- Crisis Management Wins and Sins
- Cruising Toward Social Media Success with a Customer Advocacy Program
- How LeBron James Twissed* His Fans... And How Businesses Can Do Better
- Be careful what you (don't) tweet
- Be there or be foursquare - localized marketing
- View Archive >
- About this blog
- Branding
- Corporate
- Crisis
- Healthcare
- Interactive
- Media
- PR
- Research
- Search Marketing
- Social Media
The Lead
|
« Don't Try So Hard to Fit In When You Were Born To Stand Out | Main | While Writing Web Content, Say What You Mean » Try to Avoid the Purple Squirrels and UnicornsPosted by Matt Kucharski on March 4, 2010 at March 4, 2010 8:01 AMIn the first two months of 2010, it's clear that companies are recognizing that they've got to re-tool after an ugly 2009. That's resulted in us conducting a lot of of strategic communications planning and messaging sessions lately (commercial plug here -- at Padilla we package them into two "products" -- Communicating for Action and BrandBuilder). Each of those processes has a "Discovery Session" attached to it -- a 3/4-day facilitated session where we bring all of the key stakeholders together for a food fight on business strategy, audience, messaging and key brand attributes. One of the "house rules" that I lay out at the start is "Avoid Purple Squirrels and Unicorns." That always gets at least a few raised eyebrows. Let me explain: A Purple Squirrel is that customer who came out of the blue and purchased your products and services for no rational reason. Maybe they're not in your core target market. Maybe they bought from you based on obscure non-value-add feature. Maybe they chose you because they have a sister who works at the company. No matter the reason, Purple Squirrels are a distraction -- you spend time looking at them, but since you'll never see another one, it doesn't make sense to build a strategy around them. The Unicorn is in essence the opposite of the Purple Squirrel. The Unicorn is that perfect customer -- the one who recognizes all of the unique, hard-to-articulate values you bring, buys all of your services, pays a premium without blinking an eye, and doesn't hesitate to aggressively introduce you to other Unicorns. Here's the deal with Unicorns -- literally everybody can recognize them, but the problem is, nobody's ever actually seen one in real life. When you're building your strategic communications program or refreshing your brand, try to avoid the Purple Squirrels and Unicorns -- they'll keep you from making decisions that move the business forward.
Trackback PingsTrackBack URL for this entry: CommentsPost a comment |
