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FEATURE GUEST ARTICLE

Better Marketing Through Modern Mind-Control

By: By Linda Cox J.A.M.G.
(Just Another Marketing Guru)

There are two kinds of marketing: Direct Marketing and Brand Marketing. Direct marketing targets wallets. Branding is about hearts and minds.

For example, I sell a variety of internet marketing tools, but you won't see them mentioned here. That's because the brand I'm marketing by writing and distributing articles is Linda Cox, not any single product. If I can hook you into the Linda Cox brand, then the sales (and more) will follow.

If it works, thousands will visit my website and I can sell banners there. Then millions will subscribe to my ezine and I can sell ads there. Then everyone will want to be identified with my unique brand of humor and insight so they'll buy body oils and spark plugs and beach umbrellas with my name on them.

Ultimately, of course, anytime you pass the Golden Arches your oh-so branded children will screech for a Happy Meal just to get the free "Linda Cox: Queen of the Online Marketers" doll inside.

Different By Design

Ads designed for branding are cool. They don't plead and beg and cajole, they just sit there. They may be loud, but in a very smug way because they already got what they want. They may tell you where to click or who to call, but they don't really care if you do. You saw them... that's enough. An impression was made.

Think Absolut Vodka.

Direct sale ads have a real do-or-die attitude that can make them a bit annoying and undignified, especially when surrounded by their mellower counterparts. By their directives shall ye know them: Call Now! Order Now! Click Now!

Think infomercials.

You can't track a branding campaign like you can a direct sales campaign, but you don't have to. You don't need to prove that an ad performed its function when its function was to just sit there and look cool.

Check Your Left Hemisphere at the Door

Modern marketers don't even condescend to sit at the same tables as accountants anymore. The battle is over and creative excess won. Sales are out. Customers are in.

The New Customer

Say it's your friend's birthday and you buy her a Mikey t-shirt with the logo of the Mikey Running Shoe company emblazoned across the front. What does that make you? A Mikey person? No. You're just some putz who bought something. You're irrelevant... a statistical aberration.

Frankly, Mikey would rather have their shirt back.

But say you buy ALL your friends gifts with the Mikey logo? You don't even have to think about it, you just do it. Now you're not an aberration, you're a customer, and that's a whole different level of commitment.

You pay money to be a walking billboard for Mikey. You strive to represent the Mikey ideal. You craft your self-image based on the models and sports stars in Mikey ads (even if you're a pudgy smoker with a Twinkie jones).

Image Is

But your adoption of the Mikey image runs far deeper. You're not just a Mikey customer, you're a Mikey PERSON.

If someone bad-mouths Mikey, you set them straight. If someone speaks well of a non-Mikey product, you respond with autonomic contempt. If someone converts to Mikey-hood, you embrace them into the fold.

If it were a cult, it would be called programming. If it were an ideology, it would be called brainwashing. If it were a religion, it would be called a conversion.

But it's a shoe. It's called branding.

The New World

In any field, there are two brands and a bunch of off-brands or wannabes. Democrat and Republican are brands. Libertarian, Green Party and whoever else are merely Other.

(It's a Yin Yang thing. Note how Democracy is diminished without Communism for counterpoint?)

In the new world order, stores and websites are clubs, brands are families, and a person is defined simply as the combination of several dozen brand settings, like toggle switches on a motherboard: Coke (not Pepsi). Chevy (not Ford). Burger King (not McDonalds). Shaken (not stirred). Catholic (not Protestant). White Sox (not Cubs).

And is there ever any substantial difference between the two main contenders in any given category?

Depends who you ask.

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Linda Cox (J.A.M.G.) was actually a real-world corporate
marketer for many years before going on the net without
a net. Now she's Just Another Marketing Guru.
MORE LINDA & FREE EZINE! http://www.LindaCox.com
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