Marketing is kind of like weighted dice.

You can’t mind control people but you can increase the probability of influencing people.

Marketing doesn’t deal in laws it deals in probabilities.

If you care for someone, the rest will follow.

If you prepare for something, the rest will follow.

If you worry about something the rest will follow.

If you make terrific and interesting advertising, the rest will follow.

Sometimes it’s easy to over complicate what a great agency is. A great agency produces great work that is better then the average.

Everything else is secondary to that result.

Marketing is the brands core soul. It’s a representation of what the company stands for and promises to consumers. It is the beacon that allows customers to connected and communicate together about the brand. Marketing is what provides the fundamental physiological innovation to customers realities and perceptions. Itis what helps people cope and marketing is what allows people and cultures to change.

Advertising is the voice of the marketing. It is the element that reaches out through all the noise and clutter to connect to the customer. Advertising is about setting expectations. It’s about being remembered. It’s about increasing familiarity and awareness. It is about taking action. Advertising is about the placements, it’s about the tactics, its about the buying and the games that it takes for that ad to perform.

Some people say you can’t be great at both marketing and advertising but if we want to have a chance at becoming at least adequate at both – we must understand that there is a fundamental difference in both and in the way that we approach them. They are fundamentally different skill sets and functions.

Creating ads and marketing is kind of like creating miracles. There is so many factors and elements that make a group of people change or not change- and it isn’t getting easier.

As marketers and advertisers, we do the impossible- we create something out of nothing and that’s always a miracle. However, it’s a miracle that we can influence, test and control to a certain extent.

So let’s not downplay what we do but let’s raise our standards for what marketing and advertising can be and what it should be.

The marketer must do research. They must know the domain knowledge of the customer, the nuances of how they decide.

Amateur marketers use the knowledge that they selfishly have on the outside. Experienced marketers use knowledge that they gain from the customer. 

Knowledge from the customer themselves and knowledge for what the customer truly experience. 

And you don’t get this knowledge from a customer by asking a clever question- you get it from reading between the lines. Seeing what they don’t do and seeing how they phrase words. Seeing what they talk about, how they breath.

The amateur marketer does no research – the professional does hours and hours before a brief.

Frequency really is just familiarity.

When I am familiar with you – I trust you.

If I just met you, I’m less likely to trust you.

This sounds like a simple concept but people get this wrong with ads all the time.

They assume that people should buy the fist time they see the ad. The first time they engage with you but that is hardly ever the case. They need to get to know you and your brand. They need to get familiar, so that they can have enough confidence to give you a try.

While it’s not always about familiarity it is always about facilitating some level of trust.

I went through part of my life thinking I needed to “work hard to make it”.

Work hard to be successful.

Work long hours.

Outwork the other people.

Then I decided to change the story or in other words “the frame” of this whole idea.

The frame is the beliefs and assumptions. It’s what you define as success. It’s what you believe you can do, can’t do and what you should and shouldn’t do.

Instead, I changed it to: enjoy the process, have fun and be patient.

Still working the same hours.

Still working “hard”.

Still working better then most people.

But I changed the narrative into something that is fun. That has less pain and friction.

You can do the same for your customers.

Stories work because they act as Trojan horses.

It transports the listener to a place that they never thought they would go.

The interesting thing with the human mind – is that it has trouble telling the difference between reality and imagination.

When you tell a story and it’s engaging enough – it feels like you are really there. It feels like it’s actually happening.

Because of all the associations that come with a story – it’s also much easier from someone to remember.

The story itself gives them a reason to share.

Always have stories in your quiver when speaking and marketing.

The intercept the mind in ways that information never could.

Constantly asking: Who is this for and what will they feel when they experience this? If you ruthlessly focus on those fundamental questions, the work usually always comes together nicely in a human way. It’s when you add and get attached to all the tactics, and hot new things, that you go off course to not being human and to just being average.

This is how you start to create human focused design.

The hard part about having true empathy for someone is this simple fact that: things feel different when you factor in time.

That’s why it’s almost impossible to feel the empathy for someone because to do so you would have to feel the toll of the years. How the years effected their story. How the years reinforced things and how it changed things.

Having empathy one day, is not the same as having empathy for 20 years.

Can you ever reach the level of empathy? Probably not, but when seeking deeper empathy with people, we must start by adding in time and simulating.

How would the story change from day one to year 20? How would domain knowledge change? How would experience change?

These questions and ideas influence the empathy factor you have for your customer.