Marketing
Marcom
Marcom, which represents “marketing communications” meets the information needs for marketing initiatives, sales, creative services, advertising goals, and sometimes corporate communication projects.
The objectives for content are very different than technical documentation deliverables.The goals in marcom are to reach a targeted audience and evoke a response (i.e., make a purchase, contact the organization, etc.).
The Steak, or the Sizzle?
Do you recall the sad-sack hapless advertising account executive of the 60's by the name of Darren Stevens? Certainly, you remember Darren, the slicked back flannel suit wearing American everyman who was married to a certain nose wiggling witch?
Darren worked like a dog every day of his career wooing clients to accept the very latest cutting edge campaign he had created for the McMahon and Tate Agency. Larry Tate played the tightly wound agency boss, while Darren remained the consummate yes-man. Together, they conveyed "what marketing was" in the minds of the television producers of the day.
Since that time of black and white television and peanut butter, marketing has evolved into a multi-facted industry that today serves clients who are IT savvy and fully integrated into the New Media Age. However, as Momma always said, the more things change, the more they remain the same.
In our excitement and sometimes haste to use all of the bells and whistles available in today's world of marketing, the basics that never change are sometimes forgotten. Forty years ago, Marshall McLuhan told us that "the medium is the message," "the medium is the massage." Marshall managed to launch a million communications studies term papers with that single statement.
In 1969, Syracuse University Newhouse Communications Instructor Len Aronoff countered by saying, "you sell the sizzle, not the steak." Now Len, as an Instructor of TV-Radio 101 was not the original author of this clever witticism. Assuredly, it was an old sales aphorism that the best marketing people continue to use to great advantage by understanding humanity at the basest level of its' wants and needs. Did you buy your car entirely to be able to get from point to point or, wasn't part of the buy associated with the style, the color, the hype, the sizzle??
Failure or success in Marketing always falls back on the basics of selling. Do you know your product? Do you know your targeted buyer? Do you know which media will best convey your product's message? How best to "massage" your market? How best to convey your product's ability to fill an existing need or demand? What is the message that must be communicated in order to generate the sizzle needed for your product's future success?
Communication Lines brings experience spanning four decades of work in branding, advertising, multi-media, and design to ensure that you as our client, whether as a seasoned business entity, or as the start-up looking for guidance in bringing your new product forth into the marketplace.... Communication Lines is ready to take you step by step into the New Media Age without leaving the basics that sell products behind.
I don't order the steak at a restaurant because it'll fill me up. I order it for what it promises... the smell, the flavor, the sizzle.
Darren would have been proud, and Larry would have gotten a good night's sleep.
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