by Graham Brown
Part of the feature series: The 7 Laws of Youth Marketing by Graham Brown
<Back to Law #6) If you want to change your results, change your measurements
7) Sustainable brands ignore common sense – the underpinning of many of the failings highlighted in the 6 previous rules. Common sense means doing what works – or better put doing what works for everyone else. The Blyk business model may work, but does copying it mean a ticket to engaging young consumers? As Ahonen points out, there’ll be “many others” within time.
If you ran a successful ad campaign, keep running it until it stops working. That’s common sense logic mixed with a healthy dose of meatballs and is destined to fail. See Cadbury’s latest attempt to squeeze more juice out of its Gorilla campaign. Common Sense also means taking on the market incumbents at their own game rather than trying to identify your consumer beach head and working with them (as in the case of Zune vs Ipod).
So what is uncommon brand sense? In some circles, it’s called “reframing“, others call it simply “surprise” – ie surprise both your customers and yourself into what your brand can do or say. Would your average common sense employee think of hiring a pimped tank to promote their latest product?
All of these are facets of uncommon sense; the ability to create a corporate culture where employees feel empowered to take risks because the vast majority of service and technology innovation has been the product of individuals (not organizational directives) taking risks that may have, at the time, contradicted the received wisdom.
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