One Line Marketing Wisdom
July 26, 2007 by Susan Gunelius
Filed under Marketing
I was very happy to be contacted by Matt McDonald at A New Marketing and asked to participate in a One Line Marketing Wisdom post he was working on. Matt planned to contact many of his favorite bloggers and ask them to send him all the marketing genius they could fit into one line. Matt compiled and published twelve marketing one-liners from some heavy hitters in the blogosphere like Seth Godin. Here are a few of my favorites:
- Drew McLellan of Drew’s Marketing Minute: “Make the investment to clearly understand and articulate your brand promise (both internally and externally) and then behave from that place 100% of the time.”
- John from Marketing-Works: “Marketing failures can be more valuable than the successes assuming you learn the lesson for next time.”
- Sean Moffit of Buzz Canuck: “Marketing is for lovers – everybody may think they can do it well, but it’s only the passionate, edgy and open that make it worthwhile.”
My contribution was, “Your product or service is far less important than its ability to fulfill your customers’ needs.” That point has been prominent in my mind lately as I’m working to publish my book on copywriting. I call that line “The First Tenet of Copywriting.” It’s truly the basis of all marketing. When you forget it, you’re in trouble. I’d also like to add my other favorite marketing one-liner, “Use your common sense,” which I talked about in my post yesterday, Disney Says 4-Year Old Boys Should Wear Perfume.
Check out Matt’s post. It’s a great resource and invites readers to post more one-liners, which is yielding fun and interesting additions to the list of one-line marketing wisdom.
Kudos to you, Matt. It’s an awesome post, and I’m honored that you invited me to participate.
Thanks for participating in the post and for the incredibly kind mention and link. I’m glad everything turned out so well. Hopefully your readers think the same thing.
Matt.
“Your product or service is far less important than its ability to fulfill your customers’ needs.”
This is so weird. I love that and it’s very pertinent to my life today. I agree; I think many companies forget it. Why else would you get so many different answers from people when you post those cool quiz deals. Shouldn’t we all be thinking closer to the same thing. More to ponder. Hmmm, I can’t believe I ever thought brand stuff was dull. (sorry). I get something new to think about every time I come here.
And congrats on participating with Matt’s post — very cool.
Jennifer, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Marketers and businesspeople often get too close to their product and have trouble detaching themselves enough to remember that their product is less important than its ability to fulfill a customer’s needs.