Kal kare so aaj kar, aaj kare so ab!
This quote has never made more sense to me as it does right now. You ask why? Because if there is an opportunity to initiate a conversation with a prospective client, I better do it today instead of waiting for the auspicious moment tomorrow. Because, by the time I send a ‘Hope you are doing well’ to them, another agency must have sent the entire content strategy! So, in this race, you lose some, you gain some. This competitiveness, I have accepted and moreover, it drives us to push our limits to the best of our capacity as a team.
But when I go through my social media feed, I wonder where did these agencies go? Most of the time, it looks like, a small set of 2 to 3 companies are designing campaigns for all the brands. Sounds funny, right? When I face stiff competition during the pitching stage, why does it not reflect in the content being uploaded on a daily basis from the profiles of different brands created by different agencies?
After seeing a pattern followed by most of the brands and their agencies, I coined a term for this phenomenon – ‘Mimic Marketing’. Completely opposite to the concept of moment marketing, a popular one and it seems every brand wants to get on its bandwagon. Can’t blame them, right? Who wouldn’t want to connect with the latest developments and strike a chord with their audience? After all, relevance is the key. [Too tired of hearing this, right?] But that’s the point we miss while we create a buzz around making the most of the momentary news. Moment marketing has always been crafting content around something that is happening in the world at the very moment and how your brand can leverage it to send across the message in a relatable manner. Instead, what do you see? Ten different brands aping a particular format for two days and going back to their shell, in the wait of an agency to set off on the next trend. Well, I don’t remember attending the funeral of original creativity. Looks like I wasn’t invited!
Instead of mimicking some format in the absence of your brand personality, why not utilise the talk of the town and give it your spin, the brand spin? During the Superbowl Blackout in 2013, Oreo presented the creamy white layer of the biscuit as the light everyone is waiting for. Brilliant, right? Who doesn’t know that the number of females in leadership positions are way less as compared to men? Not a novel fact at all. Every year around Women’s Day, you see this point being highlighted through examples of fierce women who fought against all odds, with the backdrop of hard-hitting, impactful music. Really? I understand the message and in no way wish to belittle it. All I expect is a different perspective while execution. Mindspace, this Women’s Day, posed a small riddle to different people with the answer being – The CEO is a woman. Sounds simple, right? But it might surprise you just like it surprised the participants, none of them could give the right answer. Why? None of them could think that the CEO is a woman, in spite of them believing that they are feminists and not sexists. This discussion calls for another article, but the moral of the story is- Add your dollop of awesomeness. That is all you need to stand out from the clutter!
A change in the scene is what I wish for. When I step into the office, I do not wish to see my creative team racking their brains and losing their sleep over – ‘Which new format is trending today?’. Rather I would love to see them involved in brainstorming sessions and answer questions like – ‘Which topic is being discussed and how will our client talk about it?’ As content creators, we have the power to change the way our audience sees the world. Why pile up 100 versions of the same idea when you have the ability to develop 100 new ideas? Let’s have a healthy competition and put our game face on!
Disclaimer: This post was first published on Brijraj Singh's LinkedIn profile.
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