It’s all the rage. Everyone wants to dive head first into social media…and many do, without so much as a glance into the water before they jump. The backlash is coming. It shouldn’t be a surprise, really. It happens when a new idea excites the market. Everybody does it, and does it wrong, then everybody gets disillusioned, and then some percentage of “everybody” figures out how to do it right. And life goes on, sans hype. The social web is in the early stages of a massive dry-heave that will eventually purge the idiots and leave the rest of us to do our jobs in a far-less-muddy environment.

It’s always a red flag when a prospect comes to our conference room and regales us with tales of how wonderful their product is…and how misunderstood it is…and that if we could only help them explain it in the right words, their bottom line would improve. They should’ve started with a better product, not tried to advertise themselves out of the hole. Advertising is always good, never bad. Marketing can be bad, ideas can be bad, and products can be bad. But good ads don’t help bad ideas or bad products. Good marketing must come first. In branding, the egg always comes before the chicken.

Albert Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” Think about that and then ask yourself if your current advertising strategy is based in insanity.

I’ve spoken with several local small business owners this past week who, like many others, have cut their ad budgets due to the economy and declining foot traffic in their stores. The interesting thing is that they were all very frank about the fact that their advertising wasn’t producing great results even before they scaled it back. My question to them was: “if your tactics weren’t effective when you were spending $5,000 per month, what makes you think they will be effective when you’re spending $2,500 per month?”

The problem is not the amount of money they were spending. The problem is the tactics they’ve chosen. If they don’t work, then doing more or less of the same thing isn’t going to change that.

Bud Light has saturated the market with their new positioning strategy: “Drinkability.” I want to address this because this, to me, is a poster-child for a bad positioning strategy. There are plenty of examples, both nationally and locally.

The goal of any marketing campaign is to differentiate itself from the competition. Tell your market how and why you’re different from the other guy so that they’ll buy your stuff. Unique Selling Proposition (or USP) is one theory that explains how to do this. A strong USP is supposed to have three components (1) it should make present a specific, tangible benefit, (2) it must be unique to that brand, and (3) it should inspire consumers to change.

“Drinkability” doesn’t mean any of these criteria. So why pick that word? Bottom line: “Drinkability” is a smoke & mirrors campaign. Bud Light is trying to edge in on Miller Lite’s position of “tastes great, less filling.” After all, “taste” and “healthy” are two very strong USP’s. The question is: will it work? All I can say is that Mr. and Mrs. Consumer and their Consumerlings aren’t stupid.

A couple of weeks ago, I met with a student who had just received her Master’s in business administration. She asked if I was worried that the local market seemed to have so many advertising agencies. I said I wasn’t. She expressed surprise. I suppose I can see where she’s coming from. Most would be worried. Threatened, even. I just don’t feel that way.

There’s really nothing new about the idea that competitors raise the likelihood of success for all. Think about it…it’s the idea behind bookstores, hardware stores, music stores, shopping malls, food courts, movie theatres, the MLS system, etc. Imagine if a publisher was angry because Borders placed their book on a shelf next to…(gulp)…another book!

So, long story short, I believe that healthy competition is a very good thing.

Whenever I hear that someone’s primary goal is to “raise awareness” about their brand, I pause. Saying that your marketing strategy is designed to raise awareness is sort of like saying that your primary goal in exercising is to sweat…or that the primary goal of eating is to chew.

Awareness shouldn’t be viewed a goal. Awareness should be viewed as an effect…as in, for every cause, there’s an effect. When you advertise, consumers will become aware. But the real question is: what good is that awareness? What does that awareness achieve?

If you’ve been in business long enough, you’ve had to weather some storms. You’ve had to endure some attacks from old competitors, from blood-hungry startups, and from angry customers. Maybe, you’ve even had to defend yourself against your own screw-ups. Hey, it happens. But what is the best way to defend your brand? At one point or another, you’ve probably heard me say that “PR builds a brand, and advertising defends it.” Whenever I say this, I usually get a distant “ahh-ok” look from the listener…like they’re agreeing with me but don’t have a clue what I mean. For the most part, this statement is a very broad generalization, but a good starting point for a tactical discussion of brand defense.

It all comes down to the fact that some things are inherently interesting and some just…well…aren’t. In today’s market, if you want your product or service to be top-of-mind with your consumers, you need a story that will stick. A story that has to be retold ten times over before it takes hold isn’t really a very good story, now is it? So what will make your story stick?

Is aggressively marketing your startup company a requirement or a luxury? While many entrepreneurs pay lip service to the former, they don’t really believe it. If you want the truth, look at what they actually do. As crazy as it may seem, it’s common for entrepreneurs to overlook the need for major marketing investment from day one. “We’re just starting up,” they think. “We need to get on our feet and then we’ll have the money to invest in things like marketing and advertising.” But whether it’s old-fashioned meatloaf or brand new technology, no matter how good your product or service is, it won’t sell itself. If you can’t afford a marketing budget you can’t afford to open your doors.

As marketers, our job is to tell stories. The stories we tell are either believed or disbelieved by consumers. Presumably, you hire us because people tend to believe the story we tell more often than not. As humans, we don’t process facts, we process stories. Our brains operate much better when we tell ourselves a story and then make decisions based on how that story makes us feel.