It’s the end of the month on a Monday morning and all over the country, there are marketing managers meeting with their Managing Directors for the age-old monthly marketing meeting.
The MD clears his throat and starts to say something that strikes a familiar chord with every marketing manager. “The office move is going ahead next week and it clearly demonstrates the rapid growth we’ve experienced and all this growth set against a tough economic climate and a downturn in sales for our sector! … it’s important that we use this opportunity for PR and get our story out there. Have we got any media coverage and are there any national press publications lined up to do a piece on us?”
As we know, the real response to this question should be: “Don’t be silly, they’re not going to cover that sort of story and the only way we’re getting coverage is if we miraculously persuade Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to cut the ribbon on the new office with a huge pair of shiny scissors.”
But rather than risking irking the MD with scathing satire, the marketing manager will attempt to downgrade expectations diplomatically.
The simple truth is the MD hasn’t actually stopped and asked why he wants to be published in the national press, especially as it will probably make no noticeable difference to the growth of the business. The reason you’re being asked to pull off this minor miracle is that they know marketers must live and die on their ROI.
This scenario is one of many that will play out in every marketing meeting across the country. There’s the ‘we need an experiential event for our brand’ (the MD doesn’t even know what that means but he read about it in the Sunday Times Business section). Then there’s the “I want to be top of Google across the country for every search term in our sector” or the ultimate request, the ‘big ask’ … ‘let’s develop a cross-channel integrated campaign that goes viral’.
As all Marketing Managers know, technically everything is achievable so long as you have at least one of the following two elements. The first is genuine creative thinking and the other of course is budget. But we all know the additional, sometimes forgotten question is ‘is this right for our sector and brand?’
We can’t help you extract a bigger marketing budget from your MD but we do believe that genuine creative thinking can be achieved for any business no matter how small or large the budget. We’re not talking about the ability to come up with great design solutions, we’re talking about creative concepts that can translate seamlessly to every channel. Just Enough Brave offers a brand of creativity that thinks around the inconvenient corners of small budgets.
We partner with a lot of very talented Marketing Managers and that’s the key – partnership. Your expertise coupled with our ideas is, we believe, the perfect recipe to deliver that Holy Grail – ROI!
But then again there are plenty of creative agencies out there so what makes Just Enough Brave so special? Well, the sad truth is there are a lot of consultancies that don’t deliver on the hype and it leads us to believe that there are actually three types of agencies out there:
1) Truly creative types (around 10%)
2) Agencies that say they’re creative types (around 40%)
3) Uncreative types (50%)
That 5% doesn’t just deliver great creative ideas they develop concepts that deliver results. It may seem a little boastful but we’re confident we know where we sit and we’re happy to back that up with the proof.
So if you’re a Marketing Manager who is looking for the perfect partner why don’t you give us a call, it might just make that walk along the corridor to the monthly marketing meeting that little less frustrating.