I wrote earlier about Cisco’s successful approach to content
marketing in the B2B world, a perfect example of compelling storytelling.
Pick the right cast. If you heard Quentin Tarantino’s Oscar acceptance speech, he said, “I actually think if people are knowing my movies 30 or 50 years from now, it’s going to be because of the ecuador cell phone database characters that I created. And I really get only one chance to get it right; I have to cast the right people to make those characters come alive and hopefully live for a long time. And boy, did I do it this time!” Your marketing story has to be acted out and relayed by the “actors” that your target audience will sit up and take notice of.
It doesn’t have to be your CEO who must become the public voice of your brand
If your CMO is smart, savvy and has the capability to be a thought leader, cast her or him in the lead role. And the supporting actors are important too. These could be your customer-facing sales people from the field, your help desk support team, your IT manager, or anyone else within the organization who can contribute to your effective storytelling.
Take a risk. The team of Life of Pi when receiving
their awards for Best Visual Effects and Best Cinematography, said something along the lines of “Sometimes to make a winner you’ve got to take a risk. This movie was the kind of risk worth taking.” In a post about B2B marketing innovation, I talked about how Seth Godin encourages marketers to start something “important, frightening and new”. If we do, we can hope to accomplish some memorable wins.
Be innovative, even in bite-sized chunks.
I personally loved the short film, Paperman and was happy it won the Oscar for this category. It is animated, has no dialogues, is mostly black and white (other than a red lipstick mark on a piece of paper); it is short and sweet but immensely entertaining. In the world of marketing, we feel pressured, unnecessarily, to take on major innovations. Ask your best sales people; they are innovative on-the-go because they face prospects every day and they know they cannot risk getting stale and boring.
I remember one CEO use to poke fun at one of his sales manager
who always handed out his business card each time he met a customer or prospect (even if he had met the person before and may have handed out his business card a few times in the past). But he always wrote down a famous quote on the back of the card just before handing it to the customer. Within a year, the company’s biggest sales wins were brought in by this same sales manager. He was innovative, he stood out and he made sure his prospects always knew where to reach him.
Believe that you will win
Anne Hathaway stunned the Oscar audience with her heartfelt, emotional speech and some very deep words of wisdom. As she thanked the Academy for her Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Les Miserables, you could see that she had thought carefully about her acceptance speech. Unlike many others who choked or raced or were all over the place as they spoke, even though they may have practised what they were going to say on stage. Here’s how she closed her speech, “Here’s hoping that someday in the not too distant future the misfortunes of Fantine will only be found in stori
By Louis Foong, Published February 26, 2013Be the first to comment!
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Oscars 2013: 10 Lessons for B2B Marketers
image oscars 200x300Captain Kirk (William Shatner) beaming in from Starship Enterprise went into the future to advise the Oscar 2013 award ceremony show host, Seth MacFarlane about what not to do on stage. He showed the next day’s news headlines that went from terrible, to bad, to not that great, to mediocre reviews of Seth as the host this year. And of course, we saw all that Seth was doing “wrong” and “inappropriate”, supposedly in the “future”. It was an entertaining show and definitely, as some will argue, a lot better than the recent, lacklustre (boring, actually) Grammy Awards.
Wouldn’t it be so amazing if this could actually happen?
That someone with the power to go into the future could tell us what not to do and show us what might happen if we did? As a race, we humans long to know what the future holds in store for us. From Nostradamus to the Mayans to the prophets in every major world religion, we want to know what’s going to happen. In reality, our best guide can be common sense. There are so many mistakes and failures one can avoid by just being plain and simple, sensible.
As incredible as it may seem, even the most glitzy, glamorous, star-studded night in Hollywood, the annual Academy Awards can teach us some truly valuable common sense lessons.