it’s not rocket science.

I say marketing is exactly like rocket science in one aspect.

Both start with imagination.

We first imagined walking on the moon, and only then did we pull together money, teams and technology to make it happen.

Great marketing starts with imagining what a brand could be, and then a few crazy people get together and make it happen. Or die trying.

Here are four stories on how imagining what could be instead of what is, changed fortunes.

Snowbird - what if faint-hearted complainers were not our target at all?

Snowbird is a ski resort in Utah. While gorgeous, its slopes are so treacherous, they make you question your life choices.

Some adventurers seek the thrill, while others complain.

One such complainer left a one-star rating. Not only did Snowbird not apologise, but they turned the review into a campaign.

They published the review as is in a full-page ad that said, “This mountain isn’t for everyone, but if it’s for you, you’re gonna love it.”

The golden rule of brand building is that when we are for everyone, we dilute the brand so much that it fades into irrelevance.

But Snowbird actively pissed off the complainers.

I can visualise some badass at Snowbird thinking, what if our slopes were only for the thrill-seekers, the daredevils, and the risk-takers ready to test themselves against the mountains?

Snowbird has never looked back and continues to be the destination for serious skiers.

River Pools - what if we answered every question a swimming pool customer had?

Marcus Sheridan’s company sold fibreglass swimming pools until they were hit by the 2008 recession and sales stopped.

Marcus had time on his hands, so he decided to build a website. Since he did not have any testimonials or success stories, he decided to answer each and every question a customer had ever asked about swimming pools.

No question was irrelevant for Marcus.

How much does a pool cost? What’s better, fibreglass or concrete? What should the colour be? Heated or not? How does one dig through a lawn? What should the size be? How deep to dig?

Soon, things started happening. His honesty turned the website into the most trusted resource on pools. Today, his pool company website gets more traffic than any other pool company site in the world!

Not just that, Marcus has expanded into social media coaching for other small businesses. Oh, and he’s written a book too - They Ask, You Answer.

FedEx - what if I could fund one more week through gambling?

There was still a week to go for the investors’ cheque to get credited, but Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx was down to his last $5,000.

This would not even cover fuel for the next flight. In a fit of desperate optimism, he went to Las Vegas and played blackjack with this money.

He won $27,000 - one more week’s runway.

The investor cheques got credited and the rest, as they say, is history.

Skiing on a roof - what if a waste processing plant were a tourist destination?

Amager Bakke, or CopenHill, in Copenhagen, is a 462,848-square-foot waste-to-energy plant, which just happens to have a ski slope on its roof—the best in Denmark.

Just because its architect, Bjarke Ingels, believes in the oxymoron, “sustainable hedonism,” and dared to imagine, what if saving the world could also be fun?

As we get older, imagination is beaten out of us

Humans are the only species that can tell stories and imagine new ones.

As children, our imagination is our playground. A stick becomes a sword. The carpet becomes a ferocious river of lava and the sofa becomes a safe island where candy grows on trees.

Then slowly but surely, the system tweezes imagination out, as if it were a splinter digging into its heel.

As students, we are tested for memorisation of watered-down and sanitised textbooks.

In our jobs, we are rewarded for analysing data, following orders and parroting the opinion of the HIPPOs.

Very few of us are rewarded for the power of our imagination.

When I was teaching brand building to an MBA class recently, I discovered that while the students were good at researching, not many could develop solutions with a ‘what could be’ lens. It then dawned upon me that I had missed teaching the class that it is OK, once the data have been gathered and insights have been generated, to start imagineering solutions.

Imagineering is tough. But worth it.

It is much easier to offer the consumer exactly what they say they want. Oh, you want a white shirt, let’s give you a white shirt. You want discounts, so let’s ratchet up our prices and then sell them at a permanent 30% off on Amazon.

Selling ‘what is’ gives us short-term wins, but it does not build category of one businesses.

Great brands are not built-in swanky boardrooms or by suits debating serif vs. sans serif. They’re born in the trenches, through the courage to imagine a brighter future, amidst downturns, one-star reviews, and product gaps.

Thanks for reading… now I’ll get back to imagineering a lower AQI here in Delhi, and I’ll see you next week.

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