The Real World. I can't remember the first time I heard the phrase "is that In The Real World?", probably in reference to a movie, but the phrase immediately called to mind the corollary, what ever that may be, an unreal world,.. what would exist there? Imaginary friends? The Abstract?
We created a positioning statement for Vancouver Community College "Education For the Real World", a simple promise wthout carrying the baggage or otherworldliness that the bald phrase does out of context.
Lo and behold, there came to pass the World Wide Web. Zeros. Ones. In many ways, an Unreal World.
The Unreal World, articulate a connection between The Real and The Unreal, in everyday language that everybody understands and the result is integrated communications. The tangible world integrated with the web, deadlines with branding, conversion with awareness, sales networking with social networking. All working together.
Creativity. Making something from nothing. In the real world, every entrepreneurs' dream starts with an idea to manifest a corporation or retail store or manufacturing plant. Found a dynasty.
A Dream. A Mission. A Romance. The unique proof your market needs in order to make your brand relevant, engaging, and above all, memorable, is a story. The prosaic is ignored. There are only the rock stars.
Make it for real. Strategic communications are by nature long term positioning efforts costing large amounts of money in media and production.
Advertising. A campaign is tactical in nature and seeks immediate profit. Traditional mass media like newspapers and direct mail are increasingly under attack by the www but still deliver sales or serve to influence opinion in a tangible way. Direct marketing continues in great volumes.
Awareness is related to budget in the real world and is evaluated on a $ per thousand basis. The size of the audience and how many times that audience is exposed to your key message contribute to cost. These costs are "productized" and offered to communicators as television time, newspaper space, keywords or web banners but everyone knows it is all for "eyeballs".
And what people see with their own eyes they are more likely to remember by a large factor.
So if what we are paying for is eyeballs then how much for a thousand pairs is a good question. Another good question is who owns them?
Successful products and services become integrated with society. Mass communication has always been part of articulating that relationship. Integrated communication provides you with the tools.
Something's gotta' give: sacrifice in marketing. An artist evaluates the composition of an artwork from the positive and the negative, similarly a business person with a profit and loss statement. Both sides tell a story. Following this example it is profitable to articulate which markets are going to be sacrificed as well as which markets are going to be attacked. (Not that profitable business would be turned away if it came from a tactically-sacrificed market.) Identifying markets to be ignored serves to show when resources are being misdirected. This is a difficult idea for a megalomaniac to accept.
Finite resources cannot stretch beyond their capacity. Hypothetically a company decides to attack a competitor's market, chooses a beachhead and attacks that point. Everything beyond the beachhead is sacrificed for the tactical advantage of a toehold in the competition's market. The strategic objective remains as before the campaign. The achieved tactical objective supports the strategy.
Churchill famously asked for the readiness of the English navy for war to be written on one side of an letter page. Simply stated.
It spite of myriad new media it is ironically easier rather than more difficult to determine which media are going to deliver your message to qualified prospects. And so, less expensive rather than more.
If you need to send a message to your target market, Norman Fournier helps. Design, art direction, corporate identity, advertising, exhibitry and www creative. He can be reached at 604 971 5008 or