Recently, I have been reflecting on what inspired me to call my business Marketing with Meaning, and considering why marketing ‘with meaning’ matters to me.
It can be hard to quantify the value that marketing adds. Sometimes it is viewed as an expensive waste of time and resources – pretty pictures, clever words, and ideas aimed at parting you with your hard earned pennies. And there are occasions when marketing agencies get things badly wrong and cause people to feel annoyed or upset.
Perhaps in an effort to counter that sense of marketing just being meaningless ‘fluff’, my observation is that there has been a growing trend of big corporations focusing on creating ‘meaningful’ marketing campaigns – the various big Christmas campaigns are the quintessential example of this.
These are filled with heartfelt emotion which draws you in, and creates an impression that they are meaningful. But when I step back and look objectively at these campaigns, to be frank, it’s glaringly obvious that they are not being run for the good of society, or to actually help people, or change the world for the better. Their purpose is to generate profit.
This is not marketing with meaning.
Here is something else that is not truly marketing with meaning – it’s not about doing ‘ethical marketing’.
I don’t need to explain what ethical marketing is. However, there is an important distinction here for me: I don’t brand my business as an ‘ethical marketing’ business, because I don’t do ethical marketing like it’s some kind of specific action that is separate to anything else; my entire business philosophy is ethical. Therefore marketing ‘with meaning’ will naturally and unquestionably be done in an ethical way.
So if marketing with meaning is not about ‘meaningful marketing’ and it’s not about ‘ethical marketing’ then what is it about? For me, personally, it’s about authenticity, connection, and impact.
Authenticity is a much bandied about word at the moment. Everything has to look, feel, and be authentic, right? Otherwise it’s no good – it’s fake. So how do you make your marketing authentic? My view is that authenticity comes from the heart. What you’re talking about has to be of paramount importance to you personally; something you’d walk over hot coals for. If you have that degree of passion for something, that authenticity will naturally lead to marketing that has meaning.
For marketing to have real meaning, connection is another critical element. And this is about connection to the people you’re reaching out to – your customers / consumers / donors etc. Its about deeply understanding them so that they feel like family. That goes way beyond ABC1 and age brackets, and what newspapers they read. Their pain and frustrations should be met with such a profound level of empathy for what they are experiencing that you genuinely want to help them. We’re all familiar with that rather over-hackneyed phrase ‘country before party’. But how about ‘person before profit’? That kind of marketing has meaning on a personal level.
And finally, impact. When marketing truly has meaning, it has a correspondingly positive impact on the world, on society, or to individuals. I am inspired when I can see, hear, taste, smell, and feel the impact of what I am doing – achieving change for the better. Sometimes this in tiny ways – having a client tell me I’ve saved them time and stress by implementing a small change to their marketing process; or it can be in a major way – delivering a re-brand for an organisation who do amazing work helping others, so that their marketing has a greater impact.
These three pillars – authenticity, connection, and impact – are what constitute ‘marketing with meaning’ for me, and it’s only when all three are present that a campaign can truly succeed. Take out one, and the others will most probably falter.
Finding the meaning in what I am doing is what keeps me feeling inspired and engaged and drives my business forward, and is what has shaped 20 years of working for organisations where their values matched mine. So choosing the name ‘Marketing with Meaning’ seemed like the obvious choice.
I’d love to know if you like the name and whether you feel that my reasons for choosing it are sound – let me know in the comments below.
Photo by Felicia Buitenwerf on Unsplash