Let me repeat that one more time: MARKETING IS ABOUT VALUES.
The best brands in the world strive to enunciate this truth in everything they do. Look at Apple, Nike and others of the same ilk and think how their marketing is driven.
Do you see them hard selling their products, berating their competition, or insulting the intelligence of their customers? No. They concentrate on their core mission and judge everything they do against those set of values. Apple doesn’t sell computers, it strives to make people’s lives better. Nike doesn’t sell shoes, it celebrates athletes and athletics, Coke doesn’t sell drinks, it inspires moments of happiness.
Have a look at this speech by Steve Jobs to his company’s staffers and see how he enunciates this principle which continues to be true to this day at Apple, several years after he had passed.
This type of thinking is critical to a company’s success. To companies like Apple, their own competition is themselves, not Microsoft. The same goes for all the top brands. They operate on another level altogether. They’re not in it to be the “number one” in their industry, but to benefit their audience long term regardless of their competition. Simon Sinek had covered this topic in an excellent TEDx speech entitled “Most leaders don’t know the game they’re in” where he contends that successful companies are in “infinite” rather than “finite” games. It is well worth watching. Here’s a link to that speech:
Although I’ve inherently known this – as has most marketing and communications professionals I should think, it pains me to see that many companies disregard these basics in their own marketing efforts. A sorry example of these are STC and Batelco, the two giants of telecommunications in Bahrain. Unfortunately, they seem to be having a base-level slug-fest going on at the moment, and both are excelling at insulting their target customers and their intelligence. Batelco hoardings shout out “intelligent people know better” and STC’s “all fiber is the same” except that STC charges you less, and belittling their competition with hoardings that encourage people to switch when their contract with “them” is over, with the word “them” displayed in Batelco’s red corporate colour.
Ludicrous.
How are advertising campaigns like these benefit their customers or others? What do base marketing campaigns like these say about these companies themselves? According to my own personal interpretation, they amply demonstrate the willful disregard of people’s aspirations and intelligence. They might be fighting in a cost spiral – if the commodity they’re selling is the same; hence, there is nothing that differentiates it other than cost, but I’d wager that there is a better and more honourable way to sell this product than this, as there is absolutely no value in both of these companies’ efforts.
Compare them with Apple’s “Think Different” or Nike’s “You Can’t Stop Sports” or Dove’s “Real Beauty Sketches”
These campaigns transcend the noise, inspire and empower people. These are the kind of advertisements that companies and organisations in Bahrain should strive for.
STC and Batelco et al, it’s time that you upped the game. You owe your customers and the country that at least.
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