by Patrick M. Yore – CCO & Owner of Brainblaze Fine Advertising & Design
What do you drive when it comes to your marketing? or How much is good quality marketing really worth to my company and what should I pay for it?
Putting a value on strategic creative marketing tools for your company is definitely a moving target in this day and age of automated everything. People are turning more and more to assume that marketing materials can be created for nothing or next to nothing. And that’s true.
The quandary lies in whether or not the marketing materials that are produced actually have value, and if they do how much?
First of all we have to look at advertising and marketing services like building a website or creating a brochure or coming up with a strategic plan to motivate people to action as something different than just a one time service such as having your teeth cleaned or fixing a bike.
Professional marketing endeavors, in their truest goal and objective, are undertaken for the sole purpose of moving customers to action. That usually means having them pull out their wallets.
A successful and valuable marketing vehicle, weather again it’s a website, an email, or a blimp, has value not only in the immediate moment it’s created but in its shelflife or long-term value.
Marketing or advertising makes you money far into the future. It’s not a simple one-time service that once completed is over and done with. If it’s good, it can make you A LOT of money for many years after the ink dries on the paper or the final pixel is pushed in place.
Think of a successful three word tagline. A couple favorites we’ve developed are “What FuelZ You?” for RaceFuelZ Healthy Energy Drink and “Run it All” for Fundrunner IRM Software.
If you were to pay a copywriter simply for the time that it takes to create those three words in actuality it might only take a few seconds for that one final tagline.
But when writing timelines or campaign themes there can be many hours of research, sketching and idea generation that goes into those final three words. On top of this, what is the value of those three words to the company that uses those three words in every single communication they put in front of the public for a year? Say 10 years? say 100 years?
Think of this also in relation to a logo, or a campaign theme, or an ad campaign’s art direction even moreso a website.
As the Director of Marketing, Director of Advertising, Art Director, Copywriter, Strategic Marketing Professional for 100+ companies over 20+ years, I’ve had the opportunity to help a companies collectively worth over a half $1 billion to succeed greatly through the expertise, experience and passion I bring to every project.
I can’t remember if it was William Golden or Milton Glaser or who it was, but a seminal logo designer was asked to do a logo for a company, it might’ve been CBS or NBC, and at the time he was sitting with the clients and did a sketch in about two minutes.
The client looked at the sketch and said “that’s it”. When the designer presented the customer client with a bill for say $10,000, the client exclaimed, “But this only took you two minutes, why don’t we just pay for that time?”
The designer said, “Yes, this took me two minutes. It took me two minutes plus 30 years of experience.”
On to the concept of Corvettes and Chevettes…
A metaphor of cars. Of course a Chevette can get you from point A to point B.
A Chevette can carry your groceries or your child to and from school.
Of course it moves forward when you push the push the accelerator.
Of course it comes to a stop when you press the brakes.
But when it comes down to it, when you’re driving the Chevette, how do you feel? How does it make the people in the car with you (your employees) feel? What do people other people think when they see you drive-by in a four-cylinder backfiring rusted out 1983 hunk of cheap metal? Will it get you up the next hill?
Now let’s think of this in relation to a Corvette. A Corvette is a beautiful, wonderfully crafted, sculpted piece of artwork that’s been refined over 60 years with the highest amount of technology, skill, and love poured into it’s ever part by many, many professionals.
It has a finely tuned engine that has been carefully engineered. It has suspension, aerodynamics, everything you could ever ask for in a vehicle. It not only gets you from point A to point B, but stimulates you and everyone around you.
Some people come to Brainblaze with a glazed look in their eyes saying “I need a website. I need a website!” and then we discuss costs, and they think to themselves “I can just do that myself” or “I can hire someone to do it cheaper.”
The difference is, at Brainblaze we don’t believe you “need a website” and we don’t “do websites.” A website is of course an integral, key part to your entire marketing and communications mix. Every business, regardless of size, needs someone to take a deep look at how to strategically reach their ripest audience, how to converse with them and what tools to emply to do this most efficiently and effectively. A website, though a big, key one, is usually just one of those tools.
If you’re looking for someone to simply do a website for you that’s fine, but ask yourself a question. Will it have many decades of experience in all types of professional acumen : businesses strategy, copywriting, the expertise of motivation and technical experience woven into it to have the most impact?
It isn’t about some lines of computer code or pushing a few buttons. It is about inspiring you, your employees and every current and potential client or customer to believe in and be inspired by what you do or offer.
It’s also similar to servicing that same fine vehicle. Would you want someone who just bought a mechanics manual and decided last week that “hey, I can work on cars and fix cars” touching your Corvette? To get the maximum power, performance, and speed of a machine such as a Corvette it needs to be handled by someone with firm grasp of every system involved to make it truly come to life.
Of course you can save tons of money by driving a beat up old car, but in the end it will break down on you. It will make you sad. It will not inspire you. It will end up being more of a hassle than what the perceived saving of a few dollars up front is worth.
At Brainblaze I try to help people to understand and embrace the true value of quality marketing, advertising, design, and communications and it’s long-term impact on the success of companies.
Cheap, poorly crafted, fast-food-style marketing cannot only fall short of helping your company, it can actually hurt it.
So I guess it’s time to ask yourself : Do you want your company to be driving a Chevette or a Corvette?
(For the record, I’m a Mustang man, but there isn’t a shitty car made that rhymes with Mustang)
