Status is not about status in the way society relates to the word “status”.

Status is not about having a big house, a fast car or dressing fancy. “Status” as it relates to marketing, is really about understanding social positions and the identities of customers.

Someone might feel that they have the social position of being neglected or falsely accused.

One might have identify that they have the social position of being well off and being able to buy anything they want.

Others might feel like they are the underdog and that they must prove everyone around them “wrong”.

Some, try to be contrarian – to be different from the crowd by separating themselves from it. They try to create a social position of their own making.

Once you see social positions you can’t un-see them however, the important thing to understand is that you can only see social positions in contrast with other social positions.

This has nothing to really do with income class, equality or a classic understanding about social classes. This is about an individuals perception of self and the social positions of the group around them.

For example, one person may take the group lead, the other takes notes, one blindly followers and the last tries to disprove everything that is said.

Each person in different situations, assumes roles of what they feel their social position to be in that moment and adapt their social position based on others.

Some people will challenge others social positions, some follow suit and others try to self promote their own social positioning.

Status roles fluctuate and change based on the situation. Some people try to fake social positions – and people call them out for that.

Social positioning and status is one of the fundamental ways people relate to the world.

So next time you hear another new buzz word like “servant brands”, “ad tech” or “story telling” – assume the status role of being contrarian and critically thinking for yourself about what concepts are really the most important in your marketing strategy.

Before I always thought that emotions and feelings were the same thing.
Well I was wrong.
As it turns out, there are subtle differences in these two things that make a BIG difference when it comes to marketing insights.
Emotions are what we feel in the moment. They are typically triggered by some type of stimulus. For example, if we go to a movie together and see a scary movie and something pops out that scares us – we jump and have the emotion of being scared. That might stay around for a little bit but then goes away.
Now, if you keep having that emotion of being scared – that’s not an emotion anymore – that’s a feeling. Emotion is what you have initially to something – its like a reaction. While feeling is something that lingers well after the stimulus is gone. It can be positive or negative but in a lot of ways a feeling is the narrative we tell ourselves about the experience we just had.
For branding and marketing this has clear implications.
Everyone talks about the emotions that the brand creates but no one considers the feelings that a brand creates. Feelings is what actually creates brand followers and consistent customers. Emotions is usually the work of more aggressive and less noble forms of short term marketing.
You need to market with both in mind.
Emotional reactions are great but its feelings that create action over the long run in customers.

Even though I write these posts every single day; I have had a focus on the power of visuals.

I would believe photos, videos and immersive experiences where the way to get to people’s emotional hearts, and the way to change them.

I didn’t give words any value.

Deep down – I knew their value but I took them as a secondary component; not as a primary one.

The turning point for me was that, while I knew people think and remember with sensory and visuals, they are also motivated and take extreme meaning to what words mean to them.

They will tell themselves quotes and they will recount stories to themselves and friends. Words matter to people.

People use words to guide their mental frameworks, to make decisions and to understand the world around them.

I guess what I realized is that, it isn’t all visual when you tell your friend who is down a quote and it changes their life.

There was something about a string of eight or ten words that changed him.

Words are a tool of change and if used correctly – have just as much power as visuals.

Sometimes the things that we hold closest to ourselves, are the things that are that are the furthest away from us.

What I’ve learned in marketing and in life, is that you can’t always solve things with force. You can’t always hammer your way through a problem. You can’t always assault a problem with your thinking. Sometimes to solve the most challenging, the most reoccurring of problems; the ones that you feel like you can never change, is to just step away from them.

Distance creates perspective and perspective creates insight.

When you give yourself this space you are able to step back and see really what the problem is.

Books are really interesting as they relate to marketing.

Yes, the knowledge and insight of books is great but books has a much deeper significance when we start learning about marketing.

The special thing about books is that they aren’t designed to keep your house warm or hold up a wall – they don’t have a functional purpose like this. The interesting thing about a book is that its only function is to change you.

Before you read the book you were one way, now after reading the book you are another way. That change is what marketing at its purest form is really all about.

Along with this change the book creates, the design of the book, the typography, the color, the testimonials, the author and more – all form to create the expectations or the promise of the book. Or in other words – the promise of what the change will be if someone reads the book.

Looking at all of these subtle and obvious details of the book you can start to clearly identify who the book is for and who it is not for.

It is simply one of the single greatest ways to learn the basics about marketing.

Business models help us to define what value we create for customers, capture value and who the customer is.

So why not create a social media model? 

What are the customer segments? Who is each post talking to?

What are the resources we need to make compelling posts?

What are the costs associated with developing each post?

What is the value proposition of your social media presence? Is this unique or just a copy of everyone else? 

How do you distribute the social media posts and in what format? How do they find you and how do they get to know you better?

How do you manage your relationships of social media? What do clients expect and what do you deliver? 

Who are the key people that help you on this journey?

And finally but what must people don’t even think to ask – how does your social media page capture the value it creates?

Why it’s hard for people judge brands and make important brand decisions is because they look through the problem through the lens of themselves, rather than through the lens of the customer.

This will always be the first and fundamental mistake of the novice marketer.

I don’t ever like to predict the future so I’ll like Peter drucker says – I’m going to look to the future that has already started to happen.

One of them is that agencies can’t keep going the way that they are currently structured. They are to big, slow and selfish. The business model is quite frankly outdated. When people talk about innovation they are usually referring to technological innovation. While everything else that is not technological, cool or what they see on Shark Tank – as something that is seen as not innovation.

For marketing agencies to survive there needs to be a new type of agency to be created, better yet one that isn’t an agency at all. It will be one that combines both marketing and innovation to the growth of enterprises and be know as a form of marketing that serves customers rather then takes from them. It will be something that creates a win win – not takes from customers. Creating forms of marketing that customers seek rather then ignore.

What is this utopia I am describing? Is it all a dream? Is it even possible or financially sustainable? Maybe this idea that marketing can be dramatically better is out of our reach – but a dream I will pursue until the day I die.

Most marketing agencies and so called gurus sell the exact opposite of what actually has the potential to create an iconic brand.

They sell noise over impact. They sell hype over long term effectiveness.

Shouting louder or being super creative is not what makes a brand.

What makes the brand is the business. What makes a business is its relationship to the customer and the contribution it makes. It asks: Does this fundamentally give value to the customer? Does it have a strong point of view? Is this something customers can get excited for?

Instead of always starting with advertising – start with the fundamentals of business.

From the fundamentals of good, long lasting business – you have the chance to create a good, long lasting brand.

And just maybe then – and only then – it has a chance to be an iconic brand we actually want to remember.

When you do the math, direct marketing is the way to go. You know how much it costs for you to acquire your customer down to the cent. You know what is working and not working and the whole processes is measurable. So, why on earth would anyone want to do any other form of marketing and advertising?

Well, what supporters soon realize is that while direct marketing’s hard hitting hand generates great immediate short term results, they soon start to see the self cannibalizing nature of the whole process.

It’s easy to put it in the terms of dating – direct marketing is the hard sell in dating. It’s your friend setting up the date. It’s a pushing effect , something you are dragged into to go on the date. While brand marketing is seduction. It allows both people to play a game that leads them to both going on the date. One is subtle and one is more direct.

While branding in theory would build stronger and more lasting bonds; sometimes you need both.

Branding is seduction. Direct is conquering.