Procrastination is Marketing

Apr 27
2009
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Procrastination is good for marketing.  It may not seem so at first glance, but if you delve deeper, you’ll see it’s so. Marketing people are usually manic, running around getting things done and meeting deadlines, so they are not generally considered procrastinators.  But, here’s the truth: Great marketers do procrastinate.

If you’re a fan of CBS Sunday Morning you may have seen the Fast Draw team.  They do illustrations of difficult concepts to help enlighten us visual learners about whatever they feel is important. On Sunday, April 12, they illustrated the concept of procrastination.  Here’s what I learned:  the word is derived from Latin where pro means “forward” and crastinus means “belonging to tomorrow.”

Marketing is about looking towards tomorrow.  If you wait to think about marketing until a product is done, it’s too late. Great marketing occurs early in the process long before the next product, service or great idea is a reality. Marketing believes that tomorrow will come as will the great next thing, and to be ready for it —  we must dream more about and prepare for tomorrow, or procrastinate.

If you ask most marketing people why they never get to the important stuff, it’s because they’re busy meeting a tight deadline today.  They are getting things done rather than determining what needs to be done to better position a company.  Now, this post may seem directly opposed to my previous post “Active Tense,”  but it’s not. In that post, I noted that Marketing is about getting something done. The real key, however, is to think and plan and do the best thing.

Notice I didn’t say the “right thing.”  If you wait too long to determine the right thing, you may not do anything at all.  That’s not procrastination, which implies you’ll just do it  later. That’s downright quitting and doing nothing. Unfortunately, that’s the state of most small business marketing. Instead, consider procrastinating and having a marketing team, plan and program in place and working within the next three months. You’ll be happy you did and you’ll be amazed at what the future may look like.

*reprinted with permission from original post on InsideMarketing.org, 4/27/09, Rhona Bronson, NAPL

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Written by Rhona Bronson in: Marketing, Planning | Tags: , , ,

Ideas for Tough Times

Nov 10
2008
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Group management took a bit of back seat this month as I headed out to Chicago with other NAPL staff to attend GraphExpo. It was a great show, and as you are preparing 2009 budgets, try to put in dollars to attend the 2009 Print Show at McCormick in Chicago.  As great as GraphExpo was, and it was, Print is bigger and better and only comes around every four years.

It was at GraphExpo that our Group hit the 100 member mark.  I'm planning a new feature in celebration, but meanwhile LInkedIn  has created some new features including an ability to upload articles for sharing among the group. If you come across an interesting article, please feel free to post it and please engage with other members who have started a discussion topic.

Of course, it's nearing year-end and everyone is deep into budgeting for 2009. Since the news isn't all that rosey, most are anticipating cut-backs, but don't go into your planning assuming doom and gloom.  At GraphExpo, our chief economist Andy Paparozzi addressed the NAPL Board to give his take on the economic fronts ahead. Here's the bad news: the recession will be longer and stronger due to lots of bad decisions in the financial sectors.  Here's the good news: it won't be a depression and those who plan will come out of it stronger.

Andy presented a powerful graph that has now been shared with NAPL select tier members. It shows that industry leaders went into the last recession ahead of their peers, but more importantly came out of 2003 positioned for growth that left their peers in the dust.  From 2000-2008, industry leaders grew by 71.6% while the rest of the industry only grew by 8.2%.  The difference was in the planning and proactive strategizing that leader companies did during the last recession.  The lesson is to not hide during this storm.  Digging in won't help you dig out.  Instead, face the storm head on, take careful not stupid risks, wear a rain coat, and slosh threw it.

The bad weather analogies are mine, not Andy's. But, if you want to stay up with his teams prognostications go to www.NAPLBizTrends.org.

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Written by Rhona Bronson in: Economics, Planning | Tags: , , , ,