As marketers (and corporate denizens generally), we live in a pretty rarefied world. It’s clean. It’s mostly cerebral. We live and breathe numbers, we speak in jargon. Office politics provides most of the human drama in our day. It’s easy to lose touch of what impact—if any—our actions have in the real world.
Many consumer marketers are lucky enough to have windows into the experience of our consumers. Through research, fieldwork, customer feedback and more we get occasional glimpses of what impact we have in the lives of those who buy sell. But that’s about it.
At Right-Brain Brands we believe that more is both possible and necessary.
Internal impact
A story
When I managed the Wisk liquid detergent brand two decades ago I knew what “my” restage of Wisk had done to volume, market share, and profit. All were up significantly; everyone at HQ was delighted. When I visited the St. Louis plant (production site for much of Lever Brothers’ liquid detergents), I learned something more—and more important.
The plant manager showed me a chart of employment at the plant: employment was up. More people had been hired, and their jobs were more stable. Placing the company’s flagship brand on more solid, less price-sensitive footing eliminated the huge swings in production that had occurred previously as the brand had lurched from one big price promotion to the next. A supplier of plastic bottles had added an extra line as well, creating good-paying manufacturing jobs in East St. Louis, a severely depressed urban area.
Who knew? But for that accidental conversation I never would have known, yet this is one of the things I’m proudest of in my Brandland career. It made what I did real.
Wouldn’t you like to know?
What impact are you having in the lives of real people beyond your customers? Are you putting food on someone’s table? Whose lives are you touching—and how? Right-Brain Brands can bring the impact of your everyday work to life by capturing the human stories you’re likely never to hear.
Why should you care? Well, some won’t. But most of us yearn to matter. Many of us got into marketing because it seemed more real than, say, the Black Scholes option pricing model. Understanding the context, the web of connections and the impact of our work can be inspiring—or a bracing reality check in some cases. But ultimately knowing what’s real is more satisfying than the endless abstractions in which we usually dwell.
External impact
You hear it a lot because it’s true: consumers today are looking for more from companies than good products and reliable services. Our expectations of corporate citizenship are rising. Many companies have responded—or moved proactively—to be more socially responsible. Cause sponsorship, sustainability and community engagement initiatives have grown exponentially. Hooray!
Being extraordinary
Too often, alas, do-good initiatives don’t truly align with the highest and best possibility for their brand or company. They fall a little short. Decision-makers jump on a bandwagon that is safe and dull. They’re one of a herd behind a cause du jour. Or they let factors like personal preference drive their choices. They do some good, but they miss the chance to do something truly extraordinary.
Right-Brain Brands can develop imaginative, brand-centered options that have the potential to stir the soul.
How Right-Brain Brands can help
Many firms do excellent work developing programs in cause-branding, corporate philanthropy and other areas. Excellent left-brain work. They’re peppy and factual, and they cite metrics like impressions and media placements. All good stuff.
RBB offers something different and complementary. In addition to wanting you to achieve your goals (awareness, new business, etc.), we want to create something that:
- Gives you goosebumps when you hear about it
- Touches your heart
- Makes you think about your brand/company in a new way
- Creates genuine excitement throughout your company
RBB will work with you to:
- Develop a range of unique and proprietary ideas—a perfect fit for your brand/company and no one else’s
- Work alongside you and your agency partner to:
- Provide a right-brain perspective as the project unfolds, making sure it stays extraordinary
- Identify the messages that will be the most resonant both internally and externally