Interrupting people and shouting at them is a very unnatural form of human communication. So why is this still the main operating principle of marketing?
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Before starting Yastrow & Company in the mid-90s I was vice-president of resort marketing for Hyatt Hotels. My experiences in the hotel business showed me clearly that most marketing doesn’t happen in the marketing department. Customers are paying attention to all interactions with a company, not just the promises made in traditional "marketing communications."
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Hi Steve
Not been active here for a while, but your message has brought me back from the dead!
You talked about working on the ‘Ditch the Pitch’ book and I look forward to this. Amongst local networking groups we seem to have 2 schools of thought on the Elevator Pitch – School One says always keep it the same; that way it embeds in the minds of your fellow group members and they can look out for referral opportunities.
School Two (my preference) is that you should vary it. Maybe use a story each time, something that’s happened to you since the last meeting or maybe something on TV or in the papers that relates back to the core theme of your business. The problem with School One is that it’s deadly dull to hear the same pitch over and over AND the messenger gets (and sounds) bored with it too! It’s like always writing the same blog post on the basis that people will really ‘get’ what you do.
I also like the analogy of going to the theater – if you’re in the audience and it feels like the actors are trotting out the same old stuff they’ve done a hundred times before, you feel cheated.
To my mind stories are key to making an impact in the business world. First, do you tell a good one that engages people and has impact on how they feel? Does it feel authentic and spontaneous? Second, are you doing things that are so great they GENERATE stories themselves? Do you get the chattering classes chattering? I think this is the essence of great marketing.