Nightshift

Dina Gowar | FMCG Category Development Manager, EMEA

The above ‘rule to live by’ comes from Nicholas Bate blog and specifically his “Rules of Life” (you can download the pdf from the ‘free stuff category’ on the blog). I have been fortunate enough to take a course with Nicholas called Personal Excellence and many (sorry Nicholas, not all) of the tools I learned in that 2 day course still very much come into play in my everyday working and personal life. (I highly recommend his blog, or any of the books he has written.)

Now, if only brands could apply this golden rule to how they behave in business. Often it happens that clients want to get involved in every new, emerging, ‘underground’ opportunity without first thinking if it makes sense for their brand. No, Mr. Client your household cleaner will not make a cool viral video which 10’s of thousands of people will watch and share. Don’t get me wrong, getting involved in hot new opportunities is possible and encouraged (!) but it requires the same strategic thinking and planning as your TV or print campaign. And just because it fails, doesn’t mean it was a failure. Test, learn, refine and try again.

As a marketer ourselves, Microsoft commits a certain % of our marketing budget purely to testing. Mich Mathews, our VP of Marketing has spoken openly about the successes and failures we have encountered digitally and how we continue to learn from our failures. It’s important that we behave as we propose our partners behave. After all actions speak louder than words, and sales people can have a lot of words! J