Eccentric Rule Breaking Marketing

Alan - thanks - your approach is too eccentric for me - I don't think I can sell it internally

Thank you anyway

Best wishes"

Since I began working with clients in all kinds of business world's corporations are the most difficult and self-destructive.

Why?

The email above began with a call.

"Alan, we love your stuff, love your website and love what we can see.

The man went on to tell me he is the CEO of a large London corporation. He told me his team needed more edge. He told me they needed more creative ideas, thoughts and tools. He told me after going through everything he would speak with his marketing director and then arrange for myself to head over to their headquarters to spend a day or two with their team.

Everything ended great over the phone.

Now me being me my brain dropped into gear right away. I had ideas based on what he told me, ideas for leverage, stability, growth, innovation and how to give them distinctive capability fast!

I heard nothing back.

I waited.

I heard nothing back.

Finally, I emailed him.

His reply was as above…

"Alan - thanks - your approach is too eccentric for me - I don't think I can sell it internally

Thank you anyway

Best wishes"

He felt he couldn’t sell me internally due to my eccentric look and creative approach.

Now, what does that mean?

Let's think about this and learn from this.

The average salary for a marketing director is £86,165 according to figures online.

A really good marketing director can easily earn as much as £140,000 and even more.

His boss (the man I spoke with) is paying him and his team more than well.

Yet, his boss has had to go outside his team and ask for expert advice.

Why?

Because his highly paid team are not delivering results.

Now this marketing director that isn’t delivering results has told the CEO he does not want to deal with an expert outside the company due to the fact I look too creative, eccentric and different.

So in others words, the employee has taken a decision for the future of a large corporation based on the look of an external expert rather than his outstanding reputation. And by the way, if you don’t know about my reputation over the past 20-years with clients read more on this website.

Interesting right?

Here’s the problem.

Marketing isn’t as hard as marketing are men telling you they are simply covering their own lack of abilities. Yet marketing men that are trained and defined through the formality of expectation of how things should work – according to their training – training that was laid down in marketing manuals in the fifties!

Yet the world has changed and frankly so has the world of marketing.

The changes in the marketing process are profound. So profound in fact that I believe that over the past 3-years marketing has taken a quantum leap of epic proportions never seen before. I also believe that it will take ten years or more for companies and their internal teams to catch up unless they fast track through external expertise.

Do you think a marketing manager goes home and reads the very latest of what works and doesn't work in the minds of the consumer in bed at night? No of course not it's simply a job to him or her. External experts do - I do!

Yet when decisions are taken by marketing dinosaurs that are locked into restrictions, boundaries and fixed rules of how things should and shouldn’t be this is a danger for all companies – your company.

That is why marketing in most companies only supports the infrastructure, the ages and survival and rarely the vision of the company – if they even have a vision.

I am happy to be called eccentric. I am happy to be called too creative. I am happy to be told the marketing chief freaked out when he realised I have a tattoo or two.

Unless you take a leap of faith into the new world of marketing I want to tell you this. On the basis of a decision made by an employee, you could lose your business. I know because time and time again I have seen this over the years.

Marketing chaos isn’t just a blog post it is a reality for corporations. Throwing endless cash at a wall and praying it’ll stick isn’t going to cut it anymore. Posting endless on social media won't and probably doesn’t work for you. Does it?

We are moving into the marketing age of distinctiveness and transformation.

We are moving into the marketing age of distinctiveness and transformation. If you are stuck in the past you will know it yet who are you allowing to take the final decisions on what happens next?

I once dealt with a huge corporation that could take 10-weeks to reply to an email. I once worked with a corporation that had to have a team of six on every Skype call. I once saw a great company fail because the marketing director failed and failed the hard built company on her decisions.

If you need creative, eccentric, rule breaking, company defining marketing that works. If you understand investment is needed to grow, expand, innovate and create a vision. If you have had enough of listening to the same old endless excuses from marketing dinosaurs – you know where I am.

But if you do get in touch expect the unexpected, prepare for rules to be broken, accept the changes and enjoy the ride because I am in this for results.

You get what you want.

I get what I want

I think you deserve more.

Don’t you?

Peace from your ever eccentric, non-conforming, rule breaking, boundary smashing thinker, and creative advisor.

Alan Forrest Smith

Ps … seriously if you need a yes man, a conformist and someone that ticks all the boxes like any good marketing drone please do not get in touch as I refuse to bend on what delivers results for my clients and frankly that trained behaviour rarely delivers.

You know where I am.

Let's play together.