Having researched a lot of the marketing and advertising practices of our industry over the past several months I have arrived at the conclusion that most of our “thought leaders” are what I would describe as Tweakers.
No not the methamphetamine abusing kind… but rather the kind that tinkers with and marginally improves the existing system. It makes sense given the dearth of legitimately strategic thinkers in our industry because when you don’t have a strategy all you can do is improve what you already do.
The issue is compounded when our some of our leadership seems intent on perpetuating the same “creative” albeit ad hoc tactics. For example, I recently read an interesting fitness marketing book and one of the many tactics suggested was to print guest pass invitations on golf balls and provide them to the local gold club.
I thought that it was a novel idea although I couldn’t image a huge return on it. Not long after I read the same idea proffered by another of the top American consultants, and within a day or two I read the same idea from one of the top Australian consultants in a magazine article.
I’m not sure which consultant came up with the idea (if any of them, although they all did kind of present the idea as their own) but the fact that these three illustrious consultants were all talking about it seemed to give it more legitimacy than it perhaps deserved.
Of course I understand the pressure on consultants to have, or at least to appear to have, something new and interesting to say but if the best you can do is to “borrow” a fairly suspect marketing tactic and pass it off as your own… you probably aren’t thinking hard enough.
It’s a bit like cheating of the kid sitting next to you at school only to discover that they are just as dumb as you are.
By the way my policy is… if you “borrow” an idea give credit to the original source (if you know who they are) and show some original/critical thinking by improving it.
Tweakers are important (I know that I do my share of tweaking) but the kind of incremental improvements you get from tweaking is just the cost of doing business.
And tweaking has its limits. You can certainly improve the performance of you 1989 Ford Laser but it will never be a Lamborghini… you can’t get blood from a stone. And you will never tweak your way into a leadership position.
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