Companies can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars going conducting market research, participating in process driven, patent worthy vision sessions that chart the futures of their brands, their offerings, and their relationships with the people and companies to whom they intend to sell their products. Often several months later, with great fanfare and anticipation, a document is presented, containing brand strategies that are often well-researched, insightful, and thoughtful. Strategically driven creative campaigns based on its contents are developed and launched . . .
And nothing happens in the market.
People don’t buy strategies. They buy products and services that appeal to them–they think with their hearts first. And that appeal begins at an elemental and visceral level; that binary moment when they say “yes” or “no”. You must get your target buyer to that moment or else you’re burning money.
In a media environment where people are bombarded with brand messages, the only way you can get them to that moment is by stopping them in their tracks: looking at your banner ad, reading your print ad, taking their finger off the fast forward button when your TV spot comes on, not bouncing away from your website within seven seconds of landing there . . .
Great, highly visual and memorable creative branding can arrest people’s attention, can stop them in their tracks, and stopping people–creating that moment of pause to consider your offering is a strategy unto itself–perhaps the most important strategic goal, second only to getting the consumer to make a purchasing decision. Only after you’ve stopped them can your other strategic elements: messaging, value proposition, points of differentiation . . . plant their hooks, and begin doing their important work.
Be bold and prosper.
–Rick Julian