How to Make (Marketing) Magic

Unremarkable means nothing special, not particularly interesting or surprising. Advertising seeks to draw interest in products, people and services that lack magic on their own. That is the age-old question anyway, isn’t it? What does it take to create something that is truly magical on it’s own? The un-marketed, surprise-released Beyonce album (see: #obsession) comes to mind. That record-breaking release required some groundwork early on for sure, perhaps for years prior dating back to the early Destiny’s Child days.

 Advertising can make or break a brand or an idea in general. Creative strategy and content marketing, if executed thoughtfully with a clear long range goal in mind, can literally change the world. This promise continually drives my personal interest in the field. Look at what’s going on with the green/sustainability trend–it’s all over fashion, haute cuisine and all the rage in tech hot spots like San Francisco (composts bins all over the place with recycling and pushes to go-organic everywhere you look). What if advertising and amazing content strategy could help change people’s perceptions on such a wide scale that the populace actually takes it upon itself to address critical environmental and social issues that the government and corporations don’t necessarily solve?

Social and creative content are the new guard of tools for marketers seeking to change how the world communicates and the way brands can become humanized. Social is undoubtedly the future, especially with regard to video integration and ever-increasing personalization capabilities. Never before have brands had this much potential influence and personal engagement with their intended audiences. Across social, consumers can relate to brands like never before. There is great power in this humanization, notably the promise for greater consumer independence and empowerment with real-time information. Social represents the crossroads at which brands and consumers can create the future together and in doing so, change the way business is conducted and the way perceptions are formed altogether.