Strike three.
Get your hand off my knee.
You’re overdrawn.
Your horse won.
Yes.
No.
You have the account.
Walk.
Don’t walk.
Mother’s dead.

Basic events require simple language, whereas idiosyncratically euphuistic eccentricities are the promulgators of triturable obfuscation.
What did you do last night? Enter into a meaningful romantic involvement . . . or fall in love?
What did you have for breakfast this morning? The upper part of a hog’s hind leg with two oval bodies encased in a shell laid by a female bird . . . or ham and eggs?
A great American theatrical producer once said, ”If you can’t write your idea on the back of my calling card, you don’t have a clear idea.”
For clear writing, you need not engage a celebrated, widely recognized, overwhelmingly gifted word–smith and grammarian . . . simply call Allan Starr.

It seems like there’s a lot of “me-too” marketing going on, whether it be on the strategy or the tactical side. This happens when the collective “we” see a strategy or tactic we like, and adopt it with no regard to it being a good fit – or not.

As one critic put it, “there’s a lot of gray out there.”

Marketing communication is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Do some self-analysis before merely copying an approach that may look promising at first glance.

Oversimplified definitions of these two disciplines is:

• Advertising is selling what you have.
• Marketing is having what will sell.

As this suggests, it is critical to have a lineup of products and services that fits the needs of your key prospects. Otherwise, a sale made can be little more than an opportunity – for an ongoing and mutually beneficial relationship – wasted.

Of course, it is crucial to position your products and services effectively through advertising and other forms of marketing communication. It’s best to have an ongoing, unified campaign that does justice to your offerings.

To come up short in the promotional effort would be like “hiding your light under a bushel basket.”

Back before most of you were old enough to shave (neither was I … ha, ha!), there was a Gillette Razors commercial that went:

Push–pull, click–click – change blades that quick!

Push–pull is also a good approach for a marketing communications campaign.
Push-pull is about diving your marketing communication efforts between the proactive and reactive. Two examples of this would be – Push= a direct mailer and Pull= a really effective web site.

 A Marketer’s View

Marketing and its primary sub–categories, advertising and public relations, have earned well–deserved recognition as a primary factor in business and brand building – and more. The late Peter Drucker, widely regarded as the most important business management figure of the 20th Century, expressed it this way:

“Business has two basic functions: Innovation and Marketing. These produce results. All the rest are costs.”

This quote may have been less remarkable had Drucker been a marketing person rather than the giant among management authorities that he was.

Perhaps equally unrecognized is the key role marketing plays as a business designer. Indeed, a well–conceived marketing plan causes a growth–driven business to take a good look at its resources and goals in an effort to order its priorities. It requires that it come to grips with such crucial issues as:
High volume versus relative exclusivity
Timing of product and service releases
The realities of the competitive marketplace
What benefits to emphasize
Which consumers to target
How to reach them.
Good marketing liberates a company from dependence on emotion, chance, lead–time and inertia, allowing it to focus on vital issues such as:
What do we do best?
Where are our high–profit opportunities?
What are our key production and service capacities?
What are the impacts of the economy and competition?
What course is most likely to help us reach our goals?
Actually, marketing is not about sales; it is about profits. Among its pivotal qualities is its emphasis on timing and action. In the “natural” course of events (barring, of course, a weakened economy), a company with good people and products will, likely, grow –– even though at some random pace.

But, like an uncultivated garden, the weeds may eventually outgrow the crop.