Marketing is the discipline of harnessing ideas, expertise and resources from people around you. Analyse what you’re good at, admit where you suck, and be up front about it. People in general want to help, when you admit you need help. It’s in our nature.

If you’ve got a great idea to market your business, don’t dismiss it because you don’t have the skills. Surround yourself with passionate professionals who want to showcase their skills, sow the seed of your idea, and never ever discourage even the wackiest ideas.

In a recent campaign for Bank of Queensland in CQ – during discussions with the client, we hit upon a concept to prove value to customers about being human. You don’t just have to be an account number to a stranger at call centre. You can talk face to face to a local, about local finance. That’s the BOQ owner/manager model difference.

What better way to prove this than by being able to pronounce local street, icon, landmark names and building creative around this. Quickest way to tell if someone is not from around here is to hear them try and pronounce our unique local names.

So, we had a good concept now what?

We brought in our trusted media partners from TV, radio and press and asked their advice – what could their media do, how could we talk to their audiences at the right time, with the right message.

Our customers are experts in their field, a marketing agency is an expert at coordinating and devising campaigns, and the media are the experts at knowing their audiences.

The result was a coordinated, memorable and wide-reaching, quality campaign worth of broadcast anywhere in Australia.

The conclusion here is, don’t feel like you need to carry the burden on your own. Too often great ideas don’t get off the ground because clients are too busy to tackle them on their own. Build relationships with experts. A marketing agency can test your idea, verify its potential and present it as a creative execution. Your media reps are a wealth of knowledge about local audiences. Even if you don’t want to advertise right now – get to know them intimately.

Media sales people, marketing professionals, writers, designers, video producers are mostly passionate about their product and long for ways to show off their talent. Ideas don’t cost anything, and nor does bouncing ideas off people you trust. But good ideas, well executed and supported by talented people can change the world.

Believe in your ideas – as crazy as they may seem to you now, have a chat to us. If you don’t, you’ll never know, and worse, someone else could beat you to the prize. It costs nothing to make that call.

A fundamental principle of CMM, that differentiates us from other agencies, is that we believe in showing you, rather than telling you. CMM evolved out of a strong sense of empathy for clients and the search for answers, with and on behalf of them, to everyday marketing quests. CMM’s marketing approach is as much about a philosophy to life as it is about marketing and business. It is about selling leadership and strategy, as opposed to just being insipid and letting people do whatever they want. Most business owners don't definitively know what they want because they are struggling. Everyone is a marketing guru because marketing is such a broad discipline. Therefore, any answer seems like it has merit. Consequently, business owners bounce from one act to another, depending on who's offering their opinion. This is the opposite of focus. Then it turns out that most business owners don't know what focus is until they've had it made for them. It's no good to give you a data dump of information if you don't know what to do with it. Our role is to connect ALL the dots, give you a plan, help take the next step, make that step logical, appropriate, obvious and easy. The role of CMM is to put into words what business owners want from marketing, but could not articulate, and build on that for them. CMM is an agent of change, a creator of value, a valued contributor. We fall in love with our clients each and every day. We don’t ask what we have to do to get you to buy, we ask what do we have to give, what benefit can we render that will enhance your business. If the strategy is right, you can mess it up and it will still work. If the strategy is wrong, the most eloquent and well-conceived program won’t work. CMM is more strategy and concept-oriented than technique oriented. That’s what has made us, and our clients successful. We believe you are searching for ways to make the next investment decision, or next business decision. We'll solve that problem for you, today!

PREFACE

This article was written as an open letter to marketing practitioners however, if you're reading this as a client, or just looking for tips on choosing an agency - you'll find this enlightening too.

Marketing, advertising, PR - whatever your poison - as a practitioner and professional, it's easy to devolve to the lowest common denominator - treating briefs and executing campaigns like commodities and transactions. Sometimes you nail it and the client is ecstatic. Other times you miss the mark and the lukewarm response breaks morale.

The road to redemption is deceiving. Why? As experts, we live and die by our reputation. An average campaign outcome is as good as failure. The reflex response is self-preservation and safety. Then, it seems more of us take less action because we're afraid it won't be right, and we don't want to look dumb, ineffectual or mainstream. An extension of this is we may end up working harder not to look foolish than we will to make gains for ourselves and our clients.

It's just human nature.

If we can acknowledge this and compensate for it, it become an opportunity and a turning point which can deliver us as experts from the mainstream. Too often we fall in love with our own brand, the products and services we've nurtured - instead of falling in love with our clients.

I believe as marketers we are as much about selling leadership as we are selling marketing tools. Our role is to lead, to stand for authority, as a consultative force in our field. It's not enough for us to just fall in love with our client, we need our teams, contractors and suppliers to do the same. It has to be a combined love affair.

We are not about promoting the sales of more apparel, drinks, automobiles or what have you. Re-frame your view and consider this. Our role is about interacting truthfully, and enhancing the personal lives of our clients. Corporations - big and small are amalgams of people with hopes, fears, dreams, desires and emotions who want desperately to feel good about their decisions and body of work. Just like you. Your job is to acknowledge and exhibit genuine connectivity with those people.

Combine this with clearly stating what you are going to do and why...show the client, don't just tell them and the door to deep trust will appear. If you were on the receiving end of this 'loving' approach that embraced your personal as well as career motivations, wouldn't you feel valued, secure and more protected.

It's a small distinction, but immensely powerful. Maybe I'm late to the game and everyone else gets this already. Maybe. But whatever it is, its a revelation that has altered my philosophy towards my work and reignited my passion.

The most pivotal, integral essence of what CMM does that distinguishes it from other agencies is that we believe in showing you, rather than telling you. CMM is an agent of change, a creator of value, a value contributor. We fall in love with our clients each and every day. We don’t ask what we have to do to get you to buy, we ask what do we have to give, what benefit can we render that will enhance your business. That’s what has made us, and our clients successful. We believe you are searching for ways to make the next investment decision, or next business decision. We solve that problem for you, today!

As a business owner, you’re responsible for all aspects of business performance, but where does marketing your business rank in terms of priority?

Marketing is more than advertising and spending money on strategies that aren’t effective, provide no value. By giving your marketing an independent health check up, we can identify what is working, what’s not, and how individual initiatives can be consolidated into wholistic strategy, which maximises business growth.

As part of every health check we assess:

Your brand, your business objectives (short and long term), your marketplace, your current marketing strategies, your audience demographics/sociographics, gap analysis and SWOT analysis.

On completion of our assessment we will provide a report outlining:

The effectiveness of your marketing activity, recommendations on items that would benefit from a refresh, new/additional marketing suggestions and budget guidance.