Whilst everyone is propagating the latest social media craze, those hooked upon the den of inequity that is extended social networking, Moral Fibre’s team has been doing some of its own Social Engineering.

The reason for my diatribe, this little literary sojourn into the mundane nature of marketing, is primarily because I wanted to let you people in on a little secret: guerrilla marketing kinda works and those of you with tighter budgets than the health department’s might consider following a few of Moral Fibre’s handy guidelines.

Firstly, branding, branding, branding; whilst the axiom that your image ought to linger and thus resonate frequently within the minds of your target audience is paramount to your brand’s success you ought to consider the implications of your branding ie. the ethos of your brand. Yes that is right, I am harping on about subliminal messaging the sort of thing the Coke brand(in no way am I Vincent Hofmann making reference to the Coke n’ Cola company for that would be treading on the toes of my demi-god) consistently repeats in their usage of the generally accepted aspirations of the youth, neatly packaged into half a minute adverts, to sell a commodity which ultimately serves only to quench one’s thirst.

So you should see where I am going with this by now, your brand ought to :

• Identify it’s target audience and by this I mean not simply defining the nearest LSM category which suits your brands pricing structure, your brands position within the market etc. rather what I would have you think about is the ideal-type of consumer, the person with whom you entrust your brands reputation, your brand ambassadors.
  
• Once defined, these ideal-type “model” consumers ought to give you some reflection as to the trajectory of your brand, it ought to compel you to do some society-watching, peering into the formless and timeless void of the cultures which circulate around you which ultimately allows you to understand how to most efficiently to market your brand.
  
• Your budget is tight, time is money and money is best spent reinvesting in your own enterprise.

When you budding branders wish to market your commodity, the only thing that you can guarantee is that the product is indeed worth buying. Ford would have given me a bear hug for this, but essentially Ford’s principle was to ensure that each individual working on his assembly line would/could one day afford to purchase a black Model T Ford. Whilst there were limited choices in the market place, most of Ford’s employees aspired to own a Model T, much like in the late 60’s with the peak in popularity of the VW beetle, these are cars created and maintained by people, owned by the masses. One wonders why during a turbulent time, such as the insurgency in Vietnam and the veritable climax of the industrial revolution in the 1920’s did two cars come to represent an era? Two common characteristics predominate, namely;

• Both cars were constructed for the people
• Both cars had the reputation that they would never die – even though quite a few did

In marketing terms, for those of you wondering when I am going to get off of my historical wagon and back onto the point, you can only ensure that your product is of the highest quality and that those who market your product are capable of conversing with consumers, rather than simply pitching to them, adhere to these two simple good business practices and those working for you and those purchasing your product will put their faith in your brand. Once you’ve secured these two properties for your brand, your marketing and your customer service will fall into place, because when people can place their trust in your brand, they will sell it effectively, recommend it to their friends and keep endorsing your product.

Tags: entrepreneurial, Ford, Ford Motor Company, Marketing, social networking, strategy, Talita, Vietnam, vincent hofmann

This entry was posted on Monday, December 1st, 2008 at 5:00 pm and is filed under Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.