PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE

Here's a sports question for you: How does a team get better? Recognizing that there are no right or wrong answers to this question, most sports enthusiasts might respond first with something like, "By recruiting or trading for better talent." But if you listen to the most successful, world class athletes (like the Olympians) or to the most successful coaches around, what you will most likely hear first is something like, "Practice more or harder than the other guys." And when they refer to practicing, they don't mean during actual games. They mean outside of the games when they can run drills over and over again to get closer to perfection in executing the fundamentals of their sport. We marketers are typically core members of, even leaders of, brand-building teams. So how about our teams? For sure we aim to get better than our competitors - but do we then practice more or harder than our competitors? Do we even practice at all? Hmmmmmm. That's our subject for this week?s Dispatches.

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The DISPATCHES^TM for February 28, 2010 can be found here:

PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE

A printer / handheld friendly version can be found here:

PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE

It is also available in PDF here:

PracticePracticePractice.pdf (PDF File)

BEST PRACTICES - WE ADMIRE

How often do we hear the expression, "We're committed to best practices"? For sure, we often hear consulting firms espouse their devotion to best practices; sometimes we even hear creative agencies making claims about their development of best practices. More often than not, though, we tend to think of "best practices" as those processes we must pay large sums of money to top-thinking outsiders to acquire. But, when it comes to brand-building and marketing best practices, nothing could be further from the truth. Those true best practices are simple, easily accessible, and usually right under out noses - we just don't make use of them. This week we offer some of our thoughts on the marketing practices we admire ? because whether we call them "best practices" or not, we've found they almost always lead to better results.
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The DISPATCHES^TM for February 14, 2010 can be found here:

BEST PRACTICES - WE ADMIRE

A printer / handheld friendly version can be found here:

BEST PRACTICES - WE ADMIRE

It is also available in PDF here:

BestPractices.pdf (PDF File)

BRAND MARKETING

Marketing is critically essential in today's "age of sameness" where products are basically indistinguishable and the way of the marketplace is to commoditize categories. Given the realities of the economy and the dynamics of the marketplace customers are becoming more discriminating - on price.

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The DISPATCHES^TM for February 7, 2010 can be found here:

BRAND MARKETING

A printer / handheld friendly version can be found here:

BRAND MARKETING

It is also available in PDF here:

BrandMarketing.pdf (PDF File)

"UP YOUR GAME" TO ACHIEVE STRETCH OBJECTIVES

This economic recession is taking its toll on virtually every organization and everyone in it. Our companies are no longer safe, nor are our brands, or marketing budgets, or even our positions within these organizations. And if we are one of the lucky ones left standing from personnel cutbacks we are being tasked with doing much more with less, much less.

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The DISPATCHES^TM for February 1, 2010 can be found here:

UP YOUR GAME TO STRETCH OBJECTIVES

A printer / handheld friendly version can be found here:

UP YOUR GAME TO STRETCH OBJECTIVES

It is also available in PDF here:

UpYourGame2010.pdf (PDF File)