{"id":5536,"date":"2021-04-13T08:11:09","date_gmt":"2021-04-13T12:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/responseblog.wpengine.com\/?p=5536"},"modified":"2021-04-13T11:26:30","modified_gmt":"2021-04-13T15:26:30","slug":"marketing-is-not-the-savior-its-the-amplifier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/responseblog.wpengine.com\/2021\/04\/marketing-is-not-the-savior-its-the-amplifier\/","title":{"rendered":"Marketing Is Not The Savior. It’s The Amplifier."},"content":{"rendered":"

We will never take 100% credit for the success of a marketing or advertising campaign.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve worked in marketing for more than two (ok, fine… three) decades on both the agency and client-side. And from role to role, audience to audience, product to product, I\u2019ve been charged with driving campaign success. I\u2019ve been fortunate to be a part of wildly successful campaigns at Red Lobster, Sandella\u2019s, and for many clients as an Account Executive at Saatchi & Saatchi and as the managing partner at Response. I\u2019ve also seen campaigns with airtight research, breakthrough creative, and a media plan that attracted all the right eyeballs, die on the vine. So what gives? Is driving a successful marketing campaign like catching lightning in a bottle? While there is a certain alchemy required for campaign success, I\u2019d posit that it takes more than just the pairing of sound strategy and creative executions to create a business-changing campaign.<\/span><\/p>\n

The truth and perhaps most important thing that I\u2019ve learned in my career is that marketing alone will not save you. There is no magic bullet creative or media plan. I\u2019ll admit that I love when clients give us credit for successful campaigns, but the reality is marketing is only a third of it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s really needed to launch campaigns that move the needle is this:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Great product or service + solid operations + creative marketing\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

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What Happens When There\u2019s Only Creative Marketing\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

You can draw an audience with marketing, but if operations can\u2019t deliver, it means nothing for your business. <\/span>If the product sucks, they\u2019ll never buy it again. <\/span>And if the pricing is too high or low, your audience will either devalue your offering or run as quickly as they came.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There are countless examples from the recent past, but one of the most famous is WeWork.\u00a0 As Fast Company reported<\/a>, \u201cWeWork\u2019s valuation was based on little more than hype and unchecked fervor. The WeWork board and investors sold a concept of a co-working space that would change the world without ever stopping to measure at each funding round whether the model was still optimally positioned to win. They invested billions of dollars using decision bias rooted in very traditional management theories for a concept and company purely bred in a new millennium that needed more current methods of winning. If the company\u2019s board of directors had resisted the lure of biases and measured their execution readiness early on in WeWork\u2019s expansion, they likely could have prevented many of their problems. Perhaps the company could have even lived up to its original sky-high valuation. Instead, the board drank in the enthusiasm over the brand\u2019s image until they were drunk on the potential of a massive return\u2014a potential that had no chance of playing out because they weren\u2019t measuring their ability to execute their ideas.\u201d
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What Happens When There’s Great Product, Solid Operations and Creative Marketing<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Magic happens.\u00a0 We’ve got plenty of case studies to prove it.\u00a0 Here are links to just a few.<\/p>\n