Facilitating direct marketing & communications planning workshops for clients let’s you get exposed to a multitude of businesses and business problems.

The most recent challenges have been:

  • Brand consistency – how to bring to life a brand essence at all direct customer touchpoints? BTW I heard from one participant that it just had to look the same with imagery! OMG
  • Mass Acquisition – how to drive greater store traffic to both bricks and mortar and online retail shops?
  • Highly targeted Acquisition – how to acquire higher value customers to a ‘member’ database? Plus how deep should the profiling and segmentation be?
  • Increasing share of wallet – how to entice customers to come back for repeat purchase?
  • Increasing engagement – how to improve customer engagement & interaction within a digital brand world?

Whilst these challenges were all different, my approach was the same. Getting all the key stakeholders involved in identifying the real problem and ensuring a collaborative approach was adhered to throughout the solution process.

A golden observation

However one consistent theme has kept popping up in regards to creative planning and problem solving.

It wasn’t about logical, linear left brain thinking, nor more creative and intuitive right brain thinking (sorry creative friends). It was getting close to William “Ned” Herrmann’s theory of whole brain thinking, but it was something so much simpler…

It’s actually USING our brains!

Most businesses I see have become so overcomplicated and have stacked new marketing opportunities on top of pre-existing practices to create confusion.

Managers are confronted with new customer engagement and digital opportunities yet have forgotten what they’re in the business of.

It’s not rocket science. If you just stand back for a minute and look at the basics of your business, you’ll probably find the answers to many of your questions. And if you need a brain to help guide you, just drop me a line or grab your mobile and phone 0414 673 575 now 🙂

PS – Last week I also spoke at Step Change Marketing’s ‘Stump the Strategist’ session. It was great to see the audience unleashing their brains and engaging in thought provoking solutions. If you don’t want to work with wankers, check them out: http://www.youtube.com/stepchangemarketing#p/u/6/XNjziSHnA_I