Marketers care so much about the customer. The experience. The service. The brand voice. They care about these things so much that they forget that this brand voice needs to be heard.

This is one of my greatest weaknesses of myself and for many people who are in marketing out there.

The weakness comes from not knowing if you are doing marketing or advertising. The weakness comes from not knowing the difference and when your’re not clear, friction happens.

Marketing is about connection and overall customer experience, while advertising is the voice of your brand. It what allows your marketing message to cut through the noise and actually be heard.

It took me a very long time to realize that those are two things are completely different activities and that they require two completely different skillets.

Advertising requires being remembered while marketing requires identification.

Without some type of force or injection of energy, you can’t convince people to change.

The reason why information doesn’t work (example: We have a product that does this, come buy it. ), is because it doesn’t involve any tension that forces a person to change. To guide someone off their path that they have been going down for years requires tension.

Tension is what stops and make people think about their life. Sometimes they aren’t even thinking but rather tension sometimes is more of an emotional reaction for the customer than a thought process.

The reason why tension creates change is that people can’t sit with tension. It drives people crazy. If the tension is to much some people will try to run from the situation, some try to avoid it and others pretend it’s not there. However, at one point the customer has to resolve the tension to move forward to a change in their life. Once we create this tension as marketers, we also have the job of resolving tension for our customers.

Tension is what creates change and change leads to trust.