http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PQ6335puOc&feature=related
Mongol General: Hao! Dai ye! We won again! This is good, but what is best in life?
Mongol: The open steppe, fleet horse, falcons at your wrist, and the wind in your hair.
Mongol General: Wrong! Conan! What is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.
Mongol General: That is good! That is good.
One of the greatest predictors of success is the height of one’s ambition.
Ask your kid what grade he wants to earn in math. If he says “C”, you’ll have a good indicator of how hard he’s going to try, and what the likely outcome will be: mediocrity.
Ask a runner what time he wants in his next 10K. If he says “to beat my personal best”, you’ll have a very different sense of what his outcome will be: excellence.
The same holds true for B2B branding. What is your aim? Will you be simply be satisfied with a campaign that the CEO approves and wins the general consensus of acceptance in your organization? With a successful launch–where all of your branded assets are created and launched on time and within budget?
How about your brand campaign’s performance? Is your aim to “do no harm” and incrementally grow the brand’s awareness and revenue.
What if you set your bar much higher than that? What if you went “Conan” on your next brand campaign–with the aim of having your competitors trembling in their boots when they compete against your brand, while your sales team walks around with their chests extended like world champions. What if your aim was to create the greatest branding campaign in the history of your company, of your industry–one that achieves incredible results for brand awareness and revenue growth.
If that was your aim, do you think your marketing team would be inspired to create their very best work? Do think your agency would step up to the plate with its A-Game?
Is it a bit crazy? Well of course it is–there’s nothing sane about climbing mountains.
Be bold and prosper.