Create, Communicate, And Stand Out
There are dots interlinking value creation and communication that needs to be connected if we’re serious about building a brand for business.
I’m sure we all have heard this idiom at some point in our life - “the greatest thing since sliced bread” which is often used as an invention or development benchmark for new products.
The history of it dates back to as early as the 1930s when sliced bread was introduced in the market. Consumers were amazed at the soft, perfectly sliced, equal-sized pieces of bread. However, it was only in 1952, when Red Skelton said in an interview, "Don't worry about television, it's the greatest thing since sliced bread”, that this idiom became popular.
While humans have been consuming bread since the neolithic era, but sliced bread came into existence only in the last century.
Do you know what is more interesting about it as a product and marketing professional? The concept of sliced bread existed for more than a decade before it got known to the mass! And it only got accepted by regular consumers, when its value was communicated and delivered.
Otto Rohwedder, an American engineer was the first one to invent the automatic bread-slicing machine. He spent years developing it and getting it patented but the world didn’t know about it unless the bread brand Wonder marketed it to the mass.
While promoting, they highlighted that "wonder-cut" bread would not dry out. Bread being dry or stale was the major concern for buying pre-sliced bread earlier, which got addressed by Wonder in all its communication.
And that’s the whole point about value creation and value communication, both are important but when it comes to the world of product marketing, we need to strike a fine balance between both.
We might have developed the world’s best product but unless we speak about it, the world will not know. And vice versa, if we’re just marketing aggressively without focussing on the basics of building a good product, it won’t sustain in the long run.
Achieving that balance is important. One of the biggest challenges with creativepreneurs or passion economy professionals is they are so busy in creating that they often forget/don’t find the time to communicate. Unless we speak up, we won’t get noticed.
In fact, barely getting noticed is not sufficient in this era of information overload. We need to stand out if we are serious about building a brand for business.
And to stand out, while there are many things that we need to do at ground level (more on it in my next post), but on a strategic level, it requires three areas to focus on - Core, Communication, and Community.
A well-defined product or service is the core of any business, without which no marketing can help. In fact, it might affect adversely. As David Ogilvy said - “great marketing only makes a bad product fail faster.” Refer to my earlier two posts on defining your core.
Communication and that too, contextual and consistent is the need of the hour. In this attention economy age, attracting our consumer’s eyeball is one of the toughest tasks to do. Being relevant helps in connecting and being consistent helps in the recall. You may check the “so what” framework for relevant messaging.
Community and by this, I don’t mean bought likes and large online groups which are very easy to build in the hyper-connected world. By community, I mean a trusted group of people who are interested in you and willing to collaborate/support you. This requires hard work. Anyways, building a “genuine” and “meaningful” connection has never been easy in life, it’s the same when it comes to our business and brand.
There are dots interlinking creation and communication that need to be connected if we’re working towards building a brand for business.
Create, communicate, and stand out - the world needs to see your magic :).
Cheers,
Kanupriya
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*This post is the fourth post in a 10-posts series that I have created for Small Businesses, Passion Economy Professionals, and Solopreneurs to help them in their Product Marketing Journey. If you liked it and would like to read more, you may read the fifth post here.
And If this post was worth your time, may I request you to help me spread the word by sharing this post? It would mean a lot to me.
Know more about ‘Connecting The Dots’ here. Looking forward to connecting the dots together :).