Market in poetry, Manage in prose
Mayor Mario Cuomo identified the pragmatic need to campaign in poetry and govern in prose. What’s true for politicians seems to me also true for marketers, and especially for brand strategists.
With the emergence of tools which turn the long-trumpeted promise of big data into actionable insights and models, it is tempting to fully embrace quantitative measures and abandon more intuitive qualitative analysis. Because as Edwards Deming wrote, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”.
But I think it’s dangerous to ignore the role of creative interpretation - the ability to see the spaces in between. Imagination is the partner of, not the alternative to, data-driven insight. After all, “Not everything that matters can be measured”
Creativity has been defined as the ability to see new patterns and make new meanings, informed but not constrained by past experience. We all appreciate that brands need to be distinctive and relatable to be effective. Their names, identities, promises, experiences, and yes products and services, must stand out from competitors. Creativity, humanity and emotivity matters for brands.
But perhaps we don’t all feel the same about brand strategy?
Many years ago, I had to present a weighty brand equity analysis to the Visa global brand team who were gathered in San Francisco. Before launching into the presentation I asked the room if anyone would like to hear a little Walt Whitman before I got going. One hand went up, which was all the encouragement I needed.
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars
Written by Alec Rattray
See how Chromatic has helped brands to develop distinctive stories:
